Schadrach said:
Hmm, a quick Googling turns up something a bit unpleasant about Valenti (specifically an article in which it sounds an awful lot like she wants the burden of proof in rape cases to lie with the accused in an article about Julian Assange (quoted below)), and Hugo is generally ugh (I find it interesting that he's such a popular male feminist though, given that he's a professor who used to sleep with his female students, almost murdered an ex girlfriend, may have fathered a child that he helped the mother pretend was her other boyfriend's because she wanted to marry the stable one with the good job, acts an awful lot like a recovering addict using "feminism" as a movement as his sponsor, pretends that all men everywhere are exactly like him and all the dirtbag things he's done before, and tends to take the view that women have no agency at all since they seem never to be responsible for their own actions). NSWATM is usually pretty reasonable, though they occasionally have their off days (actually been reading it since it's launch though I despise the new format since they've moved to Good Men Project). Clarrise isn't too bad either. Haven't read any Rosenberg. Feministing is a bit hit and miss. At least you didn't use Pandagon, Shakesville, or RadicalHub as your examples.
I'll agree that Schwyze is problematic as an individual, and the stuff you mention is actually why I'm hesitant to personally get more involved in feminist stuff than what I already do - donating money, arguing about it with guys who don't get it, etc - because I've done some pretty problematic fucking things in the past and don't want to be like you say, the recovering addict using feminism as a sponsor. But a lot of what he's written speaks to me, and I think that it is important to have male voices to educate other men.
I haven't read Valenti's response to the Assange case, but you can't tell me that it's not troubling to have so many people immediately defend the dude because they like his political beliefs. It's the same kind of thing that pisses me off when an athlete is accused of rape/sexual assault and immediately everyone launches to defend them because they're fans of his team.
Rosenberg writes for ThinkProgress, if you have any progressive views whatsoever I recommend checking her out. And Watson is I think the single most prominent feminist atheist/skeptic, so if that's something that's important to you then she might be worth looking into.
Feminism is not a monolith has two effects. One, it allows a No True Scotsman argument while pretending that's not what is being done. Imagine I claimed "Republicans (to pick a group I gathered you don't like given you've accused me of being right wing[personally, I'm registered independent in large part because I can't figure out why one's positions on freedom of speech, abortion, and gun control should in any way be remotely related -- as an aside I <3 ACLU, pro-choice, and pro-gun]) are not a monolith", therefore you can't take any statement from or about any of them as even being an example of things they say, even when that statement is fueld by their Republican-hood. Or Democrats, or Neonazis, or MRAs. In fact I'm pretty sure I can argue that since "Neonazis are not a monolith", that it's impossible to demonstrate that Neonazis are racist scum because some other unnamed and unknowable Neonazi "isn't like that."
On the converse, since FINAM means that almost no beliefs are actually feminist ones, thus it sets the bar really really low to count as a feminist. In fact, if the bar is "believes men and women should have equal rights and responsibilities wherever possible, and equivalent ones when equal ones are literally impossible", then *I* count as a feminist. In fact, almost everyone you meet is, even if a lot of them wouldn't use that label because of all the other things that seem to get attached to it.
Anders Breivik seems to be a one off case, I can't point to dozens of examples of people like him. I *can* point to dozens of examples of people identifying as feminist saying terrible, terrible things, often in books used in the academic study of feminism afterward, and not as examples of one-off nutjobs (influential feminists from the 70s tend to fill this hole readily, for example).
Well, in all fairness, Second Wave feminism, Dworkin et al, they were active in a very different time than this one. That was the rise of radical feminism, and a lot of Third/Fourth-wave feminists don't hold to what they believe. I mean, I see a lot of pro-sex and even pro-porn (at least pro-not-exploitative-porn) feminism these days. Dworkin would have had a heart attack.
But I don't agree with Dworkin's writings. I don't agree with absolutely everything Valenti writes, though I admire her intellect and think she's a great modern voice for young people dipping their toes into the feminist sea. Even now you had the RadFem conference where a bunch of other feminists attacked the organizers for refusing to admit MtF transwomen on the basis that they weren't biologically women. There are tons of splinter groups and ideologies, and to conflate the RadFems of the world with the NSWATM writers or Clarisse Thorn is just as intellectually dishonest as if I were to accuse a libertarian of being a member of the Moral Majority just because they both vote republican.
And yes, that is the definition of a feminist. What you quoted just there. Congratulations, you count as a feminist
It may surprise you, but the end goal of feminism actually IS equality for men and women. But as women are still the disadvantaged and marginalized sex, that involves dismantling a lot of our social constructs, even - or rather, especially the ones we don't think about.
Ah, yes, the old "anything that screws men specifically is really about women" argument. Got a version of it for why men commit suicide at a dramatically higher rate than women, but we still focus suicide prevention selectively at women?
That was never my argument. My argument is that it doesn't exist in a vacuum, and dismantling the sexist constructs of society in that case will help both men and women.
I haven't looked at suicide statistics in a while, so this is just me talking off the top of my head, but don't women ATTEMPT more often, whereas men succeed more often? (IIRC, because it's methods - women are more likely to try pill ODs and wrist cutting whereas men are more likely to hang themselves and use guns). But again, this is a double edged sword - in our society, women are more emotional and weepy and need coddling because they're weaker, whereas men are big and strong and deal with their problems on their own.
Ergo, suicide programs directed at women (because of sexist assumptions) instead of men (because of sexist assumptions) that end up harming men.
Or, how about that hubbub over the Scholastic "How to Survive..." books? Boys got all the cool stuff like "How to survive an alligator attack," whereas girls got "how to survive a BFF fight" or "how to survive a party you don't like." Again, playing into stereotypes both ways; the boys get adventure, the girls get social stuff... but when you think about it, the girls' book is teaching the kids how to deal with situations that might actually come up in everyday life. The boys don't get that.
Sexist stereotypes on the part of our culture (tend to) hurt women more than men, but they hurt men too. But on the other hand, it's not good to just point at "HEY LOOK MEN BEING HURT" without thinking where those assumptions are coming from and recognizing that they STILL stem from sexist assumptions.
Care to provide some evidence? I'm actually interested, because it always seems like underpants gnome logic to me:
1. Someone tells a joke that references rape in any fashion/makes somthing that loosely implies rape.
2. ???
3. Rapists feel better about being rapists, so more actual rape happens.
I can't come up with an example that doesn't also require nearly the entire game industry and most of the movie and TV industries to be promoting a "murder culture" wherein murder is trivialized and normalized and actual murders should be skyrocketing for the past few decades. But that doesn't match reality at all.
Unfortunately, I cannot, as all my evidence is anecdotal and relies on things I have said and done in the past as a man who was unaware of my own privilege and how my actions affected the women around me. I can say that knowing what I know now, so much of it was a product of rape culture that it's staggering and kind of sickening.
So if I seem overly aggressive about this whole thing, that's why. Because in all these discussions I see guys who remind me of myself five years ago. And I know that you're basically all good people who certainly have no intentions of ever hurting the women in your life, like I was.
But with the blinders on, it might just happen. So I'm just trying to help all of you take those goddamn blinders OFF for once.
(Also, murder victims are not blamed for the murder or doubted in the way that rape victims are. Which is arguably the single most prevalent form of rape culture; the doubting/blaming of victims)
I've seen studies that say that less than 10% of rapists ever see prison, whether it's because their crimes are never reported or there's no evidence because victims are frequently doubted.
Are you really okay with that? That doesn't make your blood boil?
