margin, I’m not operating a double standard. You’re attempting to pull an ad hominem tu quoque, for a definition of which see the link a few posts above: arguing that before you have to respond to my calling you on strawmen and ad hominem arguments, I first have to refute your assertion that someone else is guilty of the same.
Claiming that SAL condemns all feminists flies in the face of this very clear quote:
As to being “ignorant of feminist utopian fiction”, I may not have picked up on that. I did, however, understand you to be denying that there was any such thing. Of course that doesn’t imply ignorance.
cowgirl, I’m in agreement with you, and to hell with the damage to my misogynist credentials. I got into this thread originally with a self-admitted anecdote about a piece of feminist fiction about the extinction of men, rebuked margin for some singularly bad logic, and it kinda went on from there.
Some of the quotes from people like Brownmiller, Dworkin and so on are widely-known enough hardly to need citing. For some aspects of the goals of feminism, Andy cited texts such as the S.C.U.M. Manifesto and NOW policy statements. On the whole, though, the questions you raise are the ones I too want answered.
catsix’s experiences on the Ms message board sound credible to me and vaguely reminiscent of the kind of thing I heard now and then when I used to post on www.handbag.com . I haven’t been there for a while. There was a discussion about a year or so ago over a science news item: “men facing extinction”. I was surprised to learn how controversial my own standpoint was, which majored on the enormous economic contributions men made to society and sat ill both with those who reassuringly remarked that “we will always want men around to have relationships with” and those who said “men have always oppressed and abused women and everything else they have done pales into insignificance”. Though they allowed men at Handbag - I wasn’t masquerading as female! - I figured I didn’t need this.
Of course anecdotes aren’t evidence. Sometimes, I’m inclined to wonder what is. Must dash now.
To be quite honest with you, cowgirl, your experiences with feminists are no more or less valid than mine are.
You, however, seem to think that my experience with feminism in an organized context being a negative thing means I shouldn’t form a negative opinion of feminism. I’ll tell you right now that you’re highly unlikely to get me to describe myself as a feminist by saying that you had a lovely time with organized feminism.
Those feminists and feminist groups I have encountered in my life have left a lasting impression upon me, and it’s not a positive one. It would, at this point, take quite a lot to change that impression, such things as showing me a feminist group who doesn’t dismiss all men’s rights groups as ‘nutjobs’, who recognize that there is a pro-woman bias in family courts, and who do not repeat ‘statistics’ that have been debunked many times in an effort to affect legal and social change (the Super Bowl violence myth, the ‘75 cents on a dollar’ myth). I’d also like to see an organized group of feminists who do not subscribe to the notion that a ‘patriarchy’ exists in present-day United States, and that those women who don’t believe they are oppressed are deluded tools of the patriarchy. I’d like to see a feminist group admit that domestic violence is not just a ‘men beating women’ issue, and I’d like to see domestic violence support groups that don’t laugh at me and hang up on me when I’m trying to find help for my friend who is being beaten and terrorized by his girlfriend.
Unforutnately, telling me that they exist because you know feminists who are like that won’t be good enough. There are some things that I will have to be able to see with my own eyes, experience in person to change my mind. Much like I would need to see with my own two eyes that anti-abortion protesters are not, on average, like the ones who called me a baby killer the day after I was raped because I was seeking medical treatment.
If your experience is valid to your opinion of what feminism is, then so is mine. You cannot reject it out of hand with ‘You’re wrong about feminism because that’s not what it means to me.’
Hm. This angry debate seems to have turned into a thoughtful discussion ! Hooray !
I am sorry that you have had negative experiences with feminism. I really am, but I make no apologies for the feminists you have encountered, as they have as much right to their opinion as you or I.
What my own goal is, is to try to reclaim the label “feminism” from those who have hijacked it. (It cannot be overemphasized that, like Lamia said previously, some feminists get all the press because they say things that are controversial and possibly hateful.) I am a feminist and I don’t think that says anything bad about me - why should Dworkin and MacKinnon get all the input into what a feminist is? I personally have come very close to heaving a shoe at Germaine Greer’s image when it came upon my television.
No one is disagreeing that some feminists are hateful. Just as some men, some Americans, some Christians, some Muslims, some sci-fi fans, etc, are hateful.
catsix, I feel particularly bad about your experiences and I hope that you find some feminists who do not put you off so much. Please be assured that I consider your experiences every bit as valid as mine, which is why it makes me sad that yours were so negative. I can offer my own insight into the subject:
You are the ultimate judge about what to believe. If somebody is telling you something that sounds like bollocks, no one has the right to prevent you calling it bollocks. BUT, and this is the hard part, once you have done that you can’t just dismiss everything out of hand. I also avoid Ms Magazine kind of stuff because it’s so incredibly aggrivating, some people in that demographic are just as you describe.
But please keep in mind that just because it’s bollocks doesn’t mean it’s worthless. If you disagree, don’t just shut it out. Explain why (no, not to the Ms boards, just to yourself) or at least think critically about it. Begin with the premise that the people who say things you think are outrageous are not saying it because they are evil or stupid or mean. They have reasons to think the way they do. Please try to meet them on that level.
Example: how many of us know what MacKinnon meant when she said sex = rape? If you read where she originally said it, you may be able to still disagree, but understand why she said it, and thus get new insights into heterosexual sex. I think that’s all she wants from us. A big part of what radical people do is say things that challenge us to think critically, they don’t expect us to swallow it whole.
One theory that I subscribe to is that the best way to learn something is to engage with it, interrogate your assumptions, and don’t be afraid of disagreeing. I don’t fully agree with any feminist organization (or even any feminist writer) but I agree with many things that many say, and I have learned quite a lot from the places that I disagree.
I’d really like to recommend some feminist organizations like you described, but I don’t think I can, because you seem to have your mind made up already about what Your kind of feminism is, and if something isn’t that, then it’s not worth your time. Why not explore why feminist groups (not NOW, not Ms Magazine etc) dismiss men’s rights groups as hateful? Why not read about why there isn’t an “organized” group of feminists who believe the way you do? Why not find out why they all seem to think America is run by a patriarchy?
One answer is that once you “organize” with someone you are obliged to agree with them 100% (as evidenced by this thread, among others, where all “feminists” are painted with the same brush).
Another important point, as I mentioned above, is that feminism is about women. It’s natural that when men are mentioned, it’s often negative. (Although not always by any means. Authors such as bell hooks have often said that Gender is not a Women’s issue: it has to do with the way gender is constructed. Patriarchy oppresses men too, by obliging them to fulfil unrealistic views of masculinity, just as women are obliged to fulfil unrealistic views of femininity. My own view is that oppression is something that everyone should struggle against, even those who benefit from it. No one wants a society where men beat up their partners (sorry for this reluctantly continued, painful example), neither men nor women, so can’t we work together at it?)
I read a lot of books by feminists who have expressed just the frustrations that you have. I know you don’t like to hear about the “patriarchy” that governs the U.S., which is fine, but open your mind to it and read some bell hooks. Start with either Feminism is for Everybody, which is kind of academic-y but very relevant to this thread, explaining not Feminism necessarily but why it is for everybody; or Killing Rage, which is about the interaction of race and gender, how everyone experiences oppression differently, and how white men/white women/black men/black women all have much to gain by fighting oppression. Again, instead of getting frustrated and putting the book down, think about what exactly it is that you disagree with her about.
Another hint: try thinking about an issue that interests you and look at feminist takes on it. I am not very familiar with most of the feminists mentioned in this thread, but it seems they are talking mostly about issues relating directly to men vs women. Feminist critiques of subject-specific things are very interesting, and once you’ve got an actual topic to sink your teeth into then you don’t really need to start man-bashing. I got into feminism through third-world studies, which critiques what they call Western feminism from a third-world perspective. Chandra Mohanty is a good one in this field:
I guess what I’m saying is that I agree completely with your claim that mainstream American feminism is highly disagreeable. But what I’m trying to tell you now is that a huge number of feminists agree with us on that point.
Then those feminists are doing a piss poor job of speaking up, cowgirl. I have long run into problems where it seemed that any time I presented a view of equality that didn’t include the premise that women in the U.S. today are oppressed by the patriarchy, I got some kind of backlash. For example, I was assigned by my law and politics professor to write a fifty page paper on feminist legal influence in the U.S., Canada and Europe. I wrote it from a rather objective viewpoint, neither saying that patriarchy existed or didn’t, and comparing the legal systems in a couple of European countries (France and Spain) with those in the U.S. and Canada regarding sexual harassment and pornography. My professor wrote comments throughout my paper that I had not characterized these countries as having a definite patriarchy, and that my grade had been reduced for that. The opinion that there is a present patriarchal rule in these ‘western’ states is just that, an opinion, and yet I was penalized for having not begun the research or the paper under the premise that the existence and rule of the patriarchy is an undisputed fact. This wasn’t a women’s studies course, or a feminist organization, it was a course out of the political science department titled “Law and Politics” and the course description called it a study into the effect of political lobby on legislative processes in western states. So why was I penalized for taking a neutral viewpoint on the existence of patriarchy instead of automatically accepting that as fact?
Well, when I asked the professor about it, because I had felt I wrote the paper in a very objective manner and sufficiently covered the topic assigned to me, I was told that one of the ways the patriarchy seeks to oppress all women is in refusing to acknowledge that it exists. This professor actually told me that those who don’t admit that there is a patriarchal rule, especially in the U.S., were the ones prepetuating it to the detriment of women. Now, I suppose the professor’s attitude would have been fine if that were a feminist philosophy class and I were writing a paper regarding how feminists who have had major impact on the passing of laws were applying their philosophy. I would have had to start with the premise that the patriarchy did exist in order to explain what it was these feminists (Dworkin and MacKinnon were two of them, and I read a significant amount of their work to write the paper) had actually accomplished according to their philosophy. But it wasn’t a class about feminists with a patriarchal oppression philosophy. It was supposed to be an objective look at how political lobby groups affect legislative change.
That seemed like the proper arena to discuss that ‘these feminists over here believe this, and thus seek to make these changes’ while ‘these people over here believe this, and thus do not think these changes are necessary’ type objective analysis. Instead my neutral standpoint was characterized as blatantly anti-feminist and borderline misogynist by a professor who told me that since my premise didn’t include the existence of the patriarchy, I was naturally either a tool of it, or perpetrator of it.
And that’s what passed in an objective class. Critical analysis not allowed. So my opinion that there is enough of a movement in feminism to quash any objective criticism of any feminists to be quite siginificant grew. At that point, it wasn’t the CWO or NOW or Ms. Magazine in their own space telling me I couldn’t analyze the motives of feminists who sought to change laws from a neutral point of view (i.e. not automatically accepting the premise of patriarchy), it was in a course regarding the effect of political lobby on law. Seemed to me like that was somewhere such analysis should be happening, and where the differing sides should all be considered.
Professor ended up not giving me the original D grade when I mentioned writing a letter to the editor of the studen run newspaper regarding the issue. I got a C+ as my reward for not taking my issue with the professor’s bias any further.
That sucks, catsix. That woman didn’t have any more claim to “objectivity” than you did.
If I may play the feminist devil’s advocate for a moment:
It seems like she thought that your failure to identify “the patriarchy” meant that you have been duped by it. This line of reasoning is in the same camp as “neutrality = complicity” - as in, if you don’t directly challenge something that is bad, then you are complicit in it. Of course, it’s also in the same camp as “Well, you couldn’t possibly understand how much fun Nascar racing/basket weaving/winter camping is, as you haven’t tried it !”
This is a whole big field of study. The late lamented Edward Said argued in Orientalism that true “neutrality” in writing is impossible, that you can’t remove the writer, with all his/her history and points of view, from the writing.
But agreed, unless this is an explicit subject of debate, it should not be the basis for marks ! There is no agreed-upon consensus on how/whether to view “the patriarchy” and anyone who tells you you’re anti-feminist because you’ve taken the “wrong” stance is being divisive and exclusive. For me feminism is about inclusion and critical examination of all reasonable points of view.
Let me reiterate my point: No one, not me, nor Dworkin, nor my beloved bell hooks, nor your law professor, holds the standard of what Feminism is ! You can think feminists that you meet are full of shit, and still be a feminist, if you want ! Feminism will only be better off for it !
You have to apply the same standard to all sides of a debate, Mal. You’re not doing that. Plain and simple. Andy’s repeatedly left out qualifications for his bilious statements about feminism. That’s all there is to it.
Your own quote of Andy:
Andy has repeatedly justified his hatred of feminism by claiming that it’s anti-male. What he hasn’t provided is sources.
Your ‘not picking up on it’ was extraordinarily conveniant----for Andy.
Uh, yeah. **Answer this. Where, exactly, did I deny such a thing existe? ** Relevance, definitely. But denying its existance? **He’s lying, flat out,and you never called him on it. **
I did identify the patriarchy so far as that the feminists who had been the ones instrumental in the legal changes (MacKinnon and Dworkin) regarding pornography and sexual harassment viewed it. I stated, with cites, their stance on the patriarchy. The only thing I didn’t do was claim those views as my own.
I presented both views. That, apparently, was my mistake.
I am glad to see this, and do not mind at all discussing or debating with you for that reason.
The major problem I had with that professor wasn’t that the professor was feminist and obviously believed that the patriarchy is an oppressive ruling class of men at this point in time. It was that in a supposedly objective class I was penalized for not agreeing with that opinion. It was that the professor let that philosophical belief become a grading criterion, and that there was a definite attempt to silence objective discussion of it. It was that implication that if I didn’t go public with the fact that agreement with the professor’s political ideology was a requirement for an A in the course, I’d be rewarded for my silence with a ‘respectable’ C grade, and the reading-between-the-lines of ‘This course might not go very well for you if you start publicly criticizing my grading criteria.’
If it was a mere disagreement, I would have been fine with it. Had I been able to discuss the grade I got and been given some fair reason why my paper was not good, I could live with that. What I could not stomach then, and will never stomach, was the attitude that the professor was in a position of authority, and that authority was being used to say ‘Agree with me or I will silence you.’
Perhaps I should have taken the high road and said more then about the bias of the professor, but I chickenshitted to avoid an F on my transcript.
Originally posted by Satisfying Andy Licious
You say that we shouldn’t lump all feminists in to the same batch – even though you are suspiciously silent when feminists are lumping all men together, as Brownmiller does. Let me be clear that I am citing and condemning those feminists who are anti-male. If it happens that an overwhelming number of feminist leaders hold anti-male views, well, that’s something the feminists themselves should be looking into. When we discuss anti-Semitism, we do not have to go through this bullshit tactic you are using. We do not have to wrangle about not all gentiles being anti-Semitic, just the extremists.
He doesn’t with that posting, but he certainly DOES do so with his “feminists desire a society in which men are not a part” (paraphrased) post.
And I believe that it was THAT quote and a few others like it for which margin is requesting proof (cites). To her credit, andy has NOT come in and explained THAT, and other posts like that one, nor apologized for them or recanted them.
Come on (nice smile, requesting sweetly :)), give margin a break, let her get her “SDMB” legs.
The problem with that is, that quoting/citing those things are NOT proof of what margin was asking him to provide cites for.
She was asking him to provide a cite for the fact that, as he quoted “feminists desire a society in which men are absent (paraphrased)”.
His quoting known feminist weirdos, and NOW policies does NOT prove that feminists desire this. Only that certain members of the movement do.
And that has been her point/request for cites (as I understand her to be saying, because I’ve been wanting him to prove the same thing).
Again, this isn’t that hard, maybe margin isn’t clarifying her request in the exact way you and andy would want it worded, but really, what he’s doing is akin to saying “Well, the Black Panther’s (and other radical fringe groups of the same ilk) Policy states this, therefore black people want domination over whites etc”.
He has not yet provided a single cite that shows that FEMINISTS believe a certain way. Merely a few that show what SOME feminists believe.
I don’t know what she’s going to say, but what I’M going to say to that is “you’re wrong about feminism because that’s what it says in the dictionary”.
And that is:
fem·i·nism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fm-nzm)
n.
1.) Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
2.) The movement organized around this belief.
You asked for proof that feminists other than the ones who are so markedly in the spotlight exist.
Look around you. Almost every woman you meet, whether she defines herself as such or not, IS by definition (the dictionary and commonly accepted definition) a FEMINIST. You get waited on in a restaurant? The waitresses are feminists. You can betcher butt that they expect to get the same treatment and pay as their male counterparts.
You work somewhere? I bet all of your female counterparts expect the same.
You check out books in a library? The female librarians expect to get the same pay and treatment as the male librarians. And so on.
You asked where the “nice” feminists who could restore your “trust” were (paraphrased). They’re all around you.
That a particular group has taken and twisted it’s meaning doesn’t change the quieter beliefs of the other millions of us.
You’re confusing LOUDNESS, PUBCLICITY, and NOTORIETY for majority. You’re seeing that those that are on display as claiming that they speak for all of us are either published, or perhaps a leader in some part of the movement or another.
Doesn’t mean a thing, other than that THOSE particular women are a bit “teched”.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by catsix *
**Then those feminists are doing a piss poor job of speaking up, cowgirl.
[quote]
Several of us are “speaking up” NOW catsix.
She sounds like an extroaordinarily sucky professor, to be pushing her personal beliefs in a class.
But why add her example to the “See? feminists hate all men” attitude? Why not simply chock it up to “yup another nutso”???
Well, again, you are hearing SEVERAL viewpoints here in this forum that are telling you “no, this is NOT what all feminists believe”.
Sucky professor. Again, STILL not “proof” or a cite about how “feminists” are thus and so.
You’ve got several of us on here telling you “well, We’re feminists, WE don’t believe that way”. Why not add us to your beliefs and start balancing out the bitterness?
The largest feminist activist group in the United States certainly doesn’t fit that definition. There is a difference between the literal denotation of a word, and its working connotation.
I expect equality, and I am no feminist. Please do not slap that label on me and in doing so associate me with the negativity that comes out of large, mainstream feminist lobby groups like NOW.
What gave you the right to tell people whether they’re a feminist or not? If they reject that label because of the things carried out in the name of feminism, who the fuck are you to tell them they’re wrong because the ‘dictonary says something else’?
I see lots of people. Not so many who are feminists. Of those that are, the overwhleming majority have been adding to my negative opinion.
Do you have a cite for the fact that there are ‘quiter millions’ of you? I know it sounds snarky, but can you prove they exist? I can definitely prove NOW exists, and what its political aims are, and see how many members it’s got. Am I just supposed to take your word for it that there are ‘quieter millions’? If they exist, why the hell aren’t they speaking up?
When their membership rolls are the largest, their books are the most-selling, and their material is taught in the most courses, you’re damn right I’m claiming they are ‘leading feminists’.
Because that professor tried to silence me for disagreement. Inside and outside of class.
And they have yet to show me a feminist organization, at all, that doesn’t discriminate against men.
Well, for one this is a tiny number compared to the numbers of feminists who did believe that hating men or discriminating against them wasn’t a problem, and for another, I’m not entirely convinced that some of the people in this thread don’t actually harbor anti-male viewpoints.
CanvasShoes said:
I don’t know what she’s going to say, but what I’M going to say to that is “you’re wrong about feminism because that’s what it says in the dictionary”.
And that is:
fem·i·nism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fm-nzm)
n.
1.) Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
2.) The movement organized around this belief.
You’re wrong. You cannot possibly know what all of the several million feminists in the US think, or if they do, or do not “fit that definition”.
I am speaking purely of women that meet the DICTIONARY definition of the term. You seem to keep missing the point that it does NOT matter that a group, or groups have taken the term and twisted it. The ORIGINAL definition still fits most modern women in this country.
Technically, the largest active group of feminists are NOT those in NOW, or Ms. Mag (I didn’t even know that Mag was still around). But in your every day "woman on the street.
quote:
Look around you. Almost every woman you meet, whether she defines herself as such or not, IS by definition (the dictionary and commonly accepted definition) a FEMINIST.
[quote]
I expect equality, and I am no feminist. Please do not slap that label on me and in doing so associate me with the negativity that comes out of large, mainstream feminist lobby groups like NOW.
[quote]
I didn’t slap any label on you. Please see ABOVE where I cut and pasted from Dictionary.com. If that is what you believe, you are. TECHNICALLY a feminist. Or would you prefer to go back to the days of “don’t worry your pretty little head about it”? Or, “why are you out here? Where is your husband, how come he doesn’t take care of you” (a question I was actually ASKED, while on the job in a male dominated field).
Again, since you do not know every member of the so-called “large mainstream (??? says who?) feminist lobby groups”, you do not know that the outspoken and publicized weirdos do in fact speak for them.
quote:
You get waited on in a restaurant? The waitresses are feminists. You can betcher butt that they expect to get the same treatment and pay as their male counterparts.
You work somewhere? I bet all of your female counterparts expect the same.
I’m not calling anyone anything. Again, I’m speaking TECHNICALLY. Unless these women would happily agree to take less pay, and have fewer/lesser rights than their male counterparts, TECHNICALLY by DEFINITION they ARE feminists.
Just because some fringe crazies have said that their agenda is different does NOT make “normal” feminists any less of a feminist.
quote:
You asked where the “nice” feminists who could restore your “trust” were (paraphrased). They’re all around you.
Oh, reeeeaaaally? (perplexed, not sarcastic). So, let’s say you personally know, enough to speak with and know of their lives and lifestyles, about a hundred women. Of those women, do you know any that would agree to be treated by a different standard than their male counterparts?
No? Okay then. By the accepted and technical definition of the word, those women ARE feminists. That they don’t fit the CRAZIES’ definition does NOT make them less so.
quote:
That a particular group has taken and twisted it’s meaning doesn’t change the quieter beliefs of the other millions of us.
Sure, all you have to do is look at the US Census information. The women that are working in the same jobs as men and getting the same pay and the same treatment.
There are millions of women in this country. Do you know of, or have you seen ANY on the census information who would willingly accept being paid less for the same job, or who would accept getting lesser treatment under the law?
quote:
You’re confusing LOUDNESS, PUBCLICITY, and NOTORIETY for majority. You’re seeing that those that are on display as claiming that they speak for all of us are either published, or perhaps a leader in some part of the movement or another.
Again, do you know each and every one of the members of these groups, on a speaking basis to know that each and every one of them does in fact agree with their so-called leaders?
I’m an instructor at a college, in a fitness capacity. The fitness profession is a pretty darn big one, our “leaders” range from Bill Phillips to Jack LaLanne to Dr. Atkins to Dr. PHIL for crying out loud.
Does this mean that the opinion of those people speak for all of us who are fitness professionals?
Hell no. Anymore than the craziness of some of the “leaders” of NOW speak for every single member.
quote:
But why add her example to the “See? feminists hate all men” attitude? Why not simply chock it up to “yup another nutso”???
I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. This WAS a class in an American University wasn’t it? You’re telling me that one assignment made you get a “D” unless you were willing to “sell out” which you said you “had” to do rather than flunk? Based on your description of the situation, she’s a bitch and a bad instructor. Things she could be withOUT benefit of being a feminist.
You could have done things the “American” way, fought your rights all the way to the dean.
I also don’t mean to be “snarky” but since I am also an instructor at a university, I know that it takes more than one assignment to cause you to flunk a class. If you had a problem with this teacher, you could have dropped her class, or simply “coasted” and gotten a decent grade simply by giving her what she wanted to hear.
If she was that rabid, you must have known her attitudes well before an assignment that was close to the end of the semester and liable to affect your final grade. If one assignment was enough to put your final grade into the D category, she must have had it in for you all semester. You would have had more luck to have fought her from the get go, or have dropped her class.
quote:
Well, again, you are hearing SEVERAL viewpoints here in this forum that are telling you “no, this is NOT what all feminists believe”.
This is what I’m trying to tell you, that most feminsts aren’t IN some organization, they’re just ordinary women, working and living, like the rest of the humans.
quote:
You’ve got several of us on here telling you “well, We’re feminists, WE don’t believe that way”. Why not add us to your beliefs and start balancing out the bitterness?
Well sweetie (said in an honestly kind way, NOT a condescending one). If you want to believe that I don’t harbor anti-male view, I suggest you wander over to IMHO, and see some of my posts about boyfriends and sex etc.
If I remember right, a few of my “fellow” feminst posters here have also posted some hot “pro male” things over there.
Honestly, it sounds to me as if you’re fairly young, and have been burned by some rather mean and nasty man haters. TRUST me, those types have been around for centuries, feminism or no feminism.
Nasty and means types of both sexes exist. Big groups of mean and nasty men exist too. You just gotta ignore the mean and nasties.
Except most of those posts were in this thread, waiting for Andy to put up or shut up, and for you to notice Andy’s straw women and ad hominem attacks. /sarcasm. Interesting that that line of Canvas Shoes is the only one you cite. Did you even read the rest, or did you just pick out the only one you could think of something to say about?
Canvas Shoes, you’re more or less correct. Andy’s big defense is that he means only extremist feminists, but he’s repeatedly referred to ‘feminists’ without qualification. I guess that he, like catsix, must do an awful lot of travelling in order to have met all those feminists. Furthermore, he undermines his claims that he’s referring only to extremists with quotes like this:
And here it is again, because Mal seems so determined to ignore it:
And of course, when Mal is talking to me about ad hominem insults, he ignores the ones that Andy has been lobbing at women who dare to disagree with His Perfectfullness.
This was his very next post:
Feminist fiction has what to do with feminist aims? As it appears from his feminist fiction thread, he hasn’t even read the books he bashes, and people who have read them have been easily refuting his claims about them. That’s the thread, by the way, in which he claimed I denied that such a thing existed. He hasn’t provided a quote for that, either, and it ought to be really, really simple. The problem is, there’s no such quote, and he knows it. There’s also a different standard in Cafe Society, and he knows he can’t meet it with his huge leaps to a conclusion. So he vanished.
This is the closest he’s come to a cite: more hysterical ranting and paranoia, from page two:
The part I bolded shows Andy actually putting words in unnamed peoples’ mouths, and seeing meanings that require huge jumps to conclusions.
And, finally, Andy’s attitude toward cites, because he’s perfect.
Andy doesn’t think he has to provide a cite. My, my, my. It’s common knowledge, he says. If you don’t see it, you’ve got your head up your ass. Is that like the way he knows better than me what happened at my job?
Andy can see across the Internet and Malacandra doesn’t have a problem with that.
Yup, that Andy. In a way, he really is the perfect person to talk to----or, actually, be talked at by----about feminazism, so to speak, because he really believes in it, and if you ever find another guy who also believes in it, you can pretty much expect them to act and think about women the way Andy does. I don’t believe for one minute that Andy shuts off his contempt for women when he moves beyond the borders of feminism. He jumps to too many conclusions with too little evidence except for his own paranoia, and that jumping to conclusion must be very popular with the ladies. After all, what’s better than a guy who gets spitting mad over feminism, repeatedly compares it to Naziism, and then puts words into the mouths of those that defend it? He makes shit up when it suits him, such as his claim in the other thread that I didn’t know what feminist fiction is. Either he’s lying, in that he just makes shit up when he needs to, or he really believes this paranoid stuff, in which case, we’re not really discussing feminism, we’re just discussing what a pathological hatred of feminism reveals about a speaker.
Except most of those posts were in this thread, waiting for Andy to put up or shut up, and for you to notice Andy’s straw women and ad hominem attacks. /sarcasm. Interesting that that line of Canvas Shoes is the only one you cite. Did you even read the rest, or did you just pick out the only one you could think of something to say about?
Canvas Shoes, you’re more or less correct. Andy’s big defense is that he means only extremist feminists, but he’s repeatedly referred to ‘feminists’ without qualification. I guess that he, like catsix, must do an awful lot of travelling in order to have met all those feminists. Furthermore, he undermines his claims that he’s referring only to extremists with quotes like this:
And here it is again, because Mal seems so determined to ignore it:
And of course, when Mal is talking to me about ad hominem insults, he ignores the ones that Andy has been lobbing at women who dare to disagree with His Perfectfullness.
This was his very next post:
Feminist fiction has what to do with feminist aims? As it appears from his feminist fiction thread, he hasn’t even read the books he bashes, and people who have read them have been easily refuting his claims about them. That’s the thread, by the way, in which he claimed I denied that such a thing existed. He hasn’t provided a quote for that, either, and it ought to be really, really simple. The problem is, there’s no such quote, and he knows it. There’s also a different standard in Cafe Society, and he knows he can’t meet it with his huge leaps to a conclusion. So he vanished.
This is the closest he’s come to a cite: more hysterical ranting and paranoia, from page two:
The part I bolded shows Andy actually putting words in unnamed peoples’ mouths, and seeing meanings that require huge jumps to conclusions.
And, finally, Andy’s attitude toward cites, because he’s perfect.
Andy doesn’t think he has to provide a cite. My, my, my. It’s common knowledge, he says. If you don’t see it, you’ve got your head up your ass. Is that like the way he knows better than me what happened at my job?
Andy can see across the Internet and Malacandra doesn’t have a problem with that.
Yup, that Andy. In a way, he really is the perfect person to talk to----or, actually, be talked at by----about feminazism, so to speak, because he really believes in it, and if you ever find another guy who also believes in it, you can pretty much expect them to act and think about women the way Andy does. I don’t believe for one minute that Andy shuts off his contempt for women when he moves beyond the borders of feminism. He jumps to too many conclusions with too little evidence except for his own paranoia, and that jumping to conclusion must be very popular with the ladies. After all, what’s better than a guy who gets spitting mad over feminism, repeatedly compares it to Naziism, and then puts words into the mouths of those that defend it? He makes shit up when it suits him, such as his claim in the other thread that I didn’t know what feminist fiction is. Either he’s lying, in that he just makes shit up when he needs to, or he really believes this paranoid stuff, in which case, we’re not really discussing feminism, we’re just discussing what a pathological hatred of feminism reveals about a speaker.
