Rape

The proof for oppression against women: Still missing

ArgusEyes — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 03:29:00 GMT

This post garnered a lot of discussion in the comments thread, which I am happy to see, I started this reply to a poster named bob who makes the cases for why women are more oppressed than men are. These are oft-repeated arguments so I felt it was important to dedicate a new post to my reply.

“Women get beat, raped, and exploited more.”

Men are more likely to be the victims of a violent crime, if you’re talking about D.V. then some say it happens to men a lot too. I’m not going to commit to stats since I am not a stats guy but I’m damn sure it happens to men more than those paltry handful of D.V. shelters that accommodate males. Rape does affect women overwhelmingly due to the nature of the crime.

However, for both D.V. and rape the same answer applies. These things are both crimes, therefore how is this oppression against women? We continually push, as a society, for more laws and services for women who have been raped or battered so we realise that this is a problem. Consider a crime where men are more likely to be the victim, like violent crime in general, it is accurate to say that violent crime oppresses men? No it is not, since it is not perpetrated by the state, but by individuals on other individuals and is recognised as being illegal.

The important part is where you claim women are exploited more but you’ve merely changed the words you use. Women are oppressed, women are exploited.

Never a scrap of evidence on how. The nearest you came to it was when you said this:

“Look at Middle Eastern countries.”

We are living in the west, criticising feminists in the west, who complain about the west and try to affect legislation in the west, they claim that all these oppressions happen to women in the west and when I ask how, what do I get in reply? “Look to the east”. What a crock.

“Women get paid less, men don't get to retire as soon.”

You’re missing the importance of the retire issue. This is government policy which treats men differently based upon their sex. Why do we always restrict freedom of speech to the government? Because government is the necessary totalitarian mechanism of control over all citizenry, you cannot escape the government. However, if the bakery doesn’t want you to say certain things then you can always walk out, you can never “walk out” of the government.

I realise this important distinction which is why I distinguished between the types of oppression and state that the state mandated instance of oppression are surely the worst kind and if men win in this area then what is the point of going further? The things I pointed out involve government action or funding. Do the feminists have an example of where the government acts in this way? Lets see..

The wage gap is a common example. Does the government enforce different pay on people based upon sex? Well no, it doesn’t. In fact, there is legislation passed in 1970 (1963 in the U.S. I think) that says that companies cannot pay people differently based upon sex, so if this does happen then it is like in the rape and D.V. examples where individuals in companies are choosing to pay women less. It is against the law. Therefore no government oppression exists.

The wage gap is the most sheepish feminist line out there. You’ll hear it spouted again and again when talking about these issues. It seems strange to me that so many people view the world as being so systemically sexist through-and-through as to make such a gap so pervasive throughout society. Ever since I first heard about the gap I though it was B.S. since I am not inclined to believe such conspiracy theories.

Feminism has won the culture war, its effects and ideas are pervasive in society to the extent where people can get ostracised for misplaced comments and heretical thoughts. Yet despite this people are still such sexists?! Any man will know a number of women in his life, his mother, sister, aunt, grandmother. Do so many men want what is bad for women?

I don’t want to portray that I am simple minded to how convoluted humans can be, I know that nothing is simple, taller people earn more than others because people subtly prefer taller people. Will the position of an attractive person when compared to a similarly-abled unattractive person be better? I would put my money on “yes”. However, I honestly do not find the feminist line on the wage gap to be persuasive.

The economists I know do not support the mass sexism explanation for the wage gap, these are people who actually look underneath the underneath in matters of markets and wages. I have not seen thoughts which support the feminist line in what I have read in the works of Milton Friedman, Walter Block, Thomas Sowell, etc. I see again and again that the wage gap used as proof of victimisation is made by feminists and feminists-economists (effectively like a “creation scientist”) and other groups of the activist victimist mentality such as racial groups.

In fact, I would play the victim if I wanted to. Check this out.

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/rb/RB_503DRRB.pdf

Those Asian women sure did a great job of breaking through that glass ceiling didn’t they? Having studied computer science, I can tell you that for all their flaws, the Asian students had a fierce work ethic. It would be an unfair world that dictated that the rest of us who had not worked as hard had to be raised on a pedestal to their level to close this “gap”.

As Thomas Sowell so aptly puts it, Asians always kill the yarns that the victimists try to sow.

We've frequently heard, and will hear much more I am sure if Hillary is the Democratic nominee, that women make 76 cents for every dollar a man makes. Can you give us a basic rundown of why that discrepancy exists?

There are lots of reasons. Men and women do not work the same number of hours. They do not work in the same occupations. They do not work continuously the same, and so on.

You know, if it was really true that you could hire a woman for three quarters of what you could hire a man with exactly the same qualifications, then employers would be crazy not to hire all women. It would be insane to hire men. Not only would it be insane, it would probably put them out of the business because the ones that were smart enough to hire women would have such a cost advantage that it would be really hard for the others to compete.

There are lots of gross differences between men and women and other groups and some of them shocked me when I first started doing the research. For example, I found that young male doctors make considerably more than young female doctors. But, when I dug into it a little deeper, I discovered that young male doctors work an average of 500 hours a year more than young female doctors. Obviously, a doctor that works 500 extra hours is going to make more money than the other doctor.

One profound thing you said in the book, when talking about disparities between the wages earned by white workers and minority workers in this country was that there are differences between groups all over the world, so why should we expect different groups to make the same amount of money in the first place? Can you tell us a little bit more about those differences...

I think most people have heard that there are these differences, but I think that what most of them have not heard is that there are the same differences between Asian-Americans and whites as there are between whites and blacks. Asian-American families have higher incomes than white families; during downturns in the economy, whites get laid off moreso than Asian-Americans. Among people who apply for mortgage loans, whites get turned down more often than Asian-Americans. Whites have to resort to sub-prime loans more often than Asian-Americans.

But, most of the people who talk about these things leave out Asian-Americans because it really kills their whole story. Their whole story is that non-whites do poorly because of white racism. Well then, if you find that there is the same disparity between Asian-Americans and whites as there is between whites and other non-whites, that whole argument falls down.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/02/an_interview_with_thomas_sowel.php

It’s 4am and this is getting long. So I will end it there. I am truly interested in hearing rebuttals to my points here since I am interested in finding the truth on these matters. I have not heard the feminist come back with reasonable counter arguments to points like these. They usually make the claims and then these claims work their way into the zeitgeist. But as for not, that elusive proof for oppression against women is still missing.

The Lies of a Female. Expanded

ArgusEyes — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:50:55 GMT

I made a somewhat quick post called “The lies of a female” which garnered a lot of negative feedback. It turns out that some text was missing and I should expand on what I meant back then, and what I still stand by now.

Original post is here:

---

Tattoo girl: 'I lied about my stars'

The girl suing a tattoo artist who left her with 56 stars on her face has admitted she lied.

Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, claimed that she'd asked for three small stars but fell asleep during the procedure and woke up with a whole galaxy on her face.

But she has now confessed she knew exactly what tattoo parlour owner Rouslan Toumaniantz was doing but changed her mind later.

She said she lied because her father was "furious".

As I would be. It was a stupid thing to do. Why am I mentioning this? Because this incident made me think about how women falsely accuse rape on the same grounds.

Many times women use rape for some of the most flimsy and petty reasons. Such as:

Excuses.

On further questioning the woman confessed that she was spending time with her lover in his car near the Shanghumugham beach. She cooked up the rape story to excuse himself.

Getting back at family.

A woman was jailed yesterday after her false claim of rape resulted in an innocent stranger being arrested.

In an attempt to make her family feel guilty following an argument, Kerry Saunders invented a story that she had been sexually assaulted after a night out.

Revenge against an ex.

'It has been a nightmare and I would not be on this earth if it had not been for the support of friends and family. I would be six feet under.'

That's how Briton Andrew Tutty described the ordeal his ex-girlfriend, Louise Johnson put him through with multiple false allegations against him, including rape. Read the article here (Daily Mail, 7/25/09). Johnson was recently sentenced to 18 months in prison for her crimes which the judge called "lies of the most vile kind." "There was not a word of truth in what you said," he added.

It all started when Tutty decided to break off his two-month relationship with Johnson. She went immediately to the police with the fabricated claim that Tutty had raped her. He was arrested for that and only released after he had made bail.

And no reason at all.

"To this day, we have no clue why she made this up," says Bekele's attorney, Robert Flennaugh. While the charges were pending, Flennaugh had tried, as defense lawyers do, to come up with some reason why Clifton might have dreamt up a false claim—some motivation, a grudge. In rape cases especially, when it's one person's word against another's, jurors need to see some reason for the victim to lie, especially considering how painful it is to come forward with such a charge.

Clifton had once contested a grade from Bekele, thinking she deserved a 4.0 after receiving a 3.9. And she'd sent him one e-mail that seemed possibly inappropriate. But that was it, Flennaugh says. They'd had no other contact outside the classroom.

Flennaugh would have had a tough time raising doubts in jurors' minds about the accuser's motives, a fact that still makes him shudder. Had she not gone so far as to create the bogus e-mails, his client would likely be facing a possible prison term, Flennaugh says. "If she hadn't lied too much, where would we be? We'd be in trial."

I found these in a couple of minutes of googling.

The reasoning process that this young tattoo girl went through is very similar to false rape cases. When I read this story I immediately thought of some of the reasons I have heard false rape accusers cite*. In this instance, she was not accusing rape, but she was accusing an innocent man of incompetence that could have gotten him fired or banned from his profession (not actually knowing how the tattooing profession works, but follow me on this).

In response to a situation she completely negated personal responsibility and, in my personal opinion, the character trait of personal responsibility is more of a male character trait than a female one. In fact, when people say that males need to find their “inner woman” to become more compassionate, you should retort that more women should “find their inner man” and become more responsible.

Joking aside, this is not funny. Because of these unbearably petty excuses listed above, women who do this can effectively destroy a mans life. His freedom and liberty is taken away, he can be ostracised from family and society, he may be raped himself in prison and in the worst cases he may take his life. These are all possibilities that can occur and purely at the behest of an evil little narcissistic liar who couldn’t control her petty little emotions and decided to put another person to the sword because of her anger or her rage. I’ve known women like this, all that matters to them are their own feelings, they feel entitled to be the centre of the universe and inflict their emotions upon you, be it by pouting and stropping about and pulling faces, or going to extremes like this. They feel entitled to do it and they are the worst sort.

Why is this important?

There are ideologues in this country, and others, who operate under faith based delusions that women don’t lie about rape, or don’t do so in any significant numbers, and who are driving the political system. Look at someone like Harriet Harman, this person is a man hating bigot who occupies a position of immense power, the Orwellian “equality minister” who is rampaging through the system (whilst she still has the power before these bums are voted out) instigating her female supremacist agenda. Being the classic feminist, rape is on her radar. As is par for the course, more and more men need to be held accountable for rape. I.E. The standard of evidence must be lowered. This is an end run around the concept of justice and will only exacerbate the situation.

Harman doesn’t believe that women falsely accuse rape in any great way, or if she does then she doesn’t care. People who believe in justice and fairness need to stand up against this cancer. Some people are the bottom of the barrel, both men who actually rape and women who would put an innocent man in prison for rape. Our current system where a man can go to prison purely on another person’s word is disgusting and a system that lets a person who would try to deprive another of their freedom off with a slap on the wrist is double so.

We need to uphold standards of evidence crimes, we need to punish those who try to get innocents tried for a crime, to have the same punishment as the person who they falsely accused would have gotten.

*For news about false rape, one of the best sources on the web is the false rape society.

The lies of a female

ArgusEyes — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:50:18 GMT

I have expanded on this post in a new post, I reccomend that you read that version instead of this one as it explain my point in more depth. You can find it here.

The girl suing a tattoo artist who left her with 56 stars on her face has admitted she lied.

Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, claimed that she'd asked for three small stars but fell asleep during the procedure and woke up with a whole galaxy on her face.

But she has now confessed she knew exactly what tattoo parlour owner Rouslan Toumaniantz was doing but changed her mind later.

She said she lied because her father was "furious".

Link to article

As I would be. It was a stupid thing to do. Why am I mentioning this? Because this incident made me think about how women falsely accuse rape on the same grounds. Many times they

We need to eradicate the ridiculous idea that women and girls don’t cry rape when it didn’t happen. Why even suggest such a common sense notion? Well, because there are people who adhere to faith based belief systems, not facts, that say that women do not falsely accuse rape. The most prominent example of this that comes to my mind is the Duke Lacrosse rape case, where the young men were assumed to be guilty.

But feminists and left-wing activists will dismiss these studies as biased because men where involved. For instance, one feminist, Wendy Kaminer, stated that "it is a primary article of faith among many feminists that women don't lie about rape, ever; they lack the dishonesty gene." Anyone believing women lack a dishonesty gene never dated women. If they do lack that gene, then someone out there is performing miraculous surgery to implant that gene. What's so amazing about such statements is: they are not based on any scientific evidence -- it is a sexist premise.

John O'Sullivan, a left-wing social scientist, discovered a widespread defense of the belief that "no woman would fabricate a rape charge. Feminists themselves admit as much."

Law Professor and left-wing political activist Susan Estrich stated that "the whole effort at reforming rape laws has been an attack on the premise that women who bring complaints are suspect."

Duke Rape Case All Too Common

For tales of false rape accusations, one of the best resources on the web is the False Rape Society.

What is Feminism?

ArgusEyes — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:22:47 GMT

This is about as intellectual as many discussions on feminism get. I focus on feminism in my videos so much because no other political movement is so demonstrably wrong and stupid as I believe feminism to be, and yet people still swallow the blue pill and whisper comforting myths to themselves as to the true nature of feminism. This video is a very condensed description of feminism as it exists now, in the modern world, there is not time to cover the history of feminism and I am speaking about the people who form the academic and activist vanguard of the movement.

The first step is to deconstruct the term “feminism”. When we put “ism” on the end of a word we do so to denote a belief system. So apparently feminism is a belief system of the feminine or of acting in the interests of the feminine, as is confirmed by the dictionary definition of the term:

1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.

2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.

3. feminine character.

This sounds perfectly reasonable, and the early feminist movement has done a lot to raise awareness of the need for women and men to have equal rights but it has been perverted, as most movements eventually do. Here it is mentioned that feminism is a doctrine advocating equal rights but a lot of people mention it as advocating equality. These things are not the same and words have meanings and it is important that we go beyond the beyond to examine how these philosophies play out in real life.

We understand equality, in terms of mathematics most clearly, as two sides of the equation being the same. But a lot of us understand that humans cannot be made uniform, we vary naturally as a species in ability and drive so when using the word equality, libertarians and classical liberals refer to the equality of opportunity and the non-discrimination of law. Whereas socialists and collectivists use the word equality to denote equality of outcome or sameness. Therefore the libertarian definition of equal rights is closest to what this dictionary definition says and the actual feminists are farthest from it.

The feminist stands for the socialist collectivist model, you can see this in the types of arguments they make. When a feminist argues that the fact that women earn less than men and therefore this is proof of discrimination, they never try to explicate whether or not women are making personal decisions which result in less pay, as Warren Farrell proves in his book “why men earn more”, or whether or not this is really discrimination. Feminists assume that the existence of a difference is, in and of itself, proof of discrimination and that is the end of the story for them.

This un-academic and simple minded treatment of a complex subject betrays the religious nature of what feminism actually is. It is a system of beliefs that are not open to examination, they are faith based. Nothing is more faithfully held to the feminist than the belief that the roles men and women assume are socially constructed, that is that the differences between the two are largely due to conditioning and that the main difference is physical.

As much as feminists will try to deny this, the wage gap argument that so many feminists make is one proof for the veracity of this argument. If you assume that an outcome in numbers is all that is needed to prove discrimination then you are tacitly admitting that the two sexes are the same but of course this is not true, any reasonable person can understand this through his or her interactions in the daily world. Male female difference is one of the favourite topics of comedians because it strikes at the heart of the differences between us and our angst at those differences.

The feminist meme that gender is socially constructed, whilst true in some, is ultimately a denial of science. If one is to admit that men and women differ physically and that the brain is a physician organ like any other. Then it stands to reason that men and women have different behaviours due to different brain compositions and hormonal balances and this is exactly correct. As a science geek myself I have read numerous studies about the differences between men and women. I know of not one peer reviewed scientific paper which claims that men and women are the same. Feminists simply do not back up their claims like their detractors do, such as Steve Moxon does in his book “The woman Racket”.

A good example our innate differences is the case of David Reimer who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision left him with no penis. David rejected his indoctrination and changed his gender back to male but suffered mentally and eventually committed suicide. The case was hailed as a success in the media but after the truth came out, Dr Money, who suggested the change, rejects criticisers as being part of the “anti-feminist movement”. [1]

Numerous surveys report that young woman want to stay at home, put more emphasis on the family, prefer male bosses, marry up to men making more than they do and have a different sexual nature to men. However, this evidence does not get incorporated into feminism because they already have their conclusion and they use evidence like a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination, this is a prominent feature of many other pseudosciences such as creationism and homeopathy. A good example of reality falling on deaf feminist ears is this extract from the BBC’s women’s hour program.

(please see the video for audio)

The outcome based view of the feminist makes them an enemy of liberty. Since, in liberty you have the opportunity to fail or to have the effects of your actions affect the standing of the social group you are in. Such things are reprehensible to the collectivist so the solutions they propose are always to push for big government intervention into all of our lives.

This is happening constantly, the latest event I am aware of is of “Harriett Harman” the “minster for women and equality” proposing an “Equalities Bill” which would force companies to publish average hourly rates for their male and female employees. In very recent news she will now use this bill to force banks to hire women.

'Sometimes we have to take scary methods in order to achieve worthwhile results,' she told a mainly female audience. 'It is about saying, "because you are a woman I'm going to put you in this promotion".'[5]

I must use brevity in light of the fact that I am physically shaking with anger and rage whenever I read the latest fascist proposal from this worm of a human being. But the next time you hear a feminist squawking about what whatever is disturbing their system at that particular time then just remember this, this is what they believe in and this is what they will do. Female supremacy, sexism and socialism bordering on fascism.

Despite Harman’s efforts to put women on a pedestal, one of the big myths around feminism is the notion that it acts in the interest of women. In fact not many things are more disdainful of women than feminism is. This is exemplified by a famous quote from Simone de Beauvoir in reference to stay at home mothers:

"No, we don't believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make it."[3]

The arrogance of this is staggering. Surely the person who should be acting in the interest of a woman is that individual woman. One of the actions the left performs is that it monopolises a group and pretends to be the only legitimate and allowable moral voice in representation of that group. A woman who subscribes to feminism is making a serf of herself to a particular political agenda.

Apparently a woman cannot choose whether to appear in pornography or to prostitute herself as there is a strong feminist opposition to such things. Why is this so? This is a clear cut case of where feminism acts to restrict the choices of women and as the Simone de Beauvoir quote alludes to, there is an agenda about what the feminists want women to be doing. The objection to pornography comes from being anti-male. Their problem with it is that women are being sexually submissive to males but there is also strong evidence that an increase in pornographic proliferation leads to less instances of rape.

The leftist activism of feminism is inherently anti-conservative. Old models of femininity are seen as being created by and for the benefit of men therefore the aim is to break the bonds between the genders. The example of the wage gap is an example of the disdain for women’s choices; another good example is how things such as Rape and domestic violence have their meanings skewed to include more and more women in their folds.

Does this attempt to broaden the meaning of rape help young women or hinder them? Feminism continues to exist as long as it has a bill of victim grievances to sell. By keeping young women angry and scared they ensure the next generation of young feminists through their paranoid conspiracy theories. I met young women like this at university not too long ago and they had chips on their shoulder that were at complete odds with their status in the 21^st century. Never before have has women had so much choice and freedom and never before have they been so angry.

The truth is that feminism is an identity which people with an activist mindset can slip into like a warm slipper. Their modes of acting and though are not too dissimilar to what one can see in black activism and gay activism and if a feminist was born a black man then she would be following Jesse Jackson instead of Gloria Steinem. Same walls, different wallpaper. These movements start with noble causes but as they succeed the membership is whittled away to the radical members who are left with the task of manufacturing grievances to legitimise their own existence.

The majority of people who call themselves “feminist” have bought the notion of feminism meaning equality and thus call themselves feminist without too much thought as to what feminism is, but these people do not sit on the payroll of feminist organisations or on women’s study faculty or try to pass feminist inspired laws. They are simply a rather convenient human shield for the radical feminists who are doing the damage. Feminists like this:

“The National Organization for Women-NYS stands in solidarity with NYS Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington in support[sic] legislation that will once and for all state clearly that violence against women must be regarded as a "hate crime."”[4]

Believe me, I have a long list of laws and proposals like this. Another good example is gender quotas. There is another name for a philosophy whereby you look at the world through the lens of sex, where every situation must be examined in how many women are in it and how it affects women. The name for this is sexism and that is ultimately what feminists are, sexists. Any man who says comparable things about women would be branded as a sexist and bigot and sent packing in short order.

So in short: Feminism is a movement with a gendered name that claims to stand for gender equality but really is an activist political movement and sexist belief system which, in its worse forms, denies reality, suppresses women’s choice, tramples liberty, hurts men, infantilises women and fosters animosity between the sexes.

Sources

[1] When Feminist Dogma Met Dr. Mengela - Carey Roberts

http://mesarchives.blogspot.com/2004/05/when-feminist-dogma-met-dr-mengela.html

[2] Bill set to expose gender pay gap

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8019605.stm

[3] Chapter 12: The Gender Wardens

http://blog.enlightenedwomen.org/2009/04/06/chapter-12-the-gender-wardens.aspx

[4] NYS Lawmakers Must Rethink Violence Against Women as a Hate Crime
February 26, 2009

http://www.nownys.org/pr_2009/pr_022609.html

[5] I'll put women in charge of banks: Harriet Harman's plans to use equality laws to challenge macho City culture

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1178140/Ill-women-charge-banks-Harriet-Harmans-plans-use-equality-laws-challenge-macho-City-culture.html

[not referenced] Intelligence in men and women is a gray and white matter

http://today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_iframe.asp?key=1261

[not referenced] Women's brains are different from men's – and here's scientific proof

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/womens-brains-uareu-different-from-mens-ndash-and-heres-scientific-proof-870849.html

A government built on empathy will ultimately degrade those it seeks to help

ArgusEyes — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:44:59 GMT

There is a guy on YouTube called “Thomas” who I have been having an email exchange with, I have been posting my replies on this blog as I feel it is important to get other people’s take on the matter and to also display a reasonable person who debates well. You can see my previous responses in the posts “I get email: 'Real Injustices'???” and “Our governments stifle the freedom of men in order to infantilise them”. I present his newest email minus introductory pleasantries and signature.

YOU SAY THAT YOU WANT THE FREEDOM TO MAKE YOUR OWN CHOICES AND MISTAKES AND THAT THE OPPRESSIVE SPECTRE OF GOVERNMENT SHOULD STAY OFF OF OUR BACKS.

Unless you are completely anarchist, you will agree with me that the implementation of laws that take away for instance peoples freedom to commit murder is very necessary, because the freedom to do such things severely stifles the freedom of people other than the choice making individual itself. In this way, a human beings right to choose to do whatever it pleases ends precisely the moment when its choice of action does damage to or stifles the freedom of other individuals, and most of us (including you and I) are very appreciative of a government intervening on our behalf to stop other people from compromising our freedom by stealing from us, killing us, hurting us, cheating us and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately the most privileged group in our society, i.e. white western males often seem to believe that government should only intervene to the extent that western white male (dare I say patriarchal?) freedoms and liberties will be protected from oppression, and that the oppression and hardships unique to a single given minority should continually be allowed to be practiced by said privileged group of white males.

We ban murder in our society because we consider a murderers freedom to kill to be worth a lot less than the freedom and security of potential murder victims. By this logic society should also consider male sexual dominance to be worth a lot less than the freedom and security of women and children, especially in the face of all the evidence of both the harmful effect of pornography on the human mind and on the enormous human costs of the sex industry itself. It does not, however, because of the utter lack of empathy of the privileged ruling class in society; a class whose supremacist ideals of individualism and freedom do not apply to the suppressed, but amounts only to the freedom of the oppressor to continue oppressing.

ALSO, IN COMMENTING ON MY ARGUMENT REGARDING THE COMPLEXITY OF HUMAN CHOICES, YOU SAY THAT GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT ANALYSE THE NUANCES IN OUR DECISIONS AND IN THE LIGHT THEREOF DECIDE WHAT IT THINKS ARE ACCEPTABLE WAYS TO LEAD A LIFE BECAUSE THIS STIFLE[S] THE FREEDOM OF MEN [AND] INFANTILISE[S] THEM.

It would seem that you did not read my last letter that closely, so let me answer the above-mentioned (again) with a true story this time. Consider 19-year-old Maksuda. She is a single mother and has been a factory worker since she was 11. She became pregnant with her daughter at age 17 and found herself unable to keep up with the rapid production of goods. Her manager noticed her slow down and said that he didn't want to hear her excuses about being pregnant. She tried to respond but according to her, "He violently kicked [her], hard, in the stomach and [she] fell to the floor. [She] fainted." She worked until she was eight and a half months pregnant and tried to ask for a legal maternity leave but was told that there was no law for this in the factory.

I wont tell you how this story ends, but rest assured that if you as a government official tell Maksuda that you will not analyse the nuances in her decision to be in the factory because you do not wish to infantilise her, the expression on her face will not be one of extreme gratitude. But then again, you did say the freedom of men; not the freedom of women and children my bad.

Moreover I do not think that your very individualist statement that [i]f people want to degrade themselves then let them do it would not look overly humane in the context of Maksuda and neither does it in the case of the victims of the sex industry.

FINALLY, YOU SAY THAT WANTING TO BAN THE DISTRIBUTION OF PORNOGRAPHY AND NOT PORNOGRAPHY IN SPIRIT IS IMBECILIC.

This is, in fact, NOT what I insinuated. If you would care to look at my letter again, it says that I am NOT AT ALL [] proposing that we make it illegal for women to [] participate in pornography. If this was not clear I apologise and I hope that you will let me clarify this point. What I mean to say is this:

If a woman should really (really?) want to engage in double anal and vaginal penetration while simultaneously being called a worthless little slut reduced to the mere tightness of her genital openings in the privacy of her own home in front of her brand new SONY handycam, then that decision is of course entirely up to her. What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is of no business of the state - period. In the same way, if you want to smoke a fat cigar in the privacy of your own home, not caring about the empirical evidence in front of you, telling you that it could kill you in the long run, then that is also entirely your decision. But

The moment you enter a multi million dollar industry in which you get paid (as opposed to doing it for free) to do physically and emotionally devastating things to yourself in public (as opposed to doing them in private) for the amusement of white western males in order to support your children or a drug abuse (as opposed to doing it out of personal inclination), then considered government intervention is most certainly justified as it is was when the government decided that you cannot blow smoke from your fat cigar in my face in public and endanger my health or stifle my freedom from getting lung cancer.

To be honest, Mark, I do not think that our disagreements are as much about a clash of fundamental world views as much as they are about our very differing views on privilege and empathy.

Our differences are indeed about empathy. I feel that making political decisions on empathy is a fools path. Empathy is not normally universal, that is just not what humans do right? When we empathise then we do so towards some perceived oppressed group, and that leads to misery.

Your writing drips with a kind of Marxist demagoguery. When you talk about “white males” at every step then I think it’s not too much of a leap to imagine your mentality causing real oppressions for that group, and then what? Re calibrate, recast them and then they become the new victims? This kind of thinking has caused more human misery than is possible to calculate.

Basing systems on empathy and emotion is the worst thing us humans can do. It is a well know phrase that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I don’t doubt that you are a good man but your mentality causes harm. Let’s have an example:

There was a luxury tax passed a while ago on yachts. The idea was basically eat (ahem sorry, tax) the rich. What happened? The rich stopped buying yachts, they would buy other things or work around the loopholes to avoid the tax. Sales of yachts dropped. Who suffered? The not so rich people who worked in shipping yards and providing services that related to yachts and yacht owning. So the emotion of punishing those deemed to be the haves, the emotion-based laws punished the types of people they are supposed to empathise with.

The foundational flaw of your argument is where you compare direct action which cannot be misunderstood like committing violence against another person, with an ethereal threat for which you need to make a winding justification for its danger.

People have churches and groups and can make their own mind up on what is bad for them, when you make the government enforce it on all people then this is tyranny. For everything there is a line, a pat on the back is hitting and some nebulous threat according to you is not the same as a tangible threat.

Also, ever considered that you might be wrong? I feel that rape has decreased due, in part, to the proliferation of porn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDshCXHBjQc). Think beyond your specific causes for a moment. The average life expectancy of a homosexual male is decreased about 14 years by their actions, compare this to the loss of life through cigarettes (7 years the last I heard). Now, in a system you want where policy is made on what people emote about being good for society. What is to stop a bigoted anti-gay group from oppressing homosexuals? Nothing, if you can make a strangled case for it then it might pass. In my system nothing like this can pass because of the basic freedoms that I would grant to all.

Porn Up, Rape Down

ArgusEyes — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:51:05 GMT

Thou Shalt Not Criticise Women

ArgusEyes — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:21:04 GMT

I listen to and read podcasts, blogs and news sites from a variety of perspectives. From hardcore atheists and liberals such as P.Z. Meyer's Pharyngula to secular humanists, scientific skeptics, libertarians and religious right wingers. One person on the right I greatly respect is called Dennis Prager. I do not agree with everything he says but he speaks a lot of truth on many issues including issues pertaining to men and women.

Dennis Prager wrote a two part column recently that set the feminist blogosphere alight with indignation. I want to retell this event to you as it is an important illustration of the reaction one can receive when they take an oppositional stance to feminism.

His column is a two parter called "When a Woman Isn't in the Mood" (part 1 part 2). I shall read you a couple of opening paragraphs in order to set the tone.

The subject is one of the most common problems that besets marriages: the wife who is "not in the mood" and the consequently frustrated and hurt husband.

There are marriages with the opposite problem — a wife who is frustrated and hurt because her husband is rarely in the mood. But, as important and as destructive as that problem is, it has different causes and different solutions, and is therefore not addressed here. What is addressed is the far more common problem of "He wants, she doesn't want."

It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.

Source: Dennis Prager When a Woman Isn't in the Mood: Part 1

At the end of part 1 he writes:

I conclude Part I with this clarification: Everything written here applies under two conditions: 1. The woman is married to a good man. 2. She wants him to be a happy husband. If either condition is not present, nothing written here matters. But if you are a woman who loves your husband, what is written here can be the most important thing you will read concerning your marriage. Because chances are the man you love won't tell you.

Source: Dennis Prager When a Woman Isn't in the Mood: Part 1

Allow me to summarise. In these two columns Dennis Prager presents the argument that a wife who cares about having a happy husband rethinks the idea that if she is not in the mood then that means she must not have sex. Prager shines a light on the differences between men and women, sex is far more important to men than it is to women and that a man knows his wife loves him by the fact that she has sex with him. Does mood always determine our actions? No. Are you always in the mood to get up and go to work in the morning? Are you ever in the mood to get up in the night and feed the baby? Take out the trash? Sometimes we have obligations to do things that we don't feel like doing because they lead to good consequences down the road. Prager mentions that, of course, there are times when this advice is inappropriate. It is general marital advice and I agree with it.

Let's see what many feminists had to say about this.

Our first stop is the blog pandagon.net, and a post written by Jesse Taylor. Entitled "Shit you shouldn't say". Where the very first paragraph is:

Dennis Prager says that marital rape is a-okay:

Source: Jesse Taylor Shit you shouldn't say

Taylor is not lying here. He truly believes that in an example like Prager illustrates, where a woman isn't in the mood but makes the decision on her own to have sex with her husband is rape. What feminists believe about rape as compare to what most normal people believe is very worrying, most people would agree that it is forced sex one an obviously non-consenting person. The dictionary definition is replete with words like "force", "violent seizure" and "violation.

What Jesse Taylor is actually proposing is that in a situation where a man wants to have sex with his wife and he indicates this need and she although not feeling in the mood has sex with him, is an instance of rape.

What a loving sense of marriage in the 21st century.

I hope that all married men who are listening to this are sure that their wife was in the mood for one hundred percent of the times you had sex, because you're a rapist in the eyes of the feminists otherwise.

For all the women who are listening to this, I have a question. How do you feel about this? That the movement that supposedly represents you as a woman wants to infantilise you to the point where your own decisions are irrelevant?

Taylor's characterisation of Prager as a rape advocate is disgusting and wrong. But maybe it is a one off? We continue…

The next stop is feministing.com with a post by Jessica Valenti called "Dennis Prager: Nothing says "I love you" like marital rape".

Written in Valenti's own juvenile style, she rarely stops blockquoting enough people to write any original material. But here is some of what she says:

It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to unabashedly argue in favor[sic] of marital rape. Of course columnist Dennis Prager doesn't call it that. No no, he prefers to use some sort of bizarre high school logic about how ladies who really love their man will "give her body" on demand.

Source: Jessica Valenti Dennis Prager: Nothing says "I love you" like marital rape

There is a lesson here about people who have become radicalised filter what they read or see though a dogmatic belief system and re-translate the result and then hold that to be reality. Valenti's comments bear so little relation to what I read in Prager's article that either she mistakenly read something else, is so deep in the fetid pool of fundamentalism as to be unamenable to genuine reflection or change or she didn't read it at all. I suspect the latter.

Our next stop is jezebel.com with a post written by "Megan" called "Conservative Dennis Prager Knows It's Not Rape If His Wife "Submits""

The first paragraph reads:

Conservative pundit and marital rape apologist Dennis Prager has some advice for you ladies with faltering marriages: don't think that just because you don't want to have sex your husband shouldn't try to fuck you.

Source: Megan Conservative Dennis Prager Knows It's Not Rape If His Wife "Submits"

Again, this bears no relation to reality. At this point I must apologise for the profanity in this piece. I thought, initially, that I would try to mask it but I think it is important to realise how the people on these blogs write about people they disagree with.

The feminist blogs are characterised by their vacuity, indecency and sheepish dedication to radicalism. Is there a more reasonable critique? Yes, in fact there is. Ed Brayton's skeptical blog "Dispatches from the culture wars" featured a post on Prager's column called "Prager: Just Lay There and Take It". Brayton stays away from analogising Dennis Prager to a rape advocate, which I am happy to see, but he has still re-interpreted reality in places by claiming things such as:

…married women should always have sex even if they're not in the mood to do so.

Source: Ed Brayton Prager: Just Lay There and Take It

This is not true, in fact Prager specifically says that in certain instances his advice is inappropriate.

All the onus is on women, whom he wrongly presumes want sex less than men.

Source: Ed Brayton Prager: Just Lay There and Take It

Are we to presume that both sexes, who are biologically different, want sex in equal measures. Anyone I know from the real world would agree that men have a higher sex drive than women do, are more visually stimulated and have sex drives that drop off at a lesser rate than women's do. Yet Brayton brays at such un-progressive views of human sexuality, he is operating from theory instead and let's not let reality intrude.

The most important part of this statement is the first part, where Brayton states that "all the onus in on woman" this is true, for this particular article. I suspect that none of these writers actually listen to Dennis Prager's radio show. I do. And I can tell you that he has plenty of criticism for men as well.

I'm sure that they would all nod in appreciation when at one time on his show he lambasted husbands who go to sleep immediately after sex. He said that husbands who do this should stay awake, holding and kissing their wives after sexual intercourse has finished. And I agree with that. After all, you might not want to do it, you might want to go to sleep immediately. However, because you don't feel in the mood doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, because you show her that you love her by doing so and a happy wife leads to a happy home. Would feminists argue with that? I doubt so.

What ruffles these people's feathers the most is the fact that Prager's article is an unaffronted criticism of women. And that it actually places responsibilities and obligations upon them, the horror! The writers seem to be tied up in knots of anguish that Prager doesn't have qualifying language at every step that criticises men in equal order. Such an article would be bloated, boring and would lose all semblance of meaning. I've noticed that the feminists themselves don't mind writing articles and blog posts that singularly criticise men above women.

Download the episode of the "pendulum effect" podcast that this piece appears in.

Your daily dose of Islamic evil: Stoning victim 'begged for mercy'

ArgusEyes — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:27:16 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7708169.stm

"Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.

The Men's Coalition... Stealth feminist apologists?

ArgusEyes — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:39:00 GMT

http://www.themenscoalition.org.uk/Welcome.html

The Men’s Coalition is a new organisation that aims to put issues of concern to men and boys such as health, parenting and caring, relationships, education, employment, crime and violence firmly on the public policy agenda.

At the bottom of the page it states that the Men's Coalition supports the White Ribbon campaign which bills itself as "Men working to end men's violence against women. As anyone who has seen my videos should know, language like this gets me seeing red a little bit. Why just men's violence against women? If you read their F.A.Q. page then they specify that they are talking about DV and rape.

That is a bit dissapointing but there are many things on their website which seem promising. Could you guys weigh in with your opinion of this?

Call for new rape inquiry squads

ArgusEyes — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:39:15 GMT

Consider this piece from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7496013.stm

What do you see in this piece? Objectivity? Balanced reporting? Gender demagoguery? Go on, pick one. I don’t have time to completely rip this to shreds but I’ll take the following paragraph:

He argues more expertise in the early stages of an investigation would improve the quality of evidence gathered and prevent rapes being wrongly classified as "no crime".

This is very telling. Basically, all accusations of rape are legit. Therefore if at the end of the process the conviction rates are low then that’s just a sign of the bastards getting away with it.

Mr Yates said rape was a difficult crime to investigate given that most cases involved people who knew each other, where consent was the primary issue.

Read: “We are coasting on the popular image of rape being some guy leaping out of the bushes with a knife and horrifically raping an innocent woman with the reality which is that the definition of rape has been greatly expanded to accommodate women who have sex, offer no objection, and then change their minds afterwards. Whilst the bad image of rape is still in the minds of the masses then we can push through any legislation we want to revoke “innocent until proven guilty””.

Are there stats in here about false accusations? Nope.

Also observe the usage of the word “victim”, which is aided by the pictire they chose. They are considered verbatim victims, any honest person would agree that “accuser” or “potential victim” would be better terms. I should mention that here in the UK, the BBC is tax-payer funded through a TV license, lovely.