If you say so. I think I’m done engaging with you.
Is that you calling me a liar, here in GD? Don’t fret, the moderators are on your side 
See? There’s a mod calling me a liar too.
[My bolding]
But what about all those MRAs? Despising someone doesn’t magically disappear their work. Claiming they do nothing doesn’t create a new reality, except perhaps in the minds of people inclined to swallow stories that support their partisan fantasies.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily a liar, I’m just saying that your story sounds extremely unlikely to me. Maybe you have some proof? Having people tell you directly to your face that they wouldn’t hire you because you were a man, despite being otherwise qualified, sounds like grounds for a lawsuit. Did you file a lawsuit?
Good for them. They could probably go do their good work while being members of a less hateful organization, like the KKK, but I’m not going to make their life choices for them.
P.s., speaking of “people inclined to swallow stories that support their partisan fantasies,” may I suggest Advil for your cognitive dissonance headache?
Really.
You spout extremist crap like this and expect that people here take you seriously?
You’ve lost this one, Bro.
Two comments, one general, one specific.
(1) When you say “feminism has a few blind spots”, with no qualification, you risk serious miscommunication, because of course there is no one singular feminism. When discussing a group as nebulous as “feminists”, it behooves one to try to be as specific as possible.
(2) I think there’s a very interesting debate to be had about stuff like educational achievement. Suppose in the 1960s some feminists in a city in Indiana identified that girls were lagging behind boys in chemistry education, so they set up a scholarship to help pay for college for whatever girl from the local school district did best on the AP chemistry test, or something. Now, in 2015, girls have (again, this is just a hypothetical) caught up and are now generally doing better than boys in chemistry. Does that mean that there’s somehow an onus on whoever runs that scholarship to cancel it, undo it, and now start offering it to boys? Or open it up to both genders? Or is it reasonable to just have a scholarship that specifically benefits girls, even in this day and age?
I think to a certain extent feminism is two things at the same time, which can come into conflict with each other:
(1) A movement that pushes for equal treatment and opportunity between the sexes
(2) A movement that pushes for the advancement of women and agitates for issues important to, and frequently relating to, women
I think as a shorthand most people like to talk about (1), because that’s most obviously “good”, but that doesn’t mean that (2) doesn’t exist as well. For instance, most feminists consider abortion to be a feminist issue, and it’s hard to really fit that into the umbrella of (1). If men could get pregnant, I think most feminists’ position would be “abortion should be legal”, not just “abortion rights should be equal between men and women”.
Now, there can be occasional tensions between (1) and (2), particularly now that (1) has been achieved in so many areas (and arguably surpassed in some, such as college attendance), and there’s certainly no reason that such tensions can’t be discussed. But I think it’s a bit silly to act like somehow it’s a big secret that they CLAIM they’re doing (1) but really they’re doing (2), clearly they hate men and want to keep back boys and don’t really believe in equality and are big hypocrites. Not to say that you specifically were making such a claim, but I believe there’s a bit of that running through this thread.
(And of course, disclaimer, any description of feminism as a whole, like the one I just made when I discussed (1) and (2), is problematic at its core because there is no singular movement and vision and purpose.)
Are you the one who decides?
Extremist crap like calling Anders Breivik a hero? Or crap like the following:
Calling for all-out insurrection, he offered tips on making Molotov cocktails and urged his readers to use them against courthouses and police stations. “There will be some casualties in this war,” he predicted. “Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.”
Hey, you know who else spouts extremist crap about the Men’s Rights Movement? The Southern Poverty Law center, that’s who. They write articles like this, or like this, or like this. Extremist crap, all of it.
I didn’t call you a liar, but the fact that you think that I did points to the most plausible explanation for what happened: they gave you a perfectly reasonable, non-sexist reason for not hiring you, and you misconstrued it (as you have consistently misconstrued nearly everything said to you in this thread) as being about your gender.
Just to help you out, Jack, if someone says, “You’re not the right man for this job,” that doesn’t mean they’re not hiring you because you’re a man.
Yes, and I’ve made that point in previous posts. Just as long as it doesn’t become a force field to deflect all criticism, “well, feminism is so diverse we can’t really attribute any negative qualities to it as a whole.” I gave feminism credit for positive achievements, too; do I have to qualify that statement?
At some point, a movement must have some ideology or consensus that we can discuss.
My first question would be, have the modern-day administrators of the scholarship have even considered changing it? Lots of things are done a certain way just because they always have been. I don’t think it would be out of line to say “hey, maybe this scholarship has achieved its goal”.
Personally, if girls really have caught up and achieved parity (or better) with boys in chemistry, I think the scholarship should change. Maybe that means opening it up to both genders, or finding another group that needs a leg up, like girls in engineering or boys in teaching.
There’s a bit of that running through this thread, but I think it happens on both sides. If you want to criticize feminism you lump all feminists in with the strident, “men are obsolete” crowd, but if you want to defend feminism you lump all its critics into the misogynist, MRA camp. It’s wrong when either side does it.
You said it was ‘a made up story’. That I had made it up. Made up stories are not true. The story, you say, is a lie. I am, you say, a liar. But not ‘necessarily a liar’. A liar who isn’t necessarily a liar… Is that like, for a random example, an idiot who isn’t necessarily an idiot?
Your inexperience of the diversity of humanity, or the existence of lady-bigots, or your inability to imagine that ‘extremist’ feminist narratives of misandry might be internalised by individuals exposed to them, leave you remarkably unqualified to contribute to this debate.
Alas, I did not record the interview. I did, however, initiate an employment tribunal. I believe I’ve mentioned this before, though perhaps not directly in this thread. Their defence was that they hadn’t said what they had said, but rather that they didn’t like my shoes (and had rejected a female candidate whose shoes they also objected to). Then the judge told them not to get caught again (those words, out loud, in a public court…with no public in it). But hey, maybe I’m ‘not necessarily’ ‘making that up’ too?
But you did say only I (and someone else who called me a liar) thought it to be a plausible story. I’ll take due note of your expert guidance on how to call someone a liar in GD in a way that escapes censure.
You’re going to have to help me here. What quasi-logical reasoning did you employ to leap from that fact (about a fact) to ‘the most plausible explanation’ (which is about as far removed from fact as an ignorant bigoted opinion can get)?
So you’re still calling me a liar? Is it true that you’re a mod?
The lead interviewer said outright that they preferred not to employ men, for the reasons given, and stated clearly and unambiguously. That you cannot believe that one woman could be actively misandrist, or that one school could be effectively run by misandrist feminists, says a lot about your blind adherence to an ideology.
Gosh, you’ve wildly misconstrued absolutely everything I’ve said in this thread. Care to try to back up your ludicrous claim - clearly, the first element would require some statistical analysis, but I’d settle for a couple of clear examples of the latter part.
I’d like to help you out, but I fear the task is beyond even me. But as it happens, they didn’t say that. They said no man was the person for the job.
Let me try to help you anyway. Here’s that link again, to the experiences of respected feminist novelist Doris Lessing while visiting schools. Is she a liar too?
Lay off men, Lessing tells feminists
*"I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.
“You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives.”
Lessing said the teacher tried to “catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish”.
She added: "This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing.*
This may surprise you, but we’re allowed to challenge the veracity of poster’s stories. If you believe otherwise, God told me to tell you to give me all your money.
As for the idiot thing, I’ll defer to your experience.
Your experiences don’t seem particularly diverse to me; without exception every feminist you run into does highly improbable but mean and occasionally illegal hings to you. Perhaps you should take your own advice and experience some diversity before contributing to this debate?
I feel like I should throw in another reference to cognitive dissonance here.
Surprise!
Surprise!
I bet if you try really hard you can guess what I think of your new and improved story.
No surprise - though the sticky here had to be drawn to my attention. The partisan moderation, meanwhile, was more disappointing than surprising.
Well I’ve not been here that long, but you have posted a lot recently and you’re not alone. It all adds up.
I challenge the veracity of your story (did I get that right?)
I already did, dear boy, I already did.
Would your posts have survived strict moderation? Hint: no.
I deleted the rest of your post because it had no content other than a few thinly veiled insults and a complaint that the mods aren’t paying enough attention to insults, which seems hypocritical, but you do you.
Saying that “feminism is perniciously poisonous” in the schools is hardly enough evidence to blame something that a school did on feminism or feminists. Not even remotely close enough. In fact, it’s a laughable argument.
Is this account - or school lectures of this type occurring at all - corroborated by anyone else?
Yes, I’m fairly certain that the story did not happen as you relayed it. I could, of course, be wrong - I’m not saying that the situation you described is impossible. But given your track record in this very thread of wildly missing the meaning of pretty unambiguous statements, I don’t regard your as reliable source of information about what other people have said.
Right, see, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You apparently can’t figure out the difference between thinking something didn’t happen because the person telling the story is lying, and thinking something didn’t happen because the person telling the story is mistaken. So, I’m asking myself, what’s more plausible: that you encountered a genuine, open, and unapologetic misogynist who refused to hire you because, and only because, you’re a man. That’s certainly a thing that can happen, but IME it’s not very common. Or, you were refused employment for reasons entirely unrelated to his gender, but you misinterpreted an innocent explanation or remark as saying that they refused to hire you specifically because you’re a man. Given your record of posts here, and in the associated Pit thread, that’s clearly an extremely common occurrence.
So, absent other evidence, I’m leaning towards the second explanation as the most likely.
I didn’t say I couldn’t believe it, I said I didn’t believe it. And I don’t believe it not because of my dedication to feminist ideology, but because I’ve observed how you behave here, and found you to be an unreliable narrator.
They’ve been pointed out to you in real time as you’ve made them throughout this entire thread. Just scroll up and find just about any post in here where someone has quoted something you wrote and responded to it. They’re pretty much all examples of people trying to explain a basic failure in reading comprehension to you.
Seriously, you are wildly bad at debate.
I’m sure that you believe that.
Yeah, this is another good example of how you fail at creating pretty basic logical structures. I said I don’t believe your story because you have demonstrated inability to parse simple statements. You respond by asking if I think some other person entirely is a liar. Doris Lessing has not, to date, given me any particular reason to doubt her honesty or her acuity. Of course, I’m not terribly familiar with her in general, but I’m provisionally willing to accept her version of events, absent additional data. In your case, I have additional data about your ability to accurately understand other people’s statements, which leads to feel pretty comfortable in dismissing your anecdotes.
So in the interest of hiring a woman for the job, they decided to interview a man?
Yeah that strikes me as odd. Why even call a man in for an interview if they have no intention of hiring him?
This is how men learn that they are obsolete. One failed job interview at a time.
Well let’s see. You cut my turning your insult of ‘idiot’ back on your self. You cut my challenging the veracity of your account (which, if it is an insult, is just another tit for tat), and you cut my pointing out that I’d already predicted you’d say what you then said. So there’s no veracity to that account either (but plenty of hypocrisy).
Remind me, was it you who said your ‘side’ might start concerning themselves with facts eventually?
Seriously? You doubt that writers are invited into schools? Have you seen the sun today? You should check it rose, you never know… Meanwhile, that account was given by a respected feminist - even I don’t think they all lie all the time. It was reported in the Grauniad, which is widely derided for its somewhat sloppy proof-reading but generally respected as a source of news. Indeed, if anything it’s the most feminist of British newspapers, so if they’re reporting issues with misguided misandry posing as feminism, maybe there really is a problem.
You chaps must do better than this. Clearly, I’m not going to be converted by your see-no-evil, hear-no-evil blustering - nor is anyone with half a brain going to be impressed by it. Which leaves you preaching to a choir of idiots and ideologues.
Good question. I wasn’t interviewed at the same time as other candidates, and I was called in at short notice for an evidently hastily prepared set-up with no resemblance to a real interview. I’m left to suppose that if they hadn’t even interviewed someone with all the necessary skills and plentiful experience, then their prejudice would have been even more obvious. As it was, the interview gave them plausible deniability…and look, it worked on you too.
Interim Summation: Everything a non-feminist says is a lie, say feminists. Move on, nothing to see here.
Eh? The lecture was by the teacher, not the novelist.
Color me skeptical, but “a person said they saw something outrageous and allegedly widespread, but totally corroborated by anyone else” rings the ol’ alarm bells for BS. If this sort of thing were happening in British schools, surely there’d be thousands of reports of it, no?