# Anti-Feminism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 17, 2015, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390 "2015-07-17T06:05:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/161 "2015-07-19T18:21:14Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > Instead of doing anything hard or dangerous themselves, they sit in the lap of luxury, trying to think of new things to complain about. So says the man with ample leisure time to spend on the Internet complaining about such important and timely issues as how others do not share his outrage over the ending of _Titanic_. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/162 "2015-07-19T18:51:17Z")
There’s many things I don’t understand about **LinusK** ’s arguments – chiefly the straw-man assertions about feminists. But it’s also incoherent in other ways, at least to me: for example, I think he’s claiming that men and women really are intrinsically biologically different in many ways that at least partially explains some statistical differences – like men tend to be stronger and more aggressive (according to him), so that might explain why they may be more representative in military roles and other occupations, and why they’re more likely to be involved in violence. But then at the same time he’s complaining that feminists aren’t paying attention to the differences in murder stats, or crime stats, or stuff like that… and I don’t get how he can assert the first and complain about the second. If women really are treated unfairly in many ways, it doesn’t necessarily logically follow that the fact that men are more likely to be murdered is due to some sexist and anti-male bias in society. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/163 "2015-07-19T18:53:20Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > Nope, not anymore. > > On the other hand, if all men suddenly disappeared, women would find themselves in a different world from the one they currently live in. One without truckers or farmers or ranchers or miners or plumbers or sanitation workers or garbage men or engineers. Considering that many women get freaked out by the sight of a roach, I think they’d get pretty unhappy pretty soon, once the lights went out, their toilets stopped working, and the stuff at the grocery store disappeared. > > It’s true that women don’t need protection from predators anymore: men eliminated (or nearly eliminated) them long ago. But women still need men, and men still need women. > > And by the way, the fact that someone’s a woman doesn’t make her harmless. It’s true that women are physically weaker than men, but obtaining a weapon easily overcomes that problem. Have you ever been to Eastern Europe, LinusK? For most of the 4 decades (and nearly 7 for the case of the USSR proper), women were the minority frequently shuttled into the crappy dangerous jobs. When WWII broke out, they sometimes found themselves on the front lines in some of the crappy positions. The Night Witches (the most famous all-female group of bombers) flew crappy planes (the navigators sometimes had to climb out on the wings and release bombs manually) precisely because they were women and considered expendable. Better planes were given to male pilots. You know what, the women did all these crappy, dangerous jobs quite well and frequently with less bitching then the men. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/164 "2015-07-19T18:54:22Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > So says the man with ample leisure time to spend on the Internet complaining about such important and timely issues as how others do not share his outrage over the ending of _Titanic_. My favorite part is saying that feminists are trying to start a war with men, while he sits around and says nasty things about women. Because apparently we can’t read what he’s writing or something. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/165 "2015-07-19T18:57:38Z")
I’m sorry all those women were so mean to you, **LinusK**. Can you show us on the doll where they didn’t touch you? ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/166 "2015-07-19T19:01:53Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Men are much more likely to be murdered than women, and much more likely to be killed or injured on the job. Again, no calls for equality on this front. Actually, many feminists like myself have been saying for years we need to educate (actually retrain is probably a better word) men about not doing stupid stuff that makes them prime victims for murder and on-the-job death injury. Part of the problem that causes such statistics is that boys are often socialized to take risks, lots of risk, or they are perceived as “not being real men”. Girls are told to think twice and socialized to always consider risk. And quite frankly, calculating risk is something that is engrained in our everyday lives once it becomes obvious who easily we can be victimized. Oh, and which gender is the most likely victimizer? The one with the Y chromosome. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/167 "2015-07-19T19:04:45Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Men are much more likely to be murdered than women, and much more likely to be killed or injured on the job. Again, no calls for equality on this front. Well, I don’t think it makes sense to say “Oh, let’s try to make sure women are killed equally with men!” If anyone is pushing for that, they are fucking idiots. But I’ve seen plenty of people trying to make jobs safer, trying to open up some jobs (that often tend to be high paying) to more women, and trying to reduce crime. _Equality isn’t about making men the default that women must aspire to._ ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/168 "2015-07-19T19:17:58Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > I wanted to address the bolded part, because I want to explicitly point out to you that men are also faced with murder and rape and thwarted lives. [According to the FBI](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expandhomicidemain), for example, 77.4% of murder victims were men. Men are also raped (although reliable figures are hard to come by, for various reasons), and there are certainly vast numbers of men leading “thwarted lives”. _Most men lead lives of quiet desperation._ -Henry David Thoreau. > > If you want to ignore “worst aspects” of feminism as long as crime and thwarted lives exist, you’ll be ignoring them forever. Because crime and thwarted lives will always exist. > > In other words: there is no end-date. You’ve missed **Slithy Trove’s** point completely, since it was more or less the same as yours. And he was responding to my earlier statement, and more or less missed my point. No one (rational) is saying that the only way to equality is to put the other guy down. Or that the murder of men doesn’t matter. My earlier point, which **even sven** just made much more eloquently, is that feminism has made tremendous difference to the lives of women (I can vote, own property, earn money, decide when and to whom I marry, etc), but there is still work to be done. And to everyone on the thread who keeps saying that women don’t care about the fact that more men are murdered than men. I think this is in the national dialogue, just not in the way you want. But let’s look at these murders. since you’re bringing it up, please break it down, with cites. Top 5 causes of “murder”, because I’m guessing we’re going to see crime-related homicide wayyy up there. Same for women. Who’s killing them? Pretty sure high on that list we’re going to see “partner”/significant other. For example, looking at the FBI cite that **LinusK** provided, [FBI 2010 data](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expandhomicidemain) you see that **37.5% of female victims were killed by Husbands or boyfriends**. No converse stat is provided. Wives and girlfriends may kill men, but not in such staggeringly high percentages. From the same source, in fact, **~90% of the overall offenders in 2010 were male.** I did spend some time looking through the data. Other than confirming that most murders are committed by men, and that “gangland violence” and “arguments” lead a long lead of lesser crimes that apparently went wrong, it’s hard to pull much more out without downloading Excel files and really playing with it. So what equality are you looking for? Clearly feminists care, I just think it’s in a way you don’t “hear” or appreciate. I think the conversations that are already occurring involve a reduction in overall crime, and a reduction in man on woman violence. What else do you suggest? ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/169 "2015-07-19T19:22:22Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > My favorite part is saying that feminists are trying to start a war with men, while he sits around and says nasty things about women. Because apparently we can’t read what he’s writing or something. And I can’t help myself. I reply. _bangs head on desk_ I need to print out that “There’s something wrong on the Internet” cartoon for reference at times like this. Must. Be. Strong. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/170 "2015-07-19T19:43:18Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I’m unconvinced that IQ tests are unbiased and objective measures of intelligence). Why not? IQ correlates pretty well with things like reaction time to stimuli and the ability to filter out visual information from a background, which I don’t think you could plausibly say are culturally loaded. Do you think a person with an IQ of 100 or one of 130 would make a better biologist? And would a person with an IQ of 130 or one of 145 make a better physicist? If your answer is the latter, in both cases, then IQ clearly measures something of value (that probably is indicative of _g_.) ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/171 "2015-07-19T19:54:04Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > I’m sorry all those women were so mean to you, **LinusK**. Can you show us on the doll where they didn’t touch you? His points and his logic are lousy, but I wish we’d get away from the notion that men turn weird and bitter because they aren’t having sex. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/172 "2015-07-19T19:54:31Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by adaher > This is an interesting article from the New Republic in that vein. The writer calls for freeing women from the need for full time employment, since most women don’t want full time employment: > > [http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...full-time-work](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...full-time-work) > > So is this feminism, or anti-feminism? I wanted to revisit **adaher’s** post, because I finally got around to reading the article. It was a great article. It increased my opinion of Hillary Clinton, because she was quoted explicitly saying something I’ve been wanting to hear a politician say for a long time: > [@](#): > > “getting closer to full employment is crucial for raising incomes,” Ok, it’s not exactly what I wish she would have said. I wish she would have said: “Achieving full employment is the single best way to both increase the wages and salaries of working people, and to increase the wealth of the United States overall.” And: “Full employment is not some impossible dream, but something that can be easily achieved, so long as the political will to do it is there.” And: “Full employment will help close the wealth gap and reduce poverty, which are among the most important issues facing the USA.” But you can’t have everything. Anyway, to get back on point: > [@](#): > > it appears a significant proportion of women would prefer never to be stuck with full-time work in the first place. Data collected by the Pew Research Center shows not only that women are more likely to work part-time, but that women with children largely prefer to work part-time. The fact that single mothers prefer full-time to part-time work in greater numbers than married mothers suggests that the desire for full-time work is likely a function of financial necessity rather than a matter of pure personal ambition… the workplace is not where anyone achieves much in the way of meaningful liberation. Work is, for most of us, compulsory: The Great Recession, not a burst of female empowerment, has been a major engine of female labor force re-entry in the last several years. There’s really two kinds of work in the United States. There’s the kind of work highly privileged people do, and there’s the kind of work the vast majority of people do. It is (I would imagine) pretty fun to be a high-powered executive, a member of the board of a rich corporation, a senior partner at a big law firm, a rock star, a federal judge, or a boss at a Wall Street bank. Then there’s the work that most people do: stocking shelves, manning cash-registers, driving trucks, fixing cars, working on an assembly line, sitting in a cubicle, crunching numbers, construction work, middle-management, waiting tables, preparing food, and all the other things that have to be done to make the country work. But thing is, no matter how hard any one person works, or how hard everyone works, not everybody gets to be a rock star, a federal judge, or a boss at a Wall Street bank. Somebody still has to pick up the trash. Which brings me around to the point: if you’re part of the upper-class in the US, the right to work seems like a pretty big fucking deal, because you’re one of the ones who has a good shot at getting one of the good jobs. If you’re part of working-class, the poor, or the middle-class, not so much. As somebody said up-thread, most of us would quit our jobs in a heart-beat, if we could. Which brings me to one of the internal divisions within feminism: many of the leaders of feminism came from the upper-class. But the truth is, other than their gender, they had very little in common with women who were not part of their group. So the “right” to work, looks very different, depending on your perspective. For many women, the “right” to work is really a necessity, and one they’d prefer to avoid, if they could. (Well, for that matter, it’s “right” many men would prefer to avoid, if they could.) So to answer your question, I’ll answer it the same way I did the first time around. Feminism is an incoherent group of people who don’t agree about anything (as feminists keep pointing out, over and over again). If you’re a woman from the upper-class, the right to work is a feminist issue. If you’re a woman not from the upper-class, the right _ **not** _ to work is a feminist issue. Feminism is whatever is best for women, regardless of the issue. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/173 "2015-07-19T20:04:43Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Why not? > > IQ correlates pretty well with things like reaction time to stimuli and the ability to filter out visual information from a background, which I don’t think you could plausibly say are culturally loaded. > > Do you think a person with an IQ of 100 or one of 130 would make a better biologist? And would a person with an IQ of 130 or one of 145 make a better physicist? If your answer is the latter, in both cases, then IQ clearly measures something of value (that probably is indicative of _g_.) It probably does measure something of value, but I’m unconvinced that it measures this something objectively and without bias. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/174 "2015-07-19T20:09:58Z")
…so just that we are clear LinusK, this is a witnessing thread, and you don’t intend to debate? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/175 "2015-07-19T20:43:50Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …so just that we are clear LinusK, this is a witnessing thread, and you don’t intend to debate? Yeah I’m kind of wondering if he has me on ignore or something… ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/176 "2015-07-19T21:15:09Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Originally Posted by LinusK View Post > > I can’t really argue with anything you’ve said. I will add this: breast cancer is the worst kind of cancer because… brain cancer is so much fun? > > I just Googled “breast cancer is the worst kind of cancer” because I have never heard anyone make this claim before. The search produced a single hit – this thread. Google doesn’t search everything, but it does search a lot, and it couldn’t find anyone other than you who’d ever said this. Right. I know it doesn’t always come through well in text, but that was sarcasm. The point was that breast cancer gets more attention than other kinds of cancer, not because it’s the worst kind of cancer, but because it mainly affects women. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/177 "2015-07-19T21:15:37Z")
> [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](#): > > Really? Which feminists are you prepared to quote as saying that we are not seeing enough women arrested, prosecuted and punished for violent crimes, in that case? Actually…me. I’ve long felt that, for women to be truly equal in our society, they must be equally represented in every population. Not only scientists and corporate executives and members of Congress…but also criminals, suicides, and drug addicts. Obviously, we all want as few as possible of those. But it isn’t right that far more men than women make up those classes. Real equality means participating fully in society, in the bad parts as well as the good. Otherwise, the equality isn’t real, just an idealized “on a pedestal” variety. Again, no one should commit suicide. But that three or four times as many men (in the U.S.) die from suicide as women do shows that this particular facet of equality is not realized. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/178 "2015-07-19T21:23:09Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It probably does measure something of value, but I’m unconvinced that it measures this something objectively and without bias. What kind of evidence would convince you otherwise? ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/179 "2015-07-19T21:25:16Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Worse, I’ve BEEN in meetings where it was decided not to promote a woman because she MIGHT have children. Not that they knew, she was single. Maybe she was a lesbian - we really didn’t know anything about her personal life. But she was young and unmarried and maybe she’d get married and have children and then maybe she’d quit, so lets promote the guy who already has a child instead. HE won’t quit his job, he has a family to support. > > Career trajectory determined not by eight weeks, but by a societal expectation that might not even apply. There’s nothing illogical about their thinking. If he’s married with a child, he WILL keep working because he HAS to. If she gets married and/or has children, she might quit. Because that may well be an option for her. Whether that’s _fair_ is another question. Is it? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390/180 "2015-07-19T21:26:21Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > If you’re a woman from the upper-class, the right to work is a feminist issue. > > If you’re a woman not from the upper-class, the right _ **not** _ to work is a feminist issue. Everyone is mostly concerned with people’s ability to CHOOSE. Choose to work. Choose to be a homemaker. Choose to be a Missionary in Fiji. Choose to be a hermit on a mountain. Whatever. The important thing is that you get to choose from the full range of options available to you, rather than having it dictated by your plumbing. Man or woman. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-feminism/725390.md?page=10)