guruilla » 18 Dec 2015 10:23 wrote:There are several assumptions here that don’t hold up to examination. Firstly, there is the use of the word “feminism” as if it were one set of values; if there’s one thing I have learned in the last month at this board, this simply isn’t the case. There are types of feminism which seem reasonable to me (such as equal rights), and there are types that seem insane and destructive (such as those pointed out by Dines in the video). Also, it’s been clearly demonstrated at this board that many of the assumptions of even the most basic sort of feminist rhetoric are simply wrong (such as the idea that men are more domestically violent than women. Newsflash: they aren’t).
No, and certainly not by someone who approached this topic completely ignorant of feminist analysis and history, a newbie who knows naught of what he speaks, who attempts with a wave of an imaginary magical wand of "anti-ideology" which is itself an ideology. And you're wrong about domestic violence, or any other kind of violence, and blind, deaf, and dumb to the experiences of women who live in a world with other humans who are physically stronger than they are and who use that advantage to their benefit on a daily basis. Just because no woman here bothered to counter whatever MRA bullshit was posted on DV, doesn't mean it's true.
- A woman is beaten every 9 seconds.
The American Medical Association (AMA) and FBI estimate 3-4 million women are battered each year in the U.S.
Domestic Violence is the single greatest cause of injury to women.
The FBI estimates violence will occur during the course of two-thirds of all marriages.
An AMA report shows that every five years as many women are killed by their intimate partners as were men and women killed in the Viet Nam War: 54,000.
More than 75% of the women killed in Iowa were murdered by their intimate partner.
95% of domestic violence is reported by women – perpetrated against them by their male partner.
When men are battered it is typically by their male intimate partner … battering occurs in gay and lesbian relationships at the same rate as heterosexual relationships – approximately 35%.
80% of all violent crimes committed outside the home are committed by males … it is highly unlikely that women, generally peaceful and non-violent, would make up half of partner violence.
guruilla » 18 Dec 2015 10:23 wrote:“this presentation of grievances is the product of an individualistic, post-modernist approach, an attempt to create an alternate reality wherein women and feminists are made into scapegoats for the oppressive acts of other men.”
I don’t see anything post-modern or individualistic about slomo’s arguments, nor do I see any attempt to create “an alternate reality,” much less to scapegoat feminists. I think people at this board will agree with this viewpoint, however, because of a deeply embedded ideological brainwash about “Patriarchy,” which “feminism” (in its various forms) is at least partially responsible for. Holding someone to account is not the same as scapegoating, and if any sex is being scapegoated in today’s neoliberal-totalitarian world, it is not women.
Do you have any idea how inflammatory your brainwashing statements are? Do you have any inkling of how positively insulting you're being, how psychologically cruel? Of course you do. You're speaking to a survivor of brainwashing, which is why you're using this language. This negates your entire argument. I can only assume you have no interest whatsoever in understanding, you only wish to demoralize.
guruilla » 18 Dec 2015 10:23 wrote:I posted a quoted from a popular book called The Descent of Men at the gender thread, here, calling men “vermin.” Not only did this description apparently not hinder the book’s success, no one at RI remarked on it. It is as if referring to men as vermin is no big deal, either because it’s already agreed that men are vermin, or because it doesn’t really matter what you call them, because they are in charge anyway. I find this sort of doublethink baffling and depressing.
Yes, I know it is horribly disturbing to be referred to as something negative without recognition or consequence. That is what it is like to live on a daily basis as a woman.
guruilla » 18 Dec 2015 10:23 wrote:Project Willow wrote:The question of patriarchy is not a question, if data is the requisite, I mean c'mon, it's silly.
Only if you base your criteria for what’s real on social statistics and purely material phenomena.
On what else would one base one's criteria? This is the entire point. We are talking systems here, opposed to anomalous individual experiences, which are still subject to the power of operative systems even if it may be more difficult to delineate them. That is what men like you cannot get beyond, that is what you fail to see. I'll quote someone whom I deeply respect and miss from the days when this board was once populated by people who were brilliant, thoughtful, and empathetic. Those days are gone. I would invite you to try to look beyond your own male informed experience in all of this, but I realize it's quite useless.
compared2what? » 05 Mar 2011 09:57 wrote:Men are so heartbreakingly, hopelessly and excessively sensitive to just about all perceived and real criticism, rejection and/or abandonment by women and have so much unaddressed guilt and fear and anger and performance anxiety about sex and have so few resources and coping mechanisms for dealing with those feelings that (loosely speaking) it's generally either pointlessly cruel or pointlessly dangerous to raise those issues and/or a host of associated issues with them at all directly. In those terms or, for that matter, even closely related terms.
Because no matter how carefully, lovingly, impartially, or non-critically you do it, they just go into a complete state of defensive meltdown immediately. They are, in fact, that thin-skinned. So the conversations all end up like this thread. Women try to say something about themselves, then spend the next eternity soothing, handling, wrangling with, or expiating themselves for whatever brutal thing about men the men who heard them thought they said.
I think -- although as I said, I have no way of knowing -- that most women know that better than most men do.
In any event. It always goes that way. Every single time. And it really is heartbreaking, first and foremost. As well as frustrating, both on one's own behalf and as a matter of love and consideration for the man and/or men, assuming a relationship in which that's present.
If you have any ideas about how that might most constructively be approached, please share them.
The problem is, as always, men who have no wherewithal to be able to shut up and listen. That is the central issue. It's as if the minute women must be contemplated as human beings, it means some men cease to exist. That is the definition of misogyny. That is the real mind-fuck at work here.
