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Feminist Stupidities. |
| Men's Sites: "..Recite
to any typical male any part of the feminist litany (men are rapists,
men cause all the wars, men are child-molesters, men are wife-beaters,
men are violent criminals ...), and he will often just nod in
acknowledgement and say something like, "Yeah, men are bastards, aren't
they?". Notice that it's "they", not "we". Individual men know that they
personally do not fit feminist descriptions of manhood, but are so
alienated from other men that they can easily assume there is some vast,
amorphous mass of men somewhere "out there" that does fit the
stereotypes. Because a large
proportion of those who hold visible power (eg. apparent economic and
political power) are men, it is easy for a man who is fully aware that
he is not a part of that group, to hear criticism of "men" in those
roles and not realize that it refers to him, as if the speaker were
implicitly adding a qualifier ("all men except for Keith here"). He
remains unaware that the speaker holds him in contempt, and holds him
all the more in contempt because he is sitting there smiling and nodding
as if he were not the one under discussion. The male newsreader who
smirks as he reads stories about men being blamed for their children's'
poor eating habits, is a prime example. Some men may also
feel that, by agreeing that men don't count as fully human, they improve
their own attractiveness to women by comparison - the "All Men are
Bastards Except for Me" syndrome. They may even be successful in the
short term, but in the long term, they only contribute to the
dehumanising and devaluing of all men, and the emotional warping of boys
who constantly hear that what they are growing up into is something to
be ashamed of. Chivalry was
basically the protection of women at the expense of men. Now that it is
rarely necessary to protect women from danger, many still feel that it
is the job of men to protect women from everything, including the
consequences of and responsibility for their own actions. Women who
commit crimes cast themselves as the victim, and society bends over
backwards to find excuses for them, rather than admit that they could be
responsible for a criminal act. Courtship practices in the west
invariably involve the man taking all the emotional risks, especially
the first approach; the part a woman plays in letting him know his
approach is welcome, is practised in a way that allows her to deny it
later if things don't work out: "I was just being friendly, and he
sexually harassed/seduced me." Not all women are
opposed to men's' rights, and not all of those opposed to men's
rights are women. It is probably fair to say that feminists are one
enemy; "feminists" includes such groups as Men Against Sexual Assault
(MASA) and Men Against Patriarchy, as well as women's
or wimmin's groups. MASA actively campaigns
against the activities of the Men's Rights
Agency in Of course, not
even all feminists are opposed to men's
rights. Warren Farrell broadly divides feminism into two schools of
thought: Adolescent Feminism, which blames men for all the evils of the
world and assumes that all men are rapists, child molesters, and active
conspirators in the "patriarchy"; and Adult Feminism, which believes
that both men and women are oppressed by traditional gender roles, and
that men are willing and able to make changes complementary to those
made by women through the women's movement.
Farrell's terms are potentially misleading, as
they imply that one is a more mature form of the other, or that Adult
came later than Adolescent feminism. Christina Hoff-Sommers
expresses the same distinction as Gender-Feminism versus
Equity-Feminism. The latter is the assumption that women and men are
entitled to equal or equivalent rights, and must consequently assume
equal or equivalent responsibilities. It is typified by the original
suffragettes, and most of those who campaigned for equal political and
economic rights for women up until about the sixties or seventies.
Gender feminism is the more modern brand of feminism, and the brand that
has produced women's studies, the concept of
patriarchy, and the myth of universal male power. Modern women who say
"I'm in favor of equal rights for women, but I'm not a feminist", are
distancing themselves from Gender feminism, even as they declare their
belief in the basic tenet of Equity feminism. Christine Jackman
of the Courier Mail has written of men being "stunned into silence by
the cogency of feminisms' arguments". It would be more accurate to
compare the silence of men in the face of early (Equity) feminism, with
the sullen silence of a man required to shuffle across a bus or train
seat to make room for a fat woman to sit next to him. Even though it may
be personally inconvenient, for all our grumblings, we recognise the
change as only fair and just. And remember, the analogy is not true of
all men. There were men (and women) who were determined not to allow
women the vote, or the right to own property, or any of a wide range of
rights, usually under the assumption that they were protecting women.
Similarly, the women's movement would never
have happened without supportive and sympathetic males, such as the
husbands of the original suffragettes, and especially the male
legislators who voted to extend rights to women. The stirrings of the
men's movement in response to modern (Gender)
feminism are equivalent to the protests of our man in the bus seat who,
having moved over, now finds that the woman is demanding he stand so
that she can have some elbow-room.
Men's Sites:
"..Yesterday,
scientists for Health gained weight, talked excessively without making sense,
became overly emotional, failed to think rationally, argued over nothing,
and |
