Reddit Feminists admit everything, page 2

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Several times during the last few years, men's issues discussion has included analysis and criticism of events in which there was feminist involvement;

• Feminist responses to MHRA postering, 
• Donglegate (http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/donglegate-vs-vaginagate/, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jhGRuSvWOc,) 
• the feminist protest of Canadian Association For Equality hosted events (http://22to28.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/247/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVuK44kWgxk,)  
• Doxxing Violentacrez (for being disliked by feminists), 
• Anita Sarkeesian's damseling incident (in which she falsely accused MRAs of threatening her) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4lJLJwfLo, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD6408gG6Ys&feature=youtu.be, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25o0EZiogw0, http://victorsopinion.blogspot.be/2013/07/anitas-sources.html.)

In each instance, instead of dealing with the reality of overt behavior on behalf of their movement, internet feminists have used the deflection, dodging, and denial approach I've previously described. Among the arguments used in that approach:

• Active, world-effecting feminists don't represent what feminism means to the world (a staple in their repertoire).
• That feminists pushed for something doesn't mean feminists are responsible for it happening.
• That a response or claim is based on widely-articulated and cited feminist ideology or claims doesn't link the response or claim to feminism.
• That feminists spoke out in support of an individual's actions doesn't link those actions to feminism. 

In each case, internet feminists have essentially argued that no matter what other indicators exist making a connection between a behavior or event, and feminism or any specific feminist group, unless there is an undeniable, in-your-face smoking gun, it's unreasonable to discuss those connections and draw any conclusions which would consider those connections valid.

Imagine my surprise... okay, so I wasn't surprised, just delighted at the ability to cite yet another display of feminist hypocrisy... when reddit feminists used exactly the same processes they have previously criticized when they wanted to support the claim "Men's Rights Activists flooded Occidental university with false rape reports!"

Now, for the record, here's where I have to admit to trolling a reddit feminist or two (and I'd apologize to them, but you know, they really asked for it) in order to get better evidence of that hypocrisy.

It didn't start out that way. I came in to that situation after the fact, not knowing whether or not there had even been any MRAs who filled out forms. Reading the accusation, the feminist response to it appeared to me to be completely hysterical. After all, they have spent the last few years arguing that false accusations are no big deal, even when they have real, life-wrecking consequences. They've specifically argued that wrongful use of the form in question would cause no damage at all, despite the stigma of being labeled a sex offender without the recourse of any kind of hearing for the accused. The equivalent would be in arguing the right to tattoo the word "rapist" on someone any time you like, because after all, that isn't same as imprisonment.
Therefore, it's not an abuse of the individual's rights.

If those really are their beliefs, it should not have bothered them if there had been over 9000 prank accusations filed... unless, of course, what is not damaging when women supported by feminists do it becomes a holy freakin' super-destructive force when those Magic Patriarchy Powers™ come into play.

As I looked into the existing discussions, I realized that once again, these feminists were using the molehill + feminist objection = mountain formula for justifying their own articulated outrage. Though the loophole-demonstration approach isn't something I'd have come up with, I don't actually see a problem with it, especially not one which justifies the mouth-frothing feminist response to this incident. Those involved, an unknown, untraceable mix of 4chan users and /r/mensrights subscribers, are not subjecting anyone to anything feminists don't support subjecting men to at random. They're simply demonstrating a serious flaw in the system set up by Occidental; that the anonymity factor and internet-wide availability of their sexual misconduct report form makes it easy to abuse, and abuse of it hard to quell or counter. The smartest approach Occidental could make to this display is to address that flaw, and take steps to improve their reporting system so that actual victims can report misconduct, but their students won't be vulnerable to the same attacks which were perpetrated against the poor Kool-Aid man and various incarnations of Mr. Jimmy Russel this week.

Within my set of comments, I asked for proof of the following:

• That the behavior (Prank use of Occidental's anonymous reporting form) was widespread among MRAs,
• That following their brigading of the sub, reddit feminists didn't manipulate voting
• That anything about the incident (either the demonstrable involvement in the behavior, or the vote pattern on comments and on the original post) demonstrated a unified sub-wide attitude about the behavior.

These weren't complicated questions, and though as I said, I have no doubt that there was involvement by MRAs, these questions weren't outside the standard of reason set by past reddit feminist responses to other discussion of feminist behavior and attitudes. They were based on the reality that an accusation can't be reasonably considered proved if there is not physical evidence, if there's reasonable suspicion of contributing factors not taken into account, and/or if there's not a direct, traceable and unbroken link between presented evidence and the conclusion offered.

The commenters replying to me failed to deliver on all 3 counts.

The show of hypocrisy by reddit's /r/againstmensrights feminists in response to my questions about this incident was priceless. On pushing the feminist trolls on /r/mensrights for more evidence, and then looking through the screenshots and links I was given, I learned the following:

• A small few /r/mensrights accounts (less than 0.00002% of the sub's overall population) had posted comments claiming to have filled out the forms.
• A very slightly larger number of /r/mensrights accounts had posted comments discussing the idea, with some encouraging it. Some of these were long-term, prominent members. 
• There was controversy among regulars in the sub over whether or not the idea was a good idea.
• Evidence for the claim that MRAs "flooded" Occidental with reports included an official from Occidental stating that reports "contained language similar to that used by members of 4chan and reddit's /r/mensrights." No concrete evidence was presented showing that more reports than were claimed by MRAs came from MRAs, nor was any concrete evidence presented that the official in question had any familiarity with either 4chan or /r/mensrights. 
• Based on the combined populations from which the reports are said to have come, there was no flood, but a mere 400 reports... a fraction of either individual population, and a pittance when considering their overall numbers. 
• There was no smoking gun here, but /r/againstmensrights thinks that a minority of comments and claims based on circumstantial evidence constitutes one when it's their accusation they're trying to prove. 

Now, let me repeat that I do believe there were men's rights activists involved in the effort to highlight this huge flaw in Occidental's approach to handling sexual misconduct. From the moment I saw the first list (to which I replied with my initial 0.00002% comment) I knew there were prominent, respected (including by me) MRAs involved, and I have no problem whatsoever with their actions. This article is not a denial of that; it's about the hysterical feminist response to the incident. 

Feminists - the same group which uses the deflect, dodge, and deny approach to discussion about feminist and feminist-led behavior, which responds to evidence of damage done by their movement with NAFALT, and actions taken in their name with "nothing but a smoking gun is evidence" - responded to my trollish barrage of requests for more and more evidence by offering me two things: More circumstantial evidence, and a healthy dose of vitriol. How dare I demand proof when I knew there was none? That they were so sure of their findings should be enough to convince me! Was I nuts? How could I be so unreasonable as to put forth the same requirements and stipulations they've made in the past in response to discussion of feminist behaviors? Don't I realize that when the suspects are MRAs, appearance = guilt?

The realization that those responding to me were so shocked when I presented in mock seriousness the same responses I've seen feminists present in actual seriousness made it a little hard to keep up the charade. I think I blew it in the end by pushing too hard, because they gave up and quit responding...

...but not before they cemented their display of hypocrisy by falling back on oft-used NAFALT-based projection, once again demanding that I ignore the difference between things feminists just don't like, and things that have a demonstrably discriminatory or oppressive impact on men both individually and as a group.

Reddit Feminists admit everything

The main response of feminists on the internet to any criticism of the movement is deflection, dodging, and denial. To understand this, you only have to look back at internet feminists' responses to information presented to them about their movement, and about internet feminists' actions during the last few years.

One example of the deflection response is to dismiss men's issues by combining blame for them on a conspiratorial concept they've labeled "Patriarchy" with the treatment of all men everywhere as a single unit instead of individuals with individual experiences and effects on the world. The gist of this argument is "men's problems are caused by men having power and control in society. One man's power is all men's power. Therefore, your issues are your fault, while women's issues are also your fault. That makes women's issues more important, and means that men aren't qualified to seek and apply solutions to men's issues. You should back off and let feminists have control. Our efforts to empower women will solve all of the issues related to discrimination in the world, and if they don't, you probably deserve to be discriminated against, anyway."


However, an accurate look at the history of the issues and the feminist response to them often reveals that feminist activism and feminist ideological assertions have been either causative or exacerbating factors leading or contributing to discriminatory conditions faced by men.

One example which stands out is the unequal legal handling of child custody and division of property following divorce. It was feminist activism which led to the widespread adoption of the belief that mothers should be primarily awarded child custody. Prior to their involvement, it was standard procedure that custody of children in divorce would remain with fathers, who did not receive any financial support from their ex-wives. Following the change, women given custody of their children were awarded support on the basis of their lower earning capacity. However, as women's earning capacity has increased, the expectation that an ex-husband will continue to fund his ex-wife's custody of their children following their divorce has not decreased in proportion to it.

When estranged fathers denied contact with their children and kept in poverty by exorbitant and often arbitrarily imposed support obligations (and therefore unable to fight the willful alienation imposed by their exes) began lobbying for equal custodial rights, feminist organizations opposed that effort by demonizing all fathers as abusers and deadbeats, and denying the behavior of mothers whose denial of parental contact and abuse of the system led to the effort. Further, feminist groups have not only supported the continuation of the use of outdated reasoning for the imposition of support obligation on divorcing husbands and fathers, they've fought to impose stricter legal handling of that obligation. This, knowing that the group primarily assigned custody is women, and the group primarily assigned child support obligation is men.

Another is the unequal treatment of victims of intimate partner and sexual violence depending on the sex of the victim and the sex of the perpetrator. This is another area in which feminists blame "patriarchy," but a look at their own activism shows that with respect to modern treatment of victims, their hands are as dirty as they can get, in both the area of sexual violence, and intimate partner violence. And they're still doing it. Feminist rape apologia is so blatant that they're willing to admit they have no basis for defining the same forced or coerced sex act differently depending on who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. 

The internet feminist answer to being confronted with feminist involvement in causing or exacerbating discriminatory conditions faced by men is to actually claim that despite their own actions, it's still "patriarchy," not feminism, which is the primary and current cause of these issues because   
   
1) NAFALT (explained below), and
2) Lawmakers are mostly men, and they don't have to listen to feminist advocates.
In other words, no matter the lobbying/information on which their decisions are based, all discrimination is male lawmakers' fault (female lawmakers who support feminist efforts don't count) and no responsibility can be placed on feminist groups exercising influence on the process. Or to put it another way, the all-powerful male lawmakers should have known that feminist groups were talking out of their asses, ignored all of the information presented to them, and decided purely based on the innate knowledge that comes from male omnipotence.

NAFALT is a combination of deflection, dodging, and denial that takes expert mental gymnastics to pull off. Address a concept upon which the feminist pro-discrimination lobby is based, using it exactly as feminists have described it, and your approach will be dismissed with "that's not what that concept is." Give references for your usage of the concept, and they'll be dismissed with some version of the "Not All Feminists Are Like That" argument, which boils down to the claim that no matter what the mainstream, heavily funded, established and world-effecting segment of feminism has laid down as feminist ideology on which to base their organized activism, if there's anyone anywhere who calls themselves "feminist" and believes or says differently, that feminist constitutes the new "mainstream," and all other feminism with which she disagrees (at the moment) due to her discomfort at hearing organized feminist pro-discrimination activism criticized is "radical." This argument is used in attempts to deflect responsibility for the effects of organized, established feminist activism to the subjective concept "radicalism." It's used to dodge one's responsibility to counter or accept the assertion that discriminatory conditions men currently face cannot be dismissed, or men's activism co-opted by attributing that discrimination to the ill-defined feminist concept "Patriarchy." It's used to deny the movement's role in the political process by proclaiming anything damaging which organized feminism has done "not feminism."

The NAFALT argument is the lazy feminist's answer to any criticism of any damaging thing ever done by feminist activists. It doesn't actually counter any of those criticisms, but it makes the feminist offering it more comfortable with them. 

Recently, feminists have begun responding to rejection of the NAFALT argument with lame attempts at projection. This method entails equating "prominence within a group" with "political/government establishment" and demanding that men's rights activists "take responsibility" for  men's issues discussion to which feminists take personal or ideological offense, by censoring said "offensive" speech. "If feminism is responsible for feminist-advocated and feminist-lobbied anti-male discriminatory conditions, then you're oppressing me by not condemning other MRAs for saying things I don't like!"

To employ this method, feminists treat speech they dislike as if their dislike defines it as malevolent, and  elevates its impact and that imposed malevolence to the same level as the active feminist lobby for discrimination against men in law, policy, and social response. In other words, the argument is "If you don't accept the claim that feminism is not responsible for the real, demonstrable damage feminist activism has done, then we expect you to let us tell you what you can and can't say on the basis that you're responsible for our emotional response to it. Having in existence statements we don't want to hear is as damaging to us as being falsely imprisoned, having one's victimization by intimate partner or sexual violence condoned by society and the law, being artificially pushed into poverty by the law, and being denied contact with one's children. We just can't tell the difference between an affront to our own fragile and twisted sensibilities, and real, demonstrable oppression."

Pointing out the double standard in that approach varies in effect depending on which feminists are involved in the discussion. Those purporting to be reasonable will often simply abandon the discussion at this point. Vehement opponents of the men's human rights movement, such as the trolls from reddit.com's /r/againsmensrights (certainly not a name that contains bias, right?) subreddit, on the other hand, have actually tried to justify their molehill=mountain and mountain=molehill mentality in two ways. 

The first is by assuming for themselves the right to not be offended and treating that presumed "human right" as if it is as valid and vital as the very real human rights which are violated when one is wrongfully imprisoned, stripped of personal property, separated from one's loved ones, or subjected to tolerance of violent crimes against oneself specifically on the basis of one's sex. In this way, internet feminists exercise a complete abandonment of all sense of proportion and authenticity in order to feel justified in attempting to use criticism of feminism as leveraging support for their effort to cut off nonfeminist or antifeminist speech about men's issues. 

The second is the "lower ground" argument, which employs the social justice concept of "privilege." The "privilege" dialogue uses treatment of perceived disadvantage as an excuse to infer guilt upon anyone not experiencing that disadvantage, and a baseline level of innocence for the disadvantaged. The term is used as a cattle prod in gender and other human issues discussion, allowing Social Justice ideologues to claim it's justified to treat existing conditions differently based on the "averaging" factor of privilege. Injustices against privileged people become justified; Injustices against the non-privileged are amplified. This allows the feminist to ignore real, life-effecting conditions in favor of an ideological interpretation of them. "Oh, you're in jail? Well, you're male, so you have Magic Patriarchy Powers™ that cancel out all adversity. Women have it worse just trying to live in public because women are oppressed."

The double standard approach to justifying feminist deflection of responsibility for their own movement's damage to society can also be seen in internet feminists' responses to the last few years' events. In this case, the double standard is in their application of standards of evidence.

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