Sometimes, it's really not necessary to use a lot of words to explain the ridiculousness of certain feminist complaints.
What else is there to say?
Dear Wikipedia, no I don't plan on donating
Among other problems with it, Wikipedia's bias problem is a men's rights issue.
During the last few years the men's issues community has seen Wikipedia articles on gender issues targeted by feminists to create a biased source that can be used as backup for feminism's claims about everything from various gender issues themselves to the men's rights community and specific men's advocates. Feminist-leaning editors have banded together to shut other editors out of writing and influencing the choice of content.
The same thing has occurred with #gamergate, with Wikipedia's coverage of the topic including information that is demonstrably false and excluding information in order to support an inaccurate, negative portrayal of #gamergate's consumer revolt.
The bias stretches across topics of all kinds, wherever the site's biased editors find it politically prudent to limit the information presented in order to frame an article in their own political bias. Public figures, historical events, organizations, and even abstract concepts have been subjected to this treatment, making the site worthless as a source of information unless the reader is trying to support a similar bias. Even then, its credibility undercut by its own editors, Wikipedia's value as a source has been destroyed.
In the past, I've written to ask what can be done about the site's political bias problem. Administrators showed no interest in addressing it. Now they're having a donation drive. I thought it would be appropriate to let the staff involved with collecting donations know why I can't see participating in it as a wise choice. Given that the admins' previous response was "well this is just how we do things," I do not expect my one letter to have much impact. However, I'd bet that if their donations drop and they hear from a lot of consumers that rampant political bias on the site is why, they may have to take a second look at the problem.
My email, sent to donate@ wikimedia.org, Wikipedia's contact address for issues with donating to the site:
During the last few years the men's issues community has seen Wikipedia articles on gender issues targeted by feminists to create a biased source that can be used as backup for feminism's claims about everything from various gender issues themselves to the men's rights community and specific men's advocates. Feminist-leaning editors have banded together to shut other editors out of writing and influencing the choice of content.
The same thing has occurred with #gamergate, with Wikipedia's coverage of the topic including information that is demonstrably false and excluding information in order to support an inaccurate, negative portrayal of #gamergate's consumer revolt.
The bias stretches across topics of all kinds, wherever the site's biased editors find it politically prudent to limit the information presented in order to frame an article in their own political bias. Public figures, historical events, organizations, and even abstract concepts have been subjected to this treatment, making the site worthless as a source of information unless the reader is trying to support a similar bias. Even then, its credibility undercut by its own editors, Wikipedia's value as a source has been destroyed.
In the past, I've written to ask what can be done about the site's political bias problem. Administrators showed no interest in addressing it. Now they're having a donation drive. I thought it would be appropriate to let the staff involved with collecting donations know why I can't see participating in it as a wise choice. Given that the admins' previous response was "well this is just how we do things," I do not expect my one letter to have much impact. However, I'd bet that if their donations drop and they hear from a lot of consumers that rampant political bias on the site is why, they may have to take a second look at the problem.
My email, sent to donate
My issue with donating to your site is not a technical one. It's a consumer complaint.
For years I've been researching and writing for various blogs and other publications. I have learned during that time that it is easy to find backup for anything a writer with a political bias wants to insert into an article. It's easy to ignore available information in order to frame an article to promote a political outlook. This is a thing that writers for political blogs often do. It's expected, and it's why readers should question what they read in those publications.
It should not, however, be a thing that writers for publications presented as reference material do. For reference material to be of any value, a reader should be able to trust that its presentation of information is complete, untainted by bias, and factual. It should present confirmed information without prejudice and allow readers to do their own evaluation of its meaning and importance.
Unfortunately your site does not do that.
Editors with a political bias have largely taken over the portions of Wikipedia which can be either categorized as or even remotely related to politics or the social sciences. Not only have they inserted bias into the writing on these topics, they have crowded out other editors in order to avoid being subject to any oversight on their work. When biased writing on the site is questioned, these biased editors treat that as harassment or sabotage of their work, and use Wikipedia's popular-opinion-weighted vetting process to censor dissenting editors.
This behavior calls the entire site's credibility and usefulness into question. I cannot use any Wikipedia articles as original reference material for any of my writing, as I cannot be certain without checking their work myself whether I'd be citing factual information, or quoting an ideologue's biased opinion. Instead, if I use the site at all, it's to search through your editors' sources as a starting point for online searches to see if I can get more complete information than your editors are willing to present. I might as well be doing the research for their articles myself.
I discourage my kids from using the site as an academic source except, again, as a starting point if they're having trouble figuring out what to search when doing their own research.I don't see any sense in supporting such roughshod, useless work. It would would be a terrible waste of money; if I am going to pay someone to do my research for me it would be wiser and more productive to buy access to a more established encyclopedia site.
I am terribly disappointed to see this happen to Wikipedia. It is with that disappointment and much regret that I inform you that as long as your site's administrators tolerate the biased editing and censorship of dissent, I'm afraid I simply cannot be one of your donors.
A request for Twitter
In the last few months I've seen some discussion on the exploitation of vulnerable aspects of twitter's rules by social justice warriors to silence political dissent by using bots to mass block or mass report so dissenters' accounts would be suspended. On October 29, I emailed press@twitter.com with questions, explaining my intent behind the request. I wanted to be up-front about the fact that this was for an article to ensure that their reply would consist of information they wanted known.
Recent trends in some groups' tweets have included referencing the option included in the "block or report" menu to report another user for content that is "Generally offensive, disrespectful or in disagreement with my opinion." Some users are touting that option as a means to silence political dissent. This sounded unlike a social site policy, and led me to look further into the reporting options.Further investigation has only led to more questions, including questions about other options for reporting. The help bubble for that option says "Twitter does not screen content and does not remove potentially offensive content unless such content is in violation of the Twitter Rules and Terms of Service," so I have read those.Some of the twitter rules have wording which could be subject to broad interpretation and potential abuse. I'm writing to request clarification, as I am considering an article. My current focus is communication, harassment, censorship, and how twitter's rules affect engagement between users in relation to political and other potentially controversial discussions. Any information I receive in response to these questions will contribute to that article.
For instance, listed under "targeted abuse" are
and
- if the sole purpose of your account is to send abusive messages to others;
What factors determine if the sole purpose of an account is to send abusive messages to others?
- if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats
Is disagreement with others' opinion considered an abusive message, and if so does that mean engaging in debate by replying to publicly made statements of opinion with counterarguments is now considered abuse?
If not, what is the specific reason for including "in disagreement with my opinion" in the harassment reporting options?
I am assuming that tweets without @user mentions are not considered "targeted" because they do not involve intentional contact and users can block feed they do not want to see. Is this correct?
Does "targeted abuse" include @user mentions without abusive language, but which contain a dissenting counterargument to something the user has said? (eg. I disagree with @twitteruser's stated opinion in LinkToPublication because reason #politicalorsocialconcept or @twitteruser I disagree with what you said.) If so, is that a blanket rule or does the behavior have to be repeated or continue after the user engaging in it has received some variation of "stop talking to me" before it is considered to be in violation?
Does the tone of a tweet change whether it is considered abusive, and if so what is the criteria for that? ("I disagree with what you said" vs a similar line containing expletives vs a line containing slurs or the suggestion that the user deserves to suffer violence because of his opinion.)
Under the Spam heading are the following criteria:
- If you have followed and/or unfollowed large amounts of users in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive following or follower churn);
When a political or social movement forms on twitter, users often follow each other so that posts about their specific pet issue will show up in their feed. Is it a goal of twitter to prevent this, or does following require automated means in order to be considered a violation?
Many users post links to news stories, videos, and memes related to hashtags created for issues and concepts that have meaning to them. Very often these are, to the user, personal updates because they are new information about the issue or concept. Will users whose personal updates usually include links to information be considered spammers?
- If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;
This looks like it could be used by ideological groups to silence popular or very vocal users whose updates contain statements of opinion to which they are opposed, by banding together to all block and/or report the same person, thereby putting him or her in violation. What is twitter's administration doing to counter potential abuse of these rules?
- If a large number of people are blocking you;
- If a large number of spam complaints have been filed against you;
There are Twitter users currently interpreting this to mean that dissenting views to a hashtag's political outlook and criticism of the belief or assertion behind a hashtag can be considered spam if it is posted to the hashtag. For example, posting an opposing viewpoint with a political hashtag can offend the readers of the hashtag, but it's a discussion attempt. Is it considered spam even if it is not belligerent or threatening?
- If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #, trending or popular topic, or promoted trend;
This line is hard to interpret. Can you please give a more detailed explanation of what it means? How does twitter determine when following, favoriting, and retweeting are random or aggressive, and when doing those things is acceptable?
- Randomly or aggressively following, favoriting or Retweeting Tweets;
Finally, do you have a policy in place to deal with habitual, vexatious false flagging (users repeatedly reporting content which does not violate rules or terms of service in an attempt to silence speech they disapprove or people they dislike)? This is a behavior I've seen on other social networking sites where administrators have written and posted broadly interpretable policy without stipulating that false exploitation of it would also lead to discipline. What is Twitter doing to prevent users from banding together to engage in this type of harassment, and how do you differentiate between a user engaging in this and a user who spots or experiences and reports a lot of genuine violations?
If you provide me with a statement on the overall goal of Twitter's rules and guidelines as they relate to discussion on the site, I will include that in the article.
If you have any questions for me, please let me know, and I'll be happy to clarify anything that has not come across clearly. Thank you in advance for taking the time to address these questions. I hope to produce an article that will bring about better understanding of Twitter's rules and their relationship to the many discussions among users of the site.
To date I have not heard back. I cannot be sure if this is simply due to their staff for handling press requests being small and unable to keep up, or if they are avoiding answering the question. Even if it is the latter, it could be because, now that they realize there are holes in their policy they want to fix them before replying. It could also be due to a desire to leave those holes in place without having to answer for them. The only way to know would be to hear back from twitter, and that is out of my control.
Cut to the chase
I don't usually let stuff like this get to me but lately it's been really pervasive and so I'm speaking up. Hope I get what I'm thinking about across without pissing too many people off. This isn't directed at anyone in particular, though I'm sure there will be other MRAs who can see how what I'm saying applies to arguments they've been involved in. If you do, don't take it personally, and don't take it as support for your individual side of your individual argument either, because this isn't about targeting anyone for criticism or siding with anyone's politics, social outlook, religion, or anything else.
It's just me asking you to consider some thoughts.
I know that there will be disagreement among us on politics, lifestyle choices, social behavior and so on, but we have so much work to do. We can and should have our own lifestyles, political and religious, nonreligious, or anti-religious outlooks... but none of that should eclipse the underlying goal. At the end of the day, we're just people trying to broaden society's view of humanity in hopes that doing so will lead to legal and social reform where men currently suffer discrimination.
Bickering can't take the place of that. It'll stop us in our tracks. I don't think any of us wants that.
Am I wrong?
Stupid question of the day
It's nothing new to see women questioning the validity, ethics and usefulness of birth control options for men. Dr. Coutinho, who studied a then though possible formula for a male pill, recounts how feminists led by Betty Friedan protested his research years ago. Friedan's accusation that men will lie about the pill to obtain consent is ridiculous in the context of a legal system that pins 18 years of financial responsibility on a man if he and his sex partner conceive, but it's been echoed by feminists every time the idea of birth control for men is brought up. Feminists assert everything from a belief that men are too irresponsible to a belief that despite the risk of becoming an estranged, unwed father, they don't want the option. It's also not uncommon to see the issue discussed in terms of zero sum, writing or speaking as if one partner's use of any form of birth control precludes the other partner's ability or right to do the same. Radhika Sanghani of DailyLife.com is the latest writer to do this, in an article about Vasalgel, an upcoming new innovation in male birth control, titled "Male birth control could be here by 2017 - but will anyone take it?" Her subheading asks if women would "relinquish responsibility." Even before the body of the article, she has hit two of feminism's main talking points on the topic.
Sanghani uses conjecture from a female behavioral psyhcologist to lend credibility to her theory. Donna Dawson is quoted stating that men will either say birth control is a woman's job, or be too squeamish to take the shot. This, despite the fact that men do opt for a more invasive and permanent procedure; Vasectomy.
Dawson goes on to suggest, despite the fact that they make up the majority of workplace deaths and injuries due to being the majority of workers in dangerous, difficult, and dirty jobs, that men won't handle the responsibility because they're not accustomed to it, and have a lower pain threshold than women.
Treating the issue of birth control as a zero sum game in which only one partner may use preventative methods at a time is irrational. There is nothing about a man's use of any birth control method that would prevent a woman from also using birth control. Widening men's access to birth control does not raise a question of trust, but eliminates a need for it. Expanded options for men will not reduce options for women, but they will make it harder for women to use chicanery and lies to become pregnant with a male partner's child against his will. Given that, the tendency of female-oriented media and outspoken feminists to nay-say the upcoming increase in options for male birth control is senseless at its face value. At best, it's a thinly disguised protest against an impending break of women's near-monopoly on control over conception and childbirth by providing men with a new measure of preventative control over their own reproduction.
Equally irrational is the suggestion that men don't want the option. Currently, a man only has two, condoms and vasectomy. Condoms reduce sensation, and are subject to abuse by unscrupulous women. Vasectomy is intended to be permanent, and though sometimes reversible, it is not always, so it's mainly an option for men who are done wanting to have children, or never want to have them. Even when a man does want to opt for a vasectomy, some physicians actually require the wife's consent before the procedure can be performed.
That men do opt for vasectomy even with its potential drawbacks (somewhat painful procedure, some risks, permanence) directly contradicts the supposition that they'll wimp out of using the less invasive, safer, and reversible procedure involved with Vasalgel. The claim that they will smacks of looking for any excuse one can come up with to oppose the option, or an attitude of disdain toward men. It sounds particularly stupid coming from people working in an industry which places little physical demand on the body, writing about the half of the population from which come the majority of workers in industries in which daily tasks cause bodily damage.
The most ludicrous thing, however, about discussion on male birth control by female and feminist media is the presumption that women's opinions on the subject even matter.
If we were discussing the right to use a diaphragm, birth control cream, gel, film, pills or injections, intrauterine or sub-dermal implants, or even abortion, most of these women would shout down any man who chose to express an opinion which contradicted their own. The "my body, my choice" mantra leads the charge to make female birth control and termination of pregnancy a woman-only issue. Even the suggestion that women should be responsible for obtaining these conveniences at their own expense when they are elective has been deemed a shot fired in an imaginary war on women promoted by feminist ideologues. That particular feminist flag has been picked up and carried by the uninformed voter in droves, with the layman... er, woman, knowing no better than to compare medically unnecessary drugs used for convenience to medically necessary drugs used to treat bodily dysfunction as an argument in favor of forcing insurance companies to cover elective use. Any man daring to question this ideological push faces an onslaught of accusations of attempting to interfere with women's choices in what to do with their bodies.
In light of the facts, questioning the validity, ethics, and usefulness of increased options for male birth control is truly stupid, as is making one's support of it contingent on how it helps women. This issue is not about women. A more reasonable question is this: Women's issues ideologues have fought to make women's bodies a strictly female-opinion issue. What even makes feminists like Friedan and writers like Sanghani feel entitled to the slightest consideration of their opinion on what men may do with theirs?
Sanghani uses conjecture from a female behavioral psyhcologist to lend credibility to her theory. Donna Dawson is quoted stating that men will either say birth control is a woman's job, or be too squeamish to take the shot. This, despite the fact that men do opt for a more invasive and permanent procedure; Vasectomy.
Dawson goes on to suggest, despite the fact that they make up the majority of workplace deaths and injuries due to being the majority of workers in dangerous, difficult, and dirty jobs, that men won't handle the responsibility because they're not accustomed to it, and have a lower pain threshold than women.
Treating the issue of birth control as a zero sum game in which only one partner may use preventative methods at a time is irrational. There is nothing about a man's use of any birth control method that would prevent a woman from also using birth control. Widening men's access to birth control does not raise a question of trust, but eliminates a need for it. Expanded options for men will not reduce options for women, but they will make it harder for women to use chicanery and lies to become pregnant with a male partner's child against his will. Given that, the tendency of female-oriented media and outspoken feminists to nay-say the upcoming increase in options for male birth control is senseless at its face value. At best, it's a thinly disguised protest against an impending break of women's near-monopoly on control over conception and childbirth by providing men with a new measure of preventative control over their own reproduction.
Equally irrational is the suggestion that men don't want the option. Currently, a man only has two, condoms and vasectomy. Condoms reduce sensation, and are subject to abuse by unscrupulous women. Vasectomy is intended to be permanent, and though sometimes reversible, it is not always, so it's mainly an option for men who are done wanting to have children, or never want to have them. Even when a man does want to opt for a vasectomy, some physicians actually require the wife's consent before the procedure can be performed.
That men do opt for vasectomy even with its potential drawbacks (somewhat painful procedure, some risks, permanence) directly contradicts the supposition that they'll wimp out of using the less invasive, safer, and reversible procedure involved with Vasalgel. The claim that they will smacks of looking for any excuse one can come up with to oppose the option, or an attitude of disdain toward men. It sounds particularly stupid coming from people working in an industry which places little physical demand on the body, writing about the half of the population from which come the majority of workers in industries in which daily tasks cause bodily damage.
The most ludicrous thing, however, about discussion on male birth control by female and feminist media is the presumption that women's opinions on the subject even matter.
If we were discussing the right to use a diaphragm, birth control cream, gel, film, pills or injections, intrauterine or sub-dermal implants, or even abortion, most of these women would shout down any man who chose to express an opinion which contradicted their own. The "my body, my choice" mantra leads the charge to make female birth control and termination of pregnancy a woman-only issue. Even the suggestion that women should be responsible for obtaining these conveniences at their own expense when they are elective has been deemed a shot fired in an imaginary war on women promoted by feminist ideologues. That particular feminist flag has been picked up and carried by the uninformed voter in droves, with the layman... er, woman, knowing no better than to compare medically unnecessary drugs used for convenience to medically necessary drugs used to treat bodily dysfunction as an argument in favor of forcing insurance companies to cover elective use. Any man daring to question this ideological push faces an onslaught of accusations of attempting to interfere with women's choices in what to do with their bodies.
In light of the facts, questioning the validity, ethics, and usefulness of increased options for male birth control is truly stupid, as is making one's support of it contingent on how it helps women. This issue is not about women. A more reasonable question is this: Women's issues ideologues have fought to make women's bodies a strictly female-opinion issue. What even makes feminists like Friedan and writers like Sanghani feel entitled to the slightest consideration of their opinion on what men may do with theirs?
A question of respect
A question I heard out of context today kind of crystallized for me an aspect of the #gamergate controversy, multiple men's issues, and the difference in public response to incidents of domestic violence among famous people depending on whether the perceived perpetrator is male or female. Standing in a convenience store, listening to a woman complain about a man smelling like smoke, I groaned inwardly as she landed on what seems to have become an old standby for gals with something to complain about.
"What's the matter with that guy? Doesn't he respect women?"
Most of the time, when I hear that line, the woman saying it is using the word "respect" when she really means "venerate."
Once upon a time there was a trade-off under which women earned special treatment. It was contingent on eschewing rough behaviors like heavy drinking, fighting, and sexual promiscuity. Women were presumed morally superior, and expected to live up to that. They were presumed gentler than men, and expected to live up to that, as well. Even feminine aesthetics were about being something more special than a man, which is why women were and still are allowed the luxury of wearing clothing that restricts one's ability to perform heavy or hard labor. In return for living up to those standards, women were entitled to certain concessions not afforded to men. They could display more delicate sensibilities such as offense at rough language or crude subject matter, and expect their aversions to be indulged. They could expect exemption from some of life's responsibilities, like supporting a family or even themselves. It was not just a gentleman's responsibility, but his honor to assist a woman in need, and doing harm to a woman was taboo for any man. Women who lived up to the moral and social standards associated with their traditional role were considered respectable in a way that deserved veneration; men who lived up to theirs revered them.
The reverence that women today so loudly and crassly demand in the name of "respect" is not earned under such an arrangement. Sixty years of feminist protesting has freed women from the constraints of social obligation, allowing us to, without expecting judgement for it, become as crass, as violent, and as sexually promiscuous as men, and in many cases, more. Feminists fought for this under the guise of equality, demanding society acknowledge not only equality of rights and human value but capability and toughness. Feminists fought to free women from our side of the bargain, yet what do we hear from them the moment a man's equal treatment of a woman means she is no longer indulged or exempted as before? "What's wrong with that guy? Doesn't he respect women?"
What does that have to do with #gamergate? Well, it began with women complaining of a lack of equal treatment and ended up with a massive shaming campaign wherein women and their supporters drew on traditionally unequal standards to try to shame gamers into giving them special treatment; exempting the women central to the controversy from criticism they would be expected to face and address if they were men. Both the women and the media substituted a demand for veneration of women, requiring subjugation of male gamers' concerns, where an open dialogue was needed.
How is that respect for anyone?
You can see the same treatment in various issues discussed by the men's rights community. Bring up equal parenting rights, and women's groups shout down arguments in favor by demonizing fathers without evidence, calling them deadbeats and abusers. Try to apply fact and reason to discussion about the wage gap, and the misogyny card is immediately thrown down. In the face of impending equal treatment, women's groups defend gender disparity in likelihood of arrest, in chance of a conviction, in criminal sentencing, and in length and type of sentence served in cases where men and women commit the same crimes. Even in an area that should be a no-brainer, involuntary underage genital cutting, women's groups defend girls' bodily autonomy, demanding total elimination of the tradition, while supporting the use of it on infant boys. This, with no better reason than those given for the use of it on girls.
The same groups which claim physical equality in their arguments for equal pay reverse themselves when the discussion turns to intimate partner and sexual violence. Abuse is abuse, unless a woman is the perpetrator and a man is the victim. A man must treat a woman the same as he would another man... unless she assaults him. Then, he owes her the special treatment of not defending himself as he would against another man. She is to be coddled like an unruly child. Though we're equal when women's advocates are demanding an equal share of life's rewards (*edit - excellent point made by Bernard Chapin - feminists demand rewards women have not earned such as equal representation in CEO positions despite women not putting in the work and making the sacrifices to get there... a more than equal share*), when confronting life's rough side, we're not at all equal. Suddenly, women are inferior, not only too weak to back up their display of temper with a strong assault, but also too stupid to acknowledge that by keeping their fists to themselves. Which message should women buy into? Are we strong and smart enough to earn the same pay as roughnecks and loggers, scientists and engineers, or are we too weak to defend ourselves yet too stupid to refrain from picking fights with men anyway? Do feminists and other social justice warriors think women aren't savvy enough to notice that contradiction?
This indicates to me that women's outrage is badly misdirected. It isn't men's attitudes that need to be examined, but those of feminists and other social justice warriors who play the misogyny card to deflect attempts to hold women to the same standards and expectations faced by men. That behavior is not indicative of very much faith in their supposed charges.
Hey, feminists and SJWs! What's wrong with you guys! Don't you respect women?
"What's the matter with that guy? Doesn't he respect women?"
Most of the time, when I hear that line, the woman saying it is using the word "respect" when she really means "venerate."
Once upon a time there was a trade-off under which women earned special treatment. It was contingent on eschewing rough behaviors like heavy drinking, fighting, and sexual promiscuity. Women were presumed morally superior, and expected to live up to that. They were presumed gentler than men, and expected to live up to that, as well. Even feminine aesthetics were about being something more special than a man, which is why women were and still are allowed the luxury of wearing clothing that restricts one's ability to perform heavy or hard labor. In return for living up to those standards, women were entitled to certain concessions not afforded to men. They could display more delicate sensibilities such as offense at rough language or crude subject matter, and expect their aversions to be indulged. They could expect exemption from some of life's responsibilities, like supporting a family or even themselves. It was not just a gentleman's responsibility, but his honor to assist a woman in need, and doing harm to a woman was taboo for any man. Women who lived up to the moral and social standards associated with their traditional role were considered respectable in a way that deserved veneration; men who lived up to theirs revered them.
The reverence that women today so loudly and crassly demand in the name of "respect" is not earned under such an arrangement. Sixty years of feminist protesting has freed women from the constraints of social obligation, allowing us to, without expecting judgement for it, become as crass, as violent, and as sexually promiscuous as men, and in many cases, more. Feminists fought for this under the guise of equality, demanding society acknowledge not only equality of rights and human value but capability and toughness. Feminists fought to free women from our side of the bargain, yet what do we hear from them the moment a man's equal treatment of a woman means she is no longer indulged or exempted as before? "What's wrong with that guy? Doesn't he respect women?"
What does that have to do with #gamergate? Well, it began with women complaining of a lack of equal treatment and ended up with a massive shaming campaign wherein women and their supporters drew on traditionally unequal standards to try to shame gamers into giving them special treatment; exempting the women central to the controversy from criticism they would be expected to face and address if they were men. Both the women and the media substituted a demand for veneration of women, requiring subjugation of male gamers' concerns, where an open dialogue was needed.
How is that respect for anyone?
You can see the same treatment in various issues discussed by the men's rights community. Bring up equal parenting rights, and women's groups shout down arguments in favor by demonizing fathers without evidence, calling them deadbeats and abusers. Try to apply fact and reason to discussion about the wage gap, and the misogyny card is immediately thrown down. In the face of impending equal treatment, women's groups defend gender disparity in likelihood of arrest, in chance of a conviction, in criminal sentencing, and in length and type of sentence served in cases where men and women commit the same crimes. Even in an area that should be a no-brainer, involuntary underage genital cutting, women's groups defend girls' bodily autonomy, demanding total elimination of the tradition, while supporting the use of it on infant boys. This, with no better reason than those given for the use of it on girls.
The same groups which claim physical equality in their arguments for equal pay reverse themselves when the discussion turns to intimate partner and sexual violence. Abuse is abuse, unless a woman is the perpetrator and a man is the victim. A man must treat a woman the same as he would another man... unless she assaults him. Then, he owes her the special treatment of not defending himself as he would against another man. She is to be coddled like an unruly child. Though we're equal when women's advocates are demanding an equal share of life's rewards (*edit - excellent point made by Bernard Chapin - feminists demand rewards women have not earned such as equal representation in CEO positions despite women not putting in the work and making the sacrifices to get there... a more than equal share*), when confronting life's rough side, we're not at all equal. Suddenly, women are inferior, not only too weak to back up their display of temper with a strong assault, but also too stupid to acknowledge that by keeping their fists to themselves. Which message should women buy into? Are we strong and smart enough to earn the same pay as roughnecks and loggers, scientists and engineers, or are we too weak to defend ourselves yet too stupid to refrain from picking fights with men anyway? Do feminists and other social justice warriors think women aren't savvy enough to notice that contradiction?
This indicates to me that women's outrage is badly misdirected. It isn't men's attitudes that need to be examined, but those of feminists and other social justice warriors who play the misogyny card to deflect attempts to hold women to the same standards and expectations faced by men. That behavior is not indicative of very much faith in their supposed charges.
Hey, feminists and SJWs! What's wrong with you guys! Don't you respect women?
Men's Rights Edmonton needs your help
For those who want to help but cannot attend: Please click on the link to watch this video on youtube instead of here on my blog, then click on the "share" link and share the video on your various social media so that awareness of the call to action will spread.
Thanks :)
My view from the bus on my way home from the international men's issues conference 2014
I totally forgot I had this until I was going through my phone pics today. It's not a men's rights issue so much as an interesting thing. The southbound Greyhound bus I was on was stopped just south of Toledo, Ohio, by the United States border patrol, complete with drug sniffing dog. I took a cell phone pic out the window.
Thought I'd share.
§ 287 (a) (3) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 66 Stat. 233, 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(3), which provides for warrantless searches of automobiles and other conveyances "within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States," as authorized by regulations to be promulgated by the Attorney General. The Attorney General's regulation, 8 CFR § 287.1, defines "reasonable distance" as "within 100 air miles from any external boundary of the United States."
Border patrol's buffer zone, called a "constitution-free zone" by the ACLU, extends as far south as Columbus.
Thought I'd share.
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| The dog, apparently not trained to sniff out ibuprofen and fruit flavored gummy vitamins, showed little interest in the baggage compartment of the bus. No aliens were found, either, but you know, Greyhound did transport a wild honey badger to Detroit and back. Fortunately, that's not Border Patrol's area of interest, and they did not return me to the sammich mines. |
§ 287 (a) (3) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 66 Stat. 233, 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(3), which provides for warrantless searches of automobiles and other conveyances "within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States," as authorized by regulations to be promulgated by the Attorney General. The Attorney General's regulation, 8 CFR § 287.1, defines "reasonable distance" as "within 100 air miles from any external boundary of the United States."
Border patrol's buffer zone, called a "constitution-free zone" by the ACLU, extends as far south as Columbus.
Selective Service: Code for slavery
The
purpose of selective service is to provide rich politicians with the
power to force middle class and poor (mostly poor) male citizens into
military service to support a war the public isn't behind enough to
inspire citizens to volunteer for military service.
It's really the last bastion of overt slavery in the U.S. It presumes government command of men, representing the assertion of state ownership of a man's will, his body, and his life, and of the right to sacrifice all three for the state's chosen purpose, whether he agrees or not. With significant penalties resulting from failure to register; imprisonment, limitations on access to programs they're required to fund through taxes, and exclusion from citizenship if they are immigrants. Requirement to register is not like being required to have a license in order to do or have something special. These are not conditions placed on men based on any choice or a trade. These are conditions placed on men merely because of their existence and their sex.
There is no other honest description for coerced registration except slavery. There is no other honest description involuntary military conscription except slavery. The government essentially owns every man in the United states, and reserves the right to demand any man risk everything to support any conflict into which the government chooses to place him, and if he refuses to submit to that, the government reserves the right to punish him.
In recent conflicts, the U.S. population and the military have demonstrated that even if the draft were justified and not an abuse of power, it isn't needed. Our population has been able to support extensive and widespread military action without it, even without full public support. Even in controversial actions, enough people have enlisted that while our military is active on multiple fronts, there's been no involuntary conscription by the U.S. government.
This is partly due to the existing level of public support for the current efforts. Even though it is not universal, it has been high enough. It's also partly due to the high rate of enrollment in recent decades, so that the military could rely on recalling Individual Ready Reserves.
The reason enrollment and recall have been enough is due to the second factor; advancements in technology and resulting advancements in tactics, which have greatly reduced the rate of injury and death occurring on the American side of a military action. Compare the current actions to the actions of the 20th century, and you'll see a decline in injury and death between the world war eras and today. Because of that, the military isn't having to constantly replenish its ranks to replace large losses (and there's a whole other discussion in that which I won't get into here,) and there is no legitimate excuse to claim a shortage of military personnel in an all volunteer military.
The only reason state officials would have left to want to keep this antiquated, discriminatory and abusive system in place is to retain the power to enslave and exploit men in the event the administration decides to execute military action that isn't so approved and accepted by the population as to draw volunteers. There is no justification for that; only a sense of entitlement which a society has no business tolerating while considering itself modern and civilized... especially when that entitlement is discriminatory. It's really time this ended. It never should have been enacted in the first place.
On a side note, 20th century presidential actions on the draft; who did what, and when:
It's really the last bastion of overt slavery in the U.S. It presumes government command of men, representing the assertion of state ownership of a man's will, his body, and his life, and of the right to sacrifice all three for the state's chosen purpose, whether he agrees or not. With significant penalties resulting from failure to register; imprisonment, limitations on access to programs they're required to fund through taxes, and exclusion from citizenship if they are immigrants. Requirement to register is not like being required to have a license in order to do or have something special. These are not conditions placed on men based on any choice or a trade. These are conditions placed on men merely because of their existence and their sex.
There is no other honest description for coerced registration except slavery. There is no other honest description involuntary military conscription except slavery. The government essentially owns every man in the United states, and reserves the right to demand any man risk everything to support any conflict into which the government chooses to place him, and if he refuses to submit to that, the government reserves the right to punish him.
In recent conflicts, the U.S. population and the military have demonstrated that even if the draft were justified and not an abuse of power, it isn't needed. Our population has been able to support extensive and widespread military action without it, even without full public support. Even in controversial actions, enough people have enlisted that while our military is active on multiple fronts, there's been no involuntary conscription by the U.S. government.
This is partly due to the existing level of public support for the current efforts. Even though it is not universal, it has been high enough. It's also partly due to the high rate of enrollment in recent decades, so that the military could rely on recalling Individual Ready Reserves.
The reason enrollment and recall have been enough is due to the second factor; advancements in technology and resulting advancements in tactics, which have greatly reduced the rate of injury and death occurring on the American side of a military action. Compare the current actions to the actions of the 20th century, and you'll see a decline in injury and death between the world war eras and today. Because of that, the military isn't having to constantly replenish its ranks to replace large losses (and there's a whole other discussion in that which I won't get into here,) and there is no legitimate excuse to claim a shortage of military personnel in an all volunteer military.
The only reason state officials would have left to want to keep this antiquated, discriminatory and abusive system in place is to retain the power to enslave and exploit men in the event the administration decides to execute military action that isn't so approved and accepted by the population as to draw volunteers. There is no justification for that; only a sense of entitlement which a society has no business tolerating while considering itself modern and civilized... especially when that entitlement is discriminatory. It's really time this ended. It never should have been enacted in the first place.
On a side note, 20th century presidential actions on the draft; who did what, and when:
- 1917 - original Selective Service Act, signed by Woodrow Wilson.
- 1940 - Burke-Wadsworth Act (first peacetime conscription), signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1948 - Elston Act (established the current system), signed by Harry Truman
- 1951 - Universal Military Training and Service Act (lowered draft eligibility age by 6 months, increased time of service mandate) signed by Harry Truman
- 1963 - Executive Order 11119 (exempts married men) signed by John F. Kennedy
- 1965 - Executive Order 11241 (revokes exemption for married men if childless/no dependents) signed by Lyndon B. Johnson
- 1967 - Military Selective Service Act (expanded
conscription ages to 18-35, modified student deferment to end at age 24
or completion of 4 year degree, whichever first) signed by Lyndon B. Johnson
- 1969 - Amendment to Military Selective Service Act (created the draft lottery used during the Vietnam war) signed by Richard Nixon
- 1971 - Amendment to Military Selective Service Act
(made registration compulsory, set up registration classifications -
eligible or conscientious objector - and eliminated all student
deferments except divinity school, changed draft board membership
requirements) signed by Richard Nixon
- 1973 - creation of an all-volunteer armed forces announced by Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird during the presidency of Richard Nixon
- 1975 - Proclamation 4360, Terminating Registration Procedures Under Military Selective Service Act (Eliminated registration requirement) signed by Gerald Ford
- 1980 - Proclamation 4771, Registration Under the Military Selective Service Act (retroactively re-established registration requirement for anyone born on or after 1/1/1960) signed by Jimmy Carter
- 1986 - Executive Order 12553 (eliminated
executive orders 11119 and 11241, by Kennedy & Johnson,
respectively, along with a long list of other executive orders) signed
by Ronald Reagan
Suffragettes can't save feminism
Feminists unable to defend against criticism of their lobbying history often fall back on the suffrage card. To put it simply, feminists claim that the suffragette movement means feminism is responsible for women's ability to exercise the right to vote. They present the voting card framed in the belief that prior to activism by the suffragettes, women were universally denied voting rights which were universally enjoyed by men, or at least men who were not black. It's offered as a get out of criticism free card, as if this one thing redeems the entire movement's history of anti-male rhetoric, unsupported claims, and agitation for discriminatory law and policy. It does not, but even if it did, there's another problem with the belief.
History does not support their position.
Historically, men did not have the universal suffrage that suffragettes demanded for women. Voting rights were tied to all kinds of terms and conditions. Further, there are examples (with more emerging) of women voting before the women's suffrage movement.
One such example is a recently discovered document listing English women voters in an election which took place in 1843, 75 years prior to legislation recognizing women's voting rights in 1918. At that time, suffrage for men was not universal, but limited to the upper classes, with various groups agitating for parliamentary reform throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The women recorded in the 1843 document would have had to meet the standards met by men. They paid a fee, and it determined how their vote was counted. Note that the article mentions that the high fee paid by Grace Brown gave her 4 votes, where those who paid less got only one vote. These women also enjoyed a privilege denied to men who did not meet legal voting requirements. Adult men who were not heads of households could not vote.
Prior to the formation of the United States, voting in the colonies was largely governed by the same standards used in England. However, contrary to popular belief, women were not universally barred from voting. As with the women in England's 1843 document, American women who voted prior to the 20th century did so under the same terms and conditions faced by men, save for one: Women were not and still are not subject to being drafted into the military in times of war.
One interesting example of early female voters prior to universal male suffrage is the colony of New Jersey, where gender was not a factor in voting rights until the Democratic-Republican party, which eventually became the Democrat party, took the vote away from Jersey women, minorities, non-citizens, and the poor in 1807 over conflict between their party and federalists.
Even after the U.S. became a nation, men's suffrage was not universal. Voting rights continued to evolve throughout the 19th century, with states slowly letting go of property ownership requirements over the course of decades. After the 15th amendment was ratified, recognizing black male citizenship and voting rights, southern states passed "grandfather clauses" to roll back their rights, and used Jim Crow laws and poll taxes to get out of recognizing them until the success of the civil rights movement in the mid 20th century. This allowed wealthy and middle class white women to vote while many poor and minority men and women were kept away from the polls.
In 1876, the supreme court ruled that Native Americans were not citizens as defined by the 14th Amendment, and therefore could not vote. In 1890, they were told they could apply to become naturalized citizens in their own ancestral land. Laws denying citizenship to various Asian immigrants passed in 1882 (the Chinese exception) and 1922 (Japanese immigrants.) In 1919 Native Americans and in 1925 Filipinos were told they could earn citizenship by risking their lives serving in American wars. Various stipulations, including Jim Crow laws and poll taxes, left the majority of the indigenous population of the U.S. and its territories, along with the majority of Asian immigrants, and most minorities, subject to the rule of the American government without representation by officials for (or against) whom they had the right to vote - the same injustice that sparked the Revolutionary war. Asians did not see their voting rights universally recognized until the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. Native Americans' right to vote was not fully recognized until 1957, 37 years after the 19th Amendment recognized women's right to vote... 12 years before the first man walked on the moon. It was not until 8 years after Native Americans were recognized, 4 years after the first manned American space flight and 4 years before we put a man on the moon, that the Voting Rights Act passed, protecting the right of all blacks and other minorities to vote. Upper class white women got the vote in 1920. Impoverished black men and women did not truly get theirs until 1965.
Feminists who paint the history of citizen suffrage in starkly gendered terms do so in either ignorance of or contempt for reality. Western civilization's growing pains have not been so clearly defined, nor has the weight of feminism's influence on the evolution of voting rights. It was both separate and tandem fighting by many disenfranchised groups which brought about voting reform in England and the United States, including, but not limited to, women's rights.
The suffragette movement is yet another example of feminists approaching a human problem as if only women are impacted, and only women deserve relief.
KSUM Conference on Educational Equity fundraiser underway
Kennesaw State University Men (KSUM), the first A Voice For Men-sponsored student organization, is hosting a conference on Educational Equity on November 1, 2014 from 3PM to 9PM EST.
Victor Zen (Sage Gerard) has written a series of articles on AVFM about the conference, the process of founding KSUM, and the hurdles that campus men face to simply discussing men's issues on campus. In working to get the organization off the ground, though there was support from some campus officials, Sage encountered everything from bureaucratic stonewalling to outright hostility. He found that some existing student support systems on campus were marketing their services to women but not to men, while some which targeted men weren't helpful. For their interest in having a place for men to discuss men's issues, KSUM's founders have faced opposition from campus feminists.
This conference is KSUM's opportunity to secure its place on campus as an active student organization. It's an opportunity for activists to foster an organization dedicated to providing men with educational support similar to the support offered to women.
There are two ways you can help.
1) KSUM has a fundraiser for the conference. The group needs to raise $13,000. At the writing of this post, they're at $2,362 with 26 days to go. There are rewards for higher contributions, but the site allows any dollar amount. Even small contributions can add up quickly.
2) Spread the word. Even if you cannot contribute to the fundraiser, giving it greater exposure increases the chance that the group will receive the donations they need. There are many places to share this information. Both the fundraiser site itself and Sage's article on AVFM have buttons for sharing in multiple locations. The fundraiser page also has a link you can use to share on sites not listed on the page.
Sharing the links is vital, as increasing the exposure the initiative gets will increase the chance for contributions. Even if you can't add to the pot, you may draw the attention of those who can and will.Be sure to spread the word.
Victor Zen (Sage Gerard) has written a series of articles on AVFM about the conference, the process of founding KSUM, and the hurdles that campus men face to simply discussing men's issues on campus. In working to get the organization off the ground, though there was support from some campus officials, Sage encountered everything from bureaucratic stonewalling to outright hostility. He found that some existing student support systems on campus were marketing their services to women but not to men, while some which targeted men weren't helpful. For their interest in having a place for men to discuss men's issues, KSUM's founders have faced opposition from campus feminists.
This conference is KSUM's opportunity to secure its place on campus as an active student organization. It's an opportunity for activists to foster an organization dedicated to providing men with educational support similar to the support offered to women.
There are two ways you can help.
1) KSUM has a fundraiser for the conference. The group needs to raise $13,000. At the writing of this post, they're at $2,362 with 26 days to go. There are rewards for higher contributions, but the site allows any dollar amount. Even small contributions can add up quickly.
2) Spread the word. Even if you cannot contribute to the fundraiser, giving it greater exposure increases the chance that the group will receive the donations they need. There are many places to share this information. Both the fundraiser site itself and Sage's article on AVFM have buttons for sharing in multiple locations. The fundraiser page also has a link you can use to share on sites not listed on the page.
Sharing the links is vital, as increasing the exposure the initiative gets will increase the chance for contributions. Even if you can't add to the pot, you may draw the attention of those who can and will.Be sure to spread the word.
Dark horse walks into a bar
Precious, you poor little dear, so pitifully lacking in any understanding of the beast in whose belly you've made your nest. You seem to be operating under the delusion that you're a journalist.
Let's start out with a little clarification. Make no mistake about what you actually did, versus how you have represented it in your self-aggrandizing attempt at sounding whimsical and creative. Your entire post can be summed up in one single, stark, unspun paragraph.
"I misrepresented myself, stalked a group of people who had made abundantly clear in the past they wanted nothing to do with me, and flirted with a man under false pretenses while he was drinking. I then took advantage of his trust by photographing him. Now I have written (sans evidence) a narrative I think sounds damning, and shared it along with that photo in a crappy, blathering blog post. In my arrogance and bigotry, I see nothing wrong with this and have actually had the nerve to presume my behavior 'investigative journalism.'"
Having met him and spoken to him at length myself, I don't find your story credible, but even if it were, it's not a very good condemnation of anyone against whom you intended to use it.
It hasn't even occurred to you to think of what you've said about yourself and other women in that narrative of yours, has it? Whispy as it was, it was still quite obvious that you were trying to portray one adult in a bar as a predator with nothing more than the unsupported but also not so damning claim that he reciprocated interest communicated by the approach and advances of another adult.
My word, how scandalous. You claim that you flirted with a dude in a relaxed setting, and heaven forbid... you say he took the unthinkable step of flirting back! My god, girl. It's a wonder you got out of there alive!
Your fantasy aside, what you describe with intent to infer predation is merely an interaction in which you chose to participate, and for which you obtained his consent through deception. As is typical of feminists, your writing attempts to slander in a way that relies on infantilizing yourself and other women.
You were apparently grown enough to enter that bar under your own supervision.
You were apparently grown enough to strike up conversations with strangers.
You were apparently grown enough to approach a man without invitation and initiate conversation.
By your own account, you were apparently grown enough to recognize the value and usefulness of your own aesthetic advantage, and to exploit it.
You were apparently even grown enough to disguise an image grab as use of your camera as a prop to engage your target's interest. If all of that is true, then you are grown enough to be above the bullshit you wrote about the experience.
If you're not mature enough to socially interact with people older than yourself, you're not mature enough to be out at night under your own supervision, much less in an establishment where alcohol is sold.
If you're not mature enough to determine your own behavior based on your ability to handle various responses to it, you're not mature enough to initiate social interaction with an adult of any age.
If you're not mature enough to engage in honest discussion without pretense or subterfuge so that others have the opportunity to respond to the person you are instead of the person you pretend to be, you're not deserving of the attention and regard you so voraciously hunt.
If you're so unprepared to interact with a man without requiring that his response flatter your ego that when you don't get what you want out of him you have to invent and spew badly composed adolescent fantasy, you're not stable enough, much less mature enough to deserve a man's trust.
If you're so helpless, so childish, and so fragile as to consider the scenario you described worthy of complaint by anyone except the man you willfully deceived, then you are not mature enough to exercise the simple, amateur coquetry you described in your post.
The experience of reading your writing was both disgusting and funny. It was disgusting to note that any individual capable of stringing a full set of words together to form a complete sentence would be so stupid as to degrade herself by using such tactics to damsel and mewl for attention from the likes of /r/againstmensrights redditors, David Futrelle, and their readers. It's funny how little substance it takes to earn their regard, as long as it's presented with some attempt at dramatic flair and a lot of homage to their belief system. The whole post struck me much in the same way as watching a cat chase a laser light on the floor. I honestly suspect that you just couldn't help yourself.
Even more ridiculous is your lack of foresight or any understanding of what you did.
Surely you did not, with intent to harass or intimidate, pursue your targets across state lines and engage in a course of conduct that could be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to those involved. Certainly you didn't try to use stalking and slander as a means to shame or intimidate people into silence just because they are, or are supporting, men. I mean, targeting folks for attack on the basis of their sex or the sex of those they support... that's something that is done to women, not something women do to others, right? That, according to the feminists who lobbied for it, is why there's a clause in the violence against women act covering that very type of behavior.
Oh, wait. Yes, you did. Lacking credentials and unable to use the conference itself as a setting for the bombshells you promised your financial backers, you resorted to creating your own little melodrama through stalking and harassment. You imposed your unwanted presence on and unwanted involvement in our activities and discussions, engaged people under false pretenses, surreptitiously surveilled us, and you even claim to have recorded without the knowledge of those involved discussions of which you were not part (i.e., talk in the parking lot as we prepared to leave.) When that didn't pay off with anything incriminating, you published slanderous falsehoods about the group and one individual in particular, with inferences that carry socially-damaging stigma, but none of which genuinely represented unethical or immoral behavior... and you demeaned yourself by damseling over nothing in order to do even that.
Miss Precious, you are not a journalist, and if you ever want to be one you should stop attaching shit like that to your image before it ruins your chances of ever being taken seriously by a credible publication's administrators.
And by the way, if "swore by the precious" is a Tolkien reference, you really identified yourself with the wrong character.
Bloodthirsty Shelob, who vainly strives to fill her internal void by damaging and draining from whoever she deems vulnerable, whose hunger so overwhelms her that she never even realizes or cares how she is being used, and who is far too reactive and unaware to know when she has begun to damage herself, would be a far more appropriate fit.
Let's start out with a little clarification. Make no mistake about what you actually did, versus how you have represented it in your self-aggrandizing attempt at sounding whimsical and creative. Your entire post can be summed up in one single, stark, unspun paragraph.
"I misrepresented myself, stalked a group of people who had made abundantly clear in the past they wanted nothing to do with me, and flirted with a man under false pretenses while he was drinking. I then took advantage of his trust by photographing him. Now I have written (sans evidence) a narrative I think sounds damning, and shared it along with that photo in a crappy, blathering blog post. In my arrogance and bigotry, I see nothing wrong with this and have actually had the nerve to presume my behavior 'investigative journalism.'"
Having met him and spoken to him at length myself, I don't find your story credible, but even if it were, it's not a very good condemnation of anyone against whom you intended to use it.
It hasn't even occurred to you to think of what you've said about yourself and other women in that narrative of yours, has it? Whispy as it was, it was still quite obvious that you were trying to portray one adult in a bar as a predator with nothing more than the unsupported but also not so damning claim that he reciprocated interest communicated by the approach and advances of another adult.
My word, how scandalous. You claim that you flirted with a dude in a relaxed setting, and heaven forbid... you say he took the unthinkable step of flirting back! My god, girl. It's a wonder you got out of there alive!
Your fantasy aside, what you describe with intent to infer predation is merely an interaction in which you chose to participate, and for which you obtained his consent through deception. As is typical of feminists, your writing attempts to slander in a way that relies on infantilizing yourself and other women.
You were apparently grown enough to enter that bar under your own supervision.
You were apparently grown enough to strike up conversations with strangers.
You were apparently grown enough to approach a man without invitation and initiate conversation.
By your own account, you were apparently grown enough to recognize the value and usefulness of your own aesthetic advantage, and to exploit it.
You were apparently even grown enough to disguise an image grab as use of your camera as a prop to engage your target's interest. If all of that is true, then you are grown enough to be above the bullshit you wrote about the experience.
If you're not mature enough to socially interact with people older than yourself, you're not mature enough to be out at night under your own supervision, much less in an establishment where alcohol is sold.
If you're not mature enough to determine your own behavior based on your ability to handle various responses to it, you're not mature enough to initiate social interaction with an adult of any age.
If you're not mature enough to engage in honest discussion without pretense or subterfuge so that others have the opportunity to respond to the person you are instead of the person you pretend to be, you're not deserving of the attention and regard you so voraciously hunt.
If you're so unprepared to interact with a man without requiring that his response flatter your ego that when you don't get what you want out of him you have to invent and spew badly composed adolescent fantasy, you're not stable enough, much less mature enough to deserve a man's trust.
If you're so helpless, so childish, and so fragile as to consider the scenario you described worthy of complaint by anyone except the man you willfully deceived, then you are not mature enough to exercise the simple, amateur coquetry you described in your post.
The experience of reading your writing was both disgusting and funny. It was disgusting to note that any individual capable of stringing a full set of words together to form a complete sentence would be so stupid as to degrade herself by using such tactics to damsel and mewl for attention from the likes of /r/againstmensrights redditors, David Futrelle, and their readers. It's funny how little substance it takes to earn their regard, as long as it's presented with some attempt at dramatic flair and a lot of homage to their belief system. The whole post struck me much in the same way as watching a cat chase a laser light on the floor. I honestly suspect that you just couldn't help yourself.
Even more ridiculous is your lack of foresight or any understanding of what you did.
Surely you did not, with intent to harass or intimidate, pursue your targets across state lines and engage in a course of conduct that could be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to those involved. Certainly you didn't try to use stalking and slander as a means to shame or intimidate people into silence just because they are, or are supporting, men. I mean, targeting folks for attack on the basis of their sex or the sex of those they support... that's something that is done to women, not something women do to others, right? That, according to the feminists who lobbied for it, is why there's a clause in the violence against women act covering that very type of behavior.
Oh, wait. Yes, you did. Lacking credentials and unable to use the conference itself as a setting for the bombshells you promised your financial backers, you resorted to creating your own little melodrama through stalking and harassment. You imposed your unwanted presence on and unwanted involvement in our activities and discussions, engaged people under false pretenses, surreptitiously surveilled us, and you even claim to have recorded without the knowledge of those involved discussions of which you were not part (i.e., talk in the parking lot as we prepared to leave.) When that didn't pay off with anything incriminating, you published slanderous falsehoods about the group and one individual in particular, with inferences that carry socially-damaging stigma, but none of which genuinely represented unethical or immoral behavior... and you demeaned yourself by damseling over nothing in order to do even that.
Miss Precious, you are not a journalist, and if you ever want to be one you should stop attaching shit like that to your image before it ruins your chances of ever being taken seriously by a credible publication's administrators.
And by the way, if "swore by the precious" is a Tolkien reference, you really identified yourself with the wrong character.
Bloodthirsty Shelob, who vainly strives to fill her internal void by damaging and draining from whoever she deems vulnerable, whose hunger so overwhelms her that she never even realizes or cares how she is being used, and who is far too reactive and unaware to know when she has begun to damage herself, would be a far more appropriate fit.
Don't let them silence us
Advocates for the human rights of men and boys, somebody wants to silence you.
They want to silence you so badly that they've lied about who you are.
They want to silence you so badly that they've lied about what you do.
They've lied about the goals of men's rights activism.
They've lied about the meaning and impact of our speech.
And now they've resorted to criminal threats of violence, with the intent to make gathering together too expensive for us to achieve.
Let them know that as a group, we are not intimidated, and we're not going to fold over this.
We will not be silenced.
They want to silence you so badly that they've lied about who you are.
They want to silence you so badly that they've lied about what you do.
They've lied about the goals of men's rights activism.
They've lied about the meaning and impact of our speech.
And now they've resorted to criminal threats of violence, with the intent to make gathering together too expensive for us to achieve.
Let them know that as a group, we are not intimidated, and we're not going to fold over this.
We will not be silenced.
Feminism is misogyny with effective PR
Feminists creatively frame information to infer conditions it does not support to emotionally coerce women into submissive cooperation with being exploited as political fodder. The largely one-sided "discussion" on harassment, partner, and sexual violence taking place under the hashtag #YesAllWomen is an example.It uses the out-of-context presentation of personal claims by women, many of whom are simply spouting feminist rhetoric about being afraid rather than describing personal experiences, to infer upon society an epidemic of only male on only female harassment and gendered violence. Why out of context? Because in the overall picture doesn't back up the claim.
Harvard Study says 70% of domestic violence committed by women
Relational Aggression is a behavior more often perpetrated by girls than by boys
And we've seen how hard feminists have worked to erase male victims of female sexual violence...
Manufacturing Female Victimhood and Marginalizing Vulnerable Men
Feminists define rape to exclude male victims
Feminist rape culture theory vs men
Even the stats on sexual violence themselves are exaggerated for effect:
On Rape Hysteria
Feminist advocacy research scam
These political ideologues trading in manipulation of human emotion as currency have ordered women to be unnecessarily afraid. They have demanded that we run our personal experiences through a filter of ideology that dehumanizes men and infantilizes women. When faced with women who don't submit to their self-assigned authority, their response is far from empowering.
That presentation of false or falsely framed information to emotionally manipulate women into exhibiting desired behaviors is gender-targeted abuse. It's a blatant display of misogyny within a movement which would deny women's right and ability to think for ourselves.
Zombie culture. It's not alive, but it's not dead, either.
For the record, I'd like to state a few distinctions.
Being hungry does not make someone a zombie.
Enjoying and engaging in bite-play does not make someone a zombie.
Eating a gelatin dessert molded in the shape of a brain does not make someone a zombie.
Zombie jokes are speech. If you don't like them, don't listen.
Reading zombie-perspective fiction or playing zombie-perspective games is not a zombie attack. Enjoying those media does not mean the user is secretly a zombie.
Games, shows, and literature which portray people as zombie attack victims do not infect players, viewers or readers with the zombie virus.
The involvement of some alcohol does not make mutually engaged roughhousing between two uninfected people a zombie attack by one against the other.
It is dishonest for you to smack someone in the mouth and then later label him a zombie just because his teeth were involved.
If you get drunk and bite someone because you wanted to, that does not make him a zombie, even if he bites you back.
When a person merely looks at you, that is not a zombie attack, even if you don't want the attention.
Asking you out for coffee is not a zombie attack, even if you don't want to go out for coffee.
A discussion that does not involve you is not a zombie attack, even if you don't like what's being said.
A discussion that does involve you does not become a zombie attack if you don't like the information you're learning.
If you hug a zombie, it is likely to bite you. It is your responsibility to know this.
If you have dinner with someone, that is not a zombie attack against you, even if you didn't tell him to eat.
If your neighbor eats cheeseburgers knowing full well that you are a vegetarian, that does not make him a zombie.
If you don't want dinner right now but your husband makes himself a sandwich and eats it, that's not the same as feeding you or himself to zombies.
If you become infected and you bite someone that person is just as much a victim of a zombie attack as you were when you were bitten.
Zombie virus infection is not a gender-specific trait.
Gender does not affect whether a person attacked by zombies is a zombie attack victim.
The gender of the victim does not make a zombie attack any more or less scary, painful, dangerous, or fun.
Rumors of zombie attacks are not solid proof of a zombie invasion.
Calling someone a zombie does not make him a zombie. It does not justify locking him in the closet or shooting him in the face.
Zombie status doesn't transfer by common human trait association. If one zombie has red hair that does not make all gingers zombies or potential zombies.
If you pass a person on the street, being a stranger doesn't make him Schrodinger's zombie. Neither does being male.
If an uninfected person bites you because you put your fingers in his mouth, that's not a zombie attack even if you didn't say "Bite me!"
If you do say "bite me" and someone does, it doesn't make him a zombie if you didn't mean it that way.
Locking up or shooting the uninfected does nothing to prevent zombie attacks against the general population.
If there is a cure for the zombie virus, administering the cure and then shooting the zombie anyway is inhumane. Even if you have no compassion for recovering zombies, such an action would be unproductive and wasteful. Administering a placebo and letting a zombie languish in isolation expecting to get better before you shoot him is equally inhumane, unproductive, and wasteful.
Surviving one zombie attack does not make you an expert on zombies.
Being a potential zombie attack victim does not give you an excuse to mistreat strangers.
Other uninfected people are not responsible for what zombies do.
Talking to other uninfected people about your rights doesn't change what zombies do.
If you give someone permission to bite you, changing your mind while his teeth are sunk into your skin doesn't make him a zombie.
Your personal dislike for a person does not make him a zombie or potential zombie.
If you use a needle to inject someone with the zombie virus, you've infected him, even if you didn't bite him.
A person immune to the zombie virus does not have to conform to your expectations of suffering and degeneration after surviving a zombie attack. Failing to rot and fall to pieces is not an attack on other zombie bite victims.
Disagreeing with you about methods for defense against zombies does not make anyone a zombie sympathizer.
Hopefully this has cleared up a few of the more ridiculous myths that have been preventing our society from effectively addressing the impending zombie apocalypse that zombie experts keep predicting.
Jodi Arias back in court
Jodi Arias will will return to court this week for a second attempt at a penalty phase for her trial, this time with a new jury. The jury which last year convicted her of the 2008 murder of Travis Alexander could not agree on a penalty for the crime. Though the facts of the case and the brutality of the murder - Arias slit her victim's throat from ear to ear, stabbed him 27 times in the neck and back, and shot him - were enough to find her guilty of the murder, a mistrial was declaird when they could not agree on a penalty after 13 hours of deliberation.
Speaking to media following the mistrial, jury Forman William Zervakos described Arias as "an absolutely normal everyday young woman that was living a life that was perfectly normal." Hypoagency reared its ugly head as he continued, "Then something changed the trajectory of her life after meeting Travis Alexander, and it spiraled downhill from there."
Unable to reconcile the brutal, premeditated crime with the pretty, composed young woman in the courtroom, the convicting jury instead assumed the crime must have been somebody else's fault, and they let the fate of Jodi Arias become somebody else's problem.
If this second jury is equally indecisive, the death penalty will be removed from the table and sentencing will be left to Judge Sherry Stephens, who presided over the murder trial. Should that occur, Judge Stephens could decide to sentence Arias to life without possibility of parole, or life with the possibility of release after 25 years.
Relevant links:
Jodi Arias Prepares To Meet Her New Jury For Sentencing
Somebody else's problem
Gender disparity in criminal court
Speaking to media following the mistrial, jury Forman William Zervakos described Arias as "an absolutely normal everyday young woman that was living a life that was perfectly normal." Hypoagency reared its ugly head as he continued, "Then something changed the trajectory of her life after meeting Travis Alexander, and it spiraled downhill from there."
Unable to reconcile the brutal, premeditated crime with the pretty, composed young woman in the courtroom, the convicting jury instead assumed the crime must have been somebody else's fault, and they let the fate of Jodi Arias become somebody else's problem.
If this second jury is equally indecisive, the death penalty will be removed from the table and sentencing will be left to Judge Sherry Stephens, who presided over the murder trial. Should that occur, Judge Stephens could decide to sentence Arias to life without possibility of parole, or life with the possibility of release after 25 years.
Relevant links:
Jodi Arias Prepares To Meet Her New Jury For Sentencing
Somebody else's problem
Gender disparity in criminal court
One narrative to rule them all
This case was reported in the news for a year before feminists - even local feminists - spoke out against the doctor's heinous actions.
If equality for all is really their goal, what's the reason they couldn't speak out against the inhuman treatment described here? Do not tell me it's because "bodily autonomy," because sticking a sharp object into the back of someone's neck and severing their spine, then letting them suffocate to death is not recognition of anyone's bodily autonomy. It's simply barbaric. And feminists ignored it... not just radical feminists, the mainstream... because it does not fit their narrative. When they finally were shamed by politicians (sad when politicians can shame anyone) into making a statement, they spun the tragedy into political fodder instead of admitting that it indicates a need for oversight to prevent further horrors like this.
If equality for all is really their goal, what's the reason they couldn't speak out against the inhuman treatment described here? Do not tell me it's because "bodily autonomy," because sticking a sharp object into the back of someone's neck and severing their spine, then letting them suffocate to death is not recognition of anyone's bodily autonomy. It's simply barbaric. And feminists ignored it... not just radical feminists, the mainstream... because it does not fit their narrative. When they finally were shamed by politicians (sad when politicians can shame anyone) into making a statement, they spun the tragedy into political fodder instead of admitting that it indicates a need for oversight to prevent further horrors like this.
That's what feminism looks like: So callous that it's more important to them to defend a concept than to defend an infant from a horrible death.
We Will Not Be Silenced
The statement in it is as follows:
"Greetings, Queens University Feminists.
We are honey badgers.
A recent video purported to be the work of Anonymous sounds suspiciously
like something a recently embarrassed university professor would say.
Far be it from us to determine what narrative such a group may or may
not embrace. Certainly nobody besides Anonymous themselves could obtain
the imagery and music used in their videos... and certainly a group so
well known for advocating against government tyranny would jump at the
chance to support one dedicated to increasing government intrusion into
private lives. By all means, a group which has recently uploaded videos
calling for defense of the homeless, 95% of whom are men would ally
itself with a group most well known for attacking and demonizing men.
We all know that Anonymous can be manipulated simply by invoking the name
and associating it with your pet ideological message. Your highness has
summoned them in the manner of their own personal idiom. Surely the
entire legion must respond to your command... so we're quaking in our
boots, chilled to the bone from the moment --
No, we're not.
We're not the priveleged princess you're used to dealing with.
We're not the property of feminist academia.
We're not as easily intimidated as you are embarrassed.
We are honey badgers.
Honey badgers are for human rights.
We are individuals.
We do not regret.
We will not be silenced."
The conflict started here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...
when Adèle Mercier stood to "counter" a well-referenced speech by Janice
Fiamengo with "I don't know what you're talking about," as if denial
could negate everything Janice had described.
Later, MRAs commented on a letter to the editor which decried the idea of men
discussing men's issues outside the controlling oversight of feminism.
In response to the claim, Alison Tieman cited statistics showing male
sexual victimization by female perpetrators, which have been ignored or
even covered up by feminists. The examples clearly show that feminism
isn't serving men's needs when it comes to men's issues. Among the
examples was a bureau of justicy study on faculty victimization of youth
in juvenile detention facilities found that 95% of faculty perpetrators
against boys were women.
Adèle responded with blatent rape apology, and several MRAs called her out on it. That is explained in this story.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/...
Alison made a video on the topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBNQP...
Shortly after, Professor Mercier, embarrassed that her rape apology was
becoming more and more public, sent Alison a letter demanding removal of
all reference to the discussion from the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfZWU...
In other words, in response to having her attention drawn to the
similarity between her own statements and those feminists decry as rape
apology, instead of learning and growing, Adèle has chosen to flounce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLmcf...
The 24 hours has long passed, and the videos and news article are still up.
Queens university is well aware of Adèle Mercier's comments, and
they've done nothing. In the meantime, the Honey Badger Brigade was made
aware of the "Anonymous" video yesterday evening.
Clearly this isn't what its creators intended for it to look like. Even if one knows
nothing else about Anonymous, the fact that the comments are closed
gives it away. They always want discussion. While we'd still respond no
matter who we thought made that video, the likelihood that either Adèle
herself or one of her young feminist followers made it determined the
flavor of our reply, all except for the last line. We will not be
silenced, regardless of who does not approve of what we have to say.
Feminism, your Freudian slip is showing
On April 2nd, Adèle Mercier, Associate Professor of the Queen's University Department of Philosophy, commented in reply to Alison Tieman's comment on a Queens University Paper letter to the editor.
Alison had responded to the letter, in which the author argued that men's issues discussion shouldn't take place outside feminist oversight, with information and statistics that feminists ignore when choosing to demonize all men as potential rapists while denying female perpetration.
Adele's response specifically targeted Alison's discussion on sexual abuse against boys in juvenile facilities in the U.S., where a 2012 study found that 95% of them reported female perpetrators.
Adele responded with exactly the same types of rape apology that feminists accuse the general public of using to excuse raping women and girls, quoting text from the study describing how adult staff at juvenile facilities engaged in sex with inmates as a REBUTTAL to the statement that the youth housed there were victimized.
Appalled at the way Adele, in her comment, had treated incarcerated youth as if they were able to give meaningful consent to staff in positions of authority over them, wrote about the discussion in A Voice For Men, and talked about it in a video on her channel.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/professor-adele-mercier-it-wasnt-rape-he-was-asking-for-it-queensjournal/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBNQPJ0UTCg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfZWUDxmaog
Ohio's handling of mental health issues in juvenile detention facilities
First of all, addressing the question, "How is this a men's rights issue?"
To begin with, it impacts more on men and boys, who make up the majority of the incarcerated population at both the juvenile and adult levels, and who are more likely to be subjected to harsh punishment for the same crime than women and girls.
My attention was recently drawn to this news story on Mother Jones. According to the report, the Federal Justice Department of the U.S. is suing the state of Ohio over the practice of placing mentally ill boys in juvenile detention facilities in solitary confinement. The article is horrifying. There's no excuse the state can come up with for this practice. It's cruel, and it's counterproductive as a means of effecting positive change in the individual's behavior.
As I said on Reddit, I've written to several of my state's representatives, both in the house and the senate. I had to divide my letter into 4 parts to send to each one. I hope at least one representative reads what I've written and considers what I have to say on the topic. I kept my letter gender neutral. Due to extensive feminist activism just for the benefit of female prisoners, I doubt this practice is used where girls are incarcerated, but if it is, it needs just as much to be stopped as when it is done to boys.
The following is what I sent out:
To begin with, it impacts more on men and boys, who make up the majority of the incarcerated population at both the juvenile and adult levels, and who are more likely to be subjected to harsh punishment for the same crime than women and girls.
My attention was recently drawn to this news story on Mother Jones. According to the report, the Federal Justice Department of the U.S. is suing the state of Ohio over the practice of placing mentally ill boys in juvenile detention facilities in solitary confinement. The article is horrifying. There's no excuse the state can come up with for this practice. It's cruel, and it's counterproductive as a means of effecting positive change in the individual's behavior.
As I said on Reddit, I've written to several of my state's representatives, both in the house and the senate. I had to divide my letter into 4 parts to send to each one. I hope at least one representative reads what I've written and considers what I have to say on the topic. I kept my letter gender neutral. Due to extensive feminist activism just for the benefit of female prisoners, I doubt this practice is used where girls are incarcerated, but if it is, it needs just as much to be stopped as when it is done to boys.
The following is what I sent out:
I've recently read of the Justice Department's lawsuit against the state of Ohio in response to the use of solitary confinement as a punishment against inmates with mental health issues in juvenile detention facilities. While I think it's hypocritical of the federal justice department to file such a suit when men in federal prisons are subjected to equally or more cruel and inhuman conditions, I am compelled to speak out against the continued use of solitary confinement in Ohio's juvenile justice system.
In considering this issue it is vital to remember who we're talking about. Yes, they're all in these facilities because they've violated laws. Yes, some of them exhibit dangerous behavior. Yes, some of them exhibit dysfunctional behavior that confounds the adults given charge of monitoring them. However, none of those things eliminate the fact that inmates in juvenile detention facilities are kids.
Kids who end up in the justice system aren't there because they've made a conscious, considered decision to reject the bounds of law. They're incarcerated because the adult guides in their lives, their parents, their extended families, their educators - those responsible for them - have failed to provide them with what they needed to stay within the bounds of the law. Whether that's simply a lack of good guidance and wise nurturing, failure to meet the child's medical needs, or falling back on drugs when behavioral therapy is needed along with them, we're failing our kids more and more. In the case of kids with mental health issues, it may very well be that the behavior which led to their incarceration was a manifestation of symptoms that if better addressed, would cease to affect the child's behavior in a damaging way. Instead, when adults' failure to meet a mentally ill child's health needs results in the child failing to meet society's standards, he's placed in a facility for punishment where conditions will likely reinforce his behavioral symptoms.
Solitary confinement should be eliminated as a punishment used on incarcerated juveniles, for more reason than its abusive impact on the mentally ill. Its exacerbating effect on mental health symptoms only highlights its damaging impact on the human mind. Even in healthy adults, solitary confinement beyond a few days has been shown to do serious mental harm.
Stuart Grassian, a Board Certified Psychiatrist who was on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School for over twenty-five years, stated in his report "Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement" (http://law.wustl.edu/journal/22/p325grassian.pdf) that in his studies, he had found a specific psychiatric syndrome associated with solitary confinement. Symptoms prisoners developed in solitary confinement included hallucinations, panic attacks, difficulty with thinking and memory, paranoia, and intrusive obsessional thoughts and problems with impulse control. Even if subjecting an individual to this experience was not cruel, it's counter-productive to use it as a means of reforming criminal behavior, which can stem from some of these same issues.
The root of this problem appears to be in government trying to do everything on autopilot instead of treating people like people with human conditions for which there are human approaches to remedy instead of automatic ones. Those running the system treat their charges as criminals first, and kids second, when it should be the other way around. If the state is going to take custody of these kids, then the state is responsible for their well-being, not just their containment.
A lawsuit by the federal justice department may be an inappropriately heavy-handed response, but so is severely punishing kids for the "crime" of exhibiting behavioral symptoms that are inconvenient to the adults charged with their care. We do not severely punish children for catching cold, suffering asthma, or having broken bones. What is it about mental illness that convinces the healthy that punishment will cure its symptoms?
If parents of mentally ill children severely punished them for exhibiting symptoms, child protective services would remove them from their homes. It would happen even faster if it were found that severe punishment was being used in lieu of medical treatment. Why is the state exempt from that standard of care when children are in its custody?
I strongly question the value of placing youth with diagnosed mental health issues in juvenile detention facilities that are apparently designed to deal with willful criminal activity. What will the environment do to provide them with the tools and resources they need to reform their dysfunctional behavior? What will these kids learn in these facilities, besides "no one cares about you, so you might as well care only about yourself?"
Ohio needs facilities which are designed to suit the needs of kids whose offending behavior occurs as a manifestation of mental illness rather than lack of discipline. These should be staffed by medical personnel with some law enforcement training, not the other way around. A change like that could be made transferring inmates with difficult mental health symptoms to existing mental health facilities address the care and protection of patients with symptoms that manifest in dangerous behavior. Facilities approved for such a cooperative treatment effort could be provided with staff members with the same training as detention facility guards if needed. If the state can't approve existing facilities then perhaps medical personnel who specialize in treating juveniles with mental health issues could cooperate with the state on converting an existing juvenile detention facility into a facility for the treatment and care of youth with mental health issues with symptoms that manifest in criminal behavior.
A medical environment would not only remedy the human rights violation inherent in placing mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement, it could also have a genuinely reforming impact on them by providing them with effective evaluation and behavioral therapy so they may develop better habits of self-control. I urge you to consider the idea of approaching criminal behavior in Ohio's youth as a children's rights issue first, a mental health issue second, and a criminal issue last and least, to eliminate solitary confinement as a punishment in youth detention facilities, and to offer better medical care to mentally ill inmates.
Riddle me this
For those who oppose the men's human rights movement so vehemently as to waste energy every single day with trolling, mudslinging, haranguing, whining, damseling, and drama, I have one very simple, very serious question.
Flaws in the logic of feminist "victim blaming" accusations
The "victim blaming" myth of feminism's "rape culture" theory is based on combining a logical fallacy called affirming the consequent with a type of circular reasoning called Begging the Question .
Affirming the consequent is an argument in which the individual assumes
that if one factor results from another, it can also be used to prove
the other, when one is not discussing bi-conditional factors (either/or)
but factors for which there can be variables. Begging the question is an
argument based on the assumption that its own conclusion is true.
Begging the question
The link contains extensive discussion. It explains circular reasoning thus:
First, feminists assume that the individual under discussion is a victim (feminists label incidents "rape" whether their assigned "victim" agrees with them or not). This includes circumstances where the female they want to label "victim" has actively engaged in consensual sex and later regretted it for any reason, even when the "victim" doesn't feel victimized. An example of the practical application of feminist ideological advocacy on this is university responses; my daughter has been taught at her university that any alcohol consumption at all negates a woman's ability to consent to sex. That, when combined with the campus SaVE act, indicates that if a regularly sexually active heterosexual couple has sex after the two of them have each consumed a single drink, and someone (it doesn't have to be the girl) makes a complaint against the guy, he may be considered guilty of rape, expelled from school, and barred from attending other universities in the state. Further, the censure would be reflected on his academic record, and could influence legal proceedings on the matter.
Second, feminists assume that a "victim's" interest in exercising her own agency to control her risk level is automatically unreasonable and therefore a dysfunction. This argument extends to treating anything women do outside of feminist-led organizational advisement as a sign of "self-blame," whether it's an effective means of self-defense or not. These groups protest the idea that women and girls should be encouraged to learn and use self-defense, then obtain government and other grant funding to teach self-defense to recovering victims. Not only is that a conflict of interest (feminist organizations profit from convincing women that they can't defend themselves without feminists' approval,) it's self-contradictory. Either attempting to control one's risk level is always an irrational, dysfunctional response to danger, or it's sometimes not - even if doing so is not under the controlled guidance of feminist ideology.
With these in mind, feminist "logic" proceeds by labeling women's regret of their own choices preceding or during a sexual encounter "self-blame." Both assumptions are articulated for the purpose of labeling discussion on rape prevention "victim blaming." One cannot argue in debate that women have the right or responsibility to exercise mindful awareness the same as is expected of men without being accused of victim blaming. One cannot differentiate between an act of contravening a person's right to refuse intimate contact and a sexual encounter that is later regretted by one party or the other without being accused of victim blaming.
Affirming the consequent
The example in the link uses several scenarios. I want to look for a minute at just the first two.
1) If Bill Gates owns Fort Knox, then he is rich.
2) Bill Gates is rich.
3) Therefore, he owns Fort Knox.
The fallacy is obvious in that example. That one is rich isn't necessarily an indication of what specific things one owns. It's simply a measure of one's overall wealth. It's less obvious in the second, as we often "diagnose" ourselves based on past experience. This is a much more common mistake.
1) If I have the flu, then I have a sore throat.
2) I have a sore throat.
3) Therefore, I have the flu.
This often takes the form of "Last time I had symptom X, I was diagnosed with Y. I have symptom X again, so it must be Y again.
As the factors appear more related or the issue becomes more clouded with additional steps (such as past experience) or ideology, it becomes easier for the mind to disguise that mistake as a reasonable course of thought. The flaws in in the "logic" behind feminist claims of victim blaming are similarly clouded by combining two different fallacies to reach a flawed conclusion, but once you see them, they're glaringly obvious.
The flaw begins with "If a trauma makes the victim feel helpless and afraid, then the victim will adopt behaviors to try to gain control over future circumstances to avoid experiencing the trauma again." Feminists insert "begging the question" twice between what would be steps 1 and 2 in order to impose the victim label. This expands the flaw to 5 steps and clouds it enough to hide the flaw from most individuals.
1) If a trauma makes the victim feel helpless and afraid, then the victim will adopt behaviors to try to gain control over future circumstances to avoid experiencing the trauma again.
2) Begging the question; assuming victimization, as described above.
3) Begging the question; assuming that mindful behavior is dysfunction if sexual violence is at issue, also described above.
4) The (person we labeled) victim has adopted behaviors to avoid revisiting a regretted or upsetting experience.
Because feminists have already applied the label "rape" whether the female's ability to refuse was contravened or she now regrets a conscious choice to consent, they fall right into affirming the consequent.
5) The (person we labeled) victim must be traumatized and responding to feelings of helplessness and fear
Begging the question
The link contains extensive discussion. It explains circular reasoning thus:
To beg the question is to assume something that you have no right to assume. What don't you have a right to assume? The conclusion itself, obviously, or any proposition that is just the conclusion stated in different words. Clearly, to use any argument in which the conclusion is also one of the premisses is to reason in a circle: reasoning from the premisses to the conclusion brings you back to where you started.Feminist "victim blaming" accusations start with two wrongful assumptions.
First, feminists assume that the individual under discussion is a victim (feminists label incidents "rape" whether their assigned "victim" agrees with them or not). This includes circumstances where the female they want to label "victim" has actively engaged in consensual sex and later regretted it for any reason, even when the "victim" doesn't feel victimized. An example of the practical application of feminist ideological advocacy on this is university responses; my daughter has been taught at her university that any alcohol consumption at all negates a woman's ability to consent to sex. That, when combined with the campus SaVE act, indicates that if a regularly sexually active heterosexual couple has sex after the two of them have each consumed a single drink, and someone (it doesn't have to be the girl) makes a complaint against the guy, he may be considered guilty of rape, expelled from school, and barred from attending other universities in the state. Further, the censure would be reflected on his academic record, and could influence legal proceedings on the matter.
Second, feminists assume that a "victim's" interest in exercising her own agency to control her risk level is automatically unreasonable and therefore a dysfunction. This argument extends to treating anything women do outside of feminist-led organizational advisement as a sign of "self-blame," whether it's an effective means of self-defense or not. These groups protest the idea that women and girls should be encouraged to learn and use self-defense, then obtain government and other grant funding to teach self-defense to recovering victims. Not only is that a conflict of interest (feminist organizations profit from convincing women that they can't defend themselves without feminists' approval,) it's self-contradictory. Either attempting to control one's risk level is always an irrational, dysfunctional response to danger, or it's sometimes not - even if doing so is not under the controlled guidance of feminist ideology.
With these in mind, feminist "logic" proceeds by labeling women's regret of their own choices preceding or during a sexual encounter "self-blame." Both assumptions are articulated for the purpose of labeling discussion on rape prevention "victim blaming." One cannot argue in debate that women have the right or responsibility to exercise mindful awareness the same as is expected of men without being accused of victim blaming. One cannot differentiate between an act of contravening a person's right to refuse intimate contact and a sexual encounter that is later regretted by one party or the other without being accused of victim blaming.
Affirming the consequent
The example in the link uses several scenarios. I want to look for a minute at just the first two.
1) If Bill Gates owns Fort Knox, then he is rich.
2) Bill Gates is rich.
3) Therefore, he owns Fort Knox.
The fallacy is obvious in that example. That one is rich isn't necessarily an indication of what specific things one owns. It's simply a measure of one's overall wealth. It's less obvious in the second, as we often "diagnose" ourselves based on past experience. This is a much more common mistake.
1) If I have the flu, then I have a sore throat.
2) I have a sore throat.
3) Therefore, I have the flu.
This often takes the form of "Last time I had symptom X, I was diagnosed with Y. I have symptom X again, so it must be Y again.
As the factors appear more related or the issue becomes more clouded with additional steps (such as past experience) or ideology, it becomes easier for the mind to disguise that mistake as a reasonable course of thought. The flaws in in the "logic" behind feminist claims of victim blaming are similarly clouded by combining two different fallacies to reach a flawed conclusion, but once you see them, they're glaringly obvious.
The flaw begins with "If a trauma makes the victim feel helpless and afraid, then the victim will adopt behaviors to try to gain control over future circumstances to avoid experiencing the trauma again." Feminists insert "begging the question" twice between what would be steps 1 and 2 in order to impose the victim label. This expands the flaw to 5 steps and clouds it enough to hide the flaw from most individuals.
1) If a trauma makes the victim feel helpless and afraid, then the victim will adopt behaviors to try to gain control over future circumstances to avoid experiencing the trauma again.
- Trauma such as combat conditions sometimes leads to (Post Traumitc Stress Disorder) PTSD.
One of the symptoms of PTSD is the sufferer's tendency to blame himself for conditions he could not control, and to adopt behaviors to try to gain a measure of control over those conditions. Since the conditions can't be controlled, those behaviors focus on what can mitigate their impact. This is why war vets in your circle of friends and family may be unable to sit with their backs exposed to unseen approach. One cannot control what another person is going to do, but one can influence one's ability to see it coming.
Another is to attribute significance to conditions which don't affect the outcome of a situation, and adopt behaviors to control those conditions. That's not a tendency that is unique to stress disorders; having a lucky item without which you feel more vulnerable to misfortune is an example.
Another is to (out of stress-trained habit) apply defensive responses which are necessary in frequently, unpredictably violent circumstances to ordinarily peaceful situations. An example of this is when a vet is triggered to respond in self-defense or even with panic when there is a loud noise that's similar to the noise he experienced during combat.
- Rape can be a traumatic experience.
2) Begging the question; assuming victimization, as described above.
3) Begging the question; assuming that mindful behavior is dysfunction if sexual violence is at issue, also described above.
4) The (person we labeled) victim has adopted behaviors to avoid revisiting a regretted or upsetting experience.
Because feminists have already applied the label "rape" whether the female's ability to refuse was contravened or she now regrets a conscious choice to consent, they fall right into affirming the consequent.
5) The (person we labeled) victim must be traumatized and responding to feelings of helplessness and fear
This leads to the assertion that discussion on women's power to take control over any factors surrounding incidents feminists want to call rape (which include rape, but also include regretted consensual sex acts) is victim blaming and therefore verboten. That is how feminists argue that being upset about a sexual encounter makes it rape regardless of what happened during the encounter, and use "victim blaming" as a thought-terminating cliche to stifle rational discussion on the topic.
Their argument is invalid in several places.
Don't allow feminist debaters to use a logical fallacy to pressure you into adopting a belief in something they haven't proved exists or occurs. The existence of the factors under discussion; rape, trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, and feminist-led therapy, do not automatically lead to the conclusion that the rape culture of feminist imagining is a real thing. To demonstrate that, they need to connect those factors with logic in a way that does not rely on baseless assumptions. - That the discussion is about rape and not some other area of risk
does not change what is and what is not a reasonable expectation of
personal responsibility for one's own safety. Feminists argue as if it
does.
- The presumption that assuming control over your environment is
automatically unreasonable is bullshit. That something can be stretched
to an unreasonable level (for example, never wearing red because you
were wearing red when you got shot) does not make responses to one's
environment (for example, wearing your seat-belt because you know that an
impact could send you through the windshield without it) unreasonable.
- The presumption that a sexual choice regretted by a woman
indicates that she was raped is also bullshit. Humans regularly make
decisions we regret without being told that since we regret the
decision, it must have been imposed on us from the outside. Force,
coercion, or incapacitation are ways of imposing. When an individual
simply makes a bad decision, it's not imposed, and it's not unreasonable
to feel responsible instead of victimized. A woman who did something
while drunk that when sober she realizes was a bad idea is not the
victim that a woman who was raped while passed out or unresponsive would
be.
- The consequent doesn't prove the antecedent. Assuming
responsibility for factors under one's control which can affect the
outcome of a circumstance is not necessarily an illegitimate conclusion,
even when not all of the factors one encountered in said
circumstance were under one's control. Changing one's behavior to avoid
the consequences of a bad decision is not automatically dysfunctional choice that indicates trauma. It's also a sign of learning. To qualify as an irrational response to
trauma, that change must be unproductive as a means of improving one's
situation with respect to risk, or so burdensome that its drawbacks
outweigh its benefits.
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