Malacandra, Andy’s posts contained plenty of straw women and ad hominem attacks. You appear to be condemning only me.
Someone else said it far better than I did. Is it fair to use extremists—and from thirty years ago, no less----to tar a whole movement? As they said, labelling the Civil Rights Movement as containing nothing but people on the order of Eldredge Cleaver, Leroy Jones, and so on would be unfair and inaccurate. Andy would have you believe that feminists conspire to eradicate mens’ rights, and that they have made great headway in this struggle. The quotes he’s come up with are thirty years out of date. The rest has been his interpretation of what he says that they said. For some reason, I doubt he’s being exactly accurate.
Finally, the word ‘feminazi’ itself would appear to invoke Godwin’s Law, as it’s being used outside of a relevant historical context, and in fact is being used in conjunction with frankly hysterical attacks against straw women.
I’ve asked repeatedly for a cite. He hasn’t provided one to prove that what he says feminists want are in fact common to the movement. Instead, he avoids the questions, lobs insults----the word ‘nagging’ harkens back to a Fifties sitcom----and doesn’t provide one.
Better. However, the whole point of the thread was to establish what the term “feminazi” meant, so we can’t very well drag in Godwin just because someone answers the question. Further, if the views of these people whom you call “extremists from thirty years ago” are still influential today - to the extent of being widely read in women’s studies college courses and considered central to the history of feminism - then it’s relevant to call attention to them; more so than if they were widely acknowledged as wackos and utterly discredited.
SAL has said that his quarrel is with feminists who man-bash, and yet you say:
extending the focus of what he says not only to all feminists but to all females. As he says,alleging that men who criticize any feminists criticize all women is a tired tactic for silencing the opposition.
Oh, and in Brownmiller’s quote, which I’ve just checked elsewhere in a book, Andy’s inaccurate on one point: she italicized the word “all” in “{rape} is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear”. I don’t understand why you are even attempting to excuse her.
I asked all the way on page one to define what Rush meant by “feminazi” and all I got was “Isn’t it absolutely clear?” After a few pages of SALly’s mouth-frothing the message I got was indeed loud and clear. It is an attempt to hijack the meaning of feminism and to brand all feminist with the extreme fringe.
So I decided to look up some real, verifiable cites and not just the voices in SAL’s head (am I the only one who thinks they sound like Carrie’s mother? They’re all gonna laugh at you! They’re all gonna laugh at you!)
The mother of all radical feminist organizations NOW has this penis removing mission goal
Oooooohhh. Scary! Men, get your steel cups to the ready.
Let’s not forget The Feminist Majority who state in their very name what their plan is:
See? They are out for your 'nads SAL. And do you know they sponser one of those vile, man-crunching feminist campus organizations! Called Campus Feminists. Here’s their nefarious plan:
Let us not forget the eeevilll, abortion-ramming organization Planned Parenthood. Clearly their mission is to jump on unsuspecting women and shove speculums up their nether regions.
Wanna know who calls these organizations “Radical Feminists Organizations”? I mean, besides the lying, junkie Rush Limbaugh? DadsNow does. So does The National Coalition of Free Men.
Uh yeah. Contrast and compare to see who the real extremists are.
quote]Take pity on my poor wits. How does quoting what SAL has to say about the excesses of extremist feminism equate to refuting him?
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He’s not saying just extremist feminists. He’s pretty much including all of them in there.
[quote]
Feminism:
Opposes men’s rights to due process…
The problem remains that his definition of man-bashing appears to be just about anything. Disagree with him, and you’re endorsing male-bashing. Ask for a cite to prove his point, and you’re ‘nagging’ in addition to whatever else he wants to work in there. No, I’m not accepting anecdote as anything but anecdote. Andy seems to think it’s more. Bricker was kind enough to show me the importance of cites, and I’m not being sarcastic at all. Andy appears to be confusing his opinion as fact when he states in those bullet comments what feminism’s goals are. Feminism, mind you, not just the college version.
I’m attempting to excuse Brownmiller, as you say, because she was drawing a comparison between lynching, and racial politics, and sexual politics. SAL read the book and called it man-bashing. The fact that it was a devastating study of rape does not appear to have registered on him at all. That’s rather disturbing. There is a way to balance concern for men with concern for women. That does not appear to be SAL’s concern at all.
Point taken. But you would do well to criticize him when in fact, he is not specific. How do I say this? I find it difficult to believe after his statements about ‘common knowledge’ that it’s just feminists that get him all wound up. Is it really possible to turn that amount of hate off and on?
If there’s male bashing, you would think there would be female bashing. What, exactly, would that be? Would it be accusations that feminists want to strip men of their rights and lives? Contrary to what SAL says, I’ve simply never run across anyone who ever advocated this. Would such feminists be likelier to confide in someone like SAL, or myself, do you think? I’m sure with their hatred of all things male, they’d confide in some guy rather than another woman.
I wouldn’t know what influence womens’ studies courses have. I’ve never been to one. My feminism was formed by years of being told that there was lots of stuff I couldn’t do because I was a girl, or being harassed at work—something that Andy insists I lied about, and that you have not addressed-----and feeling alone and powerless. I did not read about feminism in a book and then re-interpret past events in my life so that I became a victim of men. I’ve had some bad experiences. So has everyone else. But feminism, ironically enough, made me think better of men, and somewhat worse of women. Feminism is a real simple concept, and if the ‘feminazi’ appelation is valid, then there should be a similar one for men who see vicious harridans in women who disagree with them. In order to be valid, the so-called feminazis really should approximate Nazis. Feminists don’t advocate killing men. They’re not in favor of forming concentration camps. ‘Nazi’ has a very specific meaning for those of us whose parents actually fought them, as did my father and uncles.
( I’ve had run-ins with the victim mentality myself, and as a blue-collar woman, I found it rather frightening. My first thought upon being victimized was rage, followed immediately after by de-victimization. I most definitely did not want to be a victim. I don’t want the label, and sympathy that does nothing doesn’t do me any good----but it perpetuates the necessity for the sympathy. That said, people who rail about feminism never address the vast array of opinions that exist within it. Quite frankly, I’ve met people like SAL in real life. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that they are the reason I’m a feminist. )
If you really want a definition of the term 'feminazi' I think it's one of those loaded pejoratives the say more about the speaker than it does about the subject. My father was in fact a WWII vet. I don't fling that word about lightly. Also, I came to feminism the way a drowning person comes to a boat. It sure as hell wasn't men like SAL who helped me out; it was feminists who, by the way, include lots of men. Had I met only guys like SAL, frankly, I would in fact probably have turned into the worst kind of feminist, but even so, the formation of death camps was not a possibility. Any word which contains the word 'Nazi' had better be in reference to something as appalling as that.
No offense, Biggirl, but one of the determining characteristics of the femi-n*zi was that she considers abortion to be the most important issue.
All of the organizations you cited mentioned abortion as a key issue for their agenda, and two of them mentioned it first. So maybe they don’t all consider it to be the most important issue out there, but it seems to be the one specific issue they mention first. So Rush Limbaugh seems to be onto something here.
I can dig up the cite if you like, but I can remember a previous thread in which a feminist Doper (of whose name I am not sure enough to identify) said very specifically that she did not consider anyone who was not pro-abortion to be a feminist. I expect the organizations you mentioned to agree with that.
My own definition of “femin*zi” is easy to obtain. Go to the Ms. messageboards, and read any ten posts at random.
I have. I ran into lots of them. Including a certain web Ms.tress under the employ of Ms. Magazine. Those who opposed the view that men should account for no more than 20% of the population were silenced, our views completey unwelcome by those given the authority by Ms. Magazine to be the official voice of Ms. Magazine at their website.
No, but those I encountered during the time I did post at a feminist website I encountered at least one person who was much interested and inspired by a book she read in which men were reduced, through breeding, to only 20% of the population on a “What if we just refused to have male babies?” kind of thing. I am trying to find the name of that book or the author.
In the interest of not starting a board war, I am probably not allowed to advise you to go there and read the opinions of those feminists for yourself.
Is advocating the ‘breeding out’ of men from the population by refusing to have any male babies considered as apalling as killing those men who currently are alive to achieve the same goal?
“I said men are oppressors.” A flat, blanket stereotype.
You should know this, Zoe, because you were on that thread. I asked you then if you would condemn that type of stereotype. You refused to do so. Instead, your reaction to the poster was:
So, we are still waiting for you to condemn her remarks.
I will ask you again, since you claim to oppose man-bashing: Do you condemn the statement "“I said men are oppressors.”?
Cite, please? Where are the feminist groups that support equal rights for fathers?
BTW, I think that passage of the ERA would have made it easier for men to protect their custody rights.
No one could use such statements to “tar” the movement if feminists had never said them. At least this is the first hint that you understand there is something wrong with their way of thinking, if you sense something wrong about their man-bashing. And if you admit that, then we have no need to differ. I merely want you to acknowledge and condemn anti-male hatred.
Also, these beliefs come from some of the founders and major voices of feminism: Friedan, Steinem, Robin Morgan, Brownmiller, et al., whose ideas are still taught at the university level, available in bookstores, and distributed on the net. You can judge democracy by words that are three-hundred years old. Or do the works of Jefferson and Madison no long have merit because they are old?
So important feminists voices are “out of date” and thus invalid? Sounds like a backlash against feminism.
If these people are “out of date,” why defend them so stridently?
In another post on this thread you said:
And then you quote me saying that feminists did such-and-such.
This is just a dodge to disrupt discussion. I have never made a statement that all feminists do such-and-such. Such statements are reckless and generally unsupportable. I did say that feminists did certain things, and indeed the people who did them were feminists. If I said “whites discriminated against blacks,” would you say the statement is invalid because not all whites discriminated against blacks? If we said that labor unions supported the Democratic candidate, would you then claim that no unions supported the Democrat because you could cite one union that did not?
I doubt I’m getting through to you on this.
I will provide you with a cite on anything you want, if you would settle down, be specific, and stop hollering “cite” as a disruption tactic.
“Just about anything?” Actually, I have given you some very specif and explicit examples of man-bashing, such as Robin Morgan’s statement: "I feel that “man-hating” is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them."
This is the sort of cut-and-dried anti-male hatred that anyone with a conscience could condemn. Instead you defend her – which indicates that you are, at the very least, find nothing objectionable in this hate.
More from Morgan:
“Sexism is NOT the fault of women – kill your fathers, not your mothers.”
“We can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.”
“Don’t accept rides from strange men–and remember that all men are strange as hell.”
Brownmiller’s attempt to compare rape to lynching displays the ugliness and extremism behind her views. Lynching was often done by communities, with the explicit support or involvement of civic leaders and police, for the express purpose of oppressing a minority. Rape is largely done by twisted individual criminals. Brownmiller and her ilk try to portray all men as taking part in rape, like a lynch mob. When a rapist strikes, he does not have the mayor and sheriff standing there cheering him on. Instead, they would stop, prosecute – or maybe execute – the criminal. Brownmiller says that rape “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” She makes all men guilty.
A fellow once told me that during a widely publicized rape trial (I think it was William Kennedy Smith) a woman in his workplace said that they might as well convict him, because some time in their lives all men had committed rape or a similar offense, so they might as well convict him on one charge as on another. That is the legacy of the all-men-are-guilty philosophy.
Brownmiller and the demagogues of the rape “epidemic” never balanced the concerns of men. Instead, they dehumanized men into a faceless conspiracy much as anti-Semites dehumanizing Jews. They then fought to reduce the rights of men to defend themselves against the charge. The result, decades after the rape hysteria they fomented, is that we are seeing more and more innocent men freed from prison after decades of incarceration after DNA proves them innocent.
As for her lynching comparison, the response was to strengthen the law against this crime and enforce it. At no point did the anti-lynching activists ever try to reduce a defendant’s constitutional right to mount a defense. That is a major difference. Brownmillerian feminists advocated conviction based on accusation. Does the name “Gary Dotson” mean anything to you?
First, criticizing exteme feminists is not the same as bashing women.
Second, there are extreme feminists who do want to strip men of their rights – rights to child custody, rights to a fair trial, rights to be free of workplace discrimination. When shown evidence of them, your reaction is “I’ve simply never run across anyone who ever advocated this.” Well, your experience is not the sum and total of existence.
At least you admit that you are uninformed.
Ever hear of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto? Robin Morgan did, and included it in a college anthology.
You’re the reason the rest of us are not.
You know, if you had come up with a really horrid life story of male abuse and assault, I might have cut you some slack. Instead, you’re enraged because you just didn’t get your way all the time. What’s worse is that you admit men helped you, but you still embrace the purveyors of anti-male hatred.
I think it was Mark Twain who said that if you rescue a wounded dog, shelter it, feed it, and nurse it to health, it won’t turn around and bite you. This is the main difference between animals and humans.
Have you ever read the Constitution of the former Soviet Union. It’s a marvelous-sounding document. In there, it says Soviet citizens have a right to free speech and representation and all manner of other freedoms.
And of course, these self-serving statements did not have any bearing on reality.
We are not going by what feminists say they do. We are going by what they actually do. The entire world has watched them go at it for decades. Today, most people would rather not call themselves feminists. That is because of the reputation feminists earned with their actions rather than their advertisements.
Catsix, you had bad experience with one woman, whom you do not name, and about whom we have only your word. Provide documentation, please.
Andy, you’re just being disingenuous. I’ve repeatedly quoted your bullet statements that all begin “Feminism.” Provides cites for that or it’s only your opinion. And it’s a paranoid, hateful opinion at that.
Oh, comparing feminists to the Soviet Union! And then this little phrase. You’ve offered no proof for anything you say, just excessivley heated rantings.
Let’s see, for proof of what feminism is about, who should we listen to? The guy who keeps repeating the same thing—you know, about how feminists want to kill off the male population, stuff like that, and never backs it up because it exists only in his fevered little imagination----or people who actually have experience with and have read a wide vareity of feminists?
So, once again, SAL. CITE for all those bullet comments. Unless you come up with a cite by someone reputable, all you’re ranting about is your own paranoid fantasies. Feminists want to kill off men? Uh, yeah, sweetie. (Now I’m waiting eagerly for SAL to quoting that remark without the question mark, and then adding: "She said so! She finally admitted it! as per his style.)
So once again, SAL. I gotta say, you’re the best example I’ve ever seen of the sort of guy my more well-off friends doesn’t belive exist any more. Your ranting and hatred guarantees the contination of feminism.
Shodan, the reason abortion is a top priority is because all of womens’ rights depend on the ability to control her fertility. And that includes the ability to terminate a pregnancy, when she wants to, and without interference. That right has been under attack for thirty years.
As far as the feminists at Ms. I’ve had my run-ins myself, but then again, what do you think any woman would think if they came to the Straight Dope and found our boy Andy here?
Ah, finally, a definition of sorts. A feminazi is one who considers abortion the most important issue facing women today. Yeup, I’m a Nazi-- a Femi one. I’m one of the twelve. Because even the lying junkie who invented the word has backpedalled from his initial claim to say he was only talking about twelve of us.
**
Yes, I do tend to believe what people do. Like lobby for reproduction rights, educate on domestic violence and offer good affordable medical care. That’s what the feminist organizations I posted about do.
And I see what you are doing. Offering up hyperbole and no facts, ranting on in silly paranoia about how feminist are out to kill you and 80% of men and mostly just yeowling and licking the stump where your penis used to be after the raving loony Soviet Union-type feminist chopped it off with their emasculating calls for equal rights.
Sorry if this looks like another drive-by, but I’m having a hard time Doping just at the moment. At the office I have to at least try to look busy, and at home I’m lucky if Freeserve give me a connection before 10pm UK, and by then SDMB is in Hamster Hell…
Anyway, can I just say that the feminist attitude to abortion rights sounds a lot more inglorious if it is rephrased as:
“Feminists must promote abortion rights, because the inability to get an abortion when she wanted one might interfere with a woman’s ability to get whatever else she wanted.”
If this is a true statement of the position - and if it’s not, please explain what I’ve got wrong - I find it kind of scary to see all the complex moral issues swept aside by a single end-justifies-the-means political axiom.
Biggirl, I’ll see your “castration complex” and raise you a “frantic, unreasoning terror that all men want to rape you, beat you, chain you and condemn you to a life of perpetual subjugation and abuse”. And I don’t think SAL was beefing about calls for equal rights…
Birth control is central to womens’ lives, Macalandra, because without it, she’s subject to unplanned pregnancies, which bring with them not only children, for which she’s responsible, but nine months’ worth of phsycial changes. If she can’t choose when and how often that happens, her other rights are harder to exercise. Your fears about complex moral issues being swept away implies that you feel such women do this lightly.
You might not want to say that to a woman who’s just escaped an abusive relationship. You might not want to say that to a woman who’s just been mugged, raped, or attacked. You might not want to say that a woman who’s lower class, because the chances are she might just face things that you’re not aware of. You might not want to say that to a woman who’s been raped, or to her friends, who know she’s been raped. Somehow, I just can’t imagine such women confiding in someone who defends SAL or dismisses their concerns, thereby making their lives invisible to you.
All of these awful experiences would be easier to deal with were it not for the supposedly nice, normal people one has to deal with later. That doesn’t even include the assholes who claim that such things are more feared than experienced.
It’s easy to bitch when people react to stuff you’ll never face.
Which kind of goes to show that Rush was onto something when he stated that the feminists he characterizes as “femi-nazis” consider abortion to be the most important element in their thinking.
Both you and margin seem to be agreeing that support for abortion is the sine qua non of feminism as you define it.
margin, the point I was making to Biggirl was that caricaturization cuts both ways. Arguing that men who are opposed to the worst excesses of feminism are fuelled by terror and paranoia is no more logical than arguing that feminists themselves are driven by the kind of fears I allude to. Possibly less, as feminists, even not the extremists who advocate refusing to bear male infants, are very vociferous in arguing that both rape and domestic violence are practically universal and tacitly supported by all men. Not so much fuelled by fear and paranoia as doing all they can to fan the flames, I’d say.
Now I have the utmost sympathy for anyone who personally has confronted those same horrors in real and actual form, and I also admire what you said earlier in this thread about refusing to let yourself succumb to the trend of victimhood, but if you were just attempting to shame me into silence, that’s unethical and it ain’t gonna work. I’ll tender sympathy and offer help at the appropriate time and place; the rest of the time, I still maintain I have the right to a point of view.
Also, if you’re going to sniffily argue that SAL’s views are down to a divorce he’s bitter about, you shouldn’t expect too much kid-glove treatment yourself. His personal experiences invalidate his views, but your personal experiences are themselves the validation of your own? Kinda paradoxical. But… I haven’t argued, and am not arguing, that your personal brand of feminism is founded on man-hatred stemming from bad experiences with men, or a man. I am arguing… well, I thought that was clear enough.
As to abortion, I don’t want to spend too much time going over ground that’s already been well-trodden on these boards. I only remarked that if you strip it down to “We must all have the right to abortions when we want, or else we might not get what else we want” it doesn’t sound so pretty. And by that same logic it looks like you could justify any other measures, on any other subject, simply on the grounds that you might otherwise be deprived of some right or other.
The trouble is, I guess, that with any emotive issue, reasoned argument doesn’t get much of a look-in against rhetoric and slogans. It sounds fine and noble to cry “Every child a wanted child; every mother a loving mother”, even if the means proposed to that end don’t imply any guarantee that they’ll actually achieve it. But “If I don’t want it, here and now, I want the right to kill it” wouldn’t sound so good.
I’m not trying to shame you into silence, but I would like to know how much experience you’ve actually had with real life feminists, as opposed to the extremists, and if in fact you’ve read those writers from cover to cover. I have. They simply do not make up the majority of feminsts, and SAL has repeatedly spoken of feminists as desiring the eradication of men, period. If you’re holding those views to be common, then you and I are destined to disagree,
The fact is that rape and domestic violence are rediculously common, and when feminists bring up the subject, there’s tremendous resentment that they’re doing so. These forms of violence exist in just about every culture. I do know that when I’ve brought up the subject with some men, the response I’ve gotten has been skeptical and hostile. Sort of like Andy’s. You may be an educated man, but I don’t live at that level, and I’ve had educated friends tell me that hearing me relate my experiences has been a shocking revelation for them. But other people simply do not want to hear it. I’d characterize Andy as being one of them. His hostility when I related how I’d been fired—and I filed suit with the ERA, which did no good at all----is exactly the attitude that one finds, and which keeps women from reporting such incidents, or worse. I’m sure Andy’s convinced that what I said happened, did not happen. As a matter of fact, he said that my attitude must have been the cause of my firing. No one was punished for that incident except for me. Does that mean it doesn’t exist? Does that mean he’s right? Or does it mean that the bad guys got away with it?
As far as men supporting rape and wife-beating, I draw my own conclusions from behavior. I’m lucky enough to have many male friends, and they’re all nice guys. By nice, I mean, decent to women, and not in that flowers-and-candy kind of way. They’re genuine buddies. But I’ve had discussions of domestic violence with other men, and a very weird discussion takes place.
First, violence against women is discussed. Second, someone will ask why the phrase, ‘violence against women’—a passive construction—is used. Then men bring up that women abuse men, too. More and more numbers get bandied about, till someone mentions that they read a big study which claimed the numbers are fifty/fifty. I always wind up bringing up that the author of the study–Richard Gelles— has complained that the results of his study are being selectively quoted in ways that conceal or twist his findings. Also, that more violence against men—and damage—is done by other men so why is it that supposed mens’ rights advocates only want to blame and discuss women who do it? And what to make of the size differential, and how come women suffer far more serious injuries? And how come these guys never actually do anything but interupt discussions of violence against women? Why aren’t they out there actually *helping * those men who need it? Why aren’t they forming shelters, raising awareness, getting money appropriated and studies funded? They say they’re concerned, right? So where’s the actual evidence that they are? If they were actually doing anything, I wouldn’t be skeptical.
As far as my losing my job, I want to make something clear, too. I have an attitude *because of* that incident. I have an attitude when people like Andy make the ludicrous accusations that he does. Unless he backs them up, frankly, he's got no credibility whatsoever. But the attitude was based on actual experiences and on more conversations than I can count with men like Andy.
Sarcasm is your friend, Malacandra.
Oh, not really. *His * personal experiences lead him to make accusations that feminists—he didn’t qualify that to 'only the extreme ones when he did that bullet list-----want to kill off the male half of the speices. Mine lead me to believe *that men who make such outrageous accusations
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have more issues than National Geographic. You seem to be very sensitive to your friend’s ire. You might want to take a closer look at mine. I’m only being partially sarcastic. If you really do think that Andy’s and my opinions are equally hostile and offensive, I would point out that you are minimizing Andy’s rage, and maximizing my irritation. And I won’t apologize for being irritated, either.
Sorry, but I need to see which quote this is from.
I’m saying it again, too. Feminists—and the Army, really, not exactly a feminist environment—made me believe that I was not a victim, and that nobody was entitled to it. Andy has said explicitly that he doesn’t believe me, and I doubt like hell he believes many women, either. Unfair? He reaped what he sowed. Men like Andy have not done a damned thing for women like me, and I owe him absolutely fucking nothing.
And I don’t think SAL was beefing about calls for equal rights…