They found, on pages 44 and 43 respectively, that:
and
In the same survey, they found that 686,000 women had been raped by an intimate partner in the last 12 months (0.6%). No men had been raped, because of how they defined “rape”, but 586,000 men had been “made to penetrate” (0.5%). Under “other sexual violence,” they found that 2,747,000 female victims (2.3%) and 2,793,000 male victims (2.5%). These finding were not highlighted, the way others were, but they’re there.
Anyway, the point of all that is:
1.) Academia is a stronghold of feminism.
2.) Some feminists are deeply investing the women are victims/men are victimizers stereotype.
3.) We (both men and women) are instinctively more concerned about violence against women, than violence against men.
To get to your post:
I think it says: “Although many studies report that men and women use physical violence at equal rates within intimate relationships,7, 8 this fails to take into account the nature of the violence and the level of fear and injury experienced by each party.”
I know it says that. I read it. It’s written by an advocacy organization: my surprise was they admitted that “men and women use physical violence at equal rates within intimate relationships” at all, (something I give them credit for) not that they went on to minimize it. Anyway, the point was that even some feminists admit that women use violence in intimate relationships as often as men. Not to argue they thought it was important.
I’ll also note that Dept. of Justice statistics are problematic, to the extent they rely on convictions. The judicial system is heavily biased in favor women, and against men, particularly in the area of domestic violence. It’s a bit like arguing that blacks are more prone to violence than whites, because of convictions. If you think that whites are favored in the judicial system (and they are, though not as much as women), conviction rates aren’t a meaningful comparison.
I don’t know anything about SAVE Services, or the SPLC. If it’s one advocacy site calling another one a hate group, it’s not very meaningful to me. Name calling is common on the internet, particularly among political enemies. The site looked legit when I looked at it. However, I’ll consider this one “debunked” until or unless I have time to check it out.
Ok. I don’t know if you’re saying this is debunked or not.
Criticism of academic studies by other academics is common, even in relatively non-political topics. I will say this one appears relatively tame. I’ll note that he or she refers to the “belief that men are generally more aggressive than women”. What’s the point of doing research, if not to examine whether “belief” is consistent with what’s real?
He or she also refers to “observations of professionals who serve battered women”. Well, it’s not surprising that a group devoted to serving battered women (not men) would have a skewed perspective, is it?
It’s true, I was engaging in hyperbole. You got me there.
You’ve said that one of them is dubious. You haven’t said the others are.
And what I’m fighting is not a strawman: it’s the idea that violence in intimate relationships is perpetrated mainly by men. It’s such a commonly held assumption, it amounts to a stereotype - one, I’m arguing - is wrong.
I’m not sure if you read my two later posts, here, and here, where I go into more detail about your cites, and respond to some of your claims.
I’ll just add a few more points here.
Yes, it is controversial, and a complex issue. That’s one of the reasons I suggested you narrow the focus of the debate. You cannot simply assert your numbers unquestioned as a springboard to attack feminism.
You did not provide a link for your quoted example, so I cannot consider it.
Yes, I am familiar with the CDC study; it was the one your SAVE cite misrepresented, and I provided the link to the study when I critiqued it.
1.) You would need to provide evidence for this.
2.) How many feminists? I can make similar claims about what anti-feminists are invested in that you would disavow.
3.) This may be so, but it does not prove your claim or provide data.
You are still misinterpreting it. It does NOT admit that “men and women use physical violence at equal rates within intimate relationships”. It admits that many studies report it. That’s not the same thing. Also note that the statement appears after the heading: The Myth of “Mutuality” (my underline).
This is where it becomes complicated and controversial. I would get into it if I thought there was an interest and motivation for a real debate. But remember that you are choosing to cherry pick data that confirms your opinion, and putting less weight on multiple sources that don’t suit your agenda, and that you are ignoring the complex factors of IPV in order to make a blanket assertion against feminism. See my previous post linked above.
Why would you link to an unvetted source, or even take their word at face value? Just the fact that they out and out lied about the CDC study should be enough reason to mistrust them. There’s a thread in GD right now about the SPLC if you’re interested in knowing more.
I’m getting the idea that you are very impressionable, and don’t question claims that tell you what you want to hear. It is also clear that you are taking most, if not all, these ideas from MRAs, in particular Karen Straughan. Here is a sample of what she said about rape during an AMA at the red pill reddit:
*A rapist is a very damaged man (usually damaged by women) or a man who really really really wants sex but can’t convince a woman to willingly lie down with him.
One commenter expressed a wish that I’d learn to speak more wisely and circumspectly on topics like RooshV’s suggestion to make rape legal on private property (all I said was that however stupid or unfeasible or offensive his idea was, his stated intention was to prevent rape, so I wasn’t going to call him a bad person for it).*
Do you agree with these statements? Are rapists usually damaged by a woman?
Why doesn’t she speak out against the misogynistic statements and actions of other MRA adherents and activists? Isn’t that what you expect feminists to do so feminism is more “coherent”?
My own view is that Western women aren’t oppressed. Feminists could have had a victory party a decades ago, taken off their hats, and gone on to work on real problems. But they didn’t. Some feminists, instead, went on to find ever-more ridiculous things to complain about, up to and including misrepresentation (often through the use of misleading statistics) in order to maintain their victim-status, while at the same time working to maintain or create unfair laws and policies that often have disastrous consequences. Moreover, while some feminists will say they’re for “equality,” (while others openly admit they’re not) the reality is that mostly what they’re doing is to push for more privileges for an already privileged group, and in the process creating more and more double-standards.
Elevator-gate is an example. A man asks a woman for “coffee” in his room. She posts a video, (saying, among other things: “Men: don’t ever do this.”) And the social media explodes. Here is a link, if anyone’s interested. (I’d encourage you to watch the response, as well as the video: it’s hilarious.) Since I know many people won’t watch the videos, I’ll make a couple of points:
1.) No one would have any trouble with this if it was (a) two men, (b) two women, or (c) if it was a woman asking a man for coffee.
2.) Emma Watson wouldn’t have had a problem with it, if she’d found the guy attractive and/or she’d been interested.
3.) So, (according to Watson) hetero-men aren’t allowed to ask women for coffee. But feminism is all about liberating women sexually. (Feminists, feel free to tell me if I’m wrong.) So she could have asked him for coffee, if she wanted. Anyone see a double-standard here?
I am an anti-feminist (well, at least for the moment) but I’m not an MRA. I haven’t done a lot of research about them, but from what little I’ve done, I’ll make a few remarks about them.
1.) “MRA” as I think you’re using the term, covers a wide range of different, and sometimes bitterly opposed groups. The main point of contention, as far as I can tell, is between those who want social acceptance for the purpose of effecting political change, and those who don’t want social acceptance, think change is impossible, and either want to withdraw from the system entirely (or as much as possible) or to learn how to - and teach others who to - navigate it successfully.
2.) As one would expect from a group who think they’re being pissed on, there’s a lot of complaining and venting. The groups also act as a sort of social support system, for the men who participate in them.
3.) I don’t think these groups come out of nowhere. The combination of feminism, and women’s continuing privileges (in child custody cases, for example, and in domestic violence cases) creates a toxic environment for some men. They are a response, in other words, to a set of inequities that can be incredibly harmful to some men (and children, and society as a whole). If feminism either (a) didn’t exist, or (b) was genuinely about equality, (rather than whatever is best for women) they wouldn’t exist.
I’ll leave this one for feminists to answer.
Yes.
1.) Default 50/50 custody of children. “Default” meaning: unless there’s a good reason not to.
2.) Encourage police, prosecutors, and judges to take domestic assaults perpetrated by women as seriously as they do those by men.
3.) Encourage the justice system to start actually prosecuting false reports.
4.) Dismantle feminism as a political/social force.
5.) Stop automatically treating the lives and concerns of women as more important than men. As I said in my OP, we instinctually value the safety and concerns of women more then men’s. (If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.) But we also have a thinking part of our brains, and we should use them.
I’m sorry LinusK. The feminists in this thread have expressed concern for things dealing with both sides, when all you do is list things that deal with the death of feminism as a whole and focus fully on what you think are injustices for men. You don’t seem to be trying to put yourself in the shoes of the people arguing against you, and that turns me off to whatever you have to say. I may not agree with everything the feminists in this thread have to say, (though I’m pretty close to,) but I refuses to listen to you.
And for the love of god, don’t try to! We don’t all agree, after all. It’s a very big tent, sometimes bigger than is reasonable, and it has room for lots of disagreement: major issues, fights worth having, tone, approach, what is and isn’t exploitative, etc.
How come you don’t apply that last bit to numbers 1 through 4? It’s been pointed out already that ‘“Default” meaning: unless there’s good reason not to’ isn’t really coherent given how custody law works. It wouldn’t take much effort to gain enough of a sense of what actually goes on in the real world with domestic assault prosecution to understand that the phrase “as seriously as they do those by men” would actually make more sense if you meant it pejoratively.
Seriously. You spend so much time talking about this stuff here, but you’ll never spend as much time on it as the people who have expertise. How can it be so important to you that you keep arguing about it, but not important enough that your perception of what the facts are or what the issues are never changes?
Ok. Let me start out by saying I have a bias when it comes to Wall Street: I think the top earners there make obscene amounts of money, while contributing little in the way of actual value to the economy. In fact, if you factor in the damage that they’ve done, they probably are a net loss for the rest of us.
But quoting from your sites:
Callan, btw, if memory serves, was among those at Lehman involved in the fraudulent security scam that eventually led to the financial panic of '08/'09 (and the resulting recession.)
I, for one, don’t doubt that the cultural climate on Wall Street is cut-throat, corrupt, and unforgivingly demanding. I’ll also say that it’s not a culture that’s accommodating to most women. But I’ll also say that there’s more going on than: “We hate women, let’s keep them out.”
From your first site, “Wall Street’s Young Bankers Are Still Mostly White and Male”:
Asian-Americans make up 5% of Americans, which means they’re overrepresented by about 550%. If there is discrimination on Wall Street, is anti-woman, but pro-Asian?
(And by the way, the title of the article is misleading: about 78% of Americans are white. If only 65% or “young bankers” are white, that means whites are under-represented.)
I don’t get what you’re saying here. Bumblefuck Oklahoma is probably close to 100% white. It’s also probably relatively poor (at least compared to places like NYC). You’ll have to clarify what you’re saying, because I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it almost sounds like you’re saying Jews and Asians are rich because they don’t live around poor, racist white people in Oklahoma.
Who are the people who start off with the playing field tilted heavily in their favor?
Again, I need more clarity. I asked if boys are less intelligent. Do you think they are?
As for the rest of the post, are those your opinions, or do you think they’re facts?
I wasn’t aware that there was a cultural norm that said that the woman should sacrifice her career if one of the parents must make a sacrifice.
I will say though, that for most people, work is something they have to do; not something they do for fun.
Sorry about that. About 50% of the population is female, and about 50% of the population is male.
But you’re right: to make progress, anti-feminists must do more than talk about the way feminism hurts men. The argument must be framed in terms of the way it hurts women and children.
Boys are not less intelligent, nor are they more. They are also not in thrall to their hormones any more or less than girls. Cultural sexism does not justify reversing it to belittle men.
Where does the notion arise that, when a ship sinks, women and children come first?
It appears to have started when the HMS Birkenhead ran aground off South Africa in 1852, but the notion became widespread after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The captain explicitly issued an order for women and children to be saved first. As a result, the survival rate for women was three times higher than for men.
This idea of chivalry at sea has gained mythological status, but you’re the first person to examine if it’s true for many other maritime disasters. What did you find?
We went through a list of over 100 major maritime disasters spanning three centuries to see if we could find data on survival rates of men and women. We ended up with data on 18 shipwrecks, involving 15,000 passengers. In contrast to the Titanic, we found that the survival rate for men is basically double that for women. We only have data on children for a limited number of shipwrecks, but it is evident that they have really bad survival prospects: just 15 per cent.
So this notion of chivalry at sea is a myth?
Yes. It really is every man for himself.
Why do you think we bought into the “women and children first” belief?
The Titanic has been so extensively studied and it confirmed the myth. There was little empirical evidence against it. Lucy Delap of Cambridge University argues that this myth was spread by the British elite to prevent women obtaining suffrage. They said, look at the Titanic, there is no reason to give women the vote because men, even when facing death, will put the interests of women first.
LinusK, do you now understand why anti-feminists love to trot out the Titanic data?
Here’s the thing: if someone criticizes a religion, an ideology, a political party or a movement, it’s up to supporters of that group to respond to those criticisms, if they want to.
For example, if someone started a thread called “Anti-Atheism” I would, if I felt like it, defend atheism. What I would not do is:
1.) Resort to personal attacks
2.) Claim that atheists don’t agree about anything, so therefore atheism can’t be critisized
3.) Start a pit thread
4.) Or demand that he take personal responsibility for anyone who’s ever criticized atheists.
As far as feminism’s incoherence, who is responsible for that, if not feminists?
LinusK: Why did you ignore the last sentence of my quote? We went over this point already; you seem unable to absorb new information when moving the debate forward. Why?
You started a thread against feminism, using the title of a different movement - anti-feminism. That means more than “I am against feminism, and here’s why.” It is a movement of its own. One that Straughan, for instance, is active in. You feel that it is appropriate to attack feminism as this monolithic group, but deny your own group’s flaws. Why is it appropriate, in your view, to treat feminism as a single entity, but not anti-feminism?
In other words, why are all feminists, in your view, assumed to be the same, while all anti-feminists are to be treated as disparate individuals?
ETA in other, OTHER words, why must I, as a feminist, either explain or police other feminists, while you as an anti-feminist can simply say “well, that is someone else, that’s not my views. Address only my views?”
Oh, stop it. Your implication that you were personally attacked, (even placing it first among your options as if it has been a significant factor in this discussion), does not reflect the way in which this thread developed.
One early post asked whether you were going to get up on your soapbox one more time.
More than a page later, one poster challenged your statements using harsher language, (although not to the level of a personal attack), specifically because you were making claims (including a claim that some positions were never addressed), that the poster noted had been addressed on multiple occasions.
We were well past the 100th post before anyone took a personal shot at you–and that was based on your persistent claim that issues that had never been addressed when they had been addressed on multiple occasions.
Your claim of persecution indicates an imagination untempered by facts and your persistence in claiming persecution is nothing more than an appeal for sympathy from people who support you and an attempt to poison the well of statements opposing you. It is not appropriate and it dopes not speak well of you.
Again, I would have thought what a movement was “about” would be the central issue. If you’re trying to achieve something, it’s hard to do it, if you don’t know what it is.
Which brings me to another question: what is feminism trying to achieve?
Mmm… no, that would be the opposite of what I’m saying: women benefitted from protection by being protected. Specifically, by not dying. And, of course, by successfully bearing and raising children who lived, and went on to have children of their own.
Two things (and I realize I’m being redundant, but I believe it’s impossible to be too clear in this thread):
1.) We’re talking about our evolution as a species over millions of years, during times when our species was clinging to this side of extinction. In other words, during times when finding or not finding food on a particular day could be a life or death distinction, and when a lion was an actual threat rather than a tourist attraction.
2.) Evolution has no design, heart, or conscience. Something either works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, it’s gone. I said earlier other groups of homo sapiens never made it. We, ourselves almost didn’t make it:
Your analogy would be apt, except that it wasn’t a matter of men preventing women from, say, hunting and gathering, or plowing fields while 8 months pregnant, or while nursing an infant. It was a matter of men doing it for them, so their species (our species) could successfully reproduce.
I wouldn’t describe Sarah Connor or what’s-her-face in “The Titanic” as “passive characters” (Although the Buttercup certainly was). Either way, you realize in two of those three movies the hero dies… right? To put it differently, the hero proves his worth by dying for the heroine. The heroine doesn’t have to prove her worth because her worth is inherent.
Fine. If Western women aren’t oppressed, what is the goal of feminism?
Her worth or value is as a trophy or as the means by which the hero displays his honor. Men sacrifice themselves for women in the same way they sacrifice themselves for the flag or for glory. Therefore, women get relegated to objects that display the man’s value.
You can keep ignoring this point, but ignoring it does nothing to promote your beliefs.
And it really is important to state this emphatically: feminism favors equality. Neither men nor women have greater (or lesser) intrinsic worth.
The model where men die to protect women makes men’s lives worth less than women’s lives. At the same time, it allows men, but not women, to come home and be celebrated as heroes. This also provides a pathway for men…but not women…to attain very high military rank.
Feminism does not support either form of inequality.
A great many feminists are working to get women admitted to combat roles. Women will thus have the honor and the loss of sacrifice.