“What real impact would a curfew have?” you might ask. Certainly it would send the message that we are taking men’s behaviour seriously and that it is no longer acceptable. Certainly it would allow women to move about more safely at night — on campus, in their homes, at bars, at the bus stop. Certainly it would name the problem. It would say, unequivocally, “The problem is you, men. You are the problem, and therefore, it is you who must be stopped.”The writer is from Canada, where perhaps men might accept 'being grounded' without complaint (or even, it being Canada, with apology). Good luck enforcing such a curfew on American men.
Think of it as a mass grounding for men. After a designated period of time, we’ll allow them back on the streets after dark to see how it goes. If the sexual assaults and harassment continue, well, it’s back to the curfew.
I mean, really, they asked for it.
Also, by the way, what happens if the men who refuse the curfew in Canada are the same demographic who caused the problems in Germany? Canada has just made a big deal about accepting a bunch of them. They allegedly sang them a song that was sung to Mohammad right before he killed a bunch of Jews in the town that accepted him.
The idea of the song is that it is being sung to welcome Mohammed to Medina after he fled Mecca. So it is a song about migration. Except that after Medina welcomed Mohammed -- the first Muslim refugee, you might say -- he killed all the Jewish men and enslaved the women.Well, then, I guess the song is on point! But instead of directing concern in that direction, let's 'ground' Canadian men, so they won't be around to help when the issue of this policy comes to the fore. Who else might be there to help, if the Canadian men did accept the curfew? Who would be there to enforce the curfew on those non-Canadian men who refuse it?
It's the virus in the wild. They really can't see it.
28 comments:
OK, so this writer is a moron. Why take her seriously? She's so stupid that it's hard to believe anyone gave her a platform to beclown herself, but one of the "blessings" of technology is that morons who are willing to pay to host their own rantings online can publish them. So I guess she bought herself a platform, as opposed to someone else thinking, "Gosh, this person is so super smart that they deserve an audience."
It's not a serious argument, but I'm hardly surprised that it's out there. It's no dumber than the looniest of the men's rights stuff, and it comes from the same idiotic place.
Oh yeah, I'm cranky, but then I stayed up last night reading "Between the World and Me" for tonight's book club meeting. I'm actually glad I read it, but once you look beyond the admittedly beautiful writing, all that's left is First Worlders whining because they've discovered the world is a dangerous place filled with Bad People.
Alert the media :p
"virus in the wild": A virus is said to be “in the wild” if it is spreading uncontained among infected computers in the general public. It must be spreading on and between the computers of unsuspecting users as a result of normal day-to-day operations. A virus being studied in a controlled environment for research purposes would not be considered “in the wild.” Also, a virus (or Trojan) that exists but is not actively spreading is also not considered to be “in the wild.”
This idiocy doesn't seem to fit the definition, as I don't see it spreading - you had to go to a feminist web site to find it.
I'm not trying to pick on you. Several years back, I became concerned when Instapundit kept linking to MRA sites spouting hateful nonsense (*and*, and this is important, I saw conservative bloggers I respected linking approvingly to that same hateful nonsense). So I understand the concern, but don't see the same thing going on here.
Having seen several conservative men who seemed intelligent buying into that nonsense, I wanted to know if other conservative men recognized how dumb and toxic it was. And some did. Others defended it, and still do.
There is a well of suspicion and nastiness between some men and some women. Is it widespread? I don't know any women who would endorse this nonsense. I know quite a few men who endorsed the more idiotic of the MRA stuff a few years back.
Which is the virus in the wild?
It may be odd, but I took the virus to be criminal Muslims coming in as refugees, not this kind of feminist silliness.
One more thought: free speech can be viral. Ideas can be viral, especially when they appeal to base or visceral emotions.
Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
I don't want to sound dismissive, partly because some of the reaction I got to writing about the MRA nonsense (only after seeing it repeated on conservative sites many times) amounted to, "Why waste time responding to this/why take it seriously?"
That was partly reassuring, as part of my reason for writing about it was my desire to know whether other men I respected were taking it seriously. But it was also irritating, because the only reason I was writing about it was because other right-leaning writers were - apparently - impressed with it. I didn't go to these sites looking for dumb ideas to be outraged over - I encountered them in the last place I expected to find them (on conservative sites).
I am often struck by just how upset men get over the looniest of feminist bloviation. I understand this, having been very upset (sick, really) when I first ran into some very graphic, nasty and hate-filled MRA stuff. But it's interesting in light of the way many men dismiss womens' concerns, when they are obviously deeply upset (and by that, I mean not just angry but also hurt/disrespected) when they encounter the same kind of thing.
As usual, I speak for none but myself. But I take this kind of nonsense (along with the "if only we eliminate [no mention of how] 80% of the male population, the world would be a better place" and "all heterosexual intercourse is rape" type nonsense) with exactly as much concern and seriousness as I take the "men are being oppressed by feminism" stuff. Which is to say, not at all. If you are whining that you're being oppressed and no one comes to lock you up for it, chances are you're vastly overstating your oppression.
But the problem is, I get the distinct feeling that those on the MRA side are reading the extreme feminist stuff and taking it as "all women believe this" so they put out their stuff that the extreme feminists then read and justify their stuff with it saying "all men believe this". So in effect, they're just feeding each other's paranoia. But that's just my take on it. I generally roll my eyes and ignore it. My bride, on the other hand, loves reading it and complaining about how stupid the arguments presented in their articles are. Last night, she felt compelled to tell me about one where the author wrote "I am oppressed by the fact that I am a woman" in an article where the main topic was using the correct, exact language. My wife's complaint was, "if you were Tarzan, raised by apes in the wild, the fact that you are a woman would not oppress you in the slightest." She went on, "if you want to claim society oppresses you because you are a woman, that's one thing, but claiming the fact that you are a woman is oppressive in an article about the importance of using the right words for things is just stupid."
Now for me, that's not entertainment, it's tiresome. But she likes it (reading their stupid articles and then complaining about the fact that it's stupid). I don't understand why. I'd just as soon not read the article in the first place.
Many black commentators "whined" about unjust treatment under Jim Crow and segregation laws and no one came to lock them up. I guess they weren't really oppressed, then?
I'm not taking the MRA side, but it doesn't have to be Stalinist to be real oppression.
... I get the distinct feeling that those on the MRA side are reading the extreme feminist stuff and taking it as "all women believe this" so they put out their stuff that the extreme feminists then read and justify their stuff with it saying "all men believe this". So in effect, they're just feeding each other's paranoia. But that's just my take on it.
Mine, too :p
Many black commentators "whined" about unjust treatment under Jim Crow and segregation laws and no one came to lock them up. I guess they weren't really oppressed, then?
Well, there's whining (complaining, with no suggestions for fixing the problem and often without even bothering to say exactly how you're being oppressed) and there's protest/calls for reform.
I don't think blacks who objected to Jim Crow were mostly 'whining' - they were quite clear that they wanted Jim Crow laws repealed. On the otter heiny, I've seen few/no MRA articles of this type. Which doesn't mean they don't exist - they may very well. But they're not the ones I wrote about or saw linked to by conservatives, so they're really the only ones I can comment upon.
Feminists have been actually pretty good about saying which laws they want changed (and how they should be changed). I happen to think most of these suggestions are stupid/unworkable/unconstitutional, but I don't think that's "whining", either.
In my mind, whining is complaining in a childish or irritating manner. Concrete suggestions at least have the virtue of offering a solution to be evaluated. And it's really pretty silly for MRAs to pretend they don't have exactly the same access to legislation and lobbying that feminists do. Government is still predominantly male, especially in the upper echelons, so they're not even facing the same obstacles feminists did (inconveniently for them, The Patriarchy has actually listened to them - witness much of the feminist-inspired legislation and agency law that exists today!).
I bring it up because we were just talking about the effects of these ideologies, Cass, and it's such a perfect example. It's not meant to impute to women in general anything. It's meant to serve as an example of the danger of this structure of thought, which is Marxist structurally even though it calls itself "feminist." The MRA people are often guilty of having exactly the same Marxist ideological structure, only they've reversed the polarity on the sexes.
She's been taught to analyze society in terms of friction between class interests, only in this variation of Marxist ideology the classes are "man" and "woman." The ideology takes a problem with an obvious cause, and instead analyzes it in terms of the oppression of "men" against "women."
It leaves her not only completely unable to see and discuss the actual problem (or actual solutions), but in fact committed to rhetoric and action that will damage her society's institutions that might really be helpful in combating the problem.
As an example of the problem these ideologies represent -- and it's all of them, though they analyze society in history in terms of different binaries, some economic class and others race instead of sex -- it's classic. It's a very strong proof of the damage this mode of thinking does.
A virus is said to be “in the wild” if it is spreading uncontained among infected computers in the general public. It must be spreading on and between the computers of unsuspecting users as a result of normal day-to-day operations.
My point is that there's probably not any longer a Russian agent actively working to recruit and train people in these ideologies. She learned it somewhere, probably in some college, from people who probably didn't learn it from the KGB either.
It may be that the infectious rate isn't very high, but it is spreading naturally.
The thing to do is to reject the structure. All of these forms of analysis commit their followers to errors of this kind. Yet they seem so natural, obvious, and logical because they follow from the dialectical analysis. They do have a logic to them, but it's a logic being imposed by the ideology.
Thanks for the clarification, Grim.
I don't see this kind of stupidity as so much learned/acquired as just the product of emotional/immature thinking.
I guess I don't see it as Marxist either, though I concede the emphasis on seeing individuals as members of classes rather than as people who have agency and thus deserve credit or blame for their own decisions.
I may eventually end up writing about the Coates thing if I have time. It's filled with so many logical errors and straw man arguments, but the primary one is seeing people as groups (but only when it's convenient to the narrative to do so).
The dumbest thing about this is the notion that group punishment for individual offenses will "solve" problems of human nature. Because punishing the vast majority of men for the offenses of a few wouldn't, say, be exactly the kind of immoral, sex-based discrimination she rails against 24/7/365 :p.
As with so many of these diatribes, her proposed "cure" amounts to retribution and repetition of the very practices she claims to oppose (just with her hand on the whip, this time). Yanno, kind of like reparations.
I've only read Coates' occasional articles, although I did read the one on reparations. We discussed it at painful length. I was more persuaded by the idea of reparations because it might do what these modes of thought usually cannot do: it would suggest a way of putting an end to the analysis. Presumably, if we agreed on what reparations would be appropriate (itself a huge task) and paid them (assuming the price was actually payable), the matter would be resolved once and for all.
Nobody else here was biting on that bait, though, so it ended up being a 'discussion' in the sense of me defending the concept against absolutely everyone else. :)
Many black commentators "whined" about unjust treatment under Jim Crow and segregation laws and no one came to lock them up. I guess they weren't really oppressed, then?
No, I'm pretty sure that blacks who complained about Jim Crow and segregation got pretty well abused by the authorities because of it. I understand that it was before my time, but I've seen photographic and video evidence of the abuse of the Freedom Riders, the lunch counter protesters, the marchers on Selma, and far far too many other incidents to say that "no one came to lock them up". And that's precisely my point. They are an example of honest to god oppression. And the oppressors came out to prove them right by wielding the punitive powers of the state (or exploiting the states' unwillingness to punish them for breaking the law, so long as the criminal behavior was directed at the oppressed).
On the other hand, anyone who claims feminism is oppressing men needs to show me evidence of women bashing in the heads of men while the police assist them or at least turn a blind eye to it. And if you quote me the fake rape cases of recent memory, I'm going to be forced to laugh at you. Because the majority of them play out not in favor of the women who cry rape falsely. And that's also hardly on the scale of Jim Crow and segregation. And the same is true for women who claim "but teh PATRIARCHY" (which, and this bugs me, does NOT mean "rule by men" as they believe, but instead means "rule by fathers"; the word they actually want is "andrarchy"). Yes, I understand that there is some unfairness in this country directed at women simply because of their gender. But show me a single one of these "oppressed women" who would trade any of it for what women in the Middle East, Central and South America, Asia or Africa experience, and I'll show you a woman who literally does not know the first thing about what real oppression is.
Presumably, if we agreed on what reparations would be appropriate (itself a huge task) and paid them (assuming the price was actually payable), the matter would be resolved once and for all.
And my fundamental objection is still the same. You assume that if we (and by "we" I mean "non-blacks") pay reparations for actions none of us took against people who are no longer alive in order to "make up" for the "unfair advantage" our birth gave us over people who may or may not even be descended from the people who were enslaved and abused, that somehow all would be "forgiven and forgotten" and the whole thing would never be discussed again, because it's "resolved once and for all". I will tell you now, and I would wager everything I own and will own on this one, literally within minutes or hours of the reparations being made, the claim would go out that "it wasn't enough" and that "the debt isn't paid". Or that systematic racism is still just as bad, or that now we need to make reparations for other minorities that were similarly oppressed (and frankly, the Chinese have some pretty convincing arguments that they too should be deserving, not to mention the Native Americans), and really, where does it end? Do we owe reparations to the Islamic world for the Crusades? Surely without the wasteful wars our European forbears involved them in, they'd have been able to advance economically past where they are now, right?
No. I reject the concept, and I reject the possibility that it would ever be "resolved once and for all", regardless of what ever negotiations happened prior to the payment of any such reparation (and who the hell would even be authorized to negotiate this deal anyway?). I think the inevitability is that it would solve nothing, stir up more racial animus that it would ever hope to solve (because you don't think there would not be a whole HOST of people pissed off that they are being forced to pay a debt none of them incurred?), and be a cause of further divide between ethnicities in this country.
I don't think blacks who objected to Jim Crow were mostly 'whining' - they were quite clear that they wanted Jim Crow laws repealed.
I don't think they were whining, either (hence the scare quotes), but many times they simply pointed out the injustice with the call for reform implicit. For example, "Strange Fruit" wasn't a coherent call for specific reforms. It just pointed out injustice, but it wasn't whining.
On the otter heiny, I've seen few/no MRA articles of this type. Which doesn't mean they don't exist - they may very well. But they're not the ones I wrote about or saw linked to by conservatives, so they're really the only ones I can comment upon.
I'm not really defending them, but it seems that the first fight is for recognition that there is an injustice. If you can't get that, then proposing solutions seems pointless.
I think the MRA types have some legitimate complaints. I don't read them anymore because those legitimate problems have become buried in very destructive attitudes and behaviors, and a desire more for revenge than reform. Much like those who support Trump because their concerns have been ignored for so long and they really just want to stick it to the "establishment," I think the MR movement is unhealthy but understandable.
Feminists have been actually pretty good about saying which laws they want changed (and how they should be changed). I happen to think most of these suggestions are stupid/unworkable/unconstitutional, but I don't think that's "whining", either.
Yes, because they have academic departments and publicly recognized political movements dedicated to expounding on those changes. The attacks on men are much, much newer, and recognition that there are injustices (or even might be injustices and we should check to see) is impossible to get in a public sphere dominated by the Progressive media and academy, and, frankly, an attitude among many that "We don't need no stinkin' facts, men just CAN'T be oppressed! That's ridiculous!"
... And it's really pretty silly for MRAs to pretend they don't have exactly the same access to legislation and lobbying that feminists do.
But they don't. Again, feminists have publicly-recognized structures in the academy and press, and that means political capital. MRAs don't have that.
Government is still predominantly male, especially in the upper echelons, so they're not even facing the same obstacles feminists did ...
So, just because they share the same kind of genitalia, they adequately represent all men, regardless of social or political beliefs or convictions? This doesn't seem like a good assumption to me. For example, Obama and I are both men, but we have YUUGE differences; Carly Fiorina represents me and my interests far more than he does.
... (inconveniently for them, The Patriarchy has actually listened to them - witness much of the feminist-inspired legislation and agency law that exists today!).
That's right, the men in government don't listen to the MRAs; they listen to the feminists. So, how exactly does the government being mostly male support your argument?
Again, I don't support the MRAs and I don't think that's a healthy movement. But my overall point is that injustice, including systemic, government enforced injustice, can exist despite the fact that there are no Stasi agents hunting down the people claiming that there are injustices.
I think this is also true of Trump supporters. I shudder to think of a President Trump, but his supporters have a lot of legitimate complaints that have been ignored for decades. Just because I find him and his movement offensive on the whole doesn't mean they don't have some legitimate concerns.
I understand that it was before my time, but I've seen photographic and video evidence of the abuse of the Freedom Riders, the lunch counter protesters, the marchers on Selma, and far far too many other incidents to say that "no one came to lock them up" ...
Actually, no one came to lock up the people you use in your examples just for speaking out or complaining or whining about oppression. They generally got abused and locked up for breaking unjust laws.
No. I reject the concept, and I reject the possibility that it would ever be "resolved once and for all"...
I remember. :)
But they don't. Again, feminists have publicly-recognized structures in the academy and press, and that means political capital. MRAs don't have that.
Well, NOW they do! But these are structures they built over time, Tom. It took a half century of organizing just to get the right to vote. Women got the vote 52 years after black men did.
Think about that one for a moment - a lot of those women were the wives of men who could and did vote :p But the country wasn't ready for women voting until 1920.
Those structures didn't exist back when women were just trying to get the right to vote! Or to own property in their own names, if they were married. Or even to have any recognized custody rights over the children they carried for 9 months and then did the lion's share of rearing. It doesn't make sense to compare the infrastructure of two movements - one in its infancy, and one that has been established for decades and suggest that what women have built over the last 150 years of concerted effort somehow constitutes an overwhelming advantage MRA can't hope to equal.
Men absolutely CAN build these things, and they have a huge head start over where women started a century and a half ago. They can already vote, for instance. And legislatures have far more men than women. And there are also lots of women on their side (and NO national history of women openly saying and believing that men could not possibly vote or get degrees or hold jobs because Lordy! they hadn't done so in the past :p).
Not saying they don't have some valid arguments, Tom. But I can't see that they're disadvantaged in any material way.
That's right, the men in government don't listen to the MRAs; they listen to the feminists. So, how exactly does the government being mostly male support your argument?
You're arguing as though MRA and feminists have used the same tactics and done the same work to fight for their preferred public policy positions.
That's not the case, though. Where's the National Organization for Men? Or the League of Male Voters? (I remember my mom working for the League of women voters in the 60s, for instance). If you want to convince others, you have to work hard to get your arguments out there.
You have to propose legislation. You may be beaten or imprisoned as Susan B. Anthony was when she tried to vote (alsoa group of women in 1917 when they picketed the White House):
http://www.novahistory.org/Lorton_Womens_Suffrage.htm
Sorry, but I don't see the MRA types facing anything like that.
MikeD is right. Reparations = Dane-geld, a la Kipling.
That was the consensus of the last discussion, yes.
Sure, Cass, and I'm not downplaying the more than 100 years of hard work that was put into building those structures. However, you are pointing out that what I said was true: MRAs do not have the same political opportunities or power as feminists today.
I am also not arguing the degree of injustice or oppression, not at all. But small injustices are still injustices. They differ in degree, not kind.
That was the consensus of the last discussion, yes.
I had a minority opinion: I agreed that IF paying reparations made the issue forever go away, it would be worth it. However, I don't think it would make it go away, so I was opposed as well.
However, you are pointing out that what I said was true: MRAs do not have the same political opportunities or power as feminists today.
I suspect you and I may be arguing different, but related points (as Grim and I so often do) :)
I was essentially saying, "Look, women did it once and they started with far less. So clearly men can do what they did if they're willing to put in the work."
I think you're saying, if I understand you, "Women have been working for a century and a half and have more infrastructure in place."
And I agree - but then men had many, many centuries of infrastructure in place, and women were able to gain their support. It just took hard work, and time. I think today's men have an easier (but not equal) task and yes - I take your point that they will have to fight *some* feminists.
But not all feminists - many, for instance, would be thrilled to see more men step up in assuming parenting duties. Hopefully we agree on the main point - it's not an impossible task. I didn't mean to suggest it would be easy, but I do believe it will be far easier for men to gain support in cases where there's genuine injustice/sexism. The draft is a pretty good example - if women are allowed in the combat arms, then I see no principled reason to exclude them from the draft. And many feminists agree.
On reparations, I don't think it would be worth it no matter what.
It is, IMO, fundamentally unjust to require payments from one race to another based on nothing more than skin color. Even if a majority of whites supported reparations, I would oppose them on this basis. And that's before you even consider the effect of precedent.
Reparations is like paying Islamic slave traders. That's what got the Italian mafia, the Lombardian merchant families, as well as the European and Sephardic Jews in trouble to begin with.
Eventually Islam is just going to blame the West for slavery and ask for more. As they are demanding now at the churches of Germany.
In order to negate a raiding culture, a tribal system, one must do as Charlemagne managed to do with the viking lords. A more permanent and subordinate relationship for the vikings than endless tribute.
The MRA people are often guilty of having exactly the same Marxist ideological structure, only they've reversed the polarity on the sexes.
When you spend half your adult life fighting a mortal foe, you become like that enemy, whether you like it or not, if you want to survive.
Witness what happened to Spain under the Muslim occupation. After the Reconquista, Spain didn't go back to 620 AD in terms of culture. It was too late.
When the roots are cut out, the plant seeks sustenance from whatever source is around, even from that which is killing it. The same is true of human organizations in general or of generations of men and women.
My point is that there's probably not any longer a Russian agent actively working to recruit and train people in these ideologies. She learned it somewhere, probably in some college, from people who probably didn't learn it from the KGB either.
Putin once remarked that Russia was once a communist nation, when he was looking at the US.
I would say that the roles have reversed since the Cold War, when Russia the bear was threatening to deploy communist totalitarian control over the world, and the US was fighting to free the oppressed. It's obvious that somebody switched the roles.
... And it's really pretty silly for MRAs to pretend they don't have exactly the same access to legislation and lobbying that feminists do.
*************
But they don't. Again, feminists have publicly-recognized structures in the academy and press, and that means political capital. MRAs don't have that.
I'm sure the Tea Party thought the same for themselves, that they would have the same access to legislation and lobbying.
Oh Yea, what happened to them anyways, did the IRS approve their funding?
But I can't see that they're disadvantaged in any material way.
Thinking that intelligent people buy into "nonsense" is one way of affirming your world view, Cassandra. But it is different from seeking the truth itself. However, that becomes difficult to prop up when the threshold reaches a certain mass. Certainly not around DC, yes, but the country isn't all based around DC.
Those structures didn't exist back when women were just trying to get the right to vote!
The pioneers had equality of gender, due to their meritocracy and need for survival of random groups of explorers and colonists. The idea that these "structures" didn't exist, is thinking history started after civilization was born. Civilization doesn't get born from nothing, there's always precursors and traditions. Which are often lost, but some still remember.
Males had legitimate arguments against giving females power, which constituted something like "women are economically reliant on men, giving them a vote is the same as giving rich playboys or males a second or third or fourth vote".
The first generation of feminists, the real women, had to disprove this by showing that females were independent and could thus exercise judgment independent of society. The institutionalization of this, is why democracies become totalitarian dictatorships. The descendant generations lack almost all of the virtues of their fore bearers. It's aristocratic decline, the same reason why feudalism fails to breed noble families correctly over generations.
After Andrew Jackson died, the Southern slave barons did not inherit the virtues of Jackson. In any way whatsoever. Yet they think they did, so they went around caning people to emulate their god king, Jackson. It's a rather pathetic way for civilization to create "institutions" based on this false legend that virtues and freedoms are passed in the blood. They are not. Each generation must prove themselves.
Cass, very suspiciously, I can't find anything to disagree with you about in your 6:24 comment. Nothing. I looked, too. I suspect you have tricked me with your much more highly refined feminist rhetorical structures ... It's probably Susan B. Anthony's fault.
You know what's funny? I know very little about the whole suffragette movement. I missed most of it in school, and had little/no interest in the topic until after years of blogging, and then only in reaction to assertions that struck me as .... well... suspect from a few bloggers.
I am genuinely appalled at my weak grasp of modern history. I pay more attention now, mostly so I can talk to my youngest son's wife. But I won't pretend to be well informed :)
Thanks for the back-and-forth - I enjoyed it!
I enjoyed it, too! You always make me think, and I like that.
I also need to learn much more about US history and the women's movement. I've been focusing on black history lately, and, looking back as a late 20th / early 21st century American, it is always shocking when I cross-reference and realize how long it took the US to let women vote in national elections.
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