I think much of anti-feminism is driven by politics.
From what I’ve seen, they fall into two political categories: Small government/free market Libertarians (we don’t need no govt programs for minority groups/special interests), and social Conservatives (a woman’s place is in the home/subservient to men).
At some point their ranting digresses into how feminism is trying to further a socialist-Marxist agenda, just as feminism was associated with the “communist scare” earlier in history.
What many of them don’t realize is that patriarchy is basically a pyramid scheme. Not all women are equally oppressed, and not all men are equally privileged.
I can understand how some guy at the bottom of the pyramid would think of himself as a victim; what he doesn’t seem to see is that the weight on his back isn’t feminism, but the people at the top of the pyramid. Feminism is actually trying to dismantle that, and should be their natural allies, but the anti-feminists use propaganda to divert them from the real problem.
Wait what? I think most feminists I know (including my own father), would argue for more equal distribution to parenting responsibilities and household work, and more appreciation for the role fathers play in child raising. I see that feminists who claim for paid maternal leave in the US area also asking for father’s leave, and asking for a general parental leave, so that both of them can get time to bond with the baby. I see feminists advocating men are equally responsible for household matters such as cleaning and cooking, as that would decrease the stress for working women, who have to work outside the house yet many people in society still expect them to keep the house tidy and meals served.
I just don’t get where do you get your conclusions, or if you’re confusing some messages (that may actually be coming from social conservative groups), and applying them to feminism as a whole.
Some say Romeo and Juliet is really a comedy or satire. Not a romance at all. He was ridiculing the idea of dying for the love of a silly 13yo girl. It certainly has this baroque quality to it. And Jack should have tossed that silly pampered rich girl Rose off the goddamn wood and climbed on top of it himself. He actually showed some promise as a person, she was just a rich girl going through life feeling sorry for herself. So she grew as a person and was eventually able to ride on a stupid horse, big fucking deal.
But whatever, those man-saves-damsel-in-distress movies mainly illustrate male fantasies I think. For the female perspective we should go to chicklit, like Twilight or 50 Shades. So men dream of a pretty but troubled girl they can save. Women dream of a rich and scary alpha dude that’ll treat her like shit and rape fuck her. European girls seem a bit mellower with their Bridget Jones’s fantasies – just a top notch bloke who’ll take care of her and save her from her dreary existence, and not so much rape fuck. Whatever, men’s fantasies seem a great deal more feminist friendly than women’s fantasies. They say it’s the same with porn. All the really nasty degrading shit, rape porn, etc. Supposedly, it’s mainly women who’re into that stuff. I don’t know why women have such repulsive fantasies, but if we could try to avoid blaming men for them, then that’d be nice. We just want to save you and give you roses.
And what about the matriarchy? As far as there even exists anything resembling a patriarchy, the matriarchy (and toxic femininity) are much more damaging. I heard that the matriarchal establishment in France even made it illegal by law to verify by DNA the paternity of your own children. Cherchez la femme!
All this “supposedly” stuff (and referring to Twilight or 50 Shades rather than the utterly enormous Romance genre) is rich. So a lot of your notions about women and feminism are ridiculous – that’s not going to convince me that feminism is bad.
You heard? LOL! Everyone alert the newspapers! Rune heard that something bad happened in France!
In other words – do you have a cite that this is something that happened beyond your own mind?
Quality post right there. The LOL is always a dead giveaway for top notch posts. All of two secs: Code pénal - Article 226-28 + Wiki A maximum sentence of one year in prison and euro 15,000 fine to test your own damn kids. The matriarchy is really strict on that kind of insubordination.
It seems to say that parental DNA testing is regulated by the state, and requires a court order. That’s a bit different than saying fathers aren’t allowed to test their children.
This might blow your mind, Rune, but have you considered that some (but not all) women are into the 50 Shades stuff, just like some (but not all) men are into the knight-in-shining-armor stuff?
Goddamn, why does gender stuff make everyone forget basic standards of evidence? Something like half the world is men or women, and everyone has personally met the barest, tinest, most miniscule fraction of them! Your intuition about all men or all women is no more necessarily representative than that of a tube worm on a volcanic vent representing average temperature, pressure, and sulfur levels!
It was kind of stupidly lol-worthy how the one factual claim you made got dismissed for ideological reasons when a 30-second Google would have revealed the truth.
And if there is no court order the person being tested must consent in writing. I presume that for a minor the person’s guardians must consent. Probably makes those home test kits from CVS illegal in France.
How on Earth is that different? Are men or are men not allowed to test their children without state approval? That’s like saying stealing isn’t actually illegal in France, it’s just regulated by the state and require court approval (in which case it’s called expropriation).
Starting a business isn’t illegal, but in some localities some types of businesses are regulated. Being a doctor isn’t illegal but a random person can’t open a doctor’s office without being licensed. Regulation does not equal illegal.
Stealing isn’t illegal, it’s just regulated by the state. Killing isn’t illegal, it just requires state mandate. Regulation does not equal illegal, ergo stealing and murdering are perfectly legal. Is there actually a single thing which is illegal anywhere?
What point are you actually trying to make with such distinctions? Men are for ideological reasons severely restricted from seeking certainty in matters which are of great importance to them. They have resorted to circumvent this restriction by using out-of-country services, but the penalties according to law if discovered and convicted are substantial. Does that seem to you to be a law born out of patriarchal oppression?
Murder and theft are never legal. There are times when killing and taking something might be legal, but by law those instances (perhaps self-defense and judicial seizure of property) are neither murder nor theft. Theft and murder are not regulated, they’re outlawed.
These are actual distinctions and differences. Starting a business and murdering someone really are different and not comparable. Regulation and outlawing something really are different.
When have I claimed that such a law came from “patriarchal suppression”? I don’t think it’s a good law (because I don’t believe it is any more likely to “preserve the peace” in families – if a father suspects he is not the father, having a harder time of testing isn’t going to assuage his fears), but not all bad laws come from patriarchal ideals in culture and society. This one appears to come from a misguided view that not knowing will somehow “preserve the peace” inside of families, and I don’t see how that’s reasonable.
Have you ever noticed a thread you weren’t particularly interested in and decided not to get into, and then it blows up into like 500 or more posts, and decided to have a look thinking “I wonder if the OP is going to be depressingly exactly what I think it will be”? This is a thread like that for me.
[QUOTE=LinusK]
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.
[/QUOTE]
This sentence makes no sense either logically or with reference to how the real world works.
If an action is “up to” someone, then appending the “if they want to” qualifier makes no sense. You’re stating someone has a responsibility to take action but only if they feel like it. Taken literally your sentence is completely without content or meaning; it is logically equivalent to saying “all animals are dogs unless they are not dogs.”
Nobody who self-identifies as a member of a group has any obligation to defend that group from some guy on a message board who present ignorant straw man arguments, which is a perfect description of your OP. I actually know many active feminists and they do not in any way resemble the description in your OP, which is essentially a pile of toned-down malarkey from Rush Limbaugh’s “Feminazi” rants in the early 90s.
Defending the truth is fine, but there is a point at which an argument is simply crap and does not deserve response.
Before I start on this, LinusK, care to respond about the shirt incident? Do you see why I think your assertions about feminists wanting to control the shirts men wear as ridiculous? Do you see the difference between saying “you shouldn’t have worn that shirt” and wanting such control?
These all sound like ways in which patriarchal ideals harm men. We’ve made this claim over and over again – patriarchy doesn’t just harm women, it also harms men and children.
You are making claims about feminism that I believe are false. These things you say about feminism are not accurate for my feminism, nor for the feminism of the feminists I know, talk to, and read about. It may be accurate for some small number of feminists, but that’s not feminism as a whole.
Those are mixed – they seem to agree that gay couples in general earn more than straight couples, but gain individuals may earn less (especially gay men).
I don’t believe this is so. You have found some surveys that indicate that close to as many men may have been hit or slapped as women, but there are numerous other surveys that indicate that women are as much as six times more likely to be abused. It may be differing definitions – many men may not see a slap as abuse, or something like that. According to Martin S. Fiebert (in the link), women are as likely to be abusive as men, but women are much more likely to be seriously harmed.
And that’s just murders – most intimate partner violence does not end in murder. Looking at health care costs, which looks like a reasonable way to evaluate the severity of injuries, intimate partner violence is about three to six times as harmful, in terms of injuries requiring medical treatment, to women as to men.
Actually it seems to come from the view that fatherhood is entirely a social construct and as such can be controlled, formed and conformed after state ideology. Fatherhood as a social construct is certainly not a flower that has blossomed in any patriarchal garden, and the issue of family and fatherhood is such a central element of existence that having such a hostile male ideology at the heart of it belies any notion of a patriarchy with any power. It does however point to strong and extremely toxic matriarchal tendencies, which I’m sure we all can agree on of course should be opposed just the same as if they were patriarchal.
So this thread is going down in flames (well, I guess it started there) but can we point to any progress? I’ll pick a discrete example: LinusK, are you willing to concede that some feminists talk about prison rape?