[hey_it's_that_dog]

It's a specific issue of harm, that I was asked to address. I produced a long list of hateful feminist literature in the other thread, but someone didn't like the host site. Here it is again http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/06...-reading-list/

How many of these books are serious philosophical treatises, how many are meant to be humorous in some way, and how many are books about gender dynamics that have provocative, but not entirely accurate, titles in order to get attention?

Furthermore, even if each of these is 100% dead serious about advocating a man-hating philosophy, this is in no way damning of feminism as a whole. Just like the contemptible shit some men believe should not be held against all men.

[Raonak]

i still dont see the hostility towards mens rights movement. sure, it has its extremists, just like every group.
feminism already has too much on its plate, having a group focused on only mens issuses means thoes issues would likely be dealt with faster.
logically speaking it just makes more sense having focused groups alongside all encompasing groups.

[The Adder]

I think the difference here is that with men's rights, when feminists ask over and over and over for an example of someone in men's rights advocacy doing serious work that is not simply academically dishonest or a thin veneer for an anti-feminist diatribe, we get silence. When I do see someone concerned about these issues and addressing them in a thoughtful and well-informed way, that person is almost always a male feminist. Again, I feel you're setting up a false equivalency here.

Inquiry: Does being a male and understanding the need for, and supporting, the feminist movement, but not identifying as a feminist, still qualify you as a "male feminist." At least in your mind? Because if so, I believe that's a bit of an inverse "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

[jimi_dini]

My gut feeling is that though it is theoretically possible that quotas can facilitate less qualified individuals getting jobs over more qualified candidates, this is more of a phantom threat than anything else.

But if the better candidate gets the job, why should there be quotas then?

Because without them even better women wouldn't get employed, because of their gender? Why should an employer do that? It wouldn't make sense. I mean you said that with quotas, there should be/is no harm. Which would mean the better applicant gets the job, right? So quotas wouldn't be needed.

And in my country for example, there are quotas. They were introduced around 20 years ago. And even in jobs, where many more women are employed (for example education or medical care), women are still preferred by that quota. Which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Actually if there are quotas, those should be male quotas. And I won't even complain about children daycare, where 97% of the workers are female (horray for all males are pedophiles).

In public service all job descriptions contain the remark that females are preferred in case of same qualification. Which means males need to have better qualification (qualification == grades and paper work, doesn't say anything about competence), otherwise they have to be discriminated because of their gender.

Also since 2000 there are around 60% females in public service / administration - that's way over "equality". But the quotas are still in place since then. I just need to look at the HR department of my own workplace. Everyone is female. And HR is the largest department of the whole administration.

There are also hard quotas. Which mean exactly what I wrote. If you need to choose 4 people, 2 of them HAVE to be female. Which means if you get 4 shitty male applicants and 4 great female applicants, all is fine and dandy. If you get 4 shitty female applicants and 4 great male applicants, you got to stop the whole process or you have to discriminate 2 male applicants. It's laughable.

[mnemovore]

Or disagreement over what that philosophy is about?

That's defined by it's establishment. Permutations are not equal to their shared label.

All three of those are sort of interrelated and important in this instance. How our prison systems are run is what causes the sort of internalized rape culture to exist, by passively allowing it to take place, by using the threat of it as a tool, by placing prisoners with known rapists as punishment, by homophobic insinuations that rape victims are actually in relationships or in a lover's tiff (which also mirrors male-female rape apologetics), by failing to protect at-risk prisoners, and so forth. It isn't an accident or an inevitability that prison rape in American prisons is so enormously high; it is the result of actions and inaction taken or not taken that causes this environment. And how society perceives male criminals is obviously important, as we aren't going to have the political will to change this without changing that.

My point of bringing up those areas of focus is to illustrate how calling an effort to lower the incidence of prison rape a men's rights issue creates an arbitrary straight-jacket.

[The Adder]

But if the better candidate gets the job, why should there be quotas then? Because without them even better women wouldn't get employed, because of their gender? Why should an employer do that? It wouldn't make sense. I mean you said that with quotas, there should be/is no harm. Which would mean the better applicant gets the job, right? So quotas wouldn't be needed.

In America, at least, white men are more likely to get a job all other things being equal. Hell, they're more likely to get a job when less qualified. It's not women, but here's a perfect example of employers doing exactly that.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/pager_ajs.pdf



A study on the number of call backs of equally qualified white males with or without a criminal record vs. black Males with or without a criminal record.

As you can see from the graph even with a criminal record, a white male is more likely to get a call back than a black male with equal qualifications and no criminal record.

I'm looking for a similar study with women, but even without it, the point remains. Yes employers do this.

[NovemberMike]

So it is satirising feminists? The author was not a feminist?

There may have been satirical elements to the SCUM Manifesto, but Solanas was an insane person that killed a man and tried to kill three others.

[mac]

Specifically, producing hateful literature that's influenced generations of women in their relations with men. Poisonous really, like a cult

The father of bigotry against men. Males are portrayed as troublemaking, violent, thieves. And the hijinks. I thought to be a boy you have do commit hijinks, damn you Feminazi Mark Twain!

[Karakand]

So it is satirising feminists? The author was not a feminist?

If you flip the genders and sex organs around in it, it reads suspiciously like Freudian theories / analyses of women.

[jimi_dini]

In America, at least, white men are more likely to get a job all other things being equal. Hell, they're more likely to get a job when less qualified. It's not women, but here's a perfect example of employers doing exactly that.

Yes, but that's racism - a completely different issue.
Black men are also more likely to get stopped and searched by police. Even 28x more, which is insane. For women, I would assume it's the opposite.

[The Adder]

Yes, but that's racism - a completely different issue. Black men are also more likely to get stopped and searched by police. Even 28x more, which is insane. For women, I would assume it's the opposite.

It's all created by societal expectations and stereotypes. Blacks are considered lazy and stupid, hence the lower hiring. Likewise women are stereotyped as caregivers and not expected to work outside of the home (or if they do only in a job that's basically housework outside of the home, hence the elementary teaching positions. Well, that plus the whole Dude with Kids = Pedo thing). No matter how wrong we know it is intellectually, some people outright ignore that, and more than a few that aren't actively thinking about it let it influence them subconsciously.

[ArynCrinn]

My main issue with people who regularly stump for feminism or "manism" or whatever special interest they are picketing on that day. Is that, there's a aura of disingenuous rhetoric that goes along with it. "Well, we are feminists, so we by proxy support gender equality" or even the most hideous type of evasion "we support equality for everybody", which is empirically not true, in fact it's a logical contradiction on principle and on the vocabulary. I have no problems with people who boldly state "I am woman, therefor I am lobbying for women's rights", because at least you always know where they stand. I do take issue with the premise put forth that it by proxy supports equality or balance as a whole. Because in reality, you cannot add a weight to counteract a victim position without it having some negative or systemic effect elsewhere, you just can't do it. And that's fine if women reserve certain allotments based on biology or socioeconomic standing, just don't expect those we are affected, even if it's just perception, to like it and not be upset.

So it's obvious that feminism doesn't serve both the interests of men AND women, and sure as hell not "equality for everyone", the theories themselves and the steps historically taken disprove this. In fact, both interests are often at odds with one another. That's not to say it's been negative for the rights of women, quite the opposite. But it certainly isn't doing anything for myself or any men I know. I don't subscribe to women's rights because of "feminism" of any of their accomplishments, I believe in women's rights because I believe in virtue and ethics and fairness, and I was raised by women and love my wife and maybe someday daughter/s. I believe how we interact, how we are raised and how we accept ethical principle shapes far more reason and fairness than any special interest ever has or could. That's not to say these groups have no purpose, but I think we need to put our nose to grindstone and work in our personal lives to change perceptions, starting with how we raise our kids, not preaching or sending money or voting. But that's just me, for whatever it's worth.

And really, we support equality for everyone? No feminist or manist platform has ever said we want to help the mentally or physically handicapped find equal pay, equal opportunity, equal status of dignity and respect within society. I never hear about the Right to Die movement and how every just human being should respect anothers' right to decide if their quality of life is worth continuing, especially the terminally ill, quite the contrary. I never hear much about almost any other equal rights and equal respect issues we face, who are far more worse off than women as social classes. This isn't aimed at anybody in particular, and no disrespect meant, but I just get a bit flushed when I hear "equal or balanced rights for everyone, or even genders". It's clear what "feminism" (aka female interest) is, as a platform and who it panders to, and I tend to agree a great deal with many issues, but it is what it is.

Sorry if unreadable, a bit tired at the moment.

[kame-sennin]

The fact is you guys are using really loaded vocabulary, and in a way that is really confusing too. Either "Feminism" is the movement where women fight for their rights and interests, or it is the fight for equality between genders in general. It can't be both. Or rather it can be both, but you have to explicitely state which one you're refering to everytime, otherwise you're just blurring the discussion voluntarily or not. In any case asking men to rally under feminism to defend their rights is completely futile, even if you were to somehow make feminism solely about equality between genders the movement is historically completely owned by women.

As a male feminist, I think this is nonsense. When a society creates a system of oppression for one group and corresponding privilege for another, the only way to fight for equality is to fight for the rights of the oppressed. As a man, in order to live in a society where women are treated equally, I have to acknowledge that I in some ways benefit from unearned privilege which comes at the expense of women. Fighting for 'my rights' is nothing more than a sad attempt to further the imbalance that already exists. This is why there is no moral counterpoint to the black power movement. Blacks sought empowerment as a correction to the heinous imbalance of power present in society (then and now). I see very little difference between the MRM and white power groups. Arguing for the empowerment of the privileged can only exacerbate inequality.

However, if those who benefit from unearned privilege make good faith attempts to deal with systems of oppression, they will reap the benefits of living in an equal society. Patriarchy is a system designed to oppress women, but in order to do so it constrains both men and women to gender roles that can inadvertently hurt men. For example, the issues MRM has with divorce, adoption, child custody, and paternity leave, all result from the sexist construct of women being the sole child care provider within the home. Dismantling the patriarchy in no way conflicts with the goal of creating a more equal society.

[lopaz]

The father of bigotry against men. Males are portrayed as troublemaking, violent, thieves. And the hijinks. I thought to be a boy you have do commit hijinks, damn you Feminazi Mark Twain!

lol

[Transhuman]

I see very little difference between the MRM and white power groups. Arguing for the empowerment of the privileged can only exacerbate inequality.

I hate general statements like this. Opposing inequalities that affect men doesn't mean you think men are better than women, or that men are hard done by in every aspect of life.

[Jado]

His Brain, Her Brain - 2005 Scientific American article on the research done up to that point. This is very powerful evidence that gender exists from day 1 of birth and is not merely a creation of society. Please read. Very interesting stuff!

magazine-style PDF http://www.bio.uci.edu/public/press/...isherbrain.pdf

A generation of neuroscientists came to maturity believing that “sex differences in the brain” referred primarily to mating behaviors, sex hormones and the hypothalamus. That view, however, has now been knocked aside by a surge of findings that highlight the influence of sex on many areas of cognition and behavior, including memory, emotion, vision, hearing, the processing of faces and the brain’s response to stress hormones.

[P]rimate brains maintain proportionately larger regions devoted to vision, and rats devote more space to olfaction. So the existence of widespread anatomical disparities between men and women suggests that sex does influence the way the brain works.

Interestingly, the brain areas that Goldstein found to differ between men and women are ones that in animals contain the highest number of sex hormone receptors during development. This correlation between brain region size in adults and sex steroid action in utero suggests that at least some sex differences in cognitive function do not result from cultural influences or the hormonal changes associated with puberty— they are there from birth.

Several intriguing behavioral studies add to the evidence that some sex differences in the brain arise before a baby draws its first breath. Through the years, many researchers have demonstrated that when selecting toys, young boys and girls part ways. Boys tend to gravitate toward balls or toy cars, whereas girls more typically reach for a doll. by culture or by innate brain biology. To address this question, Melissa Hines of City University London and Gerianne M. Alexander of Texas A&M University turned to monkeys, one of our closest animal cousins. The researchers presented a group of vervet monkeys with a selection of toys, including rag dolls, trucks and some genderneutral items such as picture books. They found that male monkeys spent more time playing with the “masculine” toys than their female counterparts did, and female monkeys spent more time interacting with the playthings typically preferred by girls. Both sexes spent equal time monkeying with the picture books and other gender-neutral toys. Because vervet monkeys are unlikely to be swayed by the social pressures of human culture, the results imply that toy preferences in children result at least in part from innate biological differences. ... In the case of the toy study, males—both human and primate—prefer toys that can be propelled through space and that promote rough-and-tumble play. These qualities, it seems reasonable to speculate, might relate to the behaviors useful for hunting and for securing a mate. Similarly, one might also hypothesize that females, on the other hand, select toys that allow them to hone the skills they will one day need to nurture their young.

Many researchers have described disparities in how “people-centered” male and female infants are. For example, Baron-Cohen and his student Svetlana Lutchmaya found that one-year-old girls spend more time looking at their mothers than boys of the same age do. And when these babies are presented with a choice of films to watch, the girls look longer at a film of a face, whereas boys boys lean toward a film featuring cars. Of course, these preferences might be attributable to differences in the way adults handle or play with boys and girls. To eliminate this possibility, Baron-Cohen and his students went a step further. They took their video camera to a maternity ward to examine the preferences of babies that were only one day old. The infants saw either the friendly face of a live female student or a mobile that matched the color, size and shape of the student’s face and included a scrambled mix of her facial features. To avoid any bias, the experimenters were unaware of each baby’s sex during testing. When they watched the tapes, they found that the girls spent more time looking at the [female] student, whereas the boys spent more time looking at the mechanical object. This difference in social interest was evident on day one of life—implying again that we come out of the womb with some cognitive sex differences built in.

[Mumei]

Everything else aside, if there is one woman in the universe who is fighting for more than strict equality with men under the banner of feminism, then you can't equate feminism with simply the fight for equality in general. Or you have to create your own definition of feminism, and give your own term for what such a woman is doing, and remind everyone at every turn that you are using your own definitions of common words. It's just unnecessarily confusing. All of this is complicated of course by the fact that in a lot of areas it's really hard to determine what "strict equality" is, since men and women are in different situations and you can't give them the exact same rights (like reproductive rights, laws regarding harassement and sexual assault and so forth.)

I don't think that there needs to be 100% agreement among every member who identifies themselves as a holding some political or ideological stance for someone to be able to comment on what is generally true. I am not familiar with every facet of feminism, and I'm sure there are branches that are different than what I support. But as far as the big name, mainstream feminist blogs go and the feminist writers I have read, I think the presentation I am giving is a reasonably representative one. There might be that one (or two or twenty or a hundred) feminist(s) who want more than simple equality; I would still say that feminism is about gender equality because that is true in my experience with feminism.

And the fact that there might be issues in which it is difficult to find balance does not mean that balance is not the goal.

I was just making the point that there are gender imbalances in society that are not directly caused by patriarchy, which I thought you were somehow contesting.

I think you took the inch I was giving and tried to turn it into more here. I still believe that in our particular patriarchal society, gender issues are caused by that patriarchal system. I was only conceding that in these (hypothetical?) matriarchal societies we would almost certainly see problems that necessarily could not be blamed on patriarchy.

Someone somewhere in this thread brought up this question of men being automatically suspicious, and someone else somewhere else responded that this was another case of patriarchy causing men troubles and that feminism would cure that as well. At least that's what I understood, I might have been wrong. So you admit that this trend of preventing men from approaching children and so forth is a problem for men, and that patriarchy has nothing to do with at least this one problem (and surely others?)

As regards patriarchy having nothing to do with it: No, I was saying that I did not know. I can imagine an argument for it being related to patriarchy, but it feels sort of half-formed and I don't want to speak completely out of turn.

Well all of this sounds like how you want things to be. If there is a law about child support, and what men can or can not decide to pay or not pay for example, that's just the right to decide something that is taken from them. You can say that everything is better for everyone that way and you may even be right, but the men in question have lost some of their rights, and they may not be happy about it.

I think that this is generally a problem when privileged groups are confronted by their counterparts demanding equality. You see it when straight people who are against equal rights for gay people, such as same-sex marriage, make complaints about "special rights" for gay people. You see it when white people in the United States, and I am sure elsewhere as well, have been enticed to vote against their class interests in a way that still gives them relative advantage over black people. What you're talking about is simply another manifestation of this phenomena. It's unfortunate, but it does not mean that the dominant class is actually right in their pathos.

You mean "It can be both"? Or you mean it's the same for you, because you see it as "fight" for equality?

As I said to Simplet, when I describe what feminism is, I mean my experience with it. It is reasonably broad, but it is not all-encompassing. There might be those radical feminists out there. I don't know them, and they aren't relevant to what I think feminism is.

For example quotas. Where a woman gets a job just because of her gender, not because she is better or at least doing the job as good as the other (for example male) candidate. She may be worse, but it doesn't matter because of her gender. That's not equality. IF a candidate is way better than the other candidates, she or he should get the job. Noone should get a job because of their gender (or color, etc.).

To be honest, I don't really know much about the arguments for or against quotas. My kneejerk reaction to quotas is negative, but I wouldn't want to say no without learning more.

So what is everyone's opinion on Title IX?

"Yay"

Inquiry: Does being a male and understanding the need for, and supporting, the feminist movement, but not identifying as a feminist, still qualify you as a "male feminist." At least in your mind? Because if so, I believe that's a bit of an inverse "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

I don't know that it is. If we are talking about you, for instance, you might not identify as a male feminist, but if you hold positions that are consistent with feminism, support feminism, and understand the need for its existence, what reason is there for me to not consider you feminist?

[Timedog]

An issue that mostly affects men isn't a men's issue? Can we start invalidating gender specific issues that predominantly affect women in this fashion?

Way to not read my post. I never said that any issue that mostly affects men isn't a men's issue. Please read it again and then respond to what I actually said.

[Neo C.]

As a male feminist, I think this is nonsense. When a society creates a system of oppression for one group and corresponding privilege for another, the only way to fight for equality is to fight for the rights of the oppressed.

Not all men are priviledged, just a small fraction of them. Many men are disadvantaged. It's easier for men to make a career? I assume it's great for some who have the chance or really want to make it. For the rest of us who don't care about careers but a balanced of work and free time it isn't a priviledge at all.

I don't see why is it a problem to fight for equality from both sides, which means fight for right of men and women.

[mac]

Not all men are priviledged, just a small fraction of them. Many men are disadvantaged. It's easier for men to make a career? I assume it's great for some who have the chance or really want to make it. For the rest of us who don't care about careers but a balanced of work and free time it isn't a priviledge at all. I don't see why is it a problem to fight for equality from both sides, which means fight for right of men and women.

Those men that care more about free time can get more of it by having a better job and making more money than the women who are paid less and are passed over for promotions.

And your understanding of "privileged" is wrong. This is like when someone uses the example "the average american eats 3 bananas a week." Some kid will always raise his hand and say "but I don't eat bananas." This is a widespread social phenomenon, it's not something you can just say "but this one time . . ." and expect that to change.

[Cipherr]

I don't see why is it a problem to fight for equality from both sides, which means fight for right of men and women.

Neither can I.

I've always been somewhat mystified by the aggressive opposition this discussion generates here on GAF. Any thread or post that hints at it is immediately met with anything but kindness. The first page of this thread even was on a bad course before the mod stepped in.

[Neo C.]

Those men that care more about free time can get more of it by having a better job and making more money than the women who are paid less and are passed over for promotions.

They can't because it's much harder for men to get part-time jobs in my country. Patriarchy can be really bad for progressive men.

And your understanding of "privileged" is wrong. This is like when someone uses the example "the average american eats 3 bananas a week." Some kid will always raise his hand and say "but I don't eat bananas." This is a widespread social phenomenon, it's not something you can just say "but this one time . . ." and expect that to change.

Yeah, it's not a priviledge, it's actually a burden. Young men who don't care for careers aren't accepted, because it isn't the norm. That's why men have a tough time when they want to do a "female" job like a kindergarten teacher.

[kame-sennin]

I hate general statements like this.

I didn't make a generalization. I said that the men's rights movement very specifically is a reactionary movement on the part of the privileged to undo the small gains made by the oppressed. Such reactionary movements are common whenever out groups make progress in society.

Opposing inequalities that affect men doesn't mean you think men are better than women, or that men are hard done by in every aspect of life.

No it doesn't, which is why I never made such a claim. In fact, my post specifically outlined the ways in which the patriarchy negatively impacts men. As a feminist, I would like to see those things changed.

Not all men are priviledged, just a small fraction of them. Many men are disadvantaged. It's easier for men to make a career? I assume it's great for some who have the chance or really want to make it. For the rest of us who don't care about careers but a balanced of work and free time it isn't a priviledge at all. I don't see why is it a problem to fight for equality from both sides, which means fight for right of men and women.

That's not what privilege means. Also, you can experience privilege in one dimension (e.g. being male) while being underprivileged in another (e.g. being black).

[kevm3]

Comparing men's right movements to white power movements is utterly dishonest and to suggest that men's rights movements are trying to hold back women or roll back women's rights is also dishonest.

How does issues like marriage/divorce law reform, holding women equally accountable for domestic violence, and other such issues stifle the progress of females or equate in any ways to what racists are doing? How does any of that demonstrate hatred of women?

[Simplet]

As regards patriarchy having nothing to do with it: No, I was saying that I did not know. I can imagine an argument for it being related to patriarchy, but it feels sort of half-formed and I don't want to speak completely out of turn.

Ha that's pretty interesting. So initially you didn't see what this problem had to do with patriarchy and feminism at all, but now that I tell you that this is a gender issue in our society you automatically assume it has something to do with patriarchy, you're just not quite sure how yet?

I think that this is generally a problem when privileged groups are confronted by their counterparts demanding equality. You see it when straight people who are against equal rights for gay people, such as same-sex marriage, make complaints about "special rights" for gay people. You see it when white people in the United States, and I am sure elsewhere as well, have been enticed to vote against their class interests in a way that still gives them relative advantage over black people. What you're talking about is simply another manifestation of this phenomena. It's unfortunate, but it does not mean that the dominant class is actually right in their pathos.

Well there is a fundamental difference between the rights you are talking about and the rights I'm talking about. If a law gives gay people the right to marry, it didn't take the right to marry away from everyone else. If a law states that a man has to pay child support for twenty years if through whatever circumstances his having sex with a woman produces a baby and she decides to keep it, this law has a very real, very concrete influence on this man's life, and what he has the right to do.

You might say that such a law is good, and in most circumstances a child support law for example is a very good thing, but you have to aknowledge this very basic distinction between the feminist fight and the gay fight for example. It's just disingenious to brush it away.

[kevm3]

I didn't make a generalization. I said that the men's rights movement very specifically is a reactionary movement on the part of the privileged to undo the small gains made by the oppressed. Such reactionary movements are common whenever out groups make progress in society. No it doesn't, which is why I never made such a claim. In fact, my post specifically outlined the ways in which the patriarchy negatively impacts men. As a feminist, I would like to see those things changed. That's not what privilege means. Also, you can experience privilege in one dimension (e.g. being male) while being underprivileged in another (e.g. being black).

If being a male was such a privilege, feminists would want to assume the WHOLE package of what being a male entails for women, including the ability to be drafted and sent to the front lines of wars, lifetime alimony, paternity fraud (having your mate cheat and yet you still are forced to pay child support for a kid that isn't yours), being held equally accountable for violence (little is said when women slap men, throw drinks on them and other such actions), having custody of the children automatically rewarded to the opposite gender except in rare circumstances, etc.

[mac]

If being a male was such a privilege, feminists would want to assume the WHOLE package of what being a male entails for women, including the ability to be drafted and sent to the front lines of wars, lifetime alimony, paternity fraud (having your mate cheat and yet you still are forced to pay child support for a kid that isn't yours), being held equally accountable for violence (little is said when women slap men, throw drinks on them and other such actions), having custody of the children automatically rewarded to the opposite gender except in rare circumstances, etc.

I think the women who join the armed services would be proud to be allowed to fight on the front lines and be drafted. I think the women who sign pre-nups would prefer a automatic split in income/visitation rights. I think women would like to be able to have physical dominance over men if it meant they were accountable just the same, etc.

[Mumei]

Comparing men's right movements to white power movements is utterly dishonest and to suggest that men's rights movements are trying to hold back women or roll back women's rights is also dishonest.

The men's rights movements actively advocate against domestic abuse shelters, advocate against money for domestic abuse victims, and advocate for requiring abortions to have the consent of the father. They regularly argue against ever voting to convict when serving on a jury for a rape charge, even if the accused is unquestionably guilty. They argue that half of all rape allegations are false in a deliberate attempt to raise suspicion about claims of rapes despite the fact that false rape allegations are no more common than for any other crime. On their forums and websites it is trivially easy to find deeply misogynistic articles. A Voice For Men, the website which lopaz has linked to on multiple occasions, maintains a website called Register-Her, a website for disgruntled men to register women who supposedly have made false sexual assault allegations - or other "crimes against masculinity."

The men's rights movements can be found arguing against nearly every gain women have made from feminism over the last fifty years entirely on the basis of sexist stereotypes.

How does issues like marriage/divorce law reform, holding women equally accountable for domestic violence, and other such issues stifle the progress of females or equate in any ways to what racists are doing? How does any of that demonstrate hatred of women?

The issues do not. It is in the presentation of the issues and the sexism and misogyny displayed by their advocates that we see hatred towards women.

If you say there is inequity in marriage / divorce law (I don't know that there is; I think the inequity is a byproduct of inequity caused by other factors and men are not being legally discriminated until we get to family law, but I digress), that is not sexist or misogynistic in and of itself. If you say that we have inequity in marriage / divorce law and we need to change it because women are lying bitches who just want to get your money and the only way to win is to cut women out of your life, that's misogynistic. If you say that the only reason we have those problems is because of feminazis and manginas, that is at the very least an expression of sexism, if not outright misogyny. If you say that women should be held equally accountable for domestic violence, that is not misogynistic. If however you argue that women really do need their man to beat them once in awhile to keep them in line - a commonplace argument in MRA circles - and then you misrepresent research to make it appear that women abuse as often or as severely as men in order to argue that this is not a problem that uniquely faces women in order to argue that there is no need for domestic abuse shelters, that is misogynistic.

It is not the issues that are problematic when it comes to MRAs, it is the things they say.

I can understand someone who does not follow the MRA movement hearing some of these issues and, having heard about inequities relating to these issues in the past, believe that MRA is an innocent movement which simply is a counterpoint to some of feminism's excesses and draws attention to the ways in which men are not being well-served by feminism. I can understand it because I used to think this way, because I took a charitable interpretation of what I thought men's rights advocacy might mean. It was not until I started actually reading what they were actually saying and arguing that I saw how deeply disturbed the movement is (not my introduction, but is a good introduction; Manboobz is good for daily-ish dose of MRAs being MRAs).

Ha that's pretty interesting. So initially you didn't see what this problem had to do with patriarchy and feminism at all, but now that I tell you that this is a gender issue in our society you automatically assume it has something to do with patriarchy, you're just not quite sure how yet?

I am engaging you honestly, without engaging in needless misrepresentations of your positions. I don't appreciate your unwillingness to do me the same courtesy. This is the third time now where you have claimed that I have said something I did not say. I did not say that I didn't see what this problem had to do with patriarchy or feminism at all. I said I did not know what the connection was; I did not know how these issues might be connected. I knew it was a gendered problem long before I knew who you were, so you may stop taking credit where none is due. When I said that, you misinterpreted my profession of ignorance (as to why men face this problem), as an admission that patriarchy did not have anything to do with it. When I corrected you and said it was only an admission of ignorance and that while I could imagine an argument for patriarchy being related to it, I was not comfortable speaking about it, you then claimed that I automatically assumed that it was related to patriarchy as a result of your "educating" me.

At every step in this conversation, you have misrepresented what I have said. At this point, I'm just going to drop this argument because I'm not interested in correcting you at every step.

I hope this goes slightly better:

Well there is a fundamental difference between the rights you are talking about and the rights I'm talking about. If a law gives gay people the right to marry, it didn't take the right to marry away from everyone else. If a law states that a man has to pay child support for twenty years if through whatever circumstances his having sex with a woman produces a baby and she decides to keep it, this law has a very real, very concrete influence on this man's life, and what he has the right to do.

Religious conservatives have long argued that allowing gay people to marry and having the state recognize their marriages impedes about their rights to religious freedom by forcing them into positions where they have to legally recognize the relationships of gay people, or by forcing them into positions where they cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The privileged always find a way to twist facts to portray a situation as if they are losing something as opposed to gaining.

[Simplet]

Meh, no point continuing this discussion if you're going to take it like that. It was interesting while it lasted.

[Mumei]

I am sorry if that came across as overly aggressive. I realize that sometimes saying the same things I said as a poster might come across differently when I am a moderator. I was being a bit short-tempered because I am tired and it is just something of a pet peeve for me in these conversations.

[HoodWinked]

rescinded

[Neo C.]

I realize that there seems a huge difference between the men rights movement in the US and in other countries (like Switzerland). While the movement still doesn't get as much support as feminism, at least the institutionalization has already begun in Zurich.
I mean, I'm not part of the movement, but I don't see why I shouldn't support the progressive wing of this movement who fights for parental leave for men and against mandatory military service of men.

Is the MRM leaning to the GOP or to Tea Party? I dunno, someone should explain the situation in the US.

[The Adder]

I don't know that it is. If we are talking about you, for instance, you might not identify as a male feminist, but if you hold positions that are consistent with feminism, support feminism, and understand the need for its existence, what reason is there for me to not consider you feminist?

"The no true scotsman fallacy is a way of reinterpreting evidence in order to prevent the refutation of one’s position. Proposed counter-examples to a theory are dismissed as irrelevant solely because they are counter-examples, but purportedly because they are not what the theory is about.

The No True Scotsman fallacy involves discounting evidence that would refute a proposition, concluding that it hasn’t been falsified when in fact it has.
If Angus, a Glaswegian, who puts sugar on his porridge, is proposed as a counter-example to the claim “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge”, the ‘No true Scotsman’ fallacy would run as follows:
(1) Angus puts sugar on his porridge.
(2) No (true) Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
Therefore:
(3) Angus is not a (true) Scotsman.
Therefore:
(4) Angus is not a counter-example to the claim that no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

This fallacy is a form of circular argument, with an existing belief being assumed to be true in order to dismiss any apparent counter-examples to it. The existing belief thus becomes unfalsifiable."

So, what I'm asking is whether the statement:

"When I do see someone concerned about these issues and addressing them in a thoughtful and well-informed way, that person is almost always a male feminist"

Is coming from people identifying as "male feminists", or from the "male feminist" tag being applied retroactively.

To put it in the terms of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy:

"Only male feminists write insightful things addressing these problems":

(1). Rob doesn't identify as a "male feminist"
(2). Writes insightful thing addressing this problem
Therefore:
(3). Rob is a male feminist.
Therefore:
(4). Rob is not a counter example to the claim "Only male feminists write insightful things addressing these problems."

[LumpOfCole]

The men's rights movements actively advocate against domestic abuse shelters, advocate against money for domestic abuse victims, and advocate for requiring abortions to have the consent of the father. They regularly argue against ever voting to convict when serving on a jury for a rape charge, even if the accused is unquestionably guilty. They argue that half of all rape allegations are false in a deliberate attempt to raise suspicion about claims of rapes despite the fact that false rape allegations are no more common than for any other crime. On their forums and websites it is trivially easy to find deeply misogynistic articles. A Voice For Men, the website which lopaz has linked to on multiple occasions, maintains a website called Register-Her, a website for disgruntled men to register women who supposedly have made false sexual assault allegations - or other "crimes against masculinity." The men's rights movements can be found arguing against nearly every gain women have made from feminism over the last fifty years entirely on the basis of sexist stereotypes.

This is why I hate attaching my views to any sort of larger movement - the movement itself is either hijacked by a significant percentage of the radicals in a movement, or there is a false perception of what a majority of the movement stands for. In either instance, it would make my own individual views come across as a 'cover-up' or somewhat inconsequential. I would say I'm for equality among genders more-so than being apart of "the mens rights movements."

So, my own views per each individual point:

Advocation against domestic abuse shelters: Absolutely not. My beef with domestic abuse shelters is that many won't let in abused men who are violently abused and choose not to fight back - either because of fear of social and legal repercussions or because it is socially ingrained in that male to never strike a female for any reason whatsoever, even if violently attacked. In short, I want the role of domestic abuse shelters to be expanded to abused men. Here is a firsthand account of how this injustice has affected at least one person in a traumatizing way.

Advocation against money for domestic abuse victims: This varies on a case-by-case basis, but any individual violently striking or holding lifestyle hostage to emotionally suffocate another individual deserves monetary compensation through the legal system. I wish I could give a broad stroke answer of what I believe would be fair for this point, but it's really case-by-case.

Advocation for requiring abortions to have the consent of the father: I should preface this point by saying that my views on abortion sit right on that line that piss off many Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers alike. I'm atheist and my moral code here doesn't apply to any belief of deities or souls or heaven or anything like that. I draw the line of human life beginning when a developing brain independently begins its own electrical impulses, and this happens about six weeks into the pregnancy. All this means is that I think abortion is morally wrong after the six week mark, and perfectly alright before that mark. That all being said, while I believe the father should be consulted about the abortion, the father shouldn't have the ability force the woman to continue with carrying and delivering a baby if she desires otherwise. TL;DR: Abortions shouldn't ever be forced to have consent of the father (though the father should at least be legally notified of the procedure afterward to ensure he at least had knowledge of the pregnancy).

Arguing against ever voting to convict when serving on a jury for a rape charge: This is another point where it must be case-by-case, but I can tell you that false rape accusations scare the shit out of males in general because they are very real (example here). Before someone is prosecuted for any crime, there must be significant evidence that that crime occurred. If the legal system is sending innocents to jail because of weighted emotional appeal, then there needs to be a correction in the system to work to prevent false accusations of rape and any other allegation that convicts without suitable evidence.

Arguing that half of all rape allegations are false in a deliberate attempt to raise suspicion about claims of rapes despite the fact that false rape allegations are no more common than for any other crime: This is a point of contention that is misrepresented by extremists of both sides, and has effectively muddied the argument. There is a well-sourced study to suggest that there is no actual evidence in claiming that the figure of false rape accusations (2%) is in line with all other false crime accusations. On the other side of that coin, suggesting that false rape accusations comprise 40%+ of rape accusations is also significantly overstated. You can click here to see MRM's 40%+ figure used without proper context - it's shit like that that makes me not want to be associated with any movements while still believing in gender equality and men's rights. Law enforcement agencies (at least American ones) don't properly or adequately separate false rape allegations from rape charges that are dropped for other reasons. This muddies the statistics for both extremes of the issue.

On MRM forums and websites it being trivially easy to find deeply misogynistic articles: Yes - wearing the label of a movement also means sharing the identity of the more extreme and more shitty parts of said movement. It's why I don't want to say I'm one of the MRM supporters despite having very passionate views about certain men's rights and current injustices. There are feminist forums and sites that show pretty misandry as well, and it's just another reason that one should form his or her own individual thoughts about the issues facing gender inequality and social stigmas instead of lumping in with organized movements which always seem to have significant chips on their shoulders.

[Jado]

I'm respectful of feminists, but seeing as I disagree with certain critical aspects of it, I don't consider myself a feminist at all.

[ElectricBlue187]

That's a shame, still doesn't invalidate what she said in some of the videos before. This is pretty sad though:

I also liked some of her videos and felt they were insightful especially concerning men's reproductive rights but I think overall her having these kind of views says more about her than the feminists she rails against. Its a shame.

[Mumei]

His Brain, Her Brain - 2005 Scientific American article on the research done up to that point. This is very powerful evidence that gender exists from day 1 of birth and is not merely a creation of society. Please read. Very interesting stuff

I actually have read that before, back in 2005. I remember the article.

And I think you're not really understanding the argument I've been making. Massive (millions plus worth of data) studies have been performed comparing the cognitive differences between men and women on math and verbal skills. They are nonexistent, except in the case of the genius end of mathematical ability where men are overrepresented. Studies have shown that men are just as capable as women are of the sort of emotional intuitiveness that women are stereotypically said to have when they are placed in situations, such as work, where they need to be.

Studies which show minor differences in how long babies of different genders look at faces, which objects they look at, and so forth are not relevant to a discussion about whether biological differences are determinative in adult men in women. They only speak to possible baseline differences and don't counter the notion of plasticity and that men and women have essentially the same potential when it comes to these issues because of that plasticity, regardless of what minor differences might exist in the baseline.

"The no true scotsman fallacy is a way of reinterpreting evidence in order to prevent the refutation of one’s position. Proposed counter-examples to a theory are dismissed as irrelevant solely because they are counter-examples, but purportedly because they are not what the theory is about. The No True Scotsman fallacy involves discounting evidence that would refute a proposition, concluding that it hasn’t been falsified when in fact it has. If Angus, a Glaswegian, who puts sugar on his porridge, is proposed as a counter-example to the claim “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge”, the ‘No true Scotsman’ fallacy would run as follows: (1) Angus puts sugar on his porridge. (2) No (true) Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge. Therefore: (3) Angus is not a (true) Scotsman. Therefore: (4) Angus is not a counter-example to the claim that no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge. This fallacy is a form of circular argument, with an existing belief being assumed to be true in order to dismiss any apparent counter-examples to it. The existing belief thus becomes unfalsifiable." So, what I'm asking is whether the statement: "When I do see someone concerned about these issues and addressing them in a thoughtful and well-informed way, that person is almost always a male feminist" Is coming from people identifying as "male feminists", or from the "male feminist" tag being applied retroactively. To put it in the terms of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy: "Only male feminists write insightful things addressing these problems": (1). Rob doesn't identify as a "male feminist" (2). Writes insightful thing addressing this problem Therefore: (3). Rob is a male feminist. Therefore: (4). Rob is not a counter example to the claim "Only male feminists write insightful things addressing these problems."

No, I mean I know what the fallacy is; I just didn't see the connection. I think I see the problem, though.

I did not make the claim in (4) that "only male feminists write insightful things addressing these problems." I said that this is "almost always" the case, and I was careful to note that this was only in my experience. I was not intending to make a claim about things beyond my ken. While I have never seen an MRA say anything insightful about gender issues, though I wouldn't deny that it is possible, however unlikely it might be, and I have on occasion seem someone vaguely hostile to feminism still say things that are insightful.

You were asking me about a hypothetical man who "understands the need for" and "supports" feminism. I consider that person a feminist. I don't consider someone a feminist simply because they happen to say something insightful about gender relations; I simply find that it is usually true that when I see a man addressing issues men face in a thoughtful and informed manner, that man usually A) self-identifies as feminist, B) barring that, is sympathetic to feminist ideas to the extent that I would feel comfortable labeling them in that manner.

The point of my original comment was not so much meant to be a claim that male feminists have a monopoly on insightful comments - though the vast majority of times I have seen it happen, it has come from them - but more the implicit part that on the flip side I almost never seen MRAs saying anything of worth.

So, no, I don't think that your second example is an accurate representation of my views.

This is why I hate attaching my views to any sort of larger movement - the movement itself is either hijacked by a significant percentage of the radicals in a movement, or there is a false perception of what a majority of the movement stands for. In either instance, it would make my own individual views come across as a 'cover-up' or somewhat inconsequential. I would say I'm for equality among genders more-so than being apart of "the mens rights movements."

I can appreciate the hesitation because of the second thing; as a feminist I confront this quite often. But I think that in the case of men's rights advocacy, it is not a false impression. It is quite honestly difficult to find someone who self-identifies as a men's rights advocate who does not advocate views - or link to articles - that are at the very least based in mild sexism. You mentioned that it is also possible to find misandrist articles on feminist blogs. Perhaps. But I can name somewhere around half a dozen to a dozen mainstream MRA blogs and communities which are filled with sexism and misogyny from top to bottom. Meanwhile, if I told you to go to, say, Shakesville or Pandagon or Feministe or Feministing, you would be hard pressed to find something that is misandrist. It paints a false equivalency when you say that feminist blogs do it, too; they don't do it nearly as often and when it does happen it tends to happen on the margins.

In relation to the issues of domestic abuse and custody, you might want to read this for what the MRAs are not telling you.

Arguing against ever voting to convict when serving on a jury for a rape charge: This is another point where it must be case-by-case, but I can tell you that false rape accusations scare the shit out of males in general because they are very real (example here). Before someone is prosecuted for any crime, there must be significant evidence that that crime occurred. If the legal system is sending innocents to jail because of weighted emotional appeal, then there needs to be a correction in the system to work to prevent false accusations of rape and any other allegation that convicts without suitable evidence.

If anything the legal system is severely weighted in the favor of rapists by making it exceedingly unlikely for a case to even make it to trial. It is unfortunate and wrong when it happens, but it isn't evidence of some sort of systemic bias that makes it more likely.

Arguing that half of all rape allegations are false in a deliberate attempt to raise suspicion about claims of rapes despite the fact that false rape allegations are no more common than for any other crime: This is a point of contention that is misrepresented by extremists of both sides, and has effectively muddied the argument. There is a well-sourced study to suggest that there is no actual evidence in claiming that the figure of false rape accusations (2%) is in line with all other false crime accusations. On the other side of that coin, suggesting that false rape accusations comprise 40%+ of rape accusations is also significantly overstated. You can click here to see MRM's 40%+ figure used without proper context - it's shit like that that makes me not want to be associated with any movements while still believing in gender equality and men's rights. Law enforcement agencies (at least American ones) don't properly or adequately separate false rape allegations from rape charges that are dropped for other reasons. This muddies the statistics for both extremes of the issue.

You linked to the the website of the National Coalition for Men. They were responsible for sponsoring the House GOP's watered down version of the violence against women act, and were part of a coalition which sent a letter saying among other things:

There is no denying the very real problem of violence against women and children. However, the programs promoted in VAWA are harmful for families. VAWA often encourages the demise of the family as a means to eliminate violence.

Emphasis mine. That sentence is a polite expression of the belief that’s widespread in MRA circles and the Christian right that domestic violence is primarily the victim’s fault, usually for being insufficiently subservient to her husband or partner. The theory is that the solution for domestic violence is to encourage victims to stay with their abusers and just work harder on the marriage, usually by trying to be even more placating. I mean, this sentence is offensive on its face—they take it as a given that there’s something wrong with helping women get out of abusive relationships—but if you understand the ideology behind it, it gets uglier.

In other words, I do not believe that the NCFM is a trustworthy source for information like this. The data does vary somewhat, but the FBI reports a rate of 8% for "unfounded" (and not necessarily "false") rape reports; a quarter of those being false reports sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I know that in at least one city (Portland), the police give a false reporting rate of 1.6%. There is a range of "reasonable" ranges for false reporting rates (somewhere around 1.5 - 4%, I'd say), but you're again painting a false equivalency when you argue that both sides are equally guilty of misrepresentations and do so by linking to a group like NCFM.

[LumpOfCole]

I linked to a paper hosted on the National Coalition for Men because it was the first place where I could find a direct hotlink of the PDF version of the paper in Google.

I won't argue for, against, or about National Coalition for Men because I've never been to any URL of theirs except for the paper I linked (from a Google Search). I do apologize for making the paper seem to have no merit by lazily presenting a link hosted on a polarizing organization's site, however.

The same paper can also be read in its entirely from educational institutions or research paper search engines which have nothing to do with the National Coalition for Men:

http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/vi...16&context=llr

https://litigation-essentials.lexisn...aab3b962c8444e

http://heinonlinebackup.com/hol-cgi-...a33&section=33

[strobogo]

How can men and women be equal if they're not even from the same planets?

[The Adder]

No, I mean I know what the fallacy is; I just didn't see the connection. I think I see the problem, though. I did not make the claim in (4) that "only male feminists write insightful things addressing these problems." I said that this is "almost always" the case, and I was careful to note that this was only in my experience. I was not intending to make a claim about things beyond my ken. While I have never seen an MRA say anything insightful about gender issues, though I wouldn't deny that it is possible, however unlikely it might be, and I have on occasion seem someone vaguely hostile to feminism still say things that are insightful. You were asking me about a hypothetical man who "understands the need for" and "supports" feminism. I consider that person a feminist. I don't consider someone a feminist simply because they happen to say something insightful about gender relations; I simply find that it is usually true that when I see a man addressing issues men face in a thoughtful and informed manner, that man usually A) self-identifies as feminist, B) barring that, is sympathetic to feminist ideas to the extent that I would feel comfortable labeling them in that manner. The point of my original comment was not so much meant to be a claim that male feminists have a monopoly on insightful comments - though the vast majority of times I have seen it happen, it has come from them - but more the implicit part that on the flip side I almost never seen MRAs saying anything of worth. So, no, I don't think that your second example is an accurate representation of my views.

Cool, just checking. I have a friend who, like myself, is pretty big on general civil rights supporter and does some writing about various subjects. However, he very much does not identify himself as a feminist.

[kame-sennin]

In relation to the issues of domestic abuse and custody, you might want to read this for what the MRAs are not telling you.

RADAR’s rhetoric may seem overblown, but lately the group and its many partners have been racking up very real accomplishments. In 2008, the organization claimed to have blocked passage of four federal domestic-violence bills, among them an expansion of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to international scope and a grant to support lawyers in pro bono domestic-violence work.

...

Groups like RADAR fall under the broader umbrella of the men’s rights movement, a loose coalition of anti-feminist groups. These men’s rights activists, or MRAs, have long been written off by domestic-violence advocates as a bombastic and fringe group of angry white men, and for good reason. Bernard Chapin, a popular men’s rights blogger, told me over e-mail that he will refer to me as “Feminist E,” since he never uses real names for feminists, who are wicked and who men “must verbally oppose … until our flesh oxidizes into dust.” In the United Kingdom, a father’s rights group scaled Buckingham Palace in superhero costumes. In Australia, they wore paramilitary uniforms and demonstrated outside the houses of female divorcees.

This is what a hate group looks like.

[kame-sennin]

If being a male was such a privilege

FAQ: What is male privilege?

Before discussing “male privilege” it is first important to define what privilege means in an anti-oppression setting. Privilege, at its core, is the advantages that people benefit from based solely on their social status. It is a status that is conferred by society to certain groups, not seized by individuals, which is why it can be difficult sometimes to see one’s own privilege.

In a nutshell:

Privilege is: About how society accommodates you. It’s about advantages you have that you think are normal. It’s about you being normal, and others being the deviation from normal. It’s about fate dealing from the bottom of the deck on your behalf.

[Betty, A primer on privilege.]

Since social status is conferred in many different ways — everything from race to geography to class — all people are both privileged and non-privileged in certain aspects of their life. Furthermore, since dynamics of social status are highly dependent on situation, a person can benefit from privilege in one situation while not benefiting from it in another. It is also possible to have a situation in which a person simultaneously is the beneficiary of privilege while also being the recipient of discrimination in an area which they do not benefit from privilege.

Male privilege is a set of privileges that are given to men as a class due to their institutional power in relation to women as a class. While every man experiences privilege differently due to his own individual position in the social hierarchy, every man, by virtue of being read as male by society, benefits from male privilege.

When first dealing with the concept it might be easier to approach it from a systematic, rather than personal, approach. Consider what Lucy says here:

[T]rue gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.

And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.” My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality – my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.
[Lucy, When Worlds Collide: Fandom and Male Privilege.]

In this case the inequality is perceived, in part, because taking one’s husband’s name is considered “normal” for a woman, whereas choosing to keep one’s own name deviates from that. Popular culture often labels this behavior as “emasculating” to a man, but never bothers to question how a woman might feel being asked to give up something that has been part of her since her birth. This is an example of a culture of male privilege — where a man’s position and feelings are placed above that of the woman’s in a way that is seen as normal, natural, and traditional.

Going back to Lucy’s article, this is what she said in the paragraph directly preceding the one quoted above:

Male privilege may be more obvious in other cultures, but in so-called Western culture it’s still ubiquitous. In fact, it’s so ubiquitous that it’s invisible. It is so pervasive as to be normalized, and so normalized as to be visible only in its absence. The vast, vast, vast majority of institutions, spaces, and subcultures privilege male interests, but because male is the default in this culture, such interests are very often considered ungendered. As a result, we only really notice when something privileges female interests.
[Lucy, When Worlds Collide: Fandom and Male Privilege.]

Most people do not think twice about a woman who shares the same name as her husband; they simply assume that the shared name is his family name. This is an illustration about how male privilege operates in stealth. When a wife does not share the same name as the husband, however, it often leads to confusion and even anger — as Lucy’s example illustrated. This is because the male-oriented option (wife taking husband’s name) is seen as default, and the neutral option (both parties keeping their original names) is a deviation from that norm and therefore comes across as privileging the woman because it doesn’t privilege the man.

[Mumei]

I linked to a paper hosted on the National Coalition for Men because it was the first place where I could find a direct hotlink of the PDF version of the paper in Google. I won't argue for, against, or about National Coalition for Men because I've never been to any URL of theirs except for the paper I linked (from a Google Search). I do apologize for making the paper seem to have no merit by lazily presenting a link hosted on a polarizing organization's site, however. The same paper can also be read in its entirely from educational institutions or research paper search engines which have nothing to do with the National Coalition for Men: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/vi...16&context=llr https://litigation-essentials.lexisn...aab3b962c8444e http://heinonlinebackup.com/hol-cgi-...a33&section=33

I think that their implied support for the article (by independently hosting it) should at least cause your eyebrows to raise a bit.

And I think that the paper has no merit quite on its own given the way it misrepresents the feminist position as "Women don't lie about rape" (which implies a 0% false reporting rate, even if he acknowledges this is based on the 2% figure). This is a misinterpretation of the feminist position because it fails to give proper context on the opposing misogynistic meme propagated by men's rights advocates, which is "Women lie about rape." Men's rights advocates seek to particularly sully the testimony of rape victims and imply that women are less honest and less trustworthy than men when it comes to cases of rape. It places the burden of demonstrating that the rape took place on the shoulders of the woman, when it is not her responsibility to demonstrate. The goal is to besmirch victim testimony in cases of rape, not to raise awareness about an actual issue that needs addressing.

He also gives inaccurate statistics. He claims that "whether by trial or pleabargaining, roughly half of accused rapists are convicted." This is nonsense. RAINN says that there is about a 40% chance of an accusation, about a 50% chance of an arrest, an 80% chance of prosecution, and a 58% chance of a conviction. There is a 69% chance that the convict will serve time in the event of a conviction. This works out to a 23.57% chance of a conviction, and a 16.26% chance of jail time.

And he also takes as reliable on its face data such as the Kanin study which purported to find a 41% false reporting rate in one police department's records. The study is asinine:

Critics of Dr. Kanin's report include Dr. David Lisak, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Men's Sexual Trauma Research Project at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He states, "Kanin’s 1994 article on false allegations is a provocative opinion piece, but it is not a scientific study of the issue of false reporting of rape. It certainly should never be used to assert a scientific foundation for the frequency of false allegations."[10] According to Lisak, Kanin's study lacked any kind of systematic methodology and did not independently define a false report, instead recording as false any report which the police department classified as false. The department classified reports as false which the complainant later said were false, but Lisak points out that [b]Kanin's study did not scrutinize the police's processes or employ independent checkers to protect results from bias.[b][11] Kanin, Lisak writes, took his data from a police department whose investigation procedures are condemned by the U.S. Justice Department and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. These procedures include the almost universal[10] threat, in this department, of polygraph testing of complainants, which is viewed as a tactic of intimidation that leads victims to avoid the justice process[11] and which, Lisak says, is "based on the misperception that a significant percentage of sexual assault reports are false."[10] The police department's "biases...were then echoed in Kanin’s unchallenged reporting of their findings."[10]

Bruce Gross writes in the Forensic Examiner that Kanin's study is an example of the limitations of existing studies on false rape accusations. "Small sample sizes and non-representative samples preclude generalizability."[4] Philip N.S. Rumney questions the reliability of Kanin's study stating that it "must be approached with caution". He argues that the study's most significant problem is Kanin's assumption "that police officers abided by departmental policy in only labeling as false those cases where the complainant admitted to fabrication. He does not consider that actual police practice, as other studies have shown, might have departed from guidelines."

He has a habit of misrepresenting statistics, dismissing out of hand (and without ever actually demonstrating that their are inaccurate) statistics about false reporting rates which are lower than his figure of 25% and implying that those who disagree are being duped by feminists, and accepting uncritically exorbitantly high figures based on specious studies that only get any play in MRA circles in order to propagate their myth of victimization, and then using those exaggerated figures as his basis for moving forward.

And he also sets up a ridiculous standard for what constitutes rape, such as:

In the stronger version, any act of intercourse that occurs in the
absence of an express oral consent is rape.91 Most within the LDF do
not seriously dispute that currently a large portion of women fail to
meet this proposed standard of behavior; and they probably even
agree that it would be unjust currently to imprison the male sexual
partners. [...]

More commonly within LDF there are calls for public policy
implementation of the weaker version: that “no means no,” i.e., that
once the woman has rhetorically expressed nonconsent, sexual intercourse
is rape. This is a seemingly reasonable notion, but in a society
in which numerous women say “no” when they mean “yes,”93 it
suffers from the same practical defect as the stronger version. [...]

In other words, we cannot use a standard of express oral consent because that means that sex because of nonverbal consent would be rape. This is nonsensical; a woman who consented nonverbally would not then file a false rape report. We cannot use "no means no", because sometimes it means yes. This is classic rape apologetics and plays on the myth that women often say no when they really mean yes.

He also engages in a bit of ugly commentary in the footnotes:

95. Under the legal dominance feminist rubric, in addition to the general
categories of men with whom women cannot help but be raped automatically
whenever they have sex (for example, their ministers, doctors, therapists,
teachers, employers, etc.), some tenured law faculty have gone so far as to argue
that rape prosecutions should lie against married men regardless of
whether the wife “consented to the sexual contact with positive words or positive
conduct” so long as the husband had ever previously physically assaulted
his wife. Balos & Fellows, supra note 91, at 609.

I hope you can see why one should take into account whether a husband had previously physically assaulted his wife in determining whether or not her consent was genuine, but Edward Greeer does not see the problem.

He also fails to see the problems with consent when intoxicated, which shouldn't surprise us as we have already seen his failure to see the problems with consenting when the person you are consenting with has beaten you in the past.

The nicest thing I could say for this paper is that he is right that the 2% figure is unsupported in the sources he uses (though he jumps from unsupported to false without actually demonstrating it), but he goes right off into the rape apologist woods.

[INDENT][T]rue gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.

Another good example of this comes from The Gendered Society:

Simple enumeration of equality may not be the answer. One teacher told journalist Peggy Orenstein that after learning that teachers paid more attention to boys than girls, she explained to the class henceforth she was going to call on both sexes exactly equally, and to make sure she did, she would hold the attendance roster in her hand. What happened next surprised her. "After two days the boys blew up" she told Orenstein. "They started complaining and saying that I was calling on the girls more than them. I showed them that it wasn't true and they had to back down. I kept on doing it, but [b]for the boys, equality was hard to get used to; they perceived it as a big loss."

(Of course, equality is virtually always seen as a loss by the privileged group. If a teacher gives exactly equal time to heterosexuality and to homosexuality, to people of color as to white people, to women and to men, he or she is invariably going to be criticized as being biased in favor of hte minority group. When one is used to being the center of attention all the time, being out of the limelight for a moment or even an hour can feel like complete rejection.)

[The Adder]

It places the burden of demonstrating that the rape took place on the shoulders of the woman, when it is not her responsibility to demonstrate.

This is a comment I've never quite understood. The American Justice System is (in theory) all about "Innocent until proven guilty." The burden of proof is supposed to always rest on the state/accuser why is, and why should, this crime be any different?

[Mumei]

This is a comment I've never quite understood. The American Justice System is (in theory) all about "Innocent until proven guilty." The burden of proof is supposed to always rest on the state/accuser why is, and why should, this crime be any different?

The responsibility to demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt rests with the prosecution, not with the victim. The victim's responsibility, insofar as they can be said to have one, is reporting the crime and, if necessary, testifying at trial. The standard those people want to erect is that even before the case goes to trial, the victim must demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that she was in fact raped, and they endorse victim hostile measures in order to do this, such as requiring polygraphs and threatening jail time if they fail it. Victim hostile practices like this or hostile questioning of victims creates false positives when it comes to false rape reports as victims recant out of fear of jail time or the police and has a silencing effect on real rape claims. It erects a further barrier to victims in cases of rape.

The main reason feminists push back hard on this notion that there is a high rate of false rape reports is because that misperception is what causes police departments to take on practices like this, which in turn artificially inflate the number of "false" rape reports and appear to justify the practice, while at the same time making it less likely that victims will report and less likely that they will be believed.

Police should treat people coming forward to report a rape the same as they would someone coming forward to report any other crime, and not give people claiming rape extra special scrutiny or hostility that they would not give a complainant about another crime.

[cutmeamango]

The responsibility to demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt rests with the prosecution, not with the victim. The victim's responsibility, insofar as they can be said to have one, is reporting the crime and, if necessary, testifying at trial. The standard those people want to erect is that even before the case goes to trial, the victim must demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that she was in fact raped, and they endorse victim hostile measures in order to do this, such as requiring polygraphs and threatening jail time if they fail it. Victim hostile practices like this or hostile questioning of victims creates false positives when it comes to false rape reports as victims recant out of fear of jail time or the police and has a silencing effect on real rape claims. It erects a further barrier to victims in cases of rape. The main reason feminists push back hard on this notion that there is a high rate of false rape reports is because that misperception is what causes police departments to take on practices like this, which in turn artificially inflate the number of "false" rape reports and appear to justify the practice, while at the same time making it less likely that victims will report and less likely that they will be believed. Police should treat people coming forward to report a rape the same as they would someone coming forward to report any other crime, and not give people claiming rape extra special scrutiny or hostility that they would not give a complainant about another crime.

I won't pretend to know how it works out in the US, but I remember not much time ago the discussion about rape laws here in Brazil (and domestic violence to an extent) on how victims did not want to subject themselves to rape kit/tests and physical assessment (corpus delicti) at reporting the crime, which would lead to prosecutions that would heavily rely on accounts only.

[The Adder]

The responsibility to demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt rests with the prosecution, not with the victim. The victim's responsibility, insofar as they can be said to have one, is reporting the crime and, if necessary, testifying at trial. The standard those people want to erect is that even before the case goes to trial, the victim must demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that she was in fact raped, and they endorse victim hostile measures in order to do this, such as requiring polygraphs and threatening jail time if they fail it. Victim hostile practices like this or hostile questioning of victims creates false positives when it comes to false rape reports as victims recant out of fear of jail time or the police and has a silencing effect on real rape claims. It erects a further barrier to victims in cases of rape.

Okay, I can see what you're saying here and

Police should treat people coming forward to report a rape the same as they would someone coming forward to report any other crime, and not give people claiming rape extra special scrutiny or hostility that they would not give a complainant about another crime.

Can agree with this statement completely.

I will admit, up front, that I am occasionally wary of that 2% figure as I come from a community with a long and storied history of false allegations, especially false rape allegations, getting people hunted down and/or (usually and) killed. Not saying that happens nearly as often now (the false rape allegations at least. The general false allegations are still pretty common), but it's something I've been brought up to be wary of (my mom did not allow me to bring my female white friends over to my house when she wasn't there, or permit me to go over to theirs period in high school, save for the girl I'd practically grown up with because our mothers were best friends).

[Jado]

I actually have read that before, back in 2005. I remember the article. And I think you're not really understanding the argument I've been making. Massive (millions plus worth of data) studies have been performed comparing the cognitive differences between men and women on math and verbal skills. They are nonexistent, except in the case of the genius end of mathematical ability where men are overrepresented. Studies have shown that men are just as capable as women are of the sort of emotional intuitiveness that women are stereotypically said to have when they are placed in situations, such as work, where they need to be. Studies which show minor differences in how long babies of different genders look at faces, which objects they look at, and so forth are not relevant to a discussion about whether biological differences are determinative in adult men in women. They only speak to possible baseline differences and don't counter the notion of plasticity and that men and women have essentially the same potential when it comes to these issues because of that plasticity, regardless of what minor differences might exist in the baseline.

You may remember the article, but you missed the point entirely: it's not that one sex is smarter or has more potential (e.g. "men make better engineers"), but that the male brain just plain works very differently from the female brain. In the multiple researchers and scientific groups cited in the article, their body of work repeatedly found that men and women solved the same problems and processed the same information in completely different ways, even if they reached the same conclusion. Even something as simple as navigating city streets was accomplished differently in males and females.

Widespread structural brain differences in male and female brains are present from birth, corresponding strongly with differences in brain function which are also present from birth. Again, no one is arguing about cognitive ability/potential, but rather the very real likelihood that a particular class/teaching setup for a boy may be subpar or detrimental to how he naturally learns best. The evidence is very strong that your argument, "it's because of patriarchy," is either wrong, doesn't apply in many cases, or only a fraction of the entire picture.

OVERVIEW -Neuroscientists are uncovering anatomical, chemical and functional differences between the brains of men and women. -These variations occur throughout the brain, in regions involved in language, memory, emotion, vision, hearing and navigation. -Researchers are working to determine how these sex-based variations relate to differences in male and female cognition and behavior. Their discoveries could point the way to sex-specific therapies for men and women with neurological conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder.

A disease of the brain may not even be quite the same in men and women, as found below. A drug, made to treat the "same" condition, may not have the same effects between men and women. Why? Because their brains don't work the same in many ways!

But then I noticed something strange. The amygdala activation in some studies involved only the right hemisphere, and in others it involved only the left hemisphere. It was then I realized that the experiments in which the right amygdala lit up involved only men; those in which the left amygdala was fired up involved women. Since then, three subsequent studies—two from our group and one from John Gabrieli and Turhan Canli and their collaborators at Stanford— have confirmed this difference in how the brains of men and women handle emotional memories. The realization that male and female brains were processing the same emotionally arousing material into memory differently led us to wonder what this disparity might mean. To address this question, we turned to a century-old theory stating that the right hemisphere is biased toward processing the central aspects of a situation, whereas the left hemisphere tends to process the finer details If that conception is true, we reasoned, a drug that dampens the activity of the amygdala should impair a man’s ability to recall the gist of an emotional story (by hampering the right amygdala) but should hinder a woman’s ability to come up with the precise details (by hampering the left amygdala). Propranolol is such a drug. This socalled beta blocker quiets the activity of adrenaline and its cousin noradrenaline and, in so doing, dampens the activation of the amygdala and weakens recall of emotionally arousing memories. We gave this drug to men and women before they viewed a short slide show about a young boy caught in a terrible accident while walking with his mother. One week later we tested their memory. The results showed that propranolol made it harder for men to remember the more holistic aspects, or gist, of the story—that the boy had been run over by a car, for example. In women, propranolol did the converse, impairing their memory for peripheral details—that the boy had been carrying a soccer ball.

Women with schizophrenia have a decreased OAR [orbitofrontal cortex-to-amygdala ratio] relative to their healthy peers, as might be expected. But men, oddly, have an increased OAR relative to healthy men. These findings remain puzzling, but, at the least, they imply that schizophrenia is a somewhat different disease in men and women and that treatment of the disorder might need to be tailored to the sex of the patient.

...sex-related hemispheric disparities in how the brain processes emotional images begin within 300 milliseconds— long before people have had much, if any, chance to consciously interpret what they have seen.

In a comprehensive 2001 report on sex differences in human health, the prestigious National Academy of Sciences asserted that “sex matters. Sex, that is, being male or female, is an important basic human variable that should be considered when designing and analyzing studies in all areas and at all levels of biomedical and healthrelated research.” Neuroscientists are still far from putting all the pieces together—identifying all the sex-related variations in the brain and pinpointing their influences on cognition and propensity for brainrelated disorders. Nevertheless, the research conducted to date certainly demonstrates that differences extend far beyond the hypothalamus and mating behavior. Researchers and clinicians are not always clear on the best way to go forward in deciphering the full influences of sex on the brain, behavior and responses to medications. But growing numbers now agree that going back to assuming we can evaluate one sex and learn equally about both is no longer an option.

[Margalis]

Edit: Meh, never mind.

[mac]

Meh, I guess that meh, is mehing so much meh. I'm gonna meh and meh the meh.


Oh, by the meh, meh!