In my link to Jeff’s brilliant “Explainer” post, Raznor commented:
It’s good, but a bit harsh. Not saying that MRAs don’t deserve harshness, but I would have liked more about legitimate complaints (men being more likely to die on the job for instance) so that he could more effectively argue that feminism is the better means of repairing such complaints. That’s what I’m used to in reading about MRAs from you and from Barry Deutsch.
I thought that was a reasonable point, but that the issue of legit complaints from MRAs really requires a separate post. So, stealing Jeff’s “Explainer” idea, here’s that post.
Don’t MRAs have some good points, though?
Er, they say things that are factually accurate. But that’s a bit different than having a point. You can correctly observe that someone has a broken ankle while not having a point that the way to cure it is to do a rain dance.
Okay, okay, I get it. But the issue is that if they say things that seem true, that helps their recruiting efforts. Shouldn’t we deal honestly with the stuff they say that aren’t blatant lies and bullshit? Some of the stuff they say that shows that there’s unfairness to men does convince some that there’s no patriarchy.
Good point. Shoot.
What about the draft? Only men get drafted.
It’s indicative of the intellectual emptiness of MRA thought that in order to show discrimination against men, they have to reach for a practice that hasn’t been activated in the U.S. since women weren’t allowed into the Ivy Leagues or to sit on juries in Texas. A dearth of modern examples causes them to resort to such a silly tactic. But they like to bring up the draft, because they know that most feminists are squishy liberals and can be counted on to digress on why we think the draft itself is problematic, etc. while they run around doing the touchdown dance because we didn’t immediately say that women should be drafted.
But the draft issue is misguided for two reasons: One is that the need for and the practice of the draft are both results of the patriarchy’s tendency to war-monger and ill-informed notions about women’s weakness. The other reason is that the draft argument implies, quite wrongly, that men bear the most cost of war. In reality, the vast majority of war casualties are unarmed civilians, and they come in all ages and genders. In addition, women are especially targeted in war for rape campaigns, which are sometimes semi-organized (Balkans, Congo) and sometimes freelance (our soldiers who are raping Iraqi women), but always present in war.
Granted, your average MRA is interested in downplaying the severity of rape, sometimes coming close to implying that since many women consent to allow penises inside our bodies on a frequent basis, an occasional non-consensual penis is not that big a deal. Even if you’re compelled by that, do realize that war rape is a much nastier beast than your average “friendly fire” rapes that happen in our everyday lives.
Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.
For the reason that war rapes often leave women mutilated and therefore infertile and because war rapes are often about forcing the victims to bear the children of their oppressors, war rape is considered a form a genocide. The point of bringing this up is not to play “who’s more victimized” here, but to show that the argument that the draft shows that men are discriminated against and forced to bear the majority of the cost of war is nothing but a lot of hand-waving. War is to gender like fire is to everything in its sight—different materials may burn up differently, but in the end they’re all just burned up.
Well, that was a downer. What about how sitcoms make men like overgrown babies and buffoons?
As a fan of dismantling sexist assumptions in pop culture, I’m not going to waste my breath pointing out how this complaint, while common, has a whiff of Teh Silly to it. However, it’s another example of how MRAs are intellectually dishonest, because in order to make the argument work that male buffoonery on TV is based on an anti-male sentiment, then you have to assume that women in these shows and commercials are generally portrayed well. MRAs generally try to do this, saying women are held up as paragons of competence, and there’s something to this. But the larger story is that the standard buffoon husband/competent wife pair on TV comes with a thick dose of misogyny—the competent women are generally portrayed as humorless, fun-killing, finger-wagging prudish bores. Wives to buffoonish men on TV function like principles in high school comedies, as obstacles to the fun and games. While few people really want to be the buffoonish husbands of TVLand, they want to be the horribly no-fun wives even less.
What about how men tend to die on the job more than women? Isn’t that unfair?
More hand-waving, especially from MRAs, who tend to be the first to decry efforts to fix the pay gap between men and women. Men die on the job more because men are more likely to have the blue collar jobs that put workers in danger—and therefore take home the larger paycheck than women of that socioeconomic class, who tend to have pink collar jobs that pay much less. Plumber vs. secretary, construction worker vs. hair dresser. Which means that bringing up this issue in order to demand that women share the risk means that you should be on board with opening these higher-paying fields up to women, a feminist goal. So how are feminists the enemy again?
But this complaint is a good example of the overall fact that even when MRAs say things that are technically true, they’re still making bad faith arguments. Well-meaning activists detail out certain problems in an attempt to stop those problems. MRAs bring up men’s problems not to solve those problems, but to halt societal efforts to stop women’s problems. Stopping feminism won’t save a single man who dies on the job. Better unions and workplace regulations is the answer to this problem. So bringing up men’s deaths on the job is basically a bad faith argument—MRAs don’t really care about that, or else they’d put their efforts into fixing that problem.
You really see this break in the logic train with MRA activism against the VAWA and other policies to help battered women. They love to scream that men get hit, too, and they do, though most MRAs are cagey about the fact that a good percentage, probably the majority, of male victims of domestic violence are gay. The point that men are victims too is hand-waving, though, because their activism is about reducing women’s protections, not increasing those for men.
Follow what I’m saying? If you say, “This seat belt law will help save 50,000 lives a year from car accidents,” you don’t protest that fact by saying, “BUT WHAT ABOUT MOTORCYCLISTS?!” That motorcyclists die from accidents doesn’t make the seat belt laws wrong or ineffective or worthy of repeal.
The sitcom wife = Mr Belding is one of the better comparative media observations I’ve seen in awhile. Bravo.
Yeah, well, the leading cause of death for women at work is: murder.
I can toss out alarming facts as easily as any MRA.
In other words, don’t get lost in the details. Gotcha
Re: the sitocms. Not to mention, chances are women aren’t writing the shitty male characters; the boys are going to have to look inside their own pasture to find that bull shit. The poorly written women on the other hand… the comparison doesn’t hold. Just ask Warner Brothers.
Congratulations on one of the most compelling analogies I’ve read in a while.The only issue on which I think MRAs are not completely full of shit is courts presumtively granting child custody to women in divorces. And I really don’t know what, if anything, can or should be done about that. Contested custody cases, by definition, have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, where the best interest of the children is the major if not only concern. Divorce is one of those things that’s impossible to make painless, sweet and perfectly fair.
In other words, don’t get lost in the details.
I think it’s more accurate to say “don’t let irrelevant details obscure the real issue.”
“As a fan of dismantling sexist assumptions in pop culture, I’m not going to waste my breath pointing out how this complaint, while common, has a whiff of Teh Silly to it.”
I think a nice, non-MRA approach to bumbling doof of a man problem (and I think it *is* a problem) is that it and similar slurs *still* reinforce patriarchial distinctions and thus support the underllying institution.
See also “two wrongs don’t make a right.” A point more often overlooked by MRAs than by their (largely imaginary) adversaries.
figleaf
The only issue on which I think MRAs are not completely full of shit is courts presumtively granting child custody to women in divorces.
sigh, this one needs to be debunked as well.
Yes, women often end up with physical custody of their children. Most of the time, this is a result of mutual agreement of the parents, with no court involvement at all. When both parents seek physical custody, courts go 50-50.
Divorce is one of those things that’s impossible to make painless, sweet and perfectly fair.
Not true–except for the sweet part. My divorce was painless and perfectly fair, largely because my ex and I weren’t assholes to each other when the marriage ended. We were adults. We were both hurt, of course–we’d been together over six years and you don’t end that sort of relationship without some kind of pain–but we also had our daughter upmost in our minds and didn’t want to make it any harder on her than it had to be, and we succeeded.
What it takes is two people who are willing to set aside their own anger for the good of a third party (or parties). Lawyers feed into that to some extent, because they’re supposed to be aggressive in defense of their clients, but two people who act like adults can make a divorce and the aftermath relatively painless, if they’re both willing.
The problem, of course, is finding both sides to be willing.
One can also point out that more men died on the job in the bad old days when women couldn’t vote or get credit in their own names. Just read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Or the equally harrowing accounts of (mostly) immigrants working in today’s slaughterhouses and chicken processing plants. Rolling back feminism won’t help these men; unions and workplace regulations will. Amanda is right to state that MRA’s make the argument that more men are killed on the job because of eeeevil feminism is a bad-faith argument. No-one should have to suffer dangerous working conditions. It’s not a zero-sum game where gains to one segment of the population results in losses to another.
Re sitcom wives: I also see the icky evo-psych neo-Victorian idea that women need to “civilize” beastly men in there. Along with the idea that every schlubby schmo deserves a hot, smart, capable wife (this is what icked me out about Knocked Up).
And those same MRAs that go on that “men get hit too!” ignore that it is gay men and don’t do shit to help gay rights.
If MRA groups were advocating for ENDA, marriage equality, hate crimes protection, better representation in media, and comprehensive sex ed, I wouldn’t feel that they are shallow hippocrites, ready to drag a battered gay man out for PR only as long as he stays closeted.
Re sitcom wives: I also see the icky evo-psych neo-Victorian idea that women need to “civilize” beastly men in there. Along with the idea that every schlubby schmo deserves a hot, smart, capable wife (this is what icked me out about Knocked Up).
Not to mention, although it does get mentioned every time, that the schlubs in these sitcoms write their own parts - almost every single one of them is just acting out a thinly rewritten version of the stand-up act that got them the sitcom deal in the first place. The men are fat schmoes because they were fat schmoes when they pitched the pilot and negotiated the contracts, the women are hot because they were picked later and were therfore subject to the casting laws of female hotness.
In sitcoms that aren’t spin-offs of an established, nationally-famous stand-up act, you’ll find the male:female hotness ratio is much closer to 1, and the fat schmuck character is nearly always a bit player.
Anyone got any more sch words? Because I’m about tapped.
Kyso K: Don’t forget schlemiel. And schlemotzl.
Incertus Brian: Sure. My divorce was relatively painless, too, as far as that goes. But I was talking over the greater number of circumstances.
Well, custody generally goes to the primary caretaker, which women usually are. Feminism looks to change that to some degree, fixing that issue for men. Yay!
I think the argument in the last one is kind of misstated, to be honest. How I read that question was that men tend to work more dangerous jobs. Which is true. Dangerous jobs tend to be more physically demanding, and there are slight differences in physiology. It’s good to make those jobs safter, but MRA’s linking that to pay differences isn’t just a bit of a bad faith argument, it’s swimming in bad faith.
The problem with different pay rates isn’t across society at large Although that’s true, that’s an easily debunked argument. All you have to show is that payrates across the same field/same jobs are similar. Which they’re not.
Which is why the femininst concept is about more than just traditional feminist issues. The anti-patriarchy theory is more about changing the status quo away from the power-hungry ultra-competitive authorian mindset.
Caretaking is yet another one of those areas where MRAs lie on the floor and whine. They aren’t exactly fighting for the right of men to be SAH dads; they mostly just whine that women know what an easy, bonbon-eating non-job raising children is, and so you’ll pry the mop out of their cold dead hands. But they’d be stay-at-home dads in a minute, you know.
I think most states are switching over to giving custody to the primary caregiver - usually still the woman, but not always. So, on the whole, if men are going to want the kids, they need to make sure that they’re doing their bit to take care of them BEFORE the divoce. Switching primary caregivers is not in the best interest of the child unless there is a serious problem with that caregiver.
And, if I remember correctly, men win upwards of 90% of the time.
Sorry, that was supposed to be 75%.
Speaking of risks and hairdressers; my husband’s grandma ran her own beauty salon in the 50s and 60s. The chemicals she inhaled (plus customer cigs) so damaged her lungs that she now needs oxygen and a face mask to keep her alive.
And many hazardous jobs are done by women but not compensated or not even considered; janitorial/maid work, manicurists, and bar waitstaff are all exposed to toxic air, and mostly women. Prostitution is one of the most dangerous jobs of all. Models die from starvation and organ collapse brought on by malnutrition. Female ballet dancers ruin their bodies and especially their feet in ways males do not. Daycare workers are exposed to a slew of child-borne viruses. Young gymnasts are often starved and fed hormones to keep a childish figure as they age, while men are allowed to compete with mature bodies.
And how many fewer women than male workers have health insurance? That would be an interesting statistic.
The high risk jobs men do are highlighted or even admired. Those women do, not so much.
But the larger story is that the standard buffoon husband/competent wife pair on TV comes with a thick dose of misogyny—the competent women are generally portrayed as humorless, fun-killing, finger-wagging prudish bores.
The larger story is also that because men are supposed to be buffoons and babies, they can’t be held responsible for their actions. They can be as obnoxious, unattractive, and annoying as they want and still be lovable and desirable and have a wife to take care of them. The idea is that men, those silly children, should be free to do as they like, while women clean up after them. Because women are likely to balk at this proposal, they have to be seduced with pretty talk about how competent and capable they are and how lost their silly husbands would be without them. The joke, in the end, is on the women.
In reality, the vast majority of war casualties are unarmed civilians, and they come in all ages and genders. In addition, women are especially targeted in war for rape campaigns, which are sometimes semi-organized (Balkans, Congo)
YES! For over a decade, I’ve been shutting down MRAs with the real information (sometimes, being a military brat has great advantages)and never, ever has any MRA, in the dozens of discussions I’ve participated in…EVER responded.
Little facts like 80+% of military personnel are dedicated to support, and that the vast majority of casualties in modern warfare are noncombatants/civilians tend to put the K-bosh on MRAs heroic images of selfless men dying to defend women and children.
I get so fucking tired of men who would never even make the cut for service, let alone endure actual combat, whining about how women get a pass…
Jackasses…every one of them.
“[…]the competent women are generally portrayed as humorless, fun-killing, finger-wagging prudish bores.”
In comedies. I think it’s important to stress that.
Roseanne took a lot of shit for flipping the premise and there is no way she could have ever cast a male Patricia Heaton.
funny, i had always wondered what MRA stood for but assumed from the context that it was Male Rape Apologist. An awkward construction (apologists for male-rape?) but I guess I was pretty close.
The buffoon husband/competent wife model can be traced back to The Honeymooners. And all these attempts to emulate it don’t do a very good job of capturing all the dynamics of that relationship.
Roseanne took a lot of shit for flipping the premise and there is no way she could have ever cast a male Patricia Heaton.
Which was a good thing, because Roseanne and Dan read as a real couple, not a sitcom couple. Which was one of the things that made the show work — these were people with real struggles, who both fucked up from time to time, who didn’t have all the answers, who loved each other but had to deal with situations that strained their marriage.
Plus, I can’t stand Patricia Heaton.
First of all I’m pleased as punch that my comment led to this excellent post.
Ampersand had a great point re: sitcoms, which is the goofball is the leading roll. The incompetent boob is the funny one, while the competent wife is the straight character. Even in cases where it’s not that the wife is a buzzkill, for example Family Guy, where Lois is depicted as a party animal, but she has very few very funny lines, or The Sarah Silverman Program where the central characters are sisters instead of husband wife, Sarah plays the goofball, while Laura plays straight, but Laura has very few funny lines. This despite the fact that Alex Borstein and Laura Silverman are both brilliantly funny actresses. In any case, that the incompetent dad/ competent mom model of sitcoms is so prevalent is itself a form of sexism, in the same way as Warner Brothers’ decision to stop making movies with woman leads.
Numad:
Good point.
I’ve noticed that, pretty much across the board, the women in procedural crime dramas (the main characters, at least) tend to be portrayed pretty positively as presumptively competent people and integral members of the team.
Last year in Australia we had some men try to start up a “meninism” movement, based on a study that found that the majority of advertising in Australia made men look incompetent, next to competent women.
Of course, advertising in which men are represented as incompetent, tends to be overwhelmingly advertising for domestic products or foodstuffs– basically sending the message that “women are competent in the home; men shouldn’t be expected to do that sort of thing”.
I think another legitimate complaint of the MRA’s is that women are starting to outperform men in schools. I disagree that this is the fault of feminism (a lot of this has to do with women needing more education to get the same amount of money) and stupid patriarchy (if being smart is coded “femininine” than stupid must mean masculine), but it is a legitimate complaint.
Notice the intellectual incoherence (on the order of soap bubbles) of an ideology that touts “more men die on the job” as an argument against feminism while claiming that feminism has “emasculated” men, decrying the European “nanny state,” and promoting works such as The Dangerous Book For Boys.
That women out perform men in school has a few caveats, and it depends what level you’re looking at.
For instance, where I am, more women complete high school (and get higher marks finishing it, slightly) and go on to uni. You could look at this and wonder if the system is biased against guys.
However, a large factor in this is that apprenticeships for trades start two years before high school finishes, and a lot of guys will drop out to train to be a plumber etc. (Even intelligent and middle class guys, who could have studied at uni. These jobs pay well enough to be viable alternatives to professions.)
Women don’t really have this option of dropping out to enter well-paying jobs, so they have to take on additional study (and study debt) to get there.
Ah, I see I missed this point in my first reading of your comment Antigone, my apologies.
Antigone sez:
I think another legitimate complaint of the MRA’s is that women are starting to outperform men in schools.
Well, yes and no. The gender gap in education can be traced almost entirely to young African-American males, who are way behind not just Whites, Latinos, and Asians, but their female African-American counterparts. Of course, this likely has a lot more to do with the incarceration of a huge chunk of African-American males during the “war on drugs,” which eliminated a whole bunch of fathers from that community. All other socioeconomic groups have rough parity between girls and boys.
This, of course, means that rather than decry the gender gap that doesn’t really exist, we need to find some targeted ways to address the very real problems of the African-American community. But MRAs don’t want to talk about the damage that the WOD wrought against the African-American community, because with few exceptions, the MRAs are a bunch of white guys.
Incertus Brian, Nacho Daddy…
If you make a finding that someone is arguing in bad faith, then you shouldn’t get lost in *any* details. People like that spew ?facts? and ignore internally consistent schemas. The relevance of details don’t matter. Attack the stance.
OK…so Numad gets the “Wickedly Funny Snark” award.
Just for the record, I loved Jane in her role on “3rd Rock From The Sun.”
Also, I’m both so bummed and so happy that the MRAs have cut and run on the “draft” issue.
Bummed because the argument is invariably cheap entertainment, but happy that MRAs apparently know the argument is a loser.
My university is about 75% female, and the university works very hard to keep it at least 25% male. This results in much lower admittance standards for men. I teach a famously difficult subject, and of my 25 upper-level students, only three are male, and of those three, one is autistic, one engaged and one gay. The women outperform the men in every aspect of scholarly endeavor.
Yet they’re young and overwhelmingly straight women, and they want male companionship, so I constantly see these couples that replicate the sitcom dynamic, with a smart, ambitious, good-looking, socially adept woman and a whiny douchebag of a guy. But she *has* a guy, and that, for now, is good enough.
I haven’t been here long enough to know all that many alumnae, but I’d like to hope that once they get out of this artificial environment, the women find out that they can date smart, ambitious, good-looking, socially adept men. I’d like to hope that the men figure out that they need to get their act together. But I fear that this situation produces a lot of MRAs, as these guys are used to getting whatever they want without having to do anything for it, and I don’t think that sense of entitlement goes away.
Minor nitpick: Near the end of the sitcom paragraph, “principles” should be “principals.”
I’ve noticed that, pretty much across the board, the women in procedural crime dramas (the main characters, at least) tend to be portrayed pretty positively as presumptively competent people and integral members of the team.
is there ANYONE on procedurals who isn’t competent?
I suppose it would be irritating watching the older, slightly crooked cop fuck things up week after week.
a show one could probably do some really interesting gender analysis of is House MD. While Cuddy is a hospital administrator (which is about as high as you can get career wise) and a demonstrably talented doctor, most of her screentime feels like someone doing an impression of Col. Henry Blake from M*A*S*H.
phrased thusly, I don’t think it’s as obviously problematic as “despite being House’s boss, she’s demure and submissive to the brilliant bravado doctor.”
karpad:
Depends on what you mean by “competent.” There are a few main characters who are less than honest, and a few who make big, dramatic mistakes.
I think another legitimate complaint of the MRA’s is that women are starting to outperform men in schools.
And, as usual, instead of looking at the real problem they jump up and down and use it as a pretense that Women Are The Real Oppressors.
As Jeff notes, the actual gap is caused by minority boys falling very, very far behind; privileged white males are still doing pretty good. So how do the MRAs react? By insisting that the exact same teaching methods that used to let boys get ahead are anti-male, don’t “honor” boys’ natural energy, and we should segregate them so the boys can act out battles of the Peloponnesian War while the girls learn math by counting flower petals. (I wish I were making this up.)
Otherwise we might, you know, have to talk about race instead of how the bitches are keeping The Man down. Can’t have that.
Exactly.
As a performer, the straght man is not as funny, isn’t as appreciated and usally isn’t a star. And in general, in drama, being “normal” isn’t INTERESTING. Everyone wants to have quirks and flaws; everyone wants to WATCH characters with quirks and flaws.
The dyanmic that’s being pointed out IS sexism…but against women, who get the less interesting roles, the less watchable roles, the roles with less “star power”…and money and prestige.
And…women aren’t “funny”…..
The war argument I’ve heard is that civilian women get systematically raped while the civilian men get systematically murdered; when the proverbial rampaging hordes come into a village, the women end up damaged but alive, while the men end up dead.
I make no claims regarding whether the argument accurately reflects the reality of civilian casualties in war zones such as present day Sudan.
I’ve noticed that, pretty much across the board, the women in procedural crime dramas (the main characters, at least) tend to be portrayed pretty positively as presumptively competent people and integral members of the team.
Well they know and target their audience(s). Network TV is extremely class conscious. It’s driven to break out demographics for advertising by reinforcing cultural stereotypes and projections. Blue collar guy & hot wife, the female Asian M.D, black male authority figure, WASPy ice queens on the crime dramas.
At some level Frasier sells the idea to the proletariat that white collar wealth comes with enough baggage to make one a neurotic closet case.
MRA’s are about lack of class and status. Women are an easy target but at the core is a deep insecurity vis-a-vis other males.
The war argument I’ve heard is that civilian women get systematically raped while the civilian men get systematically murdered; when the proverbial rampaging hordes come into a village, the women end up damaged but alive, while the men end up dead.
I make no claims regarding whether the argument accurately reflects the reality of civilian casualties in war zones such as present day Sudan.
Well, clearly the war argument you have heard does not take into account the food/shelter/basic survival needs of women and children in the war zones. Sucks to be raped with a tree branch. Double sucks to have to make the choice of which of your infant twins will live or die, depending on what food is available…in the war torn Sudan.
As for the “bumbling idiot man” comedy… it’s funny precisely BECAUSE men aren’t supposed to be like that.
Comedy often works by taking popular beliefs and subverting them. It takes a well-known clichee, or a sentence where everybody just KNOWS what’s supposed to happen next… and then it’ll subtly derail all that, subverting them into sth. that’s either just bizarre or has an element of (unspoken) truth in it. Successful comedy often has a serious undertone - something has to be at stake, or things wouldn’t be so funny.
So this type of comedy works because everyone will know that men shouldn’t be like that; that NOT being like that is often a struggle, but one a man MUST win in order to maintain his self-respect and social standing etc.
I appreciate this post and all I’ve learned about MRA’s in the blogosphere. This may seem tangential, but I think it’s a very important and under-reported chapter in the misogynist MRA handbook. There are psych rights activists working diligently to disabuse women of the hateful and misogynist Borderline Personality Disorder dx, and there’s a whole MRA-fueled cottage industry of books and “experts” working against us to keep that diagnosis alive, which effects 80% women, 20% men.
When it comes to the language of women who “have” BPD all the gloves are off, and the literature (which hides behind the respectable mantle of science) uses terminology straight out of the Malleus Malleficarum to describe women as primitive, animalistic and supernatural (google BPD and “fleas.”)
For example, this page is filled with resources for MRAs going through a divorce, listed under the heading “MEDICAL”: (!) are four links to portals on BPD.
The largest organization, BPD Central has an entire page devoted to legal help for MRAs, including:
Of course “parent” means “mother”, since the malicious BPD construct is reserved for women.
All psych labels carry stigmatizing real-world baggage, but the BPD label demolishes all credibility and reputation. That MRA’s are on the side that wants to keep it viable tells me all I need to know about them.
Wow I just worked an hour on my comment. It had 2 links in it, maybe it’s just stuck in spambot?
Commenting before reading any comments after this, so forgive me if this has been addressed as well or better before,
But I think that insofar as this trend exists and is not a construct of disingenuous media feeding frenzies, it is because of patriarchy, interacting with the recent evolution of our own particular dominator society, late capitalism. In olden days (say, even as late as when I was in K-12, the 70s and early 80s) there was strong reason to accept the cultural wisdom that “knowledge is power;” that being studious in school was a way of investing in oneself and preparing for a future of improved individual outcomes. There has always been reason to take that wisdom with a grain of salt, but especially during the post-Depression to Great Society period, it seemed crystal clear that the correlation between good schooling and success in life was a strong one, getting stronger, and indeed that equal opportunity in education appeared to go far toward leveling class barriers.
But this has proven to be transitory; in late capitalism, especially after the onset of the economic crises of the 1970s, the pursuit of training and credentials has often seemed to be a fool’s errand, as the ongoing process of workplace reorganization has accelerated and “deskilled” the workforce repeatedly, and of course as corporate-run globalization has dispersed “the good jobs” overseas and set individual workers in competition not only with their peers nationally, but all over the world. These are classic and fundamental capitalist processes, described ably by Marx in Capital. In our lifetimes, the processes of concentration of wealth and the proletarianization of the entire rest of the population have reached very high pitches indeed.
The upshot is, diligence in school no longer seems so clearly validated as paying off in future earnings and general status.
Patriarchy comes in insofar as boys used to be effectively motivated by these kinds of considerations, seeing school as the means to the end of social success. Probably few kids looked at it that directly, but kids can sense the general mood and consensus of the communities they live in. Generations that took school seriously would telegraph the message to their offspring currently in school that it was serious business; vice versa when that dream has largely died, the message, however diligently or even frantically repeated, rings hollow. Since patriarchy defines a man’s role as being a successful competitor and fighter for one’s own glory and wealth, the stagnation of late capitalism tends to demoralize boys who can no longer look ahead to rosy prospects.
Girls under patriarchy in contrast are socialized to be serviceable, to subsume whatever ambitions they might have into advancing some man’s agenda and riding along in his wake–in truth, very possibly serving as engine, navigator, helmswoman, as well as the cook and morale officer of the good ship Hubby. This role can be generalized away from being the woman who stands behind a successful individual man toward being the women who serve some institution. By those norms, how much individual reward and renown one can expect for one’s efforts are not relevant, so they tend to soldier on at school despite the general malaise, perhaps driven all the more to be there in the system’s dark hour of need.
I think that before drawing any conclusions about why girls may be doing better than boys in school lately, this factor of gendered service to the dominator society should be considered for what it’s worth. We might not need other culprits at all.
In which case, IBTP.
I’m late to the party, but Kyso K, I find “schmendrick” to be an entirely satisfying epithet.
Details are important:
“Men die on the job more because men are more likely to have the blue collar jobs that put workers in danger—and therefore take home the larger paycheck than women of that socioeconomic class, who tend to have pink collar jobs that pay much less. Plumber vs. secretary, construction worker vs. hair dresser.”
Secretaries and plumbers actually make about the same amount.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos151.htm
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos211.htm
$20 an hour and $35 k a year. Not exactly the same amount (depends on how many weeks a year you think a plumber works) but certainly not “much less”.
Similarly, the pay difference between a construction worker and a hairdresser is about 20% ($12 and $10 an hour) and because of the way tips are taxed the difference in post tax income is probably less.
Tim, you know Amanda already caught and challenged this “secretary” claim of yours on the older MRA thread, right?
I make 110K + OT.
Here’s the real difference between secretaries and plumbers, Tim: Once a plumber’s apprenticeship is over, he can open his own business and charge the prevailing rate. That secretary will never be able to make substantially more than $35, because there’s little market for independent contractors.
Plus, few people have a secretarial emergency in the middle of the night that they’ll pay top dollar to have a secretary come in and fix right away.
$35k a year? Where can I get that secretarial job?
My last secretarial job (I was an “administrative assistant”) paid $27,000, and I was the highest paid person of my sort in the area - by a good margin.
I realise that she has tried to do so, not that she has. From the link above (which is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the Dept. of Labour):
“Median annual earnings of executive secretaries and administrative assistants were $34,970 in May 2004.”
That’s $30 a year different from the $35k figure I used above.
Sorry mixing and matching US and UK spelling doesn’t work. Dept. of Labor.
Zuzu, please….that’s the pay rate of qualified plumbers. If you want to claim that those running their own business make more please do so, but it isn’t directly comparable as you well know. For there are risks associated with running your own business rather than being employed by someone else.
in order to make the argument work that male buffoonery on TV is based on an anti-male sentiment, then you have to assume that women in these shows and commercials are generally portrayed well.
You also have to assume that that the buffoonery on TV is conceived, funded, written, and produced by women.
Or feminist men.
As evidence against that possibility, I present the entire rest of American pop culture.
Hence why details are unimportant, *when* you know the person arguing isn’t arguing in good faith. It might be fun to fight with them anyways, and occasionally educational for the bystanders, but one just gets spiritually exhausted keeping up that intellectual arm for sweeping aside bullshit.
Obligatory bullshit sweeping is one of the means of controlling people in organizations. I don’t necessarily think this is a good idea to do that outside of places where you have to do it to keep your job.
Ironically, even though “secretaries” (a phrase which I thought was just about dead) get paid crap wages for the work they do, they’re still high on the list positions that have been eliminated or are targeted for elimination as most companies.
Sad to say, but my field (Information Technology) is responsible for much of that. The availability of word-processors, spreadsheets, email, electronic calendars, the Internet, and the PC, combined with growing computer skills among managers, has given top management justification (probably unwarranted) to eliminate “clerical” jobs as a form of cost cutting.
Those jobs never got any respect, still don’t get respect, and probably never will get any respect. Which is highly unfortunate for those of us who’s experience in the business world proves just how important those “clerical” jobs really are in the real world…
“MRA’s are about lack of class and status. Women are an easy target but at the core is a deep insecurity vis-a-vis other males.”
I have SO noticed this. There’s a guy I know–a sort-of-friend of my boyfriend’s– who PROBABLY wouldn’t identify as MRA, but certainly displays the behaviours of one–constantly snipes at his wife, when in mixed company will basically let guys get away with saying ANYTHING but will try to shut girls up the MOMENT they say something slightly ‘annoying’. One time one of the other guys spent a good fifteen minutes making rape jokes, and he didn’t say ANYTHING to stop him, but I made some comment about books and he told me to shut up. He’s an NOT an attractive guy, not a particularly physically fit guy, and most of the other guys who he hangs out with are taller, more attractive, and more fit. Of the girls who he hangs out with, I’m the only one who’s taller, and I lack physical strength. Therefore, he takes his lifelong power issues out on the girls, and adopts a laissez-faire attitude with the guys. And it bugs the hell out of me.
Yo Tim, where the fuck do secretaries make the same as plumbers? Because I will take out a goddamn LOAN to move there!
(Of course, around here most secretaries are also demanded to have completed an additional course in bookkeeping, so that the company can save on hiring a bookkeeper - but for the same $10-12/hr wage!)
“Executive Assistant” is like “Manager” - it’s not a job that’s wide open to anyone who applies, btw. But what would you know about life in the real world, bucko…
“I’ve noticed that, pretty much across the board, the women in procedural crime dramas (the main characters, at least) tend to be portrayed pretty positively as presumptively competent people and integral members of the team.”
And you know, I really really wish that someone in charge of producing shows/movies would catch on to the fact that having multiple! competent! women! with depth! is part of what makes this type of show so popular.
(Well, ok, I’m fairly certain the creators/writers of Dexter get it, but I don’t get Showtime, so….)
The war argument I’ve heard is that civilian women get systematically raped while the civilian men get systematically murdered; when the proverbial rampaging hordes come into a village, the women end up damaged but alive, while the men end up dead.
Even if this was true, so? Is it really evidence that feminists secretly run the world? Really? I thought we were bad because we were against rape, but the non-logic in operation in that argument is that feminists are secretly conspiring to have women raped to let them off, um, “easy”. Yeah.
No. MRAs are fucking too stupid to see certain things, but feminists are not. “Kill the men, rape the women,” has been the central theme of patriarchal war-mongering throughout history. It’s based in the idea that women are property and men are people. In war, you kill your enemy and loot his belongings. War rape is, for the aggressors, a form of looting.
But I suppose in merry MRA-land, being treated as a subhuman piece of property is part of the feminist conspiracy to, I dunno, get that $200 a month cash bonanza of child support or something.
The job title shuffle is deeply amusing, and Tim has failed to really address the issue. There are 8 gazillion kinds of “secretaries” and “assistants”, but if you go into any office, you’ll find that the ones making the $23,000/year tend to be a lot more female than the ones up the chain making $40,000/year. But instead of playing the job title shell game, maybe we could point to the fact that women’s income is still 75% of what men’s is in this country. And blah blah choices—whatever. The fact that women are pressured out of the workplace and into the home more than men pretty much proves that we have hard and fast gender roles that need dismantling for women to reach real equality. The vanishingly small number of stay at home dads compared to huge numbers of stay at home moms speaks volumes about how gender roles systematically lead to women’s second class status, particularly economically.
Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in today’s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks aren’t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.
Recent research using DNA analysis found this out about two years ago: today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.
I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.
If evolution explains anything at all, it explains things related to reproduction, because reproduction is at the heart of natural selection. Basically, the traits that were most effective for reproduction would be at the center of evolutionary psychology. It would be shocking if these vastly different reproductive odds for men and women failed to produce some personality differences.
For women throughout history (and prehistory), the odds of reproducing have been pretty good. Why was it so rare for a hundred women to get together and build a ship and sail off to explore unknown regions, whereas men have fairly regularly done such things? But taking chances like that would be stupid, from the perspective of a biological organism seeking to reproduce. They might drown or be killed by savages or catch a disease. For women, the optimal thing to do is go along with the crowd, be nice, play it safe. The odds are good that men will come along and offer sex and you’ll be able to have babies. All that matters is choosing the best offer. We’re descended from women who played it safe.
For men, the outlook was radically different. If you go along with the crowd and play it safe, the odds are you won’t have children. Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today. Their lines were dead ends. Hence it was necessary to take chances, try new things, be creative, explore other possibilities. Sailing off into the unknown may be risky, and you might drown or be killed or whatever, but then again if you stay home you won’t reproduce anyway. We’re most descended from the type of men who made the risky voyage and managed to come back rich. In that case he would finally get a good chance to pass on his genes. We’re descended from men who took chances (and were lucky).
Fascinating. More “men oppress poorer men” as evidence of what? That feminists are wrong?
I’m reminded of a picture in the LBJ library of a white man holding up a sign that says something like, “No jobs for coloreds until every white man has a job.” The basic MRA argument isn’t really against anything feminists say. It’s more like a long, sustained temper tantrum that bitches shouldn’t get shit until every man has everything he wants.
It doesn’t work that way. It’s not a zero sum game. Allowing rape or making it hard for women to leave abusive marriages won’t fix the racist war on drugs that leads to the prison system. The existence of motorcycle accidents doesn’t make seat belt laws wrong.
I don’t understand why so many people are ignoring the facts about the Selective Service today. It’s possible that women who have never had 18-year-old sons don’t even know the truth. Yes, there is no draft. However, there are still penalties for not registering:
(ref)
Do they often jail or fine people? No. But it was only scholarships and reasonably affluent parents that let me go through college with no Federal student aid, and I can’t work for the government (which ended brief speculation years ago about becoming a National Park ranger, and presumably would also preclude employment at NASA - I’m an astrophysicist). I committed a felony by not registering for the draft. I got threatening letters from the government. It really is something that affects men.
I just would like everyone on the feminist side to understand this, because arguments against MRAs are much stronger if they are factually correct. I would hope that feminists are against the draft for everyone, which it would be a pretty simple answer to MRA complaints on that score. It goes right along with being against military aggression of any kind.
Those who want better male contraceptives should take the survey at
http://www.malecontraceptives.org/new_activism.php
to prove there is demand for such products.
The patriarchy oppresses the majority of men at least as bad as women. The extreme example of this is polygamy, if you will. Poor men not only live in suffering, but are also deprived of any chance to make a contribution to the next generation.
The worst thing, and perhaps the crowning “genius” of the system, is that women are often complicit in this, helping to perpetuate it. Being “the third wife of John F. Kennedy, rather than the first of Bozo the Clown” is an all too common preference. And so nobody cares about Bozo, and it’s all fine for him to be jailed, sent to war, or killed in a work accident.
You feminists should realize that the majority of men are actually your natural allies against the patriarchy. They’re oppressed along with you, and discussing who might be oppressed the most is useless, at best.
Beta Male - no shit! Feminists (especially on this site) have been saying for years that patriarchy hurts men too.
Now maybe you can convince your male friends, because they don’t listen to women.
Oh goody, the MRA trolls have arrived.
Apparently, even the esteemed Roy F. Baumeister has graced us with his presence. Note the intellectual and academic rigor he applies to the his comment. [/snark]
Apparently he is still repeating his ahistorical evo-psych garbage without the least sense of shame, despite being full of shit.
I’m not going to waste my time disputing him, because Amanda and the rest of the Pandagonians have already done such a fine job not too long ago.
Well, gaia, your attitude doesn’t help very much, does it? Maybe you should show a bit of sympathy to people, if you want them to listen to you. Matriarchy won’t cut it either for the oppressed male majority, you know.
Because nasty letters from the government are worse than? the same as? connected to? rape, lower wages, and not being considered human.
I don’t know how most feminists feel, but I am not in favor of selective service requirements; they are a bizarre left-over from another time. The patriarchal government does that though - not feminists. I’m also not against women registering if we actually needed or were willing to use a draft in a real threat/war situation (not this illegal, constructed conflict in Iraq). However, I’d like the military to clean up its rape-of-its-own-people record before instating a gender blind draft.
The point is (again) that feminists never said that the patriarchy was good for men - just the opposite. Pointing out other examples of how the patriarchy takes advantage of some men merely reinforces feminists.
Do we have a bingo card for the MRA trolls yet? Can the anti feminist bingo card be substituted?
Beta male - my attitude? What attitude, saying that men don’t listen to women? That surely can’t be news to you. I deal with men every day who won’t trust a word I say, I’m just a woman. But if I put the male file clerk on the line, they’ll listen to him say exactly what I tell him to say. And then tell him how much smarter he is than “that girl” they just spoke with.
If you’re going to come on to a site and make a statement like “patriarchy hurts the menz too!” you’d do well to actually read some of the site and see if maybe, just maybe, they’ve addressed that point. And this site has, daily.
The men who don’t get that patriarchy hurts them are the men who refuse to listen to women. So instead of preaching to the choir, you should preach to them.
David:
And, as we all know, getting nasty letters from the government is just as bad as getting raped.
Right?
Beta Male:
Shorter Beta Male: “Maybe if you weren’t such a stuck-up bitch, guys like me wouldn’t want to rape you into knowing your place.”
You don’t win arguments by proving your opponent’s point for them, especially not when you do it so conclusively.
Gaia, I’m sorry you have to go through such experiences. Nobody should be ignored on account of their gender. I understand your frustration, but please don’t take it out on people indiscriminately - on account of their gender.
I do talk to my friends about this, and, as a matter of fact, some of them completely agree with me. But many men have a more instinctual way of understanding that the gender system is messed up, and find it hard to express it in words and talk about it. This is why sympathy goes a long way towards reaching out to them, on this very instinctive level.
Dan, that’s a gross misrepresentation of what I said. You don’t win arguments by pretending the other person has said something else, either.
Well, geez Beta - tell me how I was less than sympathetic. By telling you that you’re preaching to the choir? Telling you that we already know that patriarchy hurts the menz?
Oh, I know what it is, telling you that if you’d just bothered reading the blog you’d see that this is stated daily.
I, apparently, implied that you were too lazy and stupid to read the blog that you were commenting on.
Please, if you’re going to come on to a site and castigate everyone for not understanding you, maybe you should actually read and see if your point has already been made.
Otherwise you’re just a troll yelling “but what about the menz!!!!”.
It’s a shame an interesting topic is getting bogged down in such a nasty thread.
“I don’t know how most feminists feel, but I am not in favor of selective service requirements; they are a bizarre left-over from another time. The patriarchal government does that though - not feminists.”
I dunno. The patriarchal government was all in favour of conscripting women in the fight against Japan. But guess which political movement put pay to that idea? The reason women aren’t getting nasty letters through the post isn’t because of the patriarchal government.
“Pointing out other examples of how the patriarchy takes advantage of some men merely reinforces feminists.”
But again, is it really the patriarchy? Mass conscription is historically quite recent and only really took off once women got the vote. It’s in the historical record that feminists campaigned with the government in favour of conscription. I suspect that’s not a coincidence. Would conscription had been politically sustainable if women (who had the majority of the votes) not been exempt?
I’m not blaming you lot for the actions of your forebears. But it seems to me that the whole issue is a lot more complicated than just the evil patriarchy taking advantage of some men and feminism standing up against it.
Gaia, you are showing lack of sympathy by ignoring most of my words.
My point has not been that the patriarchy hurts men, but that women, and many feminists among them, help it to do so. Is this preaching to the choir, Gaia?
Some feminists take a perverse pleasure in seeing the male majority scapegoated for the sins of the patriarchy. Thus every man is a potential rapist, and it becomes funny to see them imprisoned and raped by the same system that oppresses and rapes women.
As long as the feminist majority doesn’t grow past this stage, and keeps encouraging the oppression of their natural ally, the patriarchy will be well and fine, thank you.
I don’t know guys, instead of asking for more help for all a y’all’s personal problems with the fact that some of you haven’t got yours, perhaps one might have more success in making sure women and minorities get theirs, no? Then we might help y’all out, eh?
It’s that whole chinese parable about serving with two foot long chopsticks again…
Then again, you all aren’t out for friends, but nice people who know their place.
Beta Male:
I’m pretty sure you’re going to be all alone in objecting to my interpretation of your comments. A complete lack of self-awareness is not its own defense.
james:
Nope. Mass conscription has been a common feature of militaristic statehood in pretty much every era, going all the way back to Rome and Persia. And most modern forms of press-ganging and drafting date back to the 17th century, well before women got the vote.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some substantiation for that claim.
Given that your premise is demonstrably false, this question is meaningless at best.
Really? I thought the first mass military conscription occured during The Civil War.
Civil War, yes, in the US; but worldwide, it occured first during the French Revolution.
I’m really giggling to myself.
These guys come here and say:
The Patriarchy Is Bad, And It’s All The Women’s Fault!
The reason why?
The Women Won’t Let Us Lead The Glorious Revolution!
ahunt, you’re right. The biggest difference has been in the implementation rules. In the Civil War the (wealthy) Patriarchy could hire somebody to take their place.
If that rule was still in place, TANG would never have seen George W. Bush at all…
Ah. Also, Congress does retain the right to conscript women.
And if memory serves, the National Organization for Women and the ACLU did indeed file (and lose)lawsuits alleging that the all-male draft was discriminatory, back in the late 70s, I think.
Beta Male:
And you’re showing a lack of intelligence by not knowing what the fuck you’re talking about.
You’re making the classic MRA mistake of assuming that simply having an opinion entitles you to any consideration whatsoever.
No, it’s what we commonly refer to around here as “making shit up as you go along.”
Pre-imperial Rome and Achaemenid Persia, actually.
You know, it occurs to me (just now) that one of the reasons that girls, especially older girls, may invest themselves heavily in the educational system is that they realize that they are the ones who will be held to account if it fails. I mean, envision it. Suppose that No Child Left Behind and kindred schemes do what they’ve been cooked up to do and that the American educational system collapses. Whaddaya wanna bet that a large chunk of the responsibility for that collapse will be laid to the charge of young girls? Whaddaya wanna bet that some sort of pretext will be found: girls were too easy to teach, or they were too difficult to teach, or they were shy around boys, or they distracted the boys, or the school system should never have been run with them in mind anyway…how good would you say the odds are that, if the educational system in this country fails, there are people who will blame its failure on the fact that it paid to much attention to girls?
I’d say the odds are fair. After all, we already have the programs whereunder girls are supposed to be able to learn math by counting flower petals.
How can I even think such things? I’ll give you a hint:
Roy F. Baumeister
‘Nuff said.
Beta - again, read the site before you start casting blame. How hard is it to read a couple of threads and see the umpteen times it’s pointed out that the patriarchy hurts the menz too?
Sorry if you think we aren’t doing enough to help you. We believe that by helping ourselves, we’ll help you. But until we help ourselves we can’t exactly help anyone else. We’re in a position of NO power (reference my comment about having to use the male file clerk to answer questions) until we are in a position of some power (not even equal power but some power) there’s not a whole lot we can do.
I refer you to other threads and comments on this site to answer your rape “issue”. Paraphrasing it is “we can’t trust every man because if we do and are raped we’re told it’s our fault for trusting the man in the first place”. Until society stops laying that blame on rape victims, you’re going to see women feeling that they have to see all men as potential rapists and protect themselves as if they are. And this is something that women have said for years, but men aren’t listening. Whose fault is it that they aren’t listening? They say it’s ours because we’re “hysterical” and “strident” and “bitchy”.
But you know, it’s all about the menz and screw women until the menz get theirs.
Hahaha. I don’t need your consideration - you’re obviously trolling. Ignore my further comments, and we’ll both be happy. I will definitely overlook yours.
ahunt:
NOW passed a resolution to that effect in 1980, but I assume that that was in-house and has no legal relevance. The ACLU did indeed provide support to the plaintiffs in Rostker v. Goldberg, but lost the case.
I see both of those cases as a defense of equality, not of conscription itself.
Beta Male:
I’m not the one who barged into a feminist forum for the sole purpose of filling out everyone’s MRA bingo card. QEDude.
Again, your complete lack of self-awareness is not its own defense.
Gaia, I’m not asking for help - I’m asking for sympathy. And offering it in return.
Can’t you see? The patriarchy has found the perfect way to survive the feminist challenge. It tells the male underclass that feminists are “hysterical”, “strident” and “bitchy”. And it tells women to keep away from the male underclass, since they are all “potential rapists”. And everyone listens, and internalizes.
Therefore, as long as these two groups, who have essentially the same interest to overthrow the system, are separated, and see each other with suspicion and hostility, the patriarchy is safe. It will play one against the other, and let them waste their energies without effect.
It’s not exactly a feat of genius - “divide and rule” is an old saying. But very effective nonetheless, and it creates a pretty sad state of affairs for us all.
So you’re a uniter, not a divider?
Maaaan, thinking about this, you’re an omega male who thinks the people here are a bunch of pussies (because hey, many of the people here have that…equipment) who haven’t heard of Bush, or something, and we’re all ripe for the scamming…
Not sure how much sarcasm there is in that, shah8, but yeah, I came here to talk, listen and understand; and not to crash your party.
I despise Bush.
Ah, I take it that you’re a nice guy.
Amanda, I seriously hope you intend to take a break over Xmas way away from the blogging. Without criticising in any way, I think being in such threads as this MRA-crapola is starting to take its toll on you.
If you burn out, where do we get our daily dose of acerbic flaying of the Ungodly?
What about how men tend to die on the job more than women? Isn’t that unfair?
Unfair indeed. We call this “gain time.”
So beta, again, how was I less than sympathetic? Because I told you that we all know and agree that patriarchy hurts the menz?
All you had to do was read a few days worth of posts and you would have seen us say patriarchy hurts the menz umpteen times. You didn’t bother to read and now you want us to take you seriously?
You’re a “what about the menz” troll.
Following this off-topic tangent (please skip if you’re uninterested in the tangent), I was wondering if you perhaps could shine some light on the following experience I had a few years ago.I was out shopping; a woman came up to me and asked me to follow her. Thinking that she was a security person (she had a no-nonsense manner that made me think of cops), she brought me over to the manager and told him how I had been following her around and rubbing up against her. I explained that I hadn’t seen her before she asked me to follow her, and the manager, no doubt recognizing my male privilege, shook his head and told me to leave.
I later asked my father (who’s not a mental health worker, but who I think of as wiser than me) what exactly went on, and why someone would do that; he shrugged and said that the woman was most likely “borderline”; when I asked him what that meant, he said it meant acting like that woman had.
As there’s a lot of this going around in this thread, I should point out that I’m not somehow blaming feminism, claiming that women are in general crazy, or demanding that women stroke my tender fee-fees before I’ll deign to consider their points. I just want to know what the heck happened.
Yeah. And you’re telling us to… stop being hysterical, strident, and bitchy. Show some sympathy and compassion for the menz, and they’ll listen to you better, ladies!
Dude, it has been pointed out several times that this site completely acknowledges on a regular basis that the patriarchy hurts men, too. Your problem, as articulated by your last few posts, is that we’re not nice or receptive enough when we talk about it. Which sounds a lot like “If you uppity bitches would just shut up and listen for once…” to me.
So, you know, and I mean this in the very most compassionate way, stick it.
Personality disorders are generally considered to be severe reactions to early childhood trauma which prevent a whole, healthy development of personality. They’re very difficult, perhaps impossible, to treat or reverse.
Some of the personality disorders are gendered. Boys tend to be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, girls with hystrionic personality disorder. Boys tend to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disoder, girls with borderlne personality disorder.
One could argue that boys tend to be antisocial, and girls borderline, because of patriarchy — girls and bows are allowed/expected to express identity and aggression in different ways.
One can also argue against the legitimacy of particular disorders (as flawedplan is doing), or against the legitimacy of DSM definitions at all.
If you do a search on “borderline personality disorder,” you’ll find a lot about how the APA defines it. That should illuminate why your father would define the woman’s behavior as “borderline.” Then, if you want to understand why flawedplan is critical of the entire concept, you’ll have an idea of what she’s arguing against.
I read the NIMH page, but it describes things like self-injury, emotional instability and comorbidity with things like eating disorders; it doesn’t mention compulsive lying or delusions, and doesn’t seem to describe the woman in the store’s behavior.I suppose it’s entirely possible that my father was saying “borderline” as a shorthand for “bitches is crazy!” (that is, as a way of dismissing something a woman does, completely apart from any formal definition of mental illness), which is what flawedplan appears to be pointing out. (Please correct me if I’m missing the point here.)
I’m also rather astonished that there exists a recognized “histrionic personality disorder”; isn’t that about a half-step removed from just saying “hysteria”?
Dude, it has been pointed out several times that this site completely acknowledges on a regular basis that the patriarchy hurts men, too.
I don’t think that’s what MRAs are after. It’s easy for feminists to acknowledges that the patriarchy hurts men too. That plays right into your belief system. What would be interesting is if they would acknowledge that men are hurt by things which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the patriarchy.
That’s the thing. Jeff says in the post that started all of this that MRAs concerns are bunk and they should welcome feminism as an answer to their problems because the Patriarchy Hunts Men Too. But if there are men’s problems that aren’t the result of the patriarchy - and I think there are - then being co-opted by feminism isn’t the solution and to solve problems that genuinely effect men MRAs are going to have to look elsewhere.
Well, yes, but “look[ing] elsewhere” seems to translate with depressing frequency to “whining at feminists”.Oh, look, my socks are on the floor. I must now summon a crack squad of feminists to express their dismay over this very important situation. Accio!
james, are you seriously suggesting that someone here has promoted the idea that eliminating the Patriarchy will solve all male-exclusive problems? Where/how did you get that idea?…
Nah, just nuts. Like the freakazoid Christian fundie who came up to me when I was at a cafe reading a pile of books from the library and babbling to me about how I was going to go to hell because I was reading fiction and not reading the Bible.
As said: NUTS.
I don’t think that’s what MRAs are after.
No, the MRAs take a gram of actual worthy argument and inflate it into a metric tonne of resentment and rancour.
As far as I can tell, they’re almost always control freaks pissed off at some woman (singular) in their life who told them to grow up, get a life, and get the hell out of theirs, and they band together to reinforce their “womenz are all bitchez” mindset through mutual circle-jerking.
The key point is that they tend to want some sort of weapon to punish *the* Bitch in their life, and arguments about children and various rights are just that. They don’t really *want* the kids.
And I speak as someone who has an actual bitch in the family, a woman who screwed over her husband and wasn’t a particularly good mother for their children. The difference is that the husband got on with his life and did the best he could for the children without standing around with a bunch of other losers whining about feminism.
But if there are men’s problems that aren’t the result of the patriarchy - and I think there are - then being co-opted by feminism isn’t the solution and to solve problems that genuinely effect men MRAs are going to have to look elsewhere.
You know, there are also women’s problems that aren’t the result of the patriarchy. Eliminating the patriarchy would make the world a much better place for men and women alike, but it would not solve every single problem in the world, not by a long shot. I never claimed that it would, and I never would claim that it would.
But it would make the world a better place for men and women alike. So silly me, I think that in an ongoing quest to form a more perfect society, it’s a goal worth pursuing.
And, not for nothing, but while men are “hurt by things which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the patriarchy,” that does not mean that men are being hurt by feminism. But you knew that already.
“I’m also rather astonished that there exists a recognized “histrionic personality disorder”; isn’t that about a half-step removed from just saying “hysteria”?”
The term ‘histrionic’ is derived from the Latin term for a stage actor and is used to describe someone who’s excessively attention-seeking and theatrical. It doesn’t have any relation to the term ‘hysteria.’
“I despise Bush.”
John Wayne Gacy, Sandy Berger, Norman Hsu and OJ Simpson never liked the Bushes either–doesn’t mean we have to like them.
OK, who let the troll in?
Thanks for the headsup, Dan. I could have sworn NOW was involved in the lawsuit, and am glad to have the record straight. And you are absolutely correct that the question is