If you have a specific critisism of her, then by all means ask for a new thread on the topic. Otherwise can we not attack or criticise individuals not here to defend themselves, please.

Sir yes sir!

(As an aside: she also has a security blanket here, doesn’t she?)

I think you’re ancient history is as good as any of the others out there and agree that the which half is bigger doesnt really get at much (though I would suggest that just because it looks one way from over there isnt good evidence )

Feminists have no more evidence on their side.

One interesting thing I’m having trouble formulating is an idea about your assertion that male dominance is about mens relationship to other men (elites vs disposables)

Disposability is a characteristic of property, not of people. The greater respect afforded to disposable men was the respect you grant to a dangerous animal, not the respect you grant to a human.

Here’s an analogy: A farmer raises bulls for meat and cows for calves and milk. The Bull is the more dangerous animal, so he keeps it docile by giving it a cow.

The cows get to live out their natural lives producing calves and milk. The bulls are worked, (they plow the fields), and slaughered at an early age.

sorry I’ve actually started with the papers, so not much time.

I think you’re ancient history is as good as any of the others out there and agree that the which half is bigger doesnt really get at much (though I would suggest that just because it looks one way from over there isnt good evidence )

One interesting thing I’m having trouble formulating is an idea about your assertion that male dominance is about mens relationship to other men (elites vs disposables) NOT hating women…any feminist analysis worht its salt would point out that there must be something preceeding that primordial state of affaris which distinguished men as people worth relating to from women which amount to property. So I’m not sure your description quite gets to the heart of the matter. Does that make sense?

I think hitting is a deceptive analogy, because when you consider hitting me back, you need to consider the potential that I might physically injure you if you don’t hit back. Sometimes hitting in self-defense cannot reasonably be avoided.

An analogy isn’t invalidated merely because you can think of some characteristic it doesn’t share with the thing analogised.

Instead, let’s consider a situation where self-defense from physical injury isn’t a factor. In an online debate, a person of color calls me a kike. I think ethnic and racial slurs are odious. By your logic, it’s perfectly okay for me to call this person a racial slur in response to them calling me a kike. Do you really believe that?

Calling someone a racial epithet doesn’t rebut the one they called you, but saying (and showing) than men’s oppression is worse does rebut the claim that women’s oppression is worse. It is the rebuttal element which I am analogising to the self-defence element of “hitting back”.

If you really find the so-called Odious Comparison odious, you shouldn’t repeatedly utilize it when it’s easily avoided. Or — as certainly appears to be the case — you don’t really find the comparison itself odious, in which case you should stop claiming it’s odious.

What makes it odious are the dynamics I described in my earlier comment:

The Comparison is Odious because it justifies, is justified by, and motivates the routine denial, dismissal, minimisation, and ignoring of male suffering and disadvantage, by feminists.

It also justifies the comparative lack of attention given to right half of the mountain. That lack of attention results in a comparative lack of available information, which then feeds back into the Odious Comparison.

Sure, the patterns of violence are different, but the “violence against women” framing excludes the minoirity of men to whom these kinds of violence do happen.

For that reason, I think it makes sense to have at least three categories of violence – “violence against men,” “violence against women,” and (although I don’t talk about this above) “violence against children.”

Do you talk about “violence against men” in this exclusive way? Does feminism?

There is overlap between these categories, of course. But to pretend the differences are as insignificant as left versus right runs counter to reality.

The differences between right and left are not insignificant. The human body is only superficially symmetric. A pain down your left arm might mean something quite different from a similar pain down your right.

What I object to is the higher value placed on women’s suffering and oppression.

What I disagree with is the implication that feminists are primarily responsible for the lack of attention to how sexism harms men. (If you see anything other than feminism as responsible for men’s problems, that’s not apparent from the tone of your writing).

You haven’t noticed me writing about media representations of gender?

You see the harms, but rather than looking at the real causes – sexism in society as a whole, the failure of media to notice or report on sexism harming men, on the lack of a large-scale men’s rights movement…

How about the lack of a large-scale equality movement, which feminism pretends to be but isn’t.

– virtually all your passion goes into using men’s troubles as an excuse to attack feminists and feminism.

Oh yes. I think feminism is eeevil and I’m just using men’s troubles as an excuse. It’s much easier to dismiss what I say if you believe that.

But feminism is not the a primary cause of sexist harm to men. If feminism had never existed, men would still be expected to suppress their need for family connections to devote themselves to work. If feminism had never existed, men would still be the most likely ones to die in the workplace. If feminism had never existed, boys who can’t be masculine would still be targeted for abuse. If feminism had never existed, black men in the US would still be in prison in wildly disproportionate numbers. If feminism had never existed, warmongers would still starting wars in which hundreds of thousands of men die for no legitimate cause or gain.

And if feminism had never existed, I would probably still be unaware of the pervasive sexism that harms men.

But I am aware of it, so I want to do something about it.

A years-long, seemingly endless crusade against feminism is not a rational or effective response to men’s problems.

Years long? I only turned my attention to feminism earlier this year, (I think) when I came to Alas. Before that it was antifeminism I was focussed upon. (Sure I’d take the opportunity to engage with any feminist that came along, but there weren’t many.)

I think you’re mistaking irrational for “pissed off.” After all the attacks I’ve endured in the last 15 years, being pissed off is a reasonable reaction on my part.

I’m not attacking.

Although it’s tempting to respond to insult with insult, I won’t say you’re irrational. The truth is, you’re usually very rational, which is why I like dealing with you.

Ditto, but if you respond to criticism by accusing me of, say, favouring antifeminists, then it’s not an insult to challenge the rationality of your response.

Nonetheless, your criticisms of feminism are – in my opinion – persistently over-the-top and unwilling to acknowledge anything but negatives.

You are mistaken. I embrace the positives. Feminism invented gender analysis for example. Gender analsys is good. You think so. I think so. What’s to discuss?

For that reason, I think your writing, even when it’s accurate in some details, paints a broadly unfair and unbalanced picture of feminism.

Like I said, some bits are good. What’s to discuss?

If you hit Amp, he will cry and surrender like a little French communist. So you will win the argument if you do that.

On the other hand, if you hit Amp, then we will all mock you for picking on Amp the little French communist. So you’re going to look like an asshole.

So don’t hit Amp!

Why is “which side is bigger” so important?

I don’t think it is important, except in particular issues in a triage-y sort of way. I think it’s been blown out of proportion by the debate; as I said, the only reason I included it in the definition was as a way of distinguishing MRAs from feminists.

The truth is, folks who say “it doesn’t really matter who’s hurt more?” can easily be feminists in my view; I’ve met several such feminists in real life. That’s why I’m changing the definition.

I’m not enough of a historian to argue about the picture of history you present. Yet I suspect it’s overly simplistic. (You might even agree with me about that).

It would not be inconsistent of me to object to you hitting me, and still hit you back.

I think hitting is a deceptive analogy, because when you consider hitting me back, you need to consider the potential that I might physically injure you if you don’t hit back. Sometimes hitting in self-defense cannot reasonably be avoided.

Instead, let’s consider a situation where self-defense from physical injury isn’t a factor. In an online debate, a person of color calls me a kike. I think ethnic and racial slurs are odious. By your logic, it’s perfectly okay for me to call this person a racial slur in response to them calling me a kike. Do you really believe that? (Assume the slurs are not said in a friendly or joking manner).

If you really find the so-called Odious Comparison odious, you shouldn’t repeatedly utilize it when it’s easily avoided. Or — as certainly appears to be the case — you don’t really find the comparison itself odious, in which case you should stop claiming it’s odious.

Does it really help you to have to trivialise your own suffering, calling it “negligible compared to the far more extreme abuses so many girls and women survive”?

I don’t think that calling my suffering neglible compared to (for example) a woman who is beaten and raped by her husband at regular intervals, in any way “trivializes” my suffering. Recognizing that other people have it worse than me — and in the USA, all else held equal, those other people are usually women – in no way suggests that bad things that happen to me are trivial.

It does not make sense to specialise in “violence against women” which is equivalent to “disorders of the left hand side”.

I don’t think they are equivalent. Overwhelmingly, the most likely kind of violence for men to experience is going to be either organized institutional violence (such as members of a football team or an army experience) or from a relative stranger (barfights, frat hazing[*], muggers, gang violence, attacking armies or guerillas). Women, on the other hand, are most likely to experience violence at the hands of people they know, especially husbands and boyfriends. (And if they do experience violence from invading armies, it will frequently involve much less murder and much more rape, which is a significant difference).

For that reason, I think it makes sense to have at least three categories of violence – “violence against men,” “violence against women,” and (although I don’t talk about this above) “violence against children.”

There is overlap between these categories, of course. But to pretend the differences are as insignificant as left versus right runs counter to reality.

There is a problem when one side gets all or nearly all the focus. There is a problem when the issues affecting the other get denied, dismissed, minimised and ignored.

Agreed on both counts.

What I disagree with is the implication that feminists are primarily responsible for the lack of attention to how sexism harms men. (If you see anything other than feminism as responsible for men’s problems, that’s not apparent from the tone of your writing). You see the harms, but rather than looking at the real causes – sexism in society as a whole, the failure of media to notice or report on sexism harming men, on the lack of a large-scale men’s rights movement – virtually all your passion goes into using men’s troubles as an excuse to attack feminists and feminism.

But feminism is not the a primary cause of sexist harm to men. If feminism had never existed, men would still be expected to suppress their need for family connections to devote themselves to work. If feminism had never existed, men would still be the most likely ones to die in the workplace. If feminism had never existed, boys who can’t be masculine would still be targeted for abuse. If feminism had never existed, black men in the US would still be in prison in wildly disproportionate numbers. If feminism had never existed, warmongers would still starting wars in which hundreds of thousands of men die for no legitimate cause or gain.

A years-long, seemingly endless crusade against feminism is not a rational or effective response to men’s problems.

I know Amp fairly well, and I notice that for a characteristically rational debater he tends to react very irrationally to criticism of feminism.

I think you’re mistaking irrational for “pissed off.” After all the attacks I’ve endured in the last 15 years, being pissed off is a reasonable reaction on my part.

Although it’s tempting to respond to insult with insult, I won’t say you’re irrational. The truth is, you’re usually very rational, which is why I like dealing with you.

Nonetheless, your criticisms of feminism are – in my opinion – persistently over-the-top and unwilling to acknowledge anything but negatives. For that reason, I think your writing, even when it’s accurate in some details, paints a broadly unfair and unbalanced picture of feminism.

* * *

[*] Edited to add: I went back and forth on if I should include sports, frat hazings, etc., alongside the more extreme kinds of violence such as (for example) being rounded up and murdered by a paramilitary organization. I decided to include them all, because I think that sports such as boxing are in fact a significant form of violence that primarily harms men; but I’m not claiming that they’re all morally equivilent.

At the same time, women’s irreplaceable role in continuing the species isn’t an aristocratic need, it’s a biological reality (or it was, anyhow). Framing the necessity of protecting the race’s future as being class-specific seems bound to lead to faulty conclusions.

And on the gripping hand, bear in mind that the ability of elites to set cultural values exists but is of limited scope. Six thousand years of articulated formal urban law has not yet ingrained honesty in the human character, or fidelity in human biology. Elites are more likely to get to decide what labels and theoretical punishments await the inevitable nonconformists than to actually get their way about anything.

I’m late to the party and but I want to comment on the shit analogy.

Amp called it “silly”. You’re calling it “shit”. What’s wrong with my analogy?

Was men’s pile always bigger? If not what changed and when?

I deliberately framed it as two sides to one big pile. I think you would agree with that.

Why is “which side is bigger” so important?

I think the gender structures we have today are a legacy of those which evolved hundreds or thousands of years ago. Basically you have the aristocracy, and the masses. To the aristocracy, the masses were/are a commodity to be exploited, but also a rebelion threat. This becomes gendered when you realise that the different sexes pose different levels of threat, and have different commodity values. A woman’s value lay in her loins. Only she could produce the next generation of commodity people. She, therefore, needs to be protected. Men were always disposable. A man’s commodity value was enhanced by his very disposability. He could be sent of to do the dangerous tasks, and if he got killed, so much the better. (Less of a rebellion threat.)

But men had to be paid for their disposability, at least until they were disposed of. One way to pay them was to give each one a woman. A beneficial (from the Aristocracy’s point of view) side effect of that was that this served to control women, but the real purpose of the system was to control men.

Society, at least here in the west, has been radically restructured since then. We now live in technologised liberal democracies. Those old ideas are no longer relevant, but they persist, in the cultural values that regard men as disposable, and maybe also that they need to be paid more. (As Amp points out there is a now a disconnect between the men doing the dangerous work, and the men being paid.)

toysoldier:

As long as none of them are undermining the others or dumping on those who find them inapplicable, there is no issue.

hun:

IMO this view sets up an unbreakable bind; essentially, it requires one to suspend one’s critical faculties in order to have ‘allies’.
Am I perceiving this issue the wrong way?

Yes if one is having a critical debate on real-world issues. In this case, if another position is untenable, you are doing them a favour by refuting them (assuming they are reasonable).

However toysoldier is talking about belief systems which help survivors recover/cope. These are very often expressions of value, applicable internally, rather than logical propositions with empirical truth. forgiveness, the power of positive thinking, etc., for example. In such cases what might be true for me may very well not be true for him and vice versa.

There is a real problem when the two domains become confused, and the “my truth” standard is applied to the external world.

Well, Amanda Marcotte has no problem with demonizing politicians/public figures who espouse a morality based on religious principles; why is it that she’s a feminist of good standing, then?

If you have a specific critisism of her, then by all means ask for a new thread on the topic. Otherwise can we not attack or criticise individuals not here to defend themselves, please.

I don’t, unlike Ampersand, Richard Henry Newman and Jake Squid (if Daran is right about those two) have a sense of loyalty to the movement which would make me regard what seem doubtful arguments (or, come to that, doubtful individuals) with a tolerant eye.

I know Amp fairly well, and I notice that for a characteristically rational debater he tends to react very irractionally to criticism of feminism.

I don’t know the other two very well, so I don’t know if it’s loyalty to feminism, as such. I think it more likely to be a combination of the fact that they don’t feel the toxicity themselves, and the general feminist tendency to blame men for their own problems.

I entirely agree with the rest of your post.

Well, Amanda Marcotte has no problem with demonizing politicians/public figures who espouse a morality based on religious principles; why is it that she’s a feminist of good standing, then?

Huh?

One can be critical of something without attacking or undermining its potential to help those who would benefit from it. For instance, one could find that religion offers no solution for your issues. You may even criticize elements that you find harmful. However, you do not attack those who found it useful.

Well, Amanda Marcotte has no problem with demonizing politicians/public figures who espouse a morality based on religious principles; why is it that she’s a feminist of good standing, then?

IMO this view sets up an unbreakable bind; essentially, it requires one to suspend one’s critical faculties in order to have ‘allies’.

I disagree. One can be critical of something without attacking or undermining its potential to help those who would benefit from it. For instance, one could find that religion offers no solution for your issues. You may even criticize elements that you find harmful. However, you do not attack those who found it useful.

I am unsure what you mean by ‘allies’? Who are the allies?

As long as none of them are undermining the others or dumping on those who find them inapplicable, there is no issue.

IMO this view sets up an unbreakable bind; essentially, it requires one to suspend one’s critical faculties in order to have ‘allies’.
Am I perceiving this issue the wrong way?