Thursday, December 9, 2010

How to blame feminism for everything: Extreme Homemaker Edition

Evil feminists oppressing a fake waterfall
Follow this simple four-step plan!

1) Find a story in The Daily Mail, that bastion of journalistic excellence, about a dumb, irritating woman saying or doing something dumb and/or irritating.

Oh, here's one, with the promising title "Why I'd rather my daughter marry a rich man than have a brilliant career."

Representative dumb and irritating quote:

Younger women have realised that instead of spending the day listening to some bore drone on about sales figures, it might be more fun to go swimming with the children while the cleaner sorts out the house.

2) Decide that this dumb, irritating woman is somehow a "feminist," even though she actually mocks feminists at one point and, oh yeah, her whole life plan for her daughter is pretty much the exact polar opposite of feminism.

3) Post the article to Men's Rights on Reddit under the title "Marry a rich man: The new wave of feminism."

4) Collect upvotes.

38 comments:

  1. Why are people so stupid? Why? Basic reasoning, please. (Or, he could, you know, read the whole friggin' article!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The word feminist has got to be one of the most bastardized, completely misused words in modern culture. Women behaving badly? A woman who "done you wrong" in a marriage or relationship, or even a woman who rejects your advances because she's so hypergamous and wants those bad alpha boys instead of a nice guy like you? Or just a woman you don't agree with or don't like? She's a feminist! – the perfect all purpose slur word for females. It's a word no longer in my vocabulary and I don't apply it to myself because it has become meaningless.

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  3. Important technical nitpick for the article: They're called upboats.

    BTW Katz, I don't know where you stand on gender equality, but if that's something you care about, why hold on to a decidedly biased phrase like "feminism" to describe gender equality in the first place? Why not identify with something gender neutral like egalitarianism?

    Feminist is not less bastardized, however, than misogynist is. Probably mirror terms when it comes to bastardization.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Egalitarianism? Fine by me. I also like "humanist."

    ReplyDelete
  5. As Dr Deezee was saying; if feminism was truly about gender equality and not only a centred view on women, why not call themselves humanists?

    Obviously, feminism places women above men. It's basically meaning that women are more important than men and women are better than men.

    Take domestic violence shelters for an example. Or if a man starts talking about male issues, a very common feminist response from the movement is the sarcastic phrase "what about teh menz"

    No wonder why so many men have a problem with this movement these days.

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  6. From the way most people act within the feminist movement, I think a better name rather than feminism would be gynocentrism

    ReplyDelete
  7. 'Feminist' is a swear word. For good reason...

    and yes, women marry (and divorce) for money.

    You didn't know that David?

    Interesting to notice that David is now using British sources... DailyMail...

    ReplyDelete
  8. "or even a woman who rejects your advances because she's so hypergamous and wants those bad alpha boys instead of a nice guy like you?"

    And that's hypergamous as defined by the MRM, MRAs, Game and PUA Communities, it's not what hypergamous actually means. But let's not let true definitions stand in their way of defining reality.

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  9. "Interesting to notice that David is now using British sources"

    Whoooosh

    Either you didn't read the post or you are even dumber than I ever imagined you possibly could be.

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Lexie - those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. You're the one whose ideology has crowded out your basic arithmetic abilities.

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  11. Particularly galling as the Daily Mail is as anti-feminist a mainstream newspaper as possible. English newspapers are extraordinarily ideological and tailored to specific audiences (i.e. the Guardian is left-learning, the Telegraph is Tory), and the Mail is the bastion of middle class bigotry. Just a quick search of Mail stories on feminism (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?searchPhrase=feminism)
    reveals that the movement has 'made women more unhappy', 'destroyed real men', 'could be bad for your health', 'will destroy the family', 'turned men into second-class citizens', and most alarmingly, 'killed the art of home cooking'.

    Thus this paper is possibly the MRM's best friend, and if one can label its products 'feminist', by the same logic one might label any post from the MRM feminist. As in: "Massacring feminists and their sugar-daddy-enablers: The new wave of feminism". What nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
  12. That's funny Blackwell. So, by their logic, if a man hires a handyman, he's ruining the 'Art of home gutter cleaning' or the 'Art of home roof repair'.
    Classic.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Blackwell said...
    Particularly galling as the Daily Mail is as anti-feminist a mainstream newspaper as possible.
    .....
    Thus this paper is possibly the MRM's best friend...


    It seems you have problems with DailyMailUK and likely with some other newspapers because they are not afraid to report certain crimes and other 'unpopular' news, which are not politically correct as they are critical of feminism.

    DailyMailUK is not reporting 'false rape allegations' out of the fantasy of their journalists - these crimes do exist.

    But feminists do not want us to know...
    We all know feminists are into censorship of press and internet.

    Sorry for you, but DailyMailUK exists and the MRAs also do exist. Feminism cannot escape critics.

    ReplyDelete
  14. IR:

    Don't worry, IR, I understand that you're jealous and intimidated by my intelligence.

    ReplyDelete
  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Yohan:

    Really? "We ALL know feminists are into censorship"?

    Someone forgot to tell me.

    P.S.- I'm a feminist.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Really? "We ALL know feminists are into censorship"?

    Someone forgot to tell me.


    Let's see, rabid political correctness filters on whatever is said by the media, the president of Harvard being fired not for job performance but for questioning feminist ideology, the anti-pornography feminists trying to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies, the feminists trying to impose lower BMI limits on fashion models, feminists effectively blacklisting anyone in academia who opposes feminist ideology, and one researcher's claim that she received death and bomb threats after claiming women and men committed domestic violence equally - that's to name a few off the top of my head. That seems like censorship directly or by intimidation.

    ReplyDelete
  18. "Whoa, manboobz, why you wasting your time posting this junk, when you could legitimately be talking about the fact that Julian Assange's rape accuser's contact information is now making its way around the web?"

    I know. It's appalling. I don't know what more to say.

    ReplyDelete
  19. (Note: My previous comment was a reply to a comment by magdelyn -- the quote is her whole comment. I deleted her actual comment because it had a link to the contact info and I don't want that on this blog.)

    ReplyDelete
  20. @Yohan, it isn't 'censorship' to criticize a newpaper's content. "Feminism cannot escape critics. " So, when Blackwell criticizes something, it is a sign that all feminists promote censorship, but when you criticize,your right to do so is beyond repute? Two words you might want to learn the meaning of, Yohan, 'censor' and 'irony'.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Yohan,
    Not to be a pedant about it, but it seems to me that when responding to someone's specific post, you probably shouldn't put quotation marks around anything that isn't a direct quote from the post in question. At best, it's a little confusing and at worst it robs you of credibility. Just a thought.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Yohan,

    To give you the benefit of the doubt, I think you misunderstood the sources of my complaint. In David's original post, he discussed how a member of the MRM labeled an article from the Daily Mail as an expression of the feminist movement and used it to criticise feminism. As I pointed out, the Daily Mail is not a feminist newspaper, but has decidedly anti-feminist overtones, and thus it's absurd to label its products as feminist. It would be akin to taking a story from America's very right-wing Fox News, and then erroneously describing it as socialist in order to criticise the left-wing perspective. Can't you see that it fundamentally misrepresents the nature of the beast?

    The Daily Mail is a very popular newspaper with one of the largest circulations in the UK--no one has censored its commentary, and I certainly don't advocate doing so. I happen not to like the paper because I think it's disingenuous, but that's something else entirely. Moreover, I didn't say a word about censoring stories about false rape allegations in my post, so I have no idea why you're assigning opinions about them to me. As it happens, I think false allegations are a serious issue, and should be reported upon in the press. No arguments there.

    ReplyDelete
  23. IR:

    First of all, threats are never okay, but you can't judge a whole group on what a few have done wrong (if those threats were actually issued by feminists in the first place).

    On to other stuff!

    Lots of what you say are the opposite of what feminists (at least the ones I know, myself included) stand for.

    See, I'm a feminist, but I'm also a fat acceptance activist. So, lowering BMI limits is, really, not what is wanted. Unless you mean wanting more size, diversity in fashion. Then you'd be correct. That doesn't mean, however, that we want thin women out of the scene. It's about diversity, not pushing one down to glorify another.

    Another huge part of feminism is allowing women to do what they want, dress how they want to dress and act the way they want to act. In fact, many feminist hate "slut shaming" and women having sex when they want to, in porn or on their own is just fine. We just want people to be aware of objectification, and remember to be themselves, not what people think they should be.

    If you mean feminists or just women in general questioning what someone said is "backlash" then, you're kind of biased. (I'm sure you are, actually.) Questioning someone's words, and offering counterpoint isn't "backlash" it's being an intelligent human being.

    ReplyDelete
  24. At David: I have no problem with the delete.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Lexie,

    I'd pose to you the same question I posed to Katz. If your end goal was truly gender equality, why do you insist upon a gender-biased label like "feminist?"

    ReplyDelete
  26. Blackwell -- your post from this morning responding to Yohan on the Daily Mail was caught in the spam folder, and it's up now.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Dr. Deezee:

    Because men have it pretty good right now. Women (though it's getting better) don't. I'm focusing on the rights of women because I'm a woman. However, in my fight for my rights, I'm not going to insist that men become submissive to me. I'm not gunning for my superiority.

    In what I've seen (and this may not be the case for all or even most MRAs), MRAs don't like women and don't think women should be equal. All of the feminists I know, including myself, focus on women's rights in the first step to equality.

    I totally think it's great that men want to fight for their rights. They should. They don't have as far to go as women, but there are plenty of things men should be able to do that patriarchy stops them from doing. However, no one, men or women, should push down the other sex or gender in a fight for rights.

    ReplyDelete
  28. "Because men have it pretty good right now."

    ROFL

    Yeah for sure. Think about child custody, divorce laws, women getting lighter sentences for the same crime, men taking the majority of the grunt in the recession, male sexuality demonised, males getting falsely accused for sexual deviancy because they are simply men, way harder for men to get sex, A man is mostly viewed as someone who is guilty until proven innocent, people are generally nicer to women then they are to men in public, I can go on and on.

    Here is something to show how good men have it. A man can't even win the lotto anymore without his ex wife wanting a piece of the pie

    A perfect example how screwed laws are against men in western societies.

    Read this sickening story

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331925/Lottery-winner-Nigel-Page-pay-ex-wife-2m-left-10-years-ago.html

    ReplyDelete
  29. Lexie:

    Then you're not gunning for gender equality. You are gunning for women's rights, because you are a woman (your own words). Feminism is very very very very rarely an ideology about equality. (I say very rarely because there are still people like Christina Hoff Sommers who are actually about equality and still identify as feminists.) It's a silly name to have for an equality movement however, considering how biased it is out the gate towards one specific gender.

    I'm not even going to get into the debate about whether or not men or women have it better. I already know how that plays out on this blog.

    ReplyDelete
  30. @Dr. Deezee

    Wouldn't that be like a white power organization who wants race equality?

    ReplyDelete
  31. Dr. Deezee:

    "It's a silly name to have for an equality movement however, considering how biased it is out the gate towards one specific gender."

    Doesn't this then imply that the "Men's Rights Movement" isn't about attaining gender equality either, but about promoting the superiority of men over women?

    ReplyDelete
  32. LexieDi said...
    1 -
    .....Because men have it pretty good right now. Women (though it's getting better) don't.
    .....

    2 -
    In what I've seen (and this may not be the case for all or even most MRAs), MRAs don't like women and don't think women should be equal.


    1 -

    I really don't understand how you got this impression.

    About myself, my weekly working time during the last 40 years or so was always CONSIDERABLE longer than those of women (about 50 to 60 hours compared to 40 to 45).

    Yes, I earn more but I think it's reasonable, because of long working hours.

    Some feminists are complaining why I earn more... they want different income tax for men (pay more) and women (pay less)

    During the last 40 years I always had to do heavy work - even now near to my 60s, while a 30 year younger women will never do anything else but working at a desk...my bones are really hurting everyday and generally I am not so healthy anymore.

    All females of my age around me in the company retired healthy when 55 or 58 years old, I still have to work, at least up to 65 or 67, because I am a man.

    I know, I will die earlier, 77 or so and not as most women when they pass 85.

    My obligatory unpaid military time is deducted from my retirement allowance calculation, these months are missing but women will not do even one week without pay for any social services.

    2 -

    You think I have it pretty good... well, my income is for my family anyway and not for me alone, but I am not jobless and I have my wife and 2 daughters and even a fostergirl and they all are good people and thankful and help me very much when coming home late night almost every day. I can rest in my home...luckily no family problems...

    According to feminists, I do not like housework, I am married with a doormat since over 30 years - foreign wife of course, otherwise I would be still single - I am an old loser because I am not living in a feminist country anymore...and I am now promoting the superiority of men... because MRAs do not like women...

    Sorry, but feminism has nothing to do with equality. Feminism is a hate-movement.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Blackwell -

    Yes. There's a lot of people who get classified as "MRAs" who refuse the label, though, for that very reason.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Nicko81m:

    I didn't say they have it ALL good. I know that men get bad times, but those bad times are because of patriarchy. Patriarchy says that men aren't good at parenting, that women are "natural nurturers," and that men are violent by nature and women are weak and gentle beings. That is wrong. But patriarchy doles out those beliefs every day. Feminism is working to stop that on the female front.

    It's not our job to work on it on the male front too mostly because WE'RE NOT MALE and we can not fully comprehend what males go through, just like males can't fully comprehend what females go through because you're not female.

    So if you want to work on gender equality... go ahead, I'm all for it. But don't do it by trying to push women down because I, as a feminist, and all the feminists I know and have heard of, aren't trying to push men down.

    Dr. Deezee: Does it matter what the group is called? I could call my self a PurpleCauliflowerist and if I'm working towards something good like gender equality, then fine. Like I said above, I'm working on the female front because I don't know what males go through. I know bits of it, but because I'm not male, I can't know the full extent. Just like you can't know, to the full extent, what I go through as a woman.

    Yohan: You say that you have to labor while women work at a desk. That's because of patriarchy. Patriarchy says that women are physically weak and men are always physically stronger than women. Therefore, men should do labor and women should not. I think that's bull. I have a brother and my parents always make him help move furniture. I offer to help and they stop me only because I'm a woman. That's not right, I don't like it. That's patriarchy.

    To your #2 point. You're putting a blanket statement over feminism. I don't hate men. I know men can do house work and take care of children just as well as many women, and women can labor just as well as many men.

    I don't think the world should be split by male and female, but by individual.

    ReplyDelete
  35. @Yohan,

    "About myself, my weekly working time during the last 40 years or so was always CONSIDERABLE longer than those of women" What women? There are plenty of women who work long hours. Also, it is NOT childless women who seek part time work, it is women who are also working raising children, cooking, cleaning, you know, that traditional female work that is completely unpaid.

    "Yes, I earn more but I think it's reasonable, because of long working hours." Except discrepancy in hours does not explain the wage gap. David has a post on this already, you could try reading it. Also, there is still the issue of in-home work that women are getting paid nothing for.

    "During the last 40 years I always had to do heavy work - even now near to my 60s, while a 30 year younger women will never do anything else but working at a desk." The income class where women do easy desk work is not an income class where men are doing hard physical labour. If you look at certain lower class jobs, like maid and food service vs factory and construction, it is true that that latter are physically harder, but it is also true that the pay is massively higher as well.

    "All females of my age around me in the company retired healthy when 55 or 58 years old, I still have to work, at least up to 65 or 67, because I am a man." No, you are electing to work. Unless you can point out some sort of government of company benefit that early retiring women get that you do not, this is just whining.

    "I know, I will die earlier, 77 or so and not as most women when they pass 85." I wonder where you are getting these life expectancy estimates. Most statistics I have ever seen put a gap of a year or two, not of a decade, and the cause is unknown as it persists in classes where men do not do physical labour.

    "My obligatory unpaid military time is deducted from my retirement allowance calculation, these months are missing but women will not do even one week without pay for any social services." My country has no unpaid military time (even in the event of a draft, service is paid). Other countries, such as the UK and Canada, are the same, whereas others, such as Israel, require women to participate as well.

    "well, my income is for my family anyway and not for me " Since when do women who work not have families? And since when does women's labour not go to support their families as well?

    "I have my wife and 2 daughters and even a fostergirl and they all are good people and thankful and help me very much when coming home late night almost every day." And your wife's labour labour raising these children essentially alone? Women who work outside of the home, by your view, are not labouring to support their families and neither are women who work in the home. All you are really doing is asserting that work, when done by women, isn't work and doesn't deserve just compensation.

    "According to feminists, I do not like housework" Well, I don't know if you like it, but it certainly sounds as if you are not doing it while 'resting at home'.

    "I am married with a doormat since over 30 years" I do not assume stay at home moms are doormats, but, the fact that she is married to a misogynist does indicate she has some trouble with self esteem.

    "foreign wife of course, otherwise I would be still single " Back to the creepy 'western women are evil foreing women are good and submissive' line?

    "I am an old loser because I am not living in a feminist country anymore..." Er, I have yet to see a feminist say that not living in a western country automatically makes one a loser.

    "and I am now promoting the superiority of men... because MRAs do not like women..." Yes, this is what you do on every single post here.

    ReplyDelete
  36. DarkSideCat said...
    @Yohan,
    "and I am now promoting the superiority of men... because MRAs do not like women..." Yes, this is what you do on every single post here.


    I have to admit, DarkSideCat, that all your comments and David's blog are very useful for MRAs.

    Every sincere man, who reads this blog and your comments and sees the 'Enemy List next to it on the left side, will hopefully sign up in our forums.

    I wonder where you are getting these life expectancy estimates. Most statistics I have ever seen put a gap of a year or two, not of a decade

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

    Japan is 78 to 86
    France is 77 to 84
    Hungary is 69 to 77
    Latvia is 67 to 77
    Estonia is 67 to 78

    etc...

    ReplyDelete
  37. @Yohan, "I have to admit, DarkSideCat, that all your comments and David's blog are very useful for MRAs." Spare me your concern trolling. Fine, you found a few countries with a wider discrepancy, but you literally went through that list and picked the widest ones, didn't you. Here's the top five Japan 78-86.1; Hong Kong 79-85.1; Iceland 80.2-83.3; Switzerland 79-84.2; Australia 78.9-83.6 and the bottom five Lesotho 42.9-42.3; Sierra Leone 41-44.1; Zambia 42.1-42.5; Mozambique 41.7-42.4; Swaziland 39.8-39.4. I want to reiterate this point "the cause is unknown as it persists in classes where men do not do physical labour". Correlation does not prove causation. There is a correlation with being male and dying earlier than females (which, if you look at the bottom of the list figures, clearly isn't true for all nations), but this does not seem linked to female equality or hard labour differences. For example, if your thesis were true, we would expect third world nations to have higher discrepancies than first world nations (as third world nations do higher amounts of physical labour), but this is not the case at all. If you look at the list, you will actually find that, on average, poor countries have a lower discrepancy than wealthy ones. The evidence suggests that this discrepancy in life expenctancy holds for the upper classes in developed countries as well, who do not do hard labour. While hard labour may explain some of the difference in life expectancy between income classes, it utterly fails as an explanation of the sex differences in life expectancy.

    ReplyDelete
  38. DarkSiteCat: ...and picked the widest ones, didn't you ...

    I am learning from David, he is also picking the wildest comments in MRA-forums and is presenting them like 'all MRAs are like that'.

    ReplyDelete

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