Imagine meeting someone of great reknown, an intellectual, admired by many. You have the opportunity to speak with them for a few minutes before they step on stage. During the course of your intimate discussion, they tell you the following:
I feel that ‘misogyny’ is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them. To call a woman an animal is to flatter her; she’s a machine, a walking cum-hole. All women are bitches and that’s all they are. What I love about my career is that the more famous and powerful I get, the more power I have to hurt women. I want… I want to see a woman beaten to a bloody pulp, with a wallet shoved in her mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig. False rape and rape culture allegations are nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all women keep all men in a state of fear. Women who are raped can sometimes gain from the experience.
What would you think of this individual? Would your impressions be that this is an honourable, respectable individual whose ideas are worthy of respect, and that the most obvious course of action is to hire this person to hold seminars and to buy their books, and then, to teach them to young minds in academia?
Remember that in our scenario, however, that this was not said on stage, but off-stage, in private, to you. The speaker in question stands up on stage making grand sounding pronouncements of equality, of a brave new world, speaks of dignity and an better way of life. Continue reading →
The following is from one of my favourite websites: Finally, Feminism 101. Radical Feminist ideology at it’s simplest.
A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.
In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.
Let us remember something: this feminist, and countless others like her, truly, sincerely believes this. Can someone truly be called evil when their belief is that this kind of thinking is a positive promotion of the betterment of society?
This is a perfect example of delusion and cognitive bias. God exists because there are trees and mountains and rivers! Read the following and ask a few simple questions. Continue reading →
Mr. J said:
My whole point is that if I don’t want to be objectified by women for shallow reasons, I cannot expect to be able to do it to them. This seems to be a historic double-standard that causes much trouble.
What I hear you saying is that what you want is for both sides to be treated with equal dignity and respect. I agree. I am a Men’s Rights Activist because I’m an egalitarian first. I had a 50% chance of being born a female or male. The flip of the coin turned up heads.
I think that what you’re running into, though, is a sensitivity that comes with a deeper study of the cultural presuppositions. The campaign for women’s rights has had many beneficial effects, but also many detrimental effects, among them, the monkey-brained “Us vs. Them” mentality.
Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person merely as an instrument of sexual pleasure, making them a “sex object”. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object, without regard to their personality or dignity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification
I will point you to a very common habit of many ideologues: grievance mongering. Grievance mongering is more than pointing out verifiable facts, or enumerating a list of valid grievances. Grievance mongering is the act repeatedly subdividing instances of what may be a valid complaint, or conflating issues so as to produce more and more purported grievances so as to create a sense that the quantity and severity of grievances is superior to that which a neutral and reasonable person might accept.
The notion of sexual objectification has undergone this process, where “He made a dongle joke to his friend within ear-shot” is conflated with treating a woman as though she had no human identity, and the only relevant feature of this animal is that it can provide sexual pleasure to an omnipotent man.
The two are evidently extremes, yet grievance mongering assigns the same level of moral severity to both. The problem with grievance mongering is that it turns a gradient scale into a black and white issue.
Humans like simple polarized issues, little to no thought of complexity or nuance is required. Memes are easy to absorb. The issue speaks to dignity and power, two of the most elemental human psychological drives.
Can you see how this notion might be abused–especially by those who have a political agenda? (Politics: the management of power and resources via relationship.) The personal is the political, some feminists would claim. Men’s rights activists often rail at this notion not only due to the unreason of this position, but because it also excludes 50% of the world’s population in the equation. It presupposes that men perpetrated and that women are victimized. This notion focuses on a purportedly willful masculine act of denigration toward women, but completely ignores and dismisses all the positive acts of men toward women, and ignores and dismisses all the negative acts against men and women by women.
Now, I believe that I understand what you’re saying: that (perhaps) you, and (definitely) other people accept the above bit grievance mongering as the whole story, and that natural, instinctive and biological male entrancement with the female form triggers this unconsciously complex set of ideas as a bit-sized but response inducing meme.
I get that.
I believe that a better response to such an argument is not simply to accept that the individual feels that way and either silently walk away or to acquiesce to their statement, letting it go unchallenged, but to get them to think about it more deeply. A better response is not “don’t say these things”, but to find a better way of elucidating and communicating the relevant distinctions of the memes as I have above.
Now obviously, being a concise meme generator is not my role in life, though I work at it. What we can all do is first: understand this objection being thrown at us, and secondly, have a better meme to offer in response, one that is fair to everyone, or that highlights the unfairness of the meme itself.
“Don’t sexually objectify women” is a Trojan horse, a poisoned candy. It is very appealing, superficially, but is in reality a package of mental viruses designed to infect minds.
A true counter (though it could be made more mind-sticky) to “don’t objectify women” might be “Respect both men and women as people, instead seeing them as tools to gratify your needs”.
People are swatting at you for a number of reasons: 1. They want you to free your mind of that meme so that 2. you refuse to pass the harmful meme, as-is, along so that 3. they don’t want you to permit that meme to live in other people because of its bigoted nature. 4. It is an old chestnut to those who have spent a good deal of time examining the sexual politics and they are weary of the misandric stereotypes even more than they are having to counter it.
If you care about making a better world, don’t take the fuck-youz personally, Keep on learning, studying, discussing and accept that everyone has a mental, educational, emotional path to walk and that it’s all modulated by our history.
A London School of Economics debate between four lawyers.
I find it interesting to note that even with sharp lawyerly minds, man of the same old feminist arguments are rehashed. As someone who considers lawyers to be among the most educated in most nations, and where one would expect an extremely high level of critical thinking, I’m surprised at the transparency of certain obvious claims. Then again, it’s possible that this is merely because I’m more familiar with the material, and can spot the patterns.
In either case, listen to the debate and your conclusions will be your own.
Here’s a taboo: men talking about their pain. We say nothing because we’d prefer not to be called wimps and whiners. We remain quiet and stoic about emotional pain as well as physical pain. Why? Social status. If we speak about our pain, we are seen as potentially being cowards when the battle to save a woman’s life is at stake.
Doesn’t matter that we’re in peace-time, our instincts are stupid. Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of values. Talking about internal pain and turmoil is to address issues that go beyond survival, but our whole socialization as men revolves around men being tough enough to kill another man, or at the very least put up a brave fight long enough for her to escape.
If we can’t be killers, then we should be killer providers. Again, it revolves around women. A man who expresses pain, or full out cries, without shame–not a single tear drop on a marble-chiselled face, but a man fully crying as fully as a woman does is viewed as weak.
A man’s humanity is interpreted as weakness.
If a man expresses emotion, he’s showing vulnerability that other culturally trained men and women can and all to often will abuse, and so the man is viewed as ineffectual–without effect. And what is a man if he has no effect? He’s nothing. He is little more than a broken machine. What do we do with broken machines? We throw them away. Women cry, and we feel compassion. Children cry and we love them. When a man cries, we hate him.
Men hide their pain and vulnerability because women loath weakness. Men hate weak men because they fear that their potential team-mate will not be there to save him while he’s trying to save the woman.
How to recognize that a taboo has been violated: people become silent and uncomfortable.
How are you feeling, right now, dear reader?
The traits of vulnerability, sincerity and emotional openness are the ones that should lead men and women to friendship, intimacy, and trust, are exactly the ones that if expressed by men, will culturally and institutionally, cause people to withhold these responses from men.
The only way to assuage that discomfort of a taboo is to speak the subtext openly and without shame, to look at the assumptions and to have the courage to gaze a truth’s face without flinching, until we can make it our friend.
Really, this is the hardest battle of all. It is not a battle against hatred, or misandry per-se, but the fight to teach people to develop our character and to deal with our personal discomforts and fears in a matter-of-fact manner. People need to fight their prejudices–to face the fears that generate the prejudices.
One cannot force another to demonstrate strength and depth of character. We can only go first, and then behaviourally expect the other to step up and treat us on the higher level that we are demonstrating.
Life is messy, and if we’re to make a better world, we have to first clean up our own house to set the standard.
What of you, dear reader? How will you step up to the plate?
Listen to this lovely, massively gynocentric fluff (read: propaganda) piece that pretends to egalitarianism and notice a pattern that you will hear over and over and over.
I have watched approximately 30 to 60 seconds of this video; this is moment-by-moment commentary. I predict that this video will adhere to this pattern:
Step 1: Women are equal to men under law in all measurable ways Step 2: But not really. Step 3: Men need to work more, give more away, women are good and victims, men are bad and are perpetrators and they need to get their act together.
“Men and women have the same rights in law–but we need a female Prime Minister.”
Why? If men and women share equal rights in Denmark, and so far only males have held the office of Prime Minister, is that not an indication that the sex of the one who holds office neither hampers or promotes the enactment of rights in law for either sex?
“At the majority of workplaces, you’ll find both women and men, so it’s important that you accept that men and women are equal. This is true in schools, universities, basically, everywhere in society.”
Haven’t we already established that men and women have the same rights in law?
“Women work everywhere in professions traditionally reserved for men. Having a female superior, or boss is also quite common. Labour market legislation forbids discriminating between women and men in the workplace. This also applies to pregnant women. Pregnant women have the same rights as everyone else, they cannot be fired because they are pregnant or because they are on maternity leave.”
Reserved for men? The term “reserved” makes working in a factory seem like a preferential choice. I’d like to know at what rate Danish women choose these jobs over safe, clean, indoor jobs with flexible schedules and positive interactions versus jobs that require intense physical work, dealing with garbage or animal excrement, or the danger of falling from a roof or of having it collapse on you, or of operating heavy machinery that could kill you or another at a simple misstep.
Question: will a pregnant firefighter rescue me from a burning building? If she can, good for her, but it seems evident to me that this video isn’t big on thinking down the chain of logic.
“But they [women] also have right to equal pay for equal work.”
Nice sound-bite. Is she being paid $10 an hour for doing the exact same job of moving boxes, where she spends 60 minutes moving 30 10kilo boxes while he moves 45 25 kilo boxes? Does “equal pay for equal work” mean equal pay for equal production, or for equal effort? If the former, biology dictates that she will probably be paid less, if the former, chances are the the man will be underpaid for his contribution. That is the distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of results.
Step 2:“I don’t think that equality is lived out to the full extent that the word implies. We all know that most managing directors are men.”
Could this be a by-product of the fact that women who take pregnancy leave often don’t return, and so a company’s investment in the worker pays off better if they choose men who will sacrifice time away from their family for the company?
“There is equality in marriage. For example, both men and women can have money and have their own bank account, but when you are married, you are normally obliged to take care of each other financially. When you get married, you maintain your individual rights as a person and member of the community. This means that men and women decide for themselves”.
At this point the camera shows a variety of women engaged in a variety of activities they may do, clubs, politics, etc. The camera then shifts to a man “This means that your spouse cannot prevent you from doing these things.” As I had predicted, Step 3 is being introduced.
“Your spouse is also not allowed to prevent you from getting an education, a job or telling you what clothes you can wear. [Narrator winks at Muslims]“
“And as a woman you also decide whether you want children or not.”
And as a man? Do I have that choice?
“If you have a child, both the mother and father are entitled to maternity or paternity leave”
–which will be paid for by the employer, and which of the two is likely to forgo that leave?
“Both the man and woman must consent to marriage. It is prohibited for families to prevent a man and a woman from marrying each other. And as is in so many other countries around the world, it is also illegal to force people into a marriage [The narrator has gone from winking to demonstrating evidence of a facial tick. Here’s looking at you, Muslims!]“
“It is also prohibited from marrying more than one person. Consequently, you may have only one spouse at a time. [Is the narrator ticking, or having a seizure?]“
Tangent: Isn’t it odd the that state will enforce the number of spouses that an individual can have?
“Beating your spouse or your children is forbidden, and can result in imprisonment. If a woman is beaten by her husband or her boyfriend, she can receive free counselling and free room and board at a shelter for abused women like the window behind me.”
The camera then displays windows with extremely prominent Feminist Fist symbol.
“Men are strictly forbidden at shelters”.
And there we have it: Step 3: My prediction was accurate.
Are there shelters for men? What of women who beat men? What government-sponsored safety net do the men have? Are men offered room and board? Are men offered free counselling?
And who pays for these shelter? Donations? Government? Shelters in my opinion, while they may occasionally offer genuine value to women (but rarely men) are little more than income collection centres for political ideologues who have no real skills or prefer not to do real work. Let us see a proportional amount of shelters for men and their children, or have sex-neutral shelters.
Scene: The camera focuses on a Bride and Groom pair of mannequins.
“Getting divorced is not uncommon”, says the narrator, as someone removes the male mannequin and the camera focuses on the Bride mannequin. “Men and women can apply for divorce with or without the consent of their spouse”–why not simply say “without”? And why is it that divorce is portrayed as a unilateral act of removing the man from the family–because women, of course, are the family!
“Boys and girls, men and women are very different, but it is important to accept that they have equal rights everywhere in society, at the workplace, in school and in the family”
But not under law, if you’re a man.
“When I started to get to know Danes better” enthuses a woman, “I thought I was in paradise! Men are much more involved in daily household chores compared to Columbia where women do all the work at home”.
I imagine that the time she spends fixing the roof, the car, working the yard, mowing the lawn (and paying for it) must take a lot of her time, and thus her deep relief.
“[Women] take care of domestic tasks while the men go to work. Here, besides going to work, the men make meals and clean and things like that! I thought this was quite fantastic. It’s a very different experience for me. In the beginning it was a little difficult to understand that things were done in this way, but I thought that it was great, I thought that being here was paradise for women!”
The clip closes on women wearing a hijab purchasing some niceties and a girl-child’s smile.
This is the same old gossa that washes over us on a daily basis. So many presuppositions and obfuscations, so much pretension and spin, yet so little genuine attention to equality. How can one actually achieve “equality” if one focuses exclusively on women’s disadvantage, and not on her advantages, and if one focuses exclusively on his perceived advantages and ignore his disadvantages? “Equality”, it seems, would look at the positives and negatives associated with the individuals of both sex, in a fair and impartial light. Anything else is building a house on half of a shaky foundation.
Concluding comment: Denmark, according to this video, operates (as do most Western countries) by political feminist rules. This video is the typical glitter facade to obfuscate the facts in practice.
A very interesting story of a woman who goes undercover as a man for 18 months to learn how men live, what our experiences are, and how we navigate the world.
I found myself nodding throughout, feeling satisfied that someone was finally understanding some of the subtle interpersonal experiences that men have.
I recommend this to men, but especially to women. On one hand I can very much appreciate that she’s done this, I consider it to be a service to both men and women, on the other hand, I’m saddened that it typically takes a woman’s voice to say such things and be listened to, without being dismissed.
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