Feminism

Hate Bounces: How man hating and man bashing harms women

ArgusEyes — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:13:58 GMT

http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/vines/3951/noback/hatebounces.html

Misogynists are not born they are made.

Once, a long time ago when the world was young, I loved women with all my heart and soul. I grew up among strong competent women who understood that all living things need to be taken care of and will flourish if that happens. The men I grew up with knew that as well. Everyone knew that people must live and work together and find ways to cooperate and just deal with the inevitable differences that arise and keep them in perspective. They knew that people are not perfect, but that most of them try to be as good as they can manage. They took the measure of a person in wholeness, and if there was more good than bad to a person, they accepted that person's faults as being part of the package which was still valuable, if a bit flawed. After all, nobody really is perfect. We all knew that.

Then, something happened. And that something was called feminism. I remember the early days of the movement when it was called "Women's Liberation" which was a high sounding and noble cause in a country which is founded on a document which cites liberty as one of 3 inalienable rights that every person has. No one with a sense of fairness and an understanding of civics could be against women being liberated and treated fairly. And, there was also the promise that some of the ways men were being treated unfairly would change along with it.

And, as the old joke goes: if you believe that one, then I have some lakefront property in the Mojave Desert I'd like to talk to you about.

I learned very quickly that feminism wasn't about liberating PEOPLE from their previously too restrictive roles which were assigned to them based on the plumbing they displayed at birth, but rather was founded on a number of absolute falsehoods which had nothing to do with freedom, equality, or fairness. The fundamental premise that men had MORE power, not just a different kind of power and in a different area of society as a whole, but MORE power in a complete and absolute sense was something that I vehemently disagreed with. I could come up with thousands of examples of circumstances in which women had more power than men did. And in every example they gave of where men did have any power, I could easily point out the uneven distribution of power among men, and how a few men at the top of the wealth/influence pyramid had a lot of power, but that the vast majority of men had very little.

The strangest thing was that most of the situations in which I was being told I had or was exercising "power" seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. When I was a college freshman, one day I was walking across campus toward the student union. I reached the door about a half step ahead of a female student so, as I had been brought up to do, I hastened my last couple of steps and held the door open for her. Instead of the smile and nod that I had been used to in response to such simple acts of social courtesy, she flew into a rage and started screaming at me about how what a male chauvinist PIG I was, that she was perfectly capable of opening that door for herself and didn't need any g-- damned MAN to do it for her, and kicked me in the knee.

"Shock" is a totally inadequate word to describe my response.

I was at a loss to understand any of her reaction. She couldn't have been any more totally, completely, and absolutely wrong about my motivations and purposes. I instantly assigned her to the categories of "mentally defective", "hate filled", and female. Over the next several years, a lot of women joined her company.

A couple of years later, a woman that I was dating described her feminist "consciousness raising" group as consisting of "perfectly satisfying man hating sessions." Again, I was bewildered. I asked why she found hating me(n) so "perfectly satisfying". I don't remember the answer she gave, but she soon proved to me just how true that statement was of her. Like the knee-kicker in response to having a door opened, it seemed that anything and everything I did was proof that I deserved her hatred and rancor. At least 10 years later, she called me out of the blue to apologize. She said she realized that she had just gotten swept up in a group consciousness of hatred and had finally realized what had happened and that I had not deserved the bile she had spewed on me.

It was, I suppose, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but it was too little and too late. Because, by then I had encountered so many other women who acted in pretty much the same way that it had simply become part of my view of what women were. Somewhere, deep down inside, either hidden or proudly displayed, women hated men. Women came in a variety of sizes and shapes, most had breasts and female genitals, but they all seemed to come with a hatred and fundamental contempt for men. One woman I dated while Jimmy Carter was still president, spoke of "my hatred of men" in the same mattter-of-fact tone that she might say "my nose". It was just an integral part of her.

Needless to say, this presented me with a significant paradox and source of internal conflict. Being a healthy heterosexual male, I had the natural and universal desire that men have to have a love relationship with a woman. But, how is it possible to love someone that returns hate for that love?

So, over time I began to develop a wary distrustful posture toward women. I still dated them, but I had become so conditioned to expect hatred from them that I simply accepted it as part of the price I had to pay in order to be involved with one. My desire for a relationship was still strong, but was opposed by a distrust and unwillingness to let someone who hated me get the upper hand over me. Thus, in my mind the concept of "commitment" became one and the same as "trapped in a relationship with someone who hates me." I was indeed one of those men who "wouldn't make a commitment."

The worst part of this, for me, is that it blinded me to the warning signals of some truly sick personalities. The hostility which I had become accustomed to enduring from women became only a matter of degree - greater or lesser. And, with a baseline of being kicked in the knee for the courtesy of opening a door, and learning how "satisfying" man hating is to some women, I had no yardstick to sort out the seriously sick and deranged women from any of the rest. As a result, I ended up in some relationships that were truly horrible and very damaging to me. And, of course, each of these left scars which over time built up so much emotional scar tissue that I began to lose all the positive feelings I once had for women.

That is the personal side. And, I won't bore you with the details of all the stories. But, there eventually got to be so many that I developed the attitude that the question was not "whether" a woman would burn me if let her get close enough to do so, but "when" and "how soon" it would happen.

On the political side, things were just as bad if not worse. About the same time I started becoming the target of violent physical attacks by individual women for what I perceived as courtesy, I also became the target of vicious verbal attacks by women collectively - just for being a man.

I remember the first time I saw the slogan "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle", I knew knew my face had just been spit in. Men were not just useless to women, we were irrelevant. We had no purpose in a woman's life, and did not belong in her world at all. It was a message of hate, dismissal, and refutation. But, I also saw it as a warning of what was to come. It was like seeing clouds on the horizon, and knowing that it is time to get under cover because a storm is brewing. And, since it was obviously smearing shit in my face, it was going to be a shit storm.

Soon it became apparent that women could say any damn thing they wanted about men - no matter how wrong, no matter how hateful, no matter how unfair - and that was fine, but every time I stood up to that and said "no, that is wrong, there is another point of view" I'd get some little fem-bot harpy in my face shrieking the same old tired slogans, like a mindless Chatty Cathy doll, about how I was threatened by losing my power, wanted to keep women "in their place", was probably violent, and was a misogynist. The dull predictability and regularity of it all was only kept from being terminally boring by the shrillness and sheer vehemence of the attacks.

There is a belief among those who believe in magic that one must speak a spell 3 times in order for it to become binding and true. It took being called a misogynist a lot more than 3 times to become true, more like 300+, but in time it did become true.

I began to see women as vicious creatures whose only agenda when it came to me, or any man, was to see how much they could get from the man - then when he had nothing left to give because they had taken it all, toss him out with yesterday's garbage. In short - as nothing but users. Feminist author Wendy Dennis came out with a book in the early 1990s called "Hot and Bothered: sex and love in the 90s." Among many other astute observations in the book was that nothing was more classically typical of the state of male/female relations than the woman who complained bitterly about every aspect of men, then couldn't figure out why she couldn't get one of these awful creatures to fall madly in love with her. I had observed the same thing so many times that I had simply concluded that such women were simply not very bright. In stark contrast to the mythology of how socially adept women are, I was baffled that such women were so stupid that they didn't realize that no living thing will respond to such projections of distaste, contempt, and hatred with anything except return animosity.

I took to avoiding women, particularly groups of them, because I could never sit quietly and put up with the bashing and would always challenge it, which ended me up in a lot of fights and added greatly the count of times that I got called "misogynist." I noticed that women seemed to do it habitually, without thinking, and would confront my female friends over and over until they learned not to do it in my presence.

And, after 3 decades of listening to it, and hating it, and trying to keep the animosity which had been building in me over it - when the husband of a woman friend of mine (who had been very dishonest about her motivations for our friendship and had been trying to harass me into turning our friendship sexual) threatened to kill me and she said "I don't know why you are making such a big deal about it", I caved in and began to really hate women.

Most of the time this hatred lies dormant. I figure that the best thing I can do for myself and for women is to keep the contact I must have with them to a minimum, and to keep as much distance between them and myself as possible. It is rather like hanging a sign on a fence that says "Beware of VERY bad dog." Stay outside the fence, and everything is fine. But, come through the gate at your own risk. Leave me the hell alone and I will leave you alone.

Misogynists are not born, they are made.

I am still baffled at all the women who seem to expect men to live on a steady diet of hatred and man bashing, and somehow magically metabolize this toxic diet into "love" for women and a desire to see good things come to them. When I work real hard, I can make the anger cold and take no joy when bad things happen to women, simply regard it with indifference. When I hear a woman whine about being victimized, I simply tune her out and go elsewhere.

When a woman smiles at me, I think of an old ethic bashing joke - "What does a ______ say instead of 'fuck you'?" answer "Trust Me.

I will not allow most women in my house unless I have known her a long time and she is old enough to have escaped being infected with the plague of man hating or is escorted by someone I trust, nor will I enter theirs except on the same conditions. If I pass a woman stranded on the road, I will not stop to help her because it is as likely as not that she will be afraid of me. That's fine. She's a fish without a bicycle - I have no place in her world, nor her in mine.

Man bashing and man hating harms women, because it makes men hate them back - eventually. A puppy returns love for love, but if you beat it will eventually turn mean and will one day turn on you when you raise your fist or your stick (or the club of words) to hit it. Men are no different. When women talk about treating men like dogs, I wish they would. It would be an improvement. Most women treat their dogs far better than they treat their men.

Somewhere along the line, I went through a metamorphosis. I changed from a man who loved women and thought they were just about the greatest thing in the world, to a man who can't stand them, or anything about them.

I'm sick and tired of the lies that women tell about men, I'm sick and tired of their victim games, I'm sick and tired of hatred and bashing I have to put up with when I am around them. I am sick and tired of the arrogant contempt in which they seem to hold me and all other men. I am sick to death of the way that some of them feel the need to seek me out to piss me off. A couple of years back, at the funeral of my uncle, as fine a man as I have ever known, some woman felt the need to start a conversation with me as I sat with my private grief. She wanted me to agree with her that men don't ask for directions.

How could anyone be so stupid and socially incompetent? When men came up to me to talk, it was always with something like "Your uncle was a fine man", not "aren't men headstrong and stupid?"

Invariably, when I tell a woman about all this, she tries to argue with me and say something like "get over it", or "why don't you take the gender out of it?" In return I ask, "why the hell don't you women get over it, and take the gender out of it?"

I would like nothing better than to be left in peace, and allow women to enjoy the absence of my company which they find so annoying and unpleasant. Every day, a few more men got through the transformation and become like me. We don't get our guns and shoot a few women; we don't beat them up; because what women have been saying about us all these years is just flat wrong. But, there's no point in trying to tell women that because they have become so certain of their superiority that the best way to deal with them is to leave them to it, and the company of their other fishy friends.

I Was Banned From an MRA Site: A response

ArgusEyes — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:52:35 GMT

http://punkassblog.com/2008/09/24/i-was-banned-from-an-mra-site/

This post highlights the principle problem with most blogs on the internet, we get a breakdown of the amount of time that glen mentions feminists, a disclaimer he posts on his pages and an account of a banning from some unnamed MRA blog.
Great. Mental diarrhoea straight from this persons brain to your eyes without the bother of editing in between.

But there was a slightly more pernicious message between the supercilious filler and that is exemplified by the following passage:

"I could do this all night, but I’m disinclined to. The examples are extraordinarily numerous. The point being, these are the guys that love Glenn, that feel Glenn speaks for them, that religiously read his articles and vigorously support him. What does that say about Glenn?"

I have this to say to Lisa Kansas:
To dismiss the reasoned body of work of a man who, in my experience, tries to be reasonable and fair at all times and to instead judge him by the cherry picked comments of the people who read his blog is nothing more than intellectual thuggery.

Latest friday feminist fuck you. Can you guess who it is? Go on, guess..

ArgusEyes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:59:40 GMT

To feminists, gender is more important than skill.

ArgusEyes — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:34:07 GMT

British men - You also need to wake up!

ArgusEyes — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:08:00 GMT

Boycott relationships. Your country wants you to do it apparently.

To be a feminist's daughter

ArgusEyes — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:43:58 GMT

A very interesting article.

How my mother's fanatical views tore us apart

She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca, 38.

Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises - a mother.

Shit like this almost makes me want to become a feminist

ArgusEyes — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:28:13 GMT

I kid.. We know that the feminists don't fight against the real evils against women. Which, seem time and time again to be Islam.

Watch these and then buy the book

ArgusEyes — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:48:59 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DD40D63DBCDFCA94

http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Male-Power-Warren-Farrell/dp/0425181448/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215776892&sr=1-1

My reply to MarquisMongaga

ArgusEyes — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:54:28 GMT

Note the thoughtful pose.

When feminist don’t care about the murder of women

ArgusEyes — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:33:44 GMT

A while ago I read a story to you about a young girl in Iraq who was horrifically murdered by her father and then thrown into a makeshift grave whilst her family spat on her body.

I have been sitting on this information for a while but I have a sad follow up to the story. The girl who was killed was called Rand Abdel-Qader, and now her mother Leila has been murdered also.

It was two weeks after Rand's death on 16 March that a grief-stricken Leila, unable to bear living under the same roof as her husband, found the strength to leave him. She had been beaten and had had her arm broken. It was a courageous move. Few women in Iraq would contemplate such a step. Leila told The Observer in April: 'No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed as a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter.'

Her words were to prove prescient. Leila turned to the only place she could, a small organisation in Basra campaigning for the rights of women and against 'honour' killings. Almost immediately she began receiving threats - notes calling her a 'prostitute' and saying she deserved to die like her daughter.

Even her sons Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, whom she claimed aided their father in their sister's killing, disowned her. Meanwhile, her husband, a former government employee, escaped any charges, and even told The Observer that police had congratulated him on what he had done.

It is not known who killed Leila. All that is known is that she was staying at the house of 'Mariam', one of the women's rights campaigners, whose identity The Observer has agreed not to reveal. On the morning of 17 May, they were joined by another volunteer worker and set off to meet 'a contact' who was to help Leila travel to Amman, where she would be taken in by an Iraqi family.

'Leila was anxious, but she was also happy at having the chance to leave Iraq,' said Mariam. 'Since the death of her daughter, her own life was at serious risk. And this was a great opportunity for her to leave the country and to fight for Iraqi women's rights.

'She had not been able to sleep the night before. I stayed up talking to her about her plans after she arrived in Amman. I gave her some clothes to take with her and she was packing the only bag she had. She was too excited to sleep.'

Mariam said that when she awoke Leila had already prepared breakfast, cleaned her house and even baked a date cake as a thank-you for the help she had been given. After the arrival of 'Faisal', the volunteer (whose identity is also being protected), the three left the house at 10.30am and started walking to the end of the street to get a taxi. They had walked less than 50 metres when they heard a car drive up fast and then gunshots rang out. The attack, said by witnesses to have been carried out by three men, was over in minutes. Leila was hit by three bullets. Mariam was hit in her left arm and Faisal in her left leg. 'I didn't realise I had been shot for a few seconds, because as I heard the gunfire I saw Leila falling to the ground and saw blood pouring from her head,' said Mariam. 'I was so shocked, I didn't immediately feel the pain.'

Since February 2006, two other activists from the same women's organisation have been killed in the city. One of them was reportedly raped before being shot. The other, the only man working for the non-governmental organisation (NGO), and a father of five who was responsible for the organisation's finances, was shot five months ago.

Read the full article.

I’m going to stop there. I recommend that you read the full story which I shall link in the video description and in my blog. It goes into more details of how Mariam had to take sedatives to help her sleep at night because of continuous nightmares, and how the police stated that her death was just a coincidence. I don’t buy it.

Here’s what gets me.

Feminists, apparently, are THE people who beat the female drum more than others do.

Apparently, they’re THE cheerleaders for the woman crowd.

This is to the feminists.. Doesn’t this shit piss you off?

When I made the original video all I got were dismissals to the argument, not one feminist stood up to the plate and rebuked this behaviour. Which was what my original point was, that feminists take pot shots at their own culture which reveres women above all others, and fail to criticise a truly misogynist oppressive culture.

They mainly said things like “the fact that there is oppression in other cultures doesn’t mean that we can ignore the problems in ours”. I’m fed up of being asked to defend a position I didn’t posit. This was not the point of my original video.

But I know why they made this point, the idea of criticising Islam so frightens these politically correct cowards that they will grasp at any straw that they can to avoid the real issue, this ranges from making strawman arguments like I read to you or discussing the wage gap. If you do this in response to this video then you are avoiding the truth because the truth is so ugly that it burns to look at it. It’s like the sun, it’s so painful to stare directly at that people will cast their glance askew to avoid it.

It hurts to look at abject evil, but we need to do it.

Also I want to say. Making a comment along the lines of “these oppressions exist in other cultures and doesn’t apply to our own” is not sufficient…

Do the Dutch not have to deal with the religious sensitivity of the Muslims because the Muslims are only in the Middle East? No! The Muslims are there in their own country.

Did the riots in France not happen because the Muslims are another culture? No! The Muslims are in France.

So the evils of Islam are applicable to western cultures. Because they are IN those western cultures. Maybe feminists want to reconsider their attitudes to Muslim immigration if the rights of women matter to them so much. Here in the U.K. the Muslims are gravitating towards implementing Sharia law into the law of the U.K. How does that bode for women’s rights?

Anyone of any stripe who does not have his or her head in the sand, needs to discuss these issues.

So I must reiterate, doesn’t a story like this make you angry dear feminists? It made me furious, I’ve not seen a feminists rebuke this and if you know of one then please let me know:

Rebuking bad behaviour is not difficult, all it takes is a little testicular fortitude. I rebuked the use of the term “feminazi” in a video. I rebuked the commenter who said that Wendy McElroy was just another evil feminist who was tricking us all. Wendy does good work on men’s rights issues and I value her contribution.

And I find it interesting that the one highlighting these issues is a Men’s Rights Activist, it should show you how far feminism has come. And of course, I’m pandering to the bigoted ideas of the radical feminists here because being a Men’s Rights Activist doesn’t mean you’re a misogynist. In fact, after the reactions I got to this horrific event I think we actually care more about women then the feminists do.

And if you want to help women, don’t donate to the western feminists, donate to this women’s charity in Iraq which helps women leave the country, I’ll try to find their identity. That’s all I’ve got to say. This video is in memorandum of Rand and Mariam Abdel-Qader, may they rest in peace.

The story from the other side of the fence.

ArgusEyes — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:21:19 GMT

Links:
http://uk.askmen.com/toys/top_10_300/327_top_10_list.html
http://www.glennsacks.com/campaigns-detroit-news.php
http://www.glennsacks.com/volvo.php
http://www.davidandgoliathtees.com/index.php?mode=HCGT

Do as I do Jessica valenti

ArgusEyes — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:25:29 GMT

From Feministing (again):

"Yeah, a bunch of misogynist trolls have swarmed the site. I'm sorry to Feministing readers for the nonsense. I'm going to shut down comments for the weekend until they find something better to do (because I just can't spend all weekend online deleting and banning).”

“But in the meantime, this serves as a pretty good reminder as to why feminism is so needed! (Even if it does kill my Friday night occasionally.)"

Read: Thos icky boys are invading our little girl’s club and I need to expel them all. It’s the patriarchy!

Sorry Jessica, when you talk shit about people they tend to want to defend themselves. Not all defences are what I would call “cogent” but I’ll give you some tips to show you the kind of nice guy I am.

When it comes to opposing views. You can save yourself time and effort by not being a comment dictator and just letting them on there.

Your head is probably reeling right now, so I will try and say it again a little slower.
Just. Let. Them. On. There.

You’re faithful minions will have fun replying and saying things such as “you’re afraid of women” or “you’re not real men”. The furore will drive your traffic up.. It’ll be a regular internet bonanza!

And most importantly of all. You won’t come off as a prissy little girls who cannot handle opposing views.

Also. The line that “this shows why feminism is needed” is used to death by Jessica. As you should know by now, I read her bloody book and read her bloody blog and trust me – this is overused. EVERYTHING show that feminism is needed.

A word to the wise Jessica, one asshole or a bunch of assholes does little to prove systemic oppression of women which needs a left-based sexist socialist ideology to counter it. You make a living talking smack about men and when we reply in kind it is used as a proof of some societal evil. Pay heed to these words from a wise man.

Any loon feminist can accuse men of being rapists, killers, sadists, and Marines. These are pretty serious charges. A fellow could take exception to them. But if I say something comparatively innocuous in return, such as that I weary of being harried by a rat-pack of diesel-fired tarantulas who mostly look like Rin Tin Tin's littermates--why, they get mad. (Yes, I know, that was a three-animal zoological-automotive metaphor. Patent applied for.)

I figure if radical-feminist ladies can talk ugly about us, then we can talk ugly about them. And we're probably better at it, which they might bear in mind.

Another good slam of Feministing

ArgusEyes — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:39:36 GMT

I was sent this link to a good blog post that further demolishes the ladies at feministing.com

http://daltonator.net/durandal/blog/?p=122

There are some very good bits:

One source of these steaming shovelfuls is Feministing, a web site run by self-styled “feminist” writer Jessica Valenti, author of Full Frontal Feminism. While the site bills itself as a blog for young feminists, it is in fact a “me too” web page where Miss Valenti’s sycophantic friends and cultish followers get together to recite dogma, honor the sacraments, pledge their devotion and excommunicate or anathematize the unbelievers. Any who dare to disagree with or mock the more ridiculous dogma are branded heretics (or “assholes”) and abjured with the magic words “Fuck You!”, a devastating show of wit, no doubt.

And...

It is the act of pointing out that such thinking is harebrained that is unforgivable, according to what they call “Feminism 101″, the mere mention of which is believed by the faithful to counter all facts, reason and logic in much the same way that fundies counter all arguments with “The Bible says so!”. In fact, the denizens of Feministing draw “Feminism 101″ like Randolph Scott drew his six-shooter in his old Westerns, but like Scott’s revolver, it’s full of blanks.

But go and read it for more good stuff.

The article also raises some interesting points. At the beginning he raises a dictionary quote such as this one.

fem•i•nism –noun 1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.

And then goes on to basically say that people who agree with this should reasonably be called feminists. I agree that most decent people agree with these principles. And if that is the case, do we need a term for us? Or do we merely need to shame those who don’t believe these things. I.e. we call people who don’t believe in equality between the races racist, we don’t call people who do believe in equality between the sexes pro-race. It’s not needed.

And we don’t need the term feminism, by the same logic. But, I would also like to say that the modern feminist movement is a political movement that has been very successful in appropriating this definition for themselves. So much so that if you go and ask a good young woman who would call herself a feminist such as this, and you ask her why she is a feminist then she will say something along the lines of “because I believe in equality”. The irony is that if you truly believe in equality then you have to go against what the modern feminist movement believes.

Just disgusting...

ArgusEyes — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:18:10 GMT

Where is ZenPriest now?

ArgusEyes — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:24:30 GMT

In my video about true equality, I made reference to an essay called "hate bounces". I don't think that ZenPriest has updated that site in a while and what I would like to do, is to read this piece in its entirety as a youtube video.

I don't know about anyone else but the piece really hit home with me when I read it for the first time. Does anyone know where I can contact him, the email address from his site does not appear to work.

Welcome to True Equality

ArgusEyes — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:26:54 GMT

Until now I’ve called my channel a susurration of a shibboleth. It was about standing out from the norm. That particular message has had its time and I think there is a new message I want to convey. My thinking over the past months has definitely been tending towards on thing and that is the continuous difference between those in the men’s movement and feminists in our ideas about equality.

This was pretty much encapsulated in my last video. Which, really, should have been the first video I made for youtube. It would be right at the top of my MRA 101 list because it encapsulates why us strange creatures called Men’s Rights Activists do not call ourselves feminists. I mentioned the differing idea of equality which is given by the following blurb:

What is equality? We in the men’s rights movement believe in equality of opportunity, that as long as the playing field is level then the outcomes should not matter. The feminists tend to believe that equality of outcome is what matters, that the columns under men and women must match for there to be no more sexism. So what really matters at the end of the day is what you are comparing. Rights or outcomes? This is the foundation of our debate.

Now, certain problems have nothing to do with this, I acknowledge that. However, this fundamental disagreement is present in so many arguments between men’s rights activists and feminists. Here are three examples of what I’m talking about when I talk about the feminists view of equality of outcomes.

Feminists use the gap between men and women in pay to support the idea of the supposed oppression of women.
Feminists use the gap between men and women in collegiate sports enrolment to support the quota-based law called title nine.
And, feminists use the differences between men and women in many professions. To make a case for the forceful insertion of women into those professions. A prime example of this is the FASCIST law passed in Norway where companies are forced to have 40% of their board of directors be female.

What does it take? What does it take to believe in these foolish ideas, and they are foolish. They hurt men, and they infantilise women. How can the neurons in the brain misfire to such a way so that people can support such idiocy, not only in practice. But to the extent that it gets encapsulated into law?

It takes the belief that men.. and women.. are basically the same. That apart from their physical appearance that they think in the same basic ways. This is foolish and any remotely normal person who has usual interactions with men and women will notice that we are fundamentally different.

Modern feminist may say. Oh no, I don’t support that idea. Well no shit. It’s untenable. But back in the heyday of feminist thought they tried this. They stigmatized raising boy children differently to girl children, they said that if you give the girl a truck and give the boy a Barbie then you can switch the roles. Nothing demonstrates the fallacy of this better than the case of David Reimer who was tortured in the name of feminist theory. His story will be made in a separate video. But needless to say that the theorising of the feminist fell down when empirically tested. It also falls down in the light of common sense.

I hope by now, that I have demonstrated fallacy inerrant in the idea that men and women are the same. We are not. So in this light the feminist ideal of equality is flawed. But what about my own ideal? Why do I think my own standards of equality are sufficiently better in order to make the claim that they represent “true equality”?

My system says, what you want to achieve as a society is equality of opportunity. This means that you do not deny anyone the opportunity to apply for a job, and a job is defined by a set of criteria. You want to become a fire fighter or a soldier? Great then there are a number of pre-requisites that you’ll need in order to do that job. You’ll need a certain level of fitness and you’ll need to be able to lift a certain amount of weight. No one is intrinsically blocked from applying but due to the requirements of the job you will see a number of patterns in who makes it in. Be it more men or more women, depending upon the particular job of course.

Now take the feminist model. I as a man am not fit enough to become a fire fighter but a women who is weaker than I might get in on the back of positive discrimination. What does this achieve? Well first of all it fills a slot with someone who is not able to do the job, it puts pressure on the other people in that profession to pick up the slack after her. Nothing demonstrates that point more than this article from Fred Reed about women in the military.

Fred--Your article "The Realities of Women in Combat" really struck a chord with my experience in the Air Force. I was a shop chief with the 28th Avionics Maintenance Squadron in the 1980s. There were two women assigned to my shop. One was really sharp at her job, but she couldn't change an RT-274/APN-81 without male assistance. The other couldn't even carry her own tool box to the flight line!

Supposedly, we supervisors were assured by the brass, these women were screened before being allowed into avionics maintenance by having to pass weightlifting standards. Yeah, right. They had to be able to lift 50 pounds. An RT-274 weighed in at 125 pounds plus. I don't know what the problem was with the woman who couldn't carry her own tool box. But I couldn't get rid of her due to pressure from the brass. So, I put her in a weight training program at the base gym. Until her honorable discharge and a pat on the back for a job well done, she never carried her own tools. She, therefore, was never able to pull weekend duty alone; there had to be a male assigned as well to carry her end of the job as well as his own.

Saving lives, fighting fires, fighting wars and protecting citizens are not areas where I want social experiments run. When you are being mugged, or your house is burning down you want the best person to save your life. It is beyond me why we give feminists credence in their clearly bad and erroneous ideas.

I also want to give a shout-out to my new blog I am creating. In the theme of this video I have called it true-equality and you can find it at true hyphen equality dot net. I have improved it so that I can more easily add blog posts and I will try to add a new post every day.

RE: Friday Feminist Fuck You

ArgusEyes — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:47:03 GMT

There is a youtube channel out there called Feministing, named after the famous feminist blog of the same name started by Jessica Vallenti.

On Fridays one of the Feministing team makes a video called “Friday feminist fuck you”. Which is basically a rant about some person or institution which has committed some sexist act which has irritated them.

Here is a list of the Friday feminist fuck you topics on chronological order, from the first to the most recent:

Grover Cleveland High,
Academy Awards,
Anti-feminism in the media,
Dr. Laura,
Fox and Other Race-Dumb Outlets,
Miss Bimbo,
Public Perverts,
The U.S. Army,
WNBA Public Relations

Dear women of Feministing. You are all cowards!

There is no courage in saying fuck you to the institutions and people in the freest country in the world who have committed some pathetic infraction that has offended your delicate feminist sensibilities.

There is one overriding and prominent evil that oppresses women in the world today. And it’s called Islam and most Feminists ignore the plight of women who need them the most.

Where is your “fuck you Saudi Arabia” video? Where women are not allowed to drive and are banned from voting.

Where is your “fuck you Hojatolislam Hassani”. Who is a top Iranian cleric who said that women who do not wear the Hijab should die. And not only that. The women, their husbands and fathers should die. So three people should be killed when a woman fails to wear a piece of cloth over her head.

Where is your video “fuck you Abdel-Qader Ali” who, well, let me read you this little story...

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.

'Death was the least she deserved,' said Abdel-Qader. 'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,' he said.

Yeah, no, you’re right. Fuck you Dr. Laura. Fuck you Miss Bimbo. These are the things that matter.

And I want to hive a shout out to some honest feminists. In the UK there is a radio station called radio 4 and they have a program called women’s hour. I disagree with what is said a lot of the time but they are worlds more honest about the issues than Feministing is and they regularly feature segments about women in other Islamic countries.

Some of these Feministing videos deal with legitimate issues. For example, the one on the U.S. Army, although I find it interesting that you dealt with a legitimate issue in a cack-handed way that was about as deep as most feminist treatments of issues. Others in the series are just pathetic. For example, one of the videos was entitled “Friday feminist fuck you: public perverts”. I remember seeing that and thinking. “wow.. What a cowardly” sentiment. And it is. Do you think there are any people out there who defend perverts? No! Everyone is against perverts and you simply want to obtain the cheap heroism of gaining a knockout victory over such a decrepit target.

The annoying thing is that feminists use examples like Iran when you argue with them and they want to justify their existence even though they do no real work in fighting these injustices. Citing places like Saudi Arabia to back up your arguments which are primarily about the western world is a deeply dishonest act. Look at the titles of the Feministing fuck you series. Are any of them about real injustices that women around the world face?

At least Men’s Rights Activists fight proper injustices in the societies in which they exist. I, a men’s rights activist has done more to shine a light on the true oppression of women than any feminist I have seen on youtube to date. Western societies are the most free in the world for women, women in these societies have more rights than the men do so stop pretending that this is where the atrocity lies and point your efforts where they rightly belong.

Why I am NOT a Feminist

ArgusEyes — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:41:55 GMT

Not a day goes by without me getting a message in my inbox or a comment on one of my videos saying something along the lines of:

I am a feminist because I believe in equality and what’s wrong with that!?

Let me say something now that, for some reason, isn’t said enough. Apart from a few nut-jobs here and there, we all believe in equality. OK? It doesn’t need to be said.

People who say that feminism is about equality have some major misconceptions about what feminism actually is. Feminism is not a state of being. It’s not something you just are like you might be an jew or a homosexual.

It is an ideological movement. Ideological movements are movements that are concerned with ideas. Feminism is comprised of ideas and theories and hypotheses. These ideas can be evaluated on their individual veracity and then accepted or dismissed. And over time common threads are observed in the ideas of the feminists that testifies to the character of the movement. This is what I consider my primary role to be... To evaluate the ideas and trends of feminism. As I’ve made quite clear before, I don’t think feminists are bad, I think that in general they have bad ideas because they base them on false premises.

Why don’t I call myself a feminist? As I have stated before. Feminism is not a state of being. So you can believe in equality and not call yourself a feminist. And that’s what I and a lot of other men’s rights activists believe. In fact, a lot of us feel that feminists do not believe in the kind equality that we, and most rational people, believe in.

For those who are actually able to think, you will realise that the word equality doesn’t have a meaning that is a clear as people intent it to be when they bleat it out. To me, men’s rights activism versus feminism is about two conflicting models of what the word equality means.

To most feminists equality means equality of outcome. That if you add up the numbers at the end of the day, if the column under men and the column under women don’t match exactly then this is proof positive that women are being oppressed.

To most Men’s rights activists, equality means equality of opportunity. In that you should face no discrimination based upon your sex, race or sexual preference in a civilised society. And that if the system is fair, then the outcome vis a vie women vs. men, white vs. black. Etc. Doesn’t matter at the end of it because your own choices led to that particular outcome.

Which one of these views is correct? Obviously I am going to say the second one.

Life is rarely a dichotomous choice between two different ideas. But this is one of those times. You cannot have a completely fair system and then have the government stick its nose in afterward in an attempt to fiddle the numbers to make it appear fair. Fair is giving everyone the same chance. Fair is not raising those who didn’t put in the effort up on a pedestal to the level of those who gave a damn.

Unlike the two models of equality which I have mentioned. A lot of the time I believe in situations where you have a choice between two views, the truth lies somewhere along the middle path between the two choices. When you have two views of society which are given to you by two special interest groups, each of which represents one half of two possible sides, then each represents a side that the other will find it hard to relate to. In my opinion the Men’s rights movement grew from the extremes that feminism created and exists to present the problems that affect men. I’ve always been honest that I believe that. It’s time for the feminists to come clean and admit that they have a female-centred agenda as well. Instead of the usual B.S. about representing what is best for both of the genders.

Feminism is our ticket to true gender salvation? Salvation for both genders from a movement with a gendered name. Bollocks! Modern feminism, which is far from its more noble roots. Has had a total reign and has been having the say for both sides for far too long now. And the damage should be clear for everyone to see. They have damaged men, women and society. We need the other voice now. We need to hear the other side of the story. This is the main reason why I don’t call myself a feminist. Feminism does not speak for me! Feminism does not speak for me...

I recommend a brilliant essay which I shall link to on the left called “hate bounces: how man hating and man bashing harms women: The making of a misogynist”. The essay details the life story of a man who grew up to hate women due to feminism. It says so much that I want to say and it says it so well that I implore you to simply read it yourself. For now, I will read a part of the essay that applies directly to my life experience:

I remember the first time I saw the slogan "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle", I knew my face had just been spit in. Men were not just useless to women, we were irrelevant. We had no purpose in a woman's life, and did not belong in her world at all. It was a message of hate, dismissal, and refutation. But, I also saw it as a warning of what was to come. It was like seeing clouds on the horizon, and knowing that it is time to get under cover because a storm is brewing.

Now before you start psycho-analyzing, the quote made me angry and hurt my feelings a bit, but it did not have as much of an effect on me as it did on this guy. But when I first heard the famous feminist slogan coming from the mouth of a young woman on my university campus then I realised that part of feminism was hateful to men and it was seeping into the mind of young women and poisoning their view of men then I realised that I could never call myself a feminist. After realising this, I pondered the strange creature called the male feminist. How could one embrace an ideology that was so hostile to them?

Needless to say, the quote doesn’t even make sense. I have never met a woman who does not consider a relationship to be an very important part of her life. The reason I never took the quote too seriously is because I saw right through it to what it really was. It was posturing. It was the angry outburst of a foot-stomping child of a movement trying to convince itself that it didn’t need to rely on men, lying to itself to try and deny the truth, that men and women do depend on each other. It spoke to me of an immature movement driven by emotion rather than logic. A movement striving not towards truth, but towards anger, victim-hood and demagoguery.

So. Apart from the spit-in-the-face hostility to men, the one-sided treatment of gender issues and the flawed idea of what equality is. Why else don’t I call myself a feminist?

For the answer to that question, watch my older videos and stay tuned for the new ones because what I offer is the voice from the other side of the aisle. And that is a voice you are not going to hear from a feminist anytime soon.

Don't vote for sexism in 2008 Hillary Clinton is bad for men

ArgusEyes — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:15:56 GMT

I have a dirty little secret. Hillary Clinton scares me, I was always aware of her feminist leanings but now that she is running for the president of the united states I think it's time to focus on Hillary.

And of course this makes me a chauvinist pig. If there is one thing that Hillary is using to death it's the female victim card, standard feminists phrases such as "glass ceiling" and a completely gynocentric campaign.

From what I've heard from Hillary Clinton over the past months. It seems to me that she is completely banking on the female and emasculated male voting base. Whether or not this will work - remains to be seen. But one thing is sure, that this is a small minded strategy, completely lacking in wisdom and sophistry. Of most campaigns waged throughout human history that target one particular demographic in a demagogic way have had foul intentions and foul consequences and I exempt Hillary from this in no small way. A Hillary Clinton presidency would be an extremely bad idea for men.

I'm not going to mince words here. In my mind Hillary Clinton is a female supremacist, a bigot and an ideologue. She is Cold and calculating and she is a feminist. Being the good feminist, Hillary seems to have a female supremacist streak. Making this statement in the Vital Voices' Women's Global Leadership Summit:

"Research shows the presence of women raises the standards of ethical behaviour and lowers corruption."

Maybe you could call this the Larry Summers effect. Make a statement about some inherent difference that makes men better than women in some regard then watch as the wailing begins. But turn the tables and claim the ethical or physical superiority of women then it becomes perfectly fine. Her claims may be true, but we live in a world where is a massive difference between what one can say about women and what on can say about men.

Hillary made an astounding in one of the democratic debates. Which I am paraphrasing as such:

"It's about time that someone started talking about what is good for women. Because doesn't that make a nice change?"

And of course everyone clapped like lemmings. The inanity of this statement is unbelievable. For as long as I can remember, all I have heard is what is good for women. It is virtually unheard of to hear what is good for men.

I put it to Hillary that most all political candidates mention "women's rights" in some way and if they do not then it's not that they are talking about "men's rights" in particular, it is more that they are simply not mentioning it. Men's rights are hardly ever mentioned in politics, and I put the word "hardly" in there in case it has happened but to be honest I cannot think of a time it has happened in the perpetuity of politics - such an event would be so rare that it would be emblazoned onto my consciousness.

The sad truth is that not talking about women, to Hillary, would be the equivalent of being sexist towards them. And to make things "equal" is the same as giving women more and more perks to hurtle them through that ever problematic glass ceiling. This is proven by the kind of commentary we see in the media about the sexism of those evil white men who would not vote for her, take the actions of the New York chapter of the National Organisation of Women criticising Ted Kennedy for not endorsing Hillarie's campaign.

The message is loud and clear: If you don't vote for Hillary then you're sexist. As an aside, I have one question for the democrats. When it comes for the time to vote are you going to be sexist and vote for Obama? Or are you going to be racist and vote for Hillary?

Does Hillary even live in the real world? For all her huffing and puffing about how downtrodden women are you would think that she still lives in the 1950s. But enough of the rhetoric. Is her talk merely hot air? What effect would Hillary have if she became the 44th president of the united states?

Unfortunately there is likely to be an unfortunate effect on men. It's not just about having another president who will surpass all the others in ignoring the issues that plague men - like we haven't had to put up with that forever. She has leant herself to a blatantly sexist proposition called the "Paycheck Fairness Act" which would:

"take critical steps to empower women to negotiate for equal pay"

The Paycheck Fairness Act is an equal pay for equivalent work law by which:

"employers could not pay jobs that are held predominately by women less than jobs held predominately by men"

The matter of the wage gap is something I have always meant to get into in a separate video so I will be talking about these issues in greater depth later but I will give you the gist of it here. Essentially it's all bollocks. You get paid based on how much and how hard you work, there is no shadowy cabal of men holding women back, all of us have mothers, sisters, aunts and female friends and I do not even want to think about what image people like Hillary have of men or how this will shape her. Would you let David Duke oversee race relations? Would you assign David Irving to the head of the holocaust council? Would you let Kent Hovind decide science policy? Would you let Hillary tell you about how sexist America really is?

You see, Hillary Clinton is what the old feminists would have called "sexist". She makes arguments for the superiority of women, she hosts women only and women centred events and campaigns. She makes bigoted statements about men and seems to dislike them and she would make laws that actively disadvantage men and advantage women. I would urge my American brothers and sisters who love true equality to not vote for her.

Sources
Is Hillary Clinton a Closet Sexist?
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2008/01/15/is-hillary-clinton-a-closet-sexist/

How did Hillary Become a Feminist?
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/30039.html

HILLARY PLAYS THE FEMALE SUPREMACIST CARD
http://www.newswithviews.com/Roberts/carey56.htm

Hillary Clinton, Cultural Marxist
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/29731.html

How did Hillary fall into the feminist fold?
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/080102

The (Anti-)Feminist Movement
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/7/14/135245.shtml

NOW WTF?
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2008/01/now-wtf.html

National Committee on pay equity
http://www.pay-equity.org/info-leg.html

I Love ifeminists!

ArgusEyes — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:08:49 GMT

I realise that most of the time I am pretty “down” on feminists. And a lot of comments get made when I criticise feminism to the effect of “we’re no all like that!”. So this is a video that seeks to rectify that situation to some degree.

There is a division of feminism called “ifeminism” which stands for individual feminism

Individualist feminism, or ifeminism, advocates the equal treatment of men and women as individuals under just law. The core principle of individualist feminism is that all human beings have a moral and legal claim to their own persons and property. It is sometimes called libertarian feminism.

The ifeminists site [1] has a F.A.Q [2] which gives some refreshing answers to questions. Here is an answer “isn’t the government trying to help women?” [3].

Governments have been the greatest violators of women's rights for centuries. In the 18th and 19th centuries in America, government denied to women the most basic rights of controlling their own bodies (e.g., birth control) and their own property (e.g., wives did not have an uncontested claim to their own wages). By the late 20th century, government cemented gender hostility into society by assuming a paternalistic role that advantaged women at the expense of men (e.g., affirmative action). Whether through privilege or oppression, governments seem unwilling to respect the full and equal individual rights of women.

To my mind the most famous ifeminist is Wendy McElroy. Who, in my opinion is one of the most intelligent female writers I am aware of. Wendy McElroy is pro pornography and is legally blind in one of her eyes after she suffered domestic violence in the past. However, she never jumped onto the DV hysteria bandwagon and admits her own culpability in the situation. The ifeminists website regularly features editorial contributions from well known members of the men’s rights movement such as Glenn sacks, Stephen Baskerville and Carey Roberts.

Ifeminism is more libertarian than liberal feminism and is certainly not radical. The belief is in the individual person and the rights they deserve. This is certainly a more palatable approach then most forms of feminism. Ifeminism can be said to encapsulate some of the ideas of the men’s rights movement. So there we go, never let it be said that I never had a good word to say about some feminists.

Sources
[1] ifeminists
http://www.ifeminists.com
[2] ifeminists faq
http://www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?cat.9
[3] Isn't government trying to help women?
http://www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.17

Bad Feminist

ArgusEyes — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:08:06 GMT

This is a continuing rebuttal of the rebuttal that iwentdowntotheriver, who will henceforth be referred to as “river”, made of my video “the problems with feminism”.

River starts by claiming that this isn’t really an issue that feminists use misleading statistics because, to paraphrase him, everyone does it. Well this is a logical fallacy and it’s called “Tu quoque” or “you too”. Basically it is the idea that it’s okay to perform a certain fallacious or wrong act because someone else does it as well.

And I’m a bit confused here. Is River making a point against me here or for me? If he admits that feminists do indeed do it. Then is it not a problem with feminism as I have stated it is? To quote a great man, Jon Stewart.

“When you go to a zoo and see a monkey throwing poop. You just say “that’s what monkeys do, what are you going to do?”. What I wish the media would do more frequently is say “bad monkey””.

Should we accept a politician’s corruption with a wave of the hand and say that’s what politicians do. No we should not. So, again, the proper response would be “bad feminist”.

River expands upon the rape stat and I haven’t yet made a video about this. And for any meaningful representation of what I think he will have to wait until I make a video that addresses it. But I will make a short comment here that I absolutely believe that there should be an element of force for it to be rape, every dictionary definition of rape contains some element of force and this is what every person understands when they hear the word. Which is the image of a brutish man grabbing an innocent woman in a darkened alleyway and viciously raping her. And it is an image that the feminists have exploited to suit their agenda, very well. I will make no qualms that what feminists have done with the issue of rape is one of the most evil things that the movement has done, and I try not to use the word evil unless I really mean it.

To sum it up Rivers definition of having sex when you don’t want to as being rape is ridiculous and stupid. I always like to be a bit more diplomatic than that but I can’t in this situation. Let’s take his definition to its logical conclusion so a woman who has sex with a man and later decides that it was a bad idea can now claim that she was raped. Let’s say that River has a girlfriend and she pulls this trick on him? What will he think of it then? Will his feminist apologist platitudes stop for a second and give way to a more honest statement that this is, indeed, bullshit?

How can something as horrible as rape now be something that you can do accidentally feminism has taken us into a brave world where men are now rapists without intending to be so or knowing they are doing it.

Sexist laws

We simply differ on our most fundamental concepts here. River thinks that the idea of giving women a head start is fine. I do not. I think that no one gets special treatment. They get equal rights but nothing more. And never the twain shall meet

If that is the stance of a feminist then that’s fine, I think they’re wrong, but they’re entitled to their opinion. But when they start that they, as a feminist, are interested in equality but then blatantly support inequality then that is a problem! And I don’t think it is unreasonable to mention that.

River then goes on to emphasize with the poor women who have for millennia been down trodden by the privileged men with their hobnailed boots whilst they went on to live the life of riley. This is what I like to describe as the “fabled oppression of the past” and I will make a separate video to discuss it. For now, may I suggest that the past is the past and a woman in today’s world would have to be pretty old in order to remember where any genuinely oppressive laws existed? Any young woman will have lived a life of complete equality so why do these women deserve a “leg up” because of the fabled oppression of the past where no modern woman suffered from oppressions inflicted on them by no modern man? It’s ridiculous, it’s the same excuse that people who want reparations want.

Women have had a lot given to them already. I would also claim that the women who have benefited from this the most are the women who deserve it the least. So may I suggest that we hang up this ridiculous notion of special privilege and reach true equality.

Sexist laws

Related to the laws for women was the issue of being beaten out for a job. I don’t know where the idea of “white men” came from, Feminists love to talk about “white men” I don’t know why that’s is important, anyway river asks why white men feel threatened by women getting to the same level as we are. I doubt river has had any personal experience with this. I have, and it isn’t a nice feeling.

“threatened” doesn’t come into it, it’s about fairness. I don’t believe that payback is fair game. If this is the feeling that women were supposedly going through then how productive is getting their petty revenge going to be. It is going to create a backlash which might hurt them in return. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Again, this comes down to what we think River seems to think it’s perfectly fine, I think that no one gets to be special. And I don’t think it is an arrogant thing to suggest that my view is more equalitarian then the other.

About DV shelters

He says he can’t understand how feminists would want to protect women at the expense of men. Well in many cases this is not intentional but stems from flawed feminists theory. The idea of patriarchy and the Duluth power wheel in some way prohibits thinking that men can suffer from DV. But if they do admit this then sometimes they just don’t care. That sounds harsh but many people who have talked to me when discussing this issue say that the feminists have the interests of women first and that alternative groups may want to fund shelters for men.

And that is a valid point and can be made but don’t come to me after that saying that feminism is about equality and that feminism serves the interest of men. FEM-inism is about serving the interests of women and that’s what I mean when I say it’s gynocentric.

Smokescreening Radical Feminism

ArgusEyes — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:07:14 GMT

This is a rebuttal to iwentdowntotheriver’s rebuttal to my “problems with feminism video”. Iwentdowntotheriver is far to long as a handle for me to repeatedly refer to it so from now on I will be calling him “river”.

First of all I just want to say that I really love sensible video replies. I think this is what youtube should be about. It also cuts through the miasma of the youtube comment system which really prohibits sensible debate. And I hope we can continue this format.

The distinction that the “beliefs of a leader does not equal the particular ideology of that group” was not missed by me. As anyone could have come up with that particular platitude, and many did. This is a comment that is levelled at me all the time and is part of that silly claim that you cannot criticise a particular person or a particular group because not all the people in that group may meet the standard of your criticism.

And indeed they may not but I doubt that any group in society can be criticised if we were all so sensitive. If I were to criticise the American right for being bible bashing religious nuts. Not all on the right meet this standard of course, but the point would be well taken would it not? And I feel that it would accurately describe a problem without me having to be so guarded about my own words that it would take five pages to write one sentence in the interests of “fairness” to the miniscule fringes.

A story from my past applies here. I was talking to a good friend in university about how much I hated rap music.

And he said to me: “Well, you can’t say you hate rap because you haven’t heard it all”.

And I said: “Well I have hated all the rap that I’ve heard”.

He said: “oh that’s just the modern stuff, you can’t really say that you hate it then, because there is some really good stuff outside the chart stuff that would make you surprised and you’d probably like”.

And I said to him: “That may be true. However, there is a populist front to rap, and that is what we hear on the charts and this is the centre of gravity to the genre. So this modern front defines what we mean by the word “rap” in its most generalised form. If I don’t like rap in this form then I can accurately state that I do not like “rap”. However, if I were to find a subset of rap that I actually like then I would state so when talking about the subject”.

I hope you can see how the analogy can apply here. Feminism has a populist front, a centre of gravity to it. Like all movements or groups have. The set of beliefs that this aspect of the movement have can be legitimately criticised. Examples of what these beliefs would be, would be something like a belief in patriarchy, or a belief that the wage gap is the result of discrimination. These are things that are commonly held true.

River cited an example of a leader, who mentioned something and the people in the group disagreed with him, this can happen. But I don’t believe that it is foolish to say that a leader is chosen on their ability to represent the views of a group. The democrats are not going to put forth a republican as a presidential candidate for their party. They are going to put forth someone who represents them.

You can criticise the leader quite happily. And if they stand by themselves then point it out to me and I will take it back. However, when river criticise me he doesn’t provide any rebuttal to my points but instead wastes his time critiquing my style.

Hatred of men

River states that my argument that many feminists seem to have a hatred of men is not an argument against feminism but is simply an argument against certain feminists. When you look at some of those feminist hate marches from back in the 70s. How much love do you feel?

Yes, this clip was from decades ago. But that’s how modern feminism started. How much love can you feel when you watch that? Don’t be surprised that many people who saw that and haven’t read into the topic like you or I might, would have come away with the impression that their private areas were in danger. Let me read you an article by Carey Roberts called “A rash of feminists hate speech” [1].

A woman named Mary took the open microphone. "Hello, my name is Mary Man-Hating-is-Fun," she explained. "Ever since I learned to embrace my feminist nature, I found great joy in threatening men's lives, flicking off frat brothers and plotting the patriarchy's death. I hate men because they are men."

The 40 women in the audience, many wearing scissors around their necks, laughed and clapped, then broke into a light-hearted song about castration.

Extremism is a problem in every movement as you yourself well know. You cannot have it both ways. You have made no efforts to rebuttal my points you simply cry out of context. Well I think that river and people like him are simply burying their heads in the sand when it comes to making excuses for the militant and radical wings of any movement, not just feminism.

I don’t know how much feminists exposure river has had but I talk to the worst element all the time, and never does the drumbeat of animosity fade from their hearts or the venom of contempt stop dripping from their lips. Hate is a strong word and many do, others merely dislike men, and others are merely contemptuous of men. A lot of them are not like that but on those cases it should be self-evident that the problems I have listed simply do not apply.

When Robin Morgan talked about class hatred she was being honest. When you have a view that there is this force called patriarchy and that rape and oppression lurks behind every corner. Then it is not surprising that you’re going to end up distrusting or hating men. Logically, the attitude that I see in many feminists follow from what they believe.

What worries me is that this feminists attitude of oppression behind every nook and cranny seems to have been passed down to normal young women who would not describe themselves as feminists but would cite certain feminists tidbits such as the 1 in 4 rape stat, the wage gap as an instance of oppression and the fabled oppression of the past being just a few. I met these kinds of girls at university and they had a faint hum of anger about them. A chip on the shoulder and an attitude that they weren’t going to take “it”, whatever “it” was.

Anyone who turns themselves off of these very real problems to feminist anger and hate is deluding themselves.

Andrea Dworkin

Not many people are more hateful then the now deceased Andréa Dworkin. Dworkin was a notorious radical feminist. But when I gave a quote of hers that would make the toes curls on a normal person not attuned to this nonsense. I get a cry of “out of context”.

And this “context”, apparently, is that Dworkin was working from a framework that current sexual norms are rape.

So not only was she a misandrist. But she was also a loon. River then said.

“one must not however give simple sound bites for complex theories of human sexuality”

It’s enough to make a cat laugh. If you cannot conclude that there’s enough context in that quote to conclude that Dworkin was hateful or that her legion of head nodding followers who lapped up her every word were hateful. Then there’s not much I can do for you.

I must cite this very strongly lest I get more accusations in the same vein that we’ve heard already. I stated that the original video was to answer the questions of the form “why do you have a problem with feminism” it was an honest admission of the problems that I see within feminism and was kept sufficiently broad to address the most common problems. But nothing but denial followed. I’ve always felt that you can never trust a person who is completely unwilling to admit that their own position has problems. This kind of attitude is unrealistic. I’ll be the first one to admit that there are close minded and proselytizing atheists or misogynistic and uncouth MRA’s.

In the same way that religious moderates make a smokescreen for the radical elements of religion. Excuse making feminists apologists like River make a smoke screen for the radical feminists. No one social movement is perfect and can’t be criticised in any way but instead of refuting my points river is merely critiquing the style of my writing. And insisting that they’re not all like that. Sometimes the proper adult reaction to take is to say “yes, those are problems. Let’s see how we can solve them”.

Sources
[1] A Rash of Feminist Hate Speech, Carey Roberts
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0504roberts.html

Look not to Feminism but to Science Redux

ArgusEyes — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:05:13 GMT

I am making this video to flesh out some of the points, address some of the inaccuracies and answer a lot of the common criticisms of my video “look not to feminism but to science”.

The original video was interesting, it is a very general idea spoken in a short time. I could make many videos about some of the issues that got raised. Some people made interesting and valid points that I will try to include here. As a matter of fact the points that people raised helped me revaluate what I think.

The overall point of the original video is one that I still agree with. And this point is that most of our progress as a race, including that of women, is gained by our species unique skill for discovering out the secrets of nature and creating tools, as life gets better and better then the divisions in society will degrade. I believe that the real liberating factors for women are those that free them from their inherently limiting biology. Biology is a scientific field and I have a news story here that demonstrates the point I made very poignantly [1].

I can’t say this strongly enough. This kind of change is something that we humans can do that puts us apart completely from nature. Our science and our tools can Improve out own lives in unimaginable ways. When I first read this article I was genuinely glad that women pained by periods (which I’ve always though were a genuinely tough aspect of being a woman) can get rid of it. And the very real monthly bleeding of women is, I think, a far greater pain in all women’s lives then the patriarchal spectres that feminists supposedly fight. Science frees you from a pain that feminism couldn’t.

Now to stress. Feminism has achieved a lot, but a lot of women’s progress can be attributed to science as well, and feminism seems to have taken, or been given all of the credit.

I talk like this because I’m a bit of a science nut. But scientism – the practice of looking at all of life’s problems through a scientific lense does not work for all things. And there are things in gender issues that science cannot touch on. It is in this are where criticisms of my own points become valid. I did put in the clause of not saying all the factors are gained through science, but maybe I did not discuss them in enough detail. Which is part of the purpose of this video.

People will always be people however. We will always be bigoted and ignorant and superstitious as long as, as Christopher Hitchins puts it, our prefrontal lobes are too small, and our adrenaline glands are too big, and we’re afraid of the dark and we’re afraid to die. I think our morality comes in part from what Richard Dawkins defines as an ever changing moral zeitgeist, another way to look at this is to say that our morals are created by society. I agree with this theory.

And how does the moral zeitgeist change? Well a number of things can do this, it is a complicated matter, but one of the main ways is an advocacy group of people push their point of view and help to change attitudes. In we look at the writings of many intelligent men of the past, we may be surprised from a modern viewpoint about their casually racist attitudes. You can find examples of this in the bible, in the writings of Charles Darwin and in the views of Mahatmas Ghandi.

Now, you might be saying that I have created a noose to hang myself here by talking about advocacy groups pushing the moral zeitgeist. Feminists are an advocacy group that do just that.

And indeed they are. But I never stated that feminists didn’t achieve any useful things. In fact my current view is not that feminism as a movement should be destroyed or disbanded. To my knowledge I have never stated this, and I have categorically stated in recent times that feminism should continue to exist to represent a certain point of view. But, alongside it should be a men’s rights movement to represent the views of men.

This sounds like it goes against the comments I made in the original video to the effects of “if feminism didn’t exist then women would have be in the same position of rights as they are today”. I wanted to comment on what I meant by this but ended up writing so much that it was bloating an already long document. So all I’ll say is that whatever we can say on the subject is academic, feminism is here and did happen. So hypothesising on what would have happened if it didn’t exists is pointless and also a waste of time. Given my previous statement that I support the existence of feminism, I rescind this view.

I would like to end. By commenting on some common points that were raised.

1) Where did the quote at the beginning come from? I can’t find it.

You can’t find it because it doesn’t exist. It turns out that I made a mistake here and misremembered a portion of an article written by Carey Roberts [2] which I had read a long time ago. The section from this article is a follows:

Ironically, those same women forgot to tell us that leading feminists thinkers were actually discouraging women from thinking logically. The reason: gender feminists have long regarded logic and rationality as patriarchal tools for the baleful oppression of women.

No, this is not a joke.

Feminist Elizabeth Minnich scornfully traces the source of rationality to a "few privileged males.who are usually called 'The Greeks.'" Historian Gerda Lerner denigrates the great liberal tradition of sound thinking as "the rape of our minds." And here's my favorite: Charlotte Bunch concludes feminists must attack the problem of "phallocentrism" by "reconstructing the world from the standpoint of women."

This is where the idea came from, just so you can see that it was not made up out of whole cloth. The reason I am mentioning this first is so that people can’t claim that I am trying to hide. If I make a mistake then I will say it.

I might also mention that the original video was made back in the dark ages of my youtube days. I had a crappy little webcam and I essentially recorded myself ranting for ten minutes. All my videos now are in essence read from scripts that I write before hand and then upload with references to my own website which I link from the video.

2) Feminism started before the 60s, e.g. the suffragettes.

Yes it did and I was aware of this. Perhaps I should have made it more clear that the main types of feminism I criticise is modern feminism. The dictionary defines the year of the origin of the word feminism as 1890-95 [4].

3) You said that feminists haven’t done any good, but look at this example...

This is a bit of a straw man argument as in the original video I never stated that feminism had accomplished nothing. But some of the examples given were well taken. I shall read one of them now. This if from lmwoods84 who sent me a link [3].

Margaret Sanger was a lifelong advocate of women's rights and the use of birth control. During the 1930s, it was discovered that hormones prevented ovulation in rabbits. In 1950, while in her 80s, Sanger underwrote the research necessary to create the first human birth control pill. Sanger raised $150,000 for the project.

So thumbs up for Margaret Sanger there.

Sources
[1] Bloodless Revolution: The abolition of menstruation.
http://www.slate.com/id/2166983

[2] Feminist Head-Games at the United Nations
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0302roberts.html

[3] Oral Contraceptive History - Birth Control Pills
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blthepill.htm

[4] Origins of the word feminism
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/feminism