Un-PC Men Are Attacked By Bitches for No Reason.

[Searcher08]

Not fair enough actually. Patriarchy hurts men too, only most don't seem to care so much.

For the men out there, I guarantee that whatever woman you may partner with can never, will not ever, fully love you or give herself to you as long as male hegemony exists.

"Male hegemony" is a cloud word. What in particular do you see, hear or feel that lets you know Mmale hegemony" exists?

Some part of her, perhaps small, unconscious, or hidden in a dark corner of her psyche will hold a resentment against you.

How can you speak for another person's internal subjective processes?

She can never fully trust or love you, because you are not her equal in day to day life.

How do you know what another can trust or love?

Believe me, as a female, there is not a day that goes by that I am not reminded of my status,

What is your status? What does a person do that reminds you of it?

and there is not a male, no matter how empathetic or enlightened, who could compensate for this.

Compensate, how? Is part of status your self-perception? If it is , how can you have anyone compensate you for it?

The complete ignorance and insensitivity in some of the postings here truly offends me. For all those who haven't got a clue about feminism or patriarchy, do us all a favor, shut up and listen. There are endless published works about what it's like to be female. One of the first lessons in the study of power is that it is virtually impossible for those who have it to empathize with those who don't.

Who says? That ignores any form of power mobility in organisations, eg promotion. Quite often I have seen people who COULD empathise with others but do not, because they just dont care.

You have demonstrated this. On behalf of this female and all whom you might encounter ... TRY.

Barracuda, marvelous comments.

While we're on the subject, I want say this for the record. I am offended to the core, to the absolute core, that any human on this earth might hold for even a millisecond of time, the idea that my gender, my genitalia renders me somehow how less than, in any way, shape, or form. How dare you, how dare all of you.

How dare *you* care what other people think of you?
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail."

[compared2what?]

Oh my god.

On edit: Dear god, Searcher08. I'll be right back.

[Searcher08]

Oh my god.

On edit: Dear god, Searcher08. I'll be right back.

I'm out for a while, but I'll be back too!

[compared2what?]

It's really almost unbelievable to me that all three women who have spoken on this thread have been met with so much hostility, you'd think that Emily Post had formally opined that contemptuous scorn was the only way a gentleman is permitted to address a lady who tries to tell him what it feels like to be a woman.

I've been up all night again, so I'll have to continue tomorrow.

And I'm so totally looking forward to it, too. Except that, oh my gosh. I don't think I have a thing to wear!

Oh well. I guess I can always fall back on crying behind the door. I read in Allure how that was always a good look for victims.

[Searcher08]

It's really almost unbelievable to me that all three women who have spoken on this thread have been met with so much hostility, you'd think that Emily Post had formally opined that contemptuous scorn was the only way a gentleman is permitted to address a lady who tries to tell him what it feels like to be a woman.

I've been up all night again, so I'll have to continue tomorrow.

And I'm so totally looking forward to it, too. Except that, oh my gosh. I don't think I have a thing to wear!

Oh well. I guess I can always fall back on crying behind the door. I read in Allure how that was always a good look for victims.

What is the hostility, c2w? I asked what (in my world) were searching clarification-based questions on what to me came across as generalisations or mindreading. Clarification to the world of the senses is very important because then it becomes much more real and concrete.
I have no hostility to Project Willow or anyone on this thread.

[compared2what?]

For early risers in search of a surrogate, CLICK TO PLAY.

You never know. You might learn something.

[nathan28]

Oh my god.

On edit: Dear god, Searcher08. I'll be right back.

@compared2what: I can't tell the sentiment behind this. Searcher08's got a point though: there's a lot of mind-reading in Project Willow's post. I find that in my experience in academia, mind-reading, usually via some form of French psychoanalysis and psycholinguistics, was one of the preferred analytical tools of feminists. I can understand that because a lot of Women's Studies departments are the semi-autonomous spawn of English departments and, after all, characters in novels demand we analyze their motivations, but frankly, when you start dealing with real people, it's just more will-to-power, and that has an odd tendency to resolve itself via calls for harsher mandatory minimum punishments that side-step the judiciary and legal precedent, which becomes physical incarceration and financial ruin: oppression indeed.

Which, as you suggested, is the only real victim, the thread about an indigent defendant who, for whatever reason, the journalist in question decided was innocent of the crime of which he was convicted but failed to provide much substantiation.

Which was my problem to begin with. This wasn't a discussion about how deep down inside every man, even those in the hole in a supermax prison, are at a minimum using their foundational psychology to oppress women. Maybe that's even valid from a psychological perspective. But it makes for shitty public policy, and this was about a public policy that affected the poor. And sadly because of the journalist's implicit assumption--something along the lines of crying "rape" in a crowded movie-theater--it became a discussion of a largely hypothetical phenomenon. The most recent and only high-profile example of that actually occurring I can think of was between a bunch of wasted and wealthy frat boys and a stripper, none of whom make for reliable characters. When all along this was really about indigent defendants. Who, I'm told, have it better off than women in positions of wealth and power, and for me to believe otherwise was "patronizing".

false consciousness 300 million, me 0

[barracuda]

Must be a great consolation to a man who has been beaten for year by his wife who has then taken out a restraining order having claimed herself to be a victim and had him thrown out of his home.

Interesting. I'll tell you something, pretty much this exact thing has happened to me personally, and it did not change how I felt one whit about the power disparities between men and women.

As we use different epistemologies, reality versus wishful thinking as I present it, I decline to debate further.

Excellent. You have thusly saved me the minor breeze it would have taken to blow down your house of cards.

[yathrib]

I don't know what to say about this. Is this a reference to the article I posted what done it all? I don't feel like I need to agree with any source I might cite on every point, but if a source opposed human rights, thought racism was good, and advocated a fundy nutball view of gender, etc., I might tend to think that their idea of good and bad might be markedly different from my own. Also, if they tended to say things that, while quite interesting, had no independent verification and were probably therefore quite untrue as well (Alex Jones, I'm looking in your general direction), I would also tend to dismiss them as sources.

You should get together with my bro-in-law. You can whine about PCism and how your churches keep getting "mistaken" for hate groups together.

This was taken from an earlier post of mine, which I believe best indicates where I was coming from with regards to 8bit's posting in another thread, before c2w jumped in, apparently in an agitated state:

The problem as I see it is that once/whenever a (new?) source of info is found it is subjected to a rigourous test of "does it hold EVERYTHING near and dear to a leftist's heart" fully intact, while the person/organization shares some info with us. The standard (arguably) items that come to mind quickly are, in no particular order, imo:

- racism (applied selectively, ie., caucasions must never utter anything that can be remotely considered racist)

- religion (christians are fair game, and Muslims to some extent, but nobody else is)

- abortion rights (must be pro-choice)

- gay rights (must be neutral at the very least)

- human rights (must be pro, unless Israel is the violator in which case an anti position is acceptable)

- environment (must be green-leaning)

- gender equality (as long as their position favours females)

I'm sure there is much more. If any source violates any of the above principles, it would appear that any info they may have, valid or not, gets chucked overboard. The baby goes out with the dirty bathwater. We automatically assign motives to them, right or wrong, because after all, rhetorically speaking, if they get one of these things so wrong, how on earth could they have good intentions about something else so totally unrelated?

This assures their data is never held under a critical light, but is automatically dismissed.

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... highlight=

And so without watering down this thread with some of the issues listed above, I'll keep to the women-as-victims-only issue.

We have seen by the response to 8bit's post, that some folks are ready to pounce on anything that might digress from the leftist principle that women are victims, and that if a woman was a perpetrator, well hell she was probably provoked and had a good reason. There are numerous studies out there, certainly in the US, Canada, and other "western" nations, that prove that females are not only real perpetrators, but that they hold their own in numbers compared to male perpetrators in terms of violence, assault, etc. If I remember correctly, violence within a lesbian relationship exceeds the rates of violence in hetero relationships, but is quickly dismissed for some reason. The discussion is usually turned by a phrase akin to "yeah, but men commit MORE violence",etc., as if that dismisses lesbian-partner violence.

And then we get to the issue of rape. One of the greatest number of victims of rape are pretty much left without a significant voice. Male victims of rape in prison. Apparently, we just don't care about them as a society. After all, they are criminals, and probably deserve it anyways (note sarcasm).

Kanin noted the high incidence of false rape claims. From what I recall reading about some cases in the US, where a woman was found to have made a false rape claim, the worst she might face is a misdemeanour charge. The guy could have been locked up, beaten, even raped, for many long years. She might get 6 months, and often with a recommendation that she get mental help. Hardly fair, really.

Strauss noted the high levels of violence by women. Yet men do not have shelters to go to, or any viable support system, for the most part, unless possibly if they are gay (local gay community resources).

And then there is divorce, and the tried and true tactic of making false accusations against the father, often such as child molestation, etc.

And forget about the media telling you any truth anytime soon. With the propogation of the "rule of thumb", and "more women are assaulted during the Super Bowl" myths, we will not be getting anything substantive to deal with the overall violence problem, from the media.

By the way, the title of this thread is hardly conducive to decent discussion. Perhaps a better one might have been "Why is it PC to paint the woman as victim almost exclusively?"

[bks]

Searcher08 wrote:
Male hegemony" is a cloud word. What in particular do you see, hear or feel that lets you know Mmale hegemony" exists?

Searcher08: I'm hoping you are more open than some of the others here. I assume you believe in gravity? If so, why? You cannot see, feel or touch it. There is no proof, and can be no proof based on your bove requirements, that gravity exists or will continue to exert the influence on objects we believe it does. Yet you believe in it because you can see the EFFECTS of it.

Patriarchy, which is closely related to "male hegemony" is somewhat analogous to gravity. Patriarchy is a theory of explanation for the differential, patterned behavior of males and females in society. It is not an absolute concept like we imagine gravity to be; rather patriarchy enables certain behaviors and constrains others. It is a channeler; it sets gender expectations in a million different ways: differential gender socialization in all its forms (the kinds of games girls play vs. the kind boys play, the kinds of clothing chosen for them, the well-known effects of media imagery and their projection of gendered normalcy, and the differential relationship of self to body that boys and girls develop from all of this.) Patriarchy prefers that women take subordinate roles to men in both the public and private sphere (particularly the private sphere). One tiny example of its influence: study after study has shown that the intelligence of adolescent girls gets 'driven underground' around the time when attention from boys becomes a big factor in their lives (see Carol Gilligan's work on this, for starters)

At bottom, patriarchy is the belief that male dominance is a natural - not merely a contingent - feature of social life. It influence runs through every major cultural institution, most obviously Christianity and marriage. The 'naturalness' of male dominance is the main argument for the rightfulness of male dominance, which is the truly pernicious part of patriarchy. By showing the supposed 'naturalness' of male dominance is itself a social construction, new grounds for criticizing it are opened.

If you want a more nuanced, highly interesting example of the way patriarchy operates, read Donna Haraway's essay Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936. It's an account of the presentation of primates in the Museum of Natural History during that time. It's a complex and controversial argument she makes, and I'm oversimplifying from memory now, but one undeniable aspect of it is that the presentation of the primates in the museum's dioramas was manipulated to show them in human-style nuclear families. This, Haraway argues, helped communicate to the mass of new American immigrants visiting the museum that the middle-class nuclear family, with dad in charge, was a reflection of the natural order of things. Bits and pieces of the essay appear below, in the context of criticism of it:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/466593

http://www.jstor.org/pss/189861

http://books.google.com/books?id=8kyPuU ... t#PPA37,M1

So the next time you hear the term 'male hegemony', you don't have to think 'cloud word'. You can think: 'Patriarchy is the view that male domination of society is both natural and appropriate, and male hegemony is the state of affairs which enables the message to get delivered and reinforced'.

[GM Citizen]

I don't know what to say about this. Is this a reference to the article I posted what done it all? I don't feel like I need to agree with any source I might cite on every point, but if a source opposed human rights, thought racism was good, and advocated a fundy nutball view of gender, etc., I might tend to think that their idea of good and bad might be markedly different from my own. Also, if they tended to say things that, while quite interesting, had no independent verification and were probably therefore quite untrue as well (Alex Jones, I'm looking in your general direction), I would also tend to dismiss them as sources.

I'm not sure if you are directing this at me or not, but having quoted my posting, I must believe that it is.

It is not in reference to the article you posted. It is in reference to a reply in your thread where 8bit said something not-so-PC, and I humorously (I thought) chastised him for not being PC, specifically for not referring to women solely as victims. Then someone else jumped on that, and I felt the change of topic would take away from the OP and suggested another thread for further discussion.

I referenced a previous posting of mine where I indicated that I see some things as pretty much sacred to lefties, one of which is how they perceive women.

You should get together with my bro-in-law. You can whine about PCism and how your churches keep getting "mistaken" for hate groups together.

Pointing out that PCism exists very much in the leftie world, is hardly whining, but hey, it's your right to view it however you please.

As for your brother-in-law, I'll just leave him be to his churches. I have no churches. Last thing I want to do is get in the middle of a dogma fight between religious and feminist fundies.

[Truth4Youth]

Moving right along with my housekeeping, in chronological order.

But it's also true, in the same sense, that lots of rapists claim the sex was consensual and that lots of women who report rape are discredited on the grounds that they're just doing it because they're predatory, dishonest and devious whores.

The only world in which that part of the story speaks for itself so well that no further explanation is necessary is one that holds the proposition that lots of women are predatory, dishonest and devious whores to be true, as supported by so much data that it amounts to common knowledge.

Women have brought that view upon themselves by not standing up to the bullying and bullshit of certain so-called "feminists" (I wouldn't call them that) in a crusade to force all women to accept their belief systems. These feminists would probably get along well with the Reagans- both nearly destroyed the porn industry in the 80s.

T4Y, I didn't respond to this on Yathrib's thread, other than to say that it would be OT to get into it. I did respond to you here, saying that I wasn't sure what you were talking about, but offering a possible interpretation based on what I understand on this subject. And I concluded by asking:

Mistaken as I think it is to oppose pornography in the interest of feminism, though, I don't see the cause-and-effect link between the anti-pornography movement of the '80s and the blanket assertion that women have no one to blame but themselves for being commonly regarded as predatory, dishonest and devious whores.

If you really meant to say that, could you please elaborate?

Since your response was not about gender bias but rather about abuses or their absence in the porn industry, and that's not a topic I have anything further to say about, I have nothing further to say to you. I'd like it if you answered my question. As it is written, your post makes no sense to me. Insofar as it is a statement that makes no sense in the interest of establishing that women have no one but themselves to blame for being commonly regarded as predatory, dishonest and devious whores, I don't agree with it, because life is a lot more complicated than that. I also probably find it offensive and objectionable, but I couldn't say for sure, and even if I could, I wouldn't know how to object to it effectively, because I do not understand what you're saying.

Could you please elaborate?

I think that some feminists feel that they have a mission to make other women believe and live like they do. I object to feminists telling women that are involved in pornography or kinky hijinks (don't worry it's only a Wiki link) that they are not doing what's right for "womankind" for lack of a better term. I think other women should start standing up to such tyrannical bullshit and it bothers me that many women don't.

I was being a bit over-exaggerative when I said that women have brought it upon themselves. I'm sorry if I caused you or anyone else to be offended.

[annie aronburg]

I think that some feminists feel that they have a mission to make other women believe and live like they do. I object to feminists telling women that are involved in pornography or kinky hijinks that they are not doing what's right for "womankind" for lack of a better term.

In Portland, Oregon, feminists have a very strong involvement in the porn and sex industries. I think the same is true for the Bay Area as well.

I think other women should start standing up to such tyrannical bullshit and it bothers me that many women don't.

There's far worse tyrannical bullshit that we're busy standing up to, as well as doing most of the tidying,Truthie, we just ignore those other girls.

I was being a bit over-exaggerative when I said that women have brought it upon themselves. I'm sorry if I caused you or anyone else to be offended.

Better we take you to task for it here, than have you blow your chances with a hot critical theorist in the future.

@@

[compared2what?]

Having reviewed the thread from start to finish several times, I'm reasonably certain that there's no point in my continuing to participate in it. It's also not very enjoyable for me, but that's not a major factor, because neither is it very punishing. From a lifetime average perspective, that puts it in the same class as about 85 percent of all group discussions in which I've been a regular active participant in any environment, whether professional, social, circumstantial or other.

FWIW, I'm not an angry woman because I'm not an angry person. I have a strong and abiding interest in gender bias as a subject that is approximately as emotionally fraught as my strong and abiding interest in soul music of the 1960s -- ie, it's a very meaningful subject to me, that falls within the parameters of larger subject of strong and abiding interest to me. It's neither a cause I feel compelled to fight for or a need I feel I must address, at every moment of the night and day, or in fact any moment of the night and day. It's a temperamental constant, whether active or passive, it doesn't require validation, and I don't judge other people or myself according to how closely our views on it are aligned.

We all live in a culturally diverse world, and I'm neither interested in nor capable of doing much to change that. As a matter of both principle and temperament, I'd like to see more tolerance of cultural diversity and less cultural divisiveness. To me, ignorance, ideological inflexibility, and hatred of any stripe are all equally serious threats to the vast majority of the human population. And if any instance of any of them comes to my attention on which I am both qualified and moved to comment, I might or might not comment on it angrily. When I do, I try to keep it on what I understand to be fair ground. I assume that most other people here do the same and that nobody's perfect. Certainly not me. Which reminds me: Digression ahead.

Hey, Posting Tulpa -- I'm very sorry I angered you during our last exchange of opposing viewpoints. There's no need to apologize for the "FU." I was only bothered by it because, as an indicator that my assessment of what constituted fair ground had been so badly mistaken that what I wrote was personally offensive to you, it was difficult to infer from it what conciliatory gesture or statement within my power to make might be received by you as sincere.

Digression closed, and picking up where I was when I so rudely interrupted myself:

That said, this thread is by far the most sexist, and in some cases misogynist, environment in which I've ever been voluntarily present for any longer than I could avoid. And seriously, I spent almost two decades in a segment of big media in which sexism was so deeply entrenched that no one, including me, would have considered calling attention to it to be of any more or less practical value than calling attention to the glossiness of the stock on which the words and pictures in magazines are printed. Frankly, when you're the only woman on staff with sufficient standing to have input wrt to editorial or creative decision-making, it's not really any more desirable than it is necessary to bring that fact to the attention of the other nine people at the conference table.*

And in terms of how much willful, tenacious, and juvenile refusal to acknowledge sexism or misogyny for what they are was going on, those meetings were like Lilith fucking Fair compared to this little confab. If they had been equivalent to it in those terms, or even within spitting distance of it in those terms, I would have quit.

Anyway. I have nothing to prove here, and therefore no motivation to continue to try to explain something to people who aren't interested in trying to understand it. And that's pretty much the operant dynamic, to the best of my ability to understand it. So unless my understanding is wrong, nothin' but love, but I am outta here.

*That's not hyperbole. With one exception, it was invariably the case at every bastion of Big Media I ever worked for. Also, in all fairness, I can only think of two occasions on which something was so beyond the pale in being nothing other than a pure and flagrant expression of violent hatred toward women that I took my objections to it all the way to the top -- ie, to the point past which continuing to object was potentially a firing offense. If anyone cares, my career stats in that category stand at: 1-1. For the most part, major media environments are congenially sexist in a status-quo for American society kind of way, moderately self-aware wrt it, and it was very rarely either severely or explicitly sexist. It's so manifestly not a climate in which serious people are a naturally occurring phenomenon, it just doesn't contain that many serious offenders or do-gooders of any type on a person-to-person level. With some exceptions.

I was once walking through an open-plan office with a close friend and colleague, en route to lunch from a meeting concerning some special project, still in the drawing-board stage, the particulars of which we were still idly discussing. I remarked that one of the most popular proposals for commissioned art might, unless the specs were carefully defined, come in in a form that could easily be construed as hostile to women And my friend and colleague said, "Look around you, [my name]. There's no group of people we here at [Prestigious Publication X] hate more than women. Except of course, black people." And I laughed. It was funny cause it was true! And it was not an offensive remark. In the interests of justice, I offer it as an anecdote that comes as close to typifying an environment I've described as sexist as any might. It was sexist. But mostly, it wasn't hostile. I didn't like it, but I didn't find it impossible to tolerate. Until I did, though that was on a more than single-issue basis.

This thread is another story. I don't like it. And though I could tolerate it with some effort, I see no reason to make one. Tell me if I'm wrong. If you're right, I'll admit it.

[compared2what?]

Annie -- How do I change the thread title?

ON EDIT: Fucking fuckety fuck hell dammit. GM Citizen posted while I was writing and I owe him a reply. I'd also* still like to change the thread title. After that, I'm outta here.

*added on edit for clarity.