MRAs

[guest post] A Thought Experiment In The Style of Schrödinger

Miri, , , , , , , 145 Comments

I’m traveling to Columbus, Ohio for the Secular Student Alliance conference, and CaitieCat has written a guest post so that you’re not too bored in my absence!

I was thinking about Schrödinger’s Rapist, the concept that to a woman faced alone with a man she does not know, it is rationality in action if she decides to be careful about how she interacts.

Now, this concept makes MRAs lose their NUT, and I can’t help but think it’s got to do with an inability to understand how reasoning works. That’s the charitable answer; the uncharitable ones are, I think, obvious.

So here’s an analogy: You’re walking down the street. You see a dog, loose, no collar. You don’t know whether the dog is escaped from someone’s house, or feral. You know nothing about the dog or its history.

Would you go over and start petting its muzzle?

Probably not. Why? Because you don’t know. It could be that this dog is feral and rabid, or it could be a sweet-natured lap dog. Basic rationality says that there’s little to be gained by treating the dog as anything but a possible object of fear at this point. You don’t know the dog, you don’t know its habits, you don’t know its mind, you don’t know if it’s been trained as an attack dog. You just don’t know.

Now, that rationality? That’s not in any way saying “all dogs are trained attack dogs which will bite you if you give them any chance at all”. That would be irrational; many dogs you encounter will be with people who love them, people who care about them, people who would help that dog not be a dog who bites people.

So you act as though any dog you don’t know could bite you, because it’s basic common sense, no?

Now go back up there, and change the concept of “dog” to “man”, and “bite” to “rape”.

THAT is Schrödinger’s Rapist. Not a belief that every man WILL rape. Simply a common-sense approach that any man you don’t know could rape, and when alone with such a person, taking a reasonably cautious approach.

How can men interact with this belief? By putting themselves in the mind of someone who doesn’t know what a wonderful person they really are, and thinking – hey, how would I as someone else know that I the real person aren’t a rapist? Well, they don’t. So you make a little effort to show the ways you’re not: you try not to walk close behind her, you don’t stare at her, you visibly involve yourself in other things, whatever.

It’s a simple issue in formal reasoning, the difference between:

– all dogs are dangerous animals which bite
– ANY dog could be a dangerous animal which bites.

One is an argument from the specific to the general, and is bad reasoning. The other is of an unknown-truth-value situation, where caution is obviously the prudent and rational answer.

And if you can’t see the difference between those two, maybe consider taking an intro course in reasoning.

CaitieCat is a 47-year-old trans bi dyke, outrageously feminist, and is a translator/editor for academics by vocation. She also writes poetry, does standup comedy, acts and directs in community theatre, paints, games, plays and referees soccer, uses a cane daily, writes other stuff, was raised proudly atheist, is both English by birth and Canadian by naturalization, a former foxhole atheist, a mother of four, and a grandmother of four more (so far). Sort of a Renaissance woman (and shaped like a Reubens!).

[guest post] A Thought Experiment In The Style of Schrödinger
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Where Feminism Fails: The Ongoing Need for Men's Rights Activism

Miri, , , , , , , 12 Comments

So, this might be kind of awkward given my past writing and activism, but it’s time for me to come clean: I’ve decided to become a Men’s Rights Activist.

I’ve realized that feminism’s biggest failure–much more important, in fact, than its historical disregard for women of color, poor women, and trans* people–is that it does absolutely nothing to address issues facing men. It starts right with the name “feminism.” If feminists really cared about equality for everyone, men included, they would’ve obviously called it “equalism” or “egalitarianism.” But they didn’t, because at its core feminism is only about helping women, perhaps even at the expense of men.

Of course, some might argue that the reason for the name “feminism” is that the movement started out to correct a perceived imbalance of power between men and women. However, if such an imbalance ever existed, it was unquestionably skewed in women’s favor. How could women really be societally disadvantaged when they were the ones who got to sit around at home while their husbands worked to support them?

The actual supposed “gains” of feminism, too, clearly privilege women at the expense of men. For instance, feminists have now made it possible for women to legally get abortions. That’s great for them, but what about for the fathers of those unborn babies? What if they don’t want them to be aborted? Why doesn’t the father have any say? Conversely, a woman who gets pregnant accidentally can choose to keep the baby even if the father doesn’t want to have a child. Yes, it’s the woman’s body or whatever, but it was the father’s sperm. Doesn’t that count for anything anymore?

Feminists also seem to believe that it is the responsibility of men, not women, to prevent themselves from harassing and assaulting women. They claim that men are not, in fact, controlled by their penises and are perfectly capable of choosing to get consent first or just ignore their sexual urges, just like women. Clearly, feminists are misandrists and think terribly of men. A more empowering ideology–men’s rights–would hold that men are completely powerless over their own sexuality and need women to dress modestly, avoid drinking in their presence, and make sure to say “no” loudly and clearly if they don’t want to have sex, even if they happen to be passed out.

Feminism has also historically ignored the issue of friend zoning, which primarily affects male-identified individuals. It’s ridiculous in this day and age that a man could treat a woman well–be a good friend to her, even–and get nothing in return (that is, no sex). If feminism is all about “fairness” and “equality,” it would’ve addressed this problem by now. Similarly, on dating sites such as OkCupid, women receive many more messages from men than the other way around, and men’s messages to women rarely receive a response. This suggests that female privilege is alive and well in the 21st century. How are men supposed to get laid when everything about modern dating gives women the upper hand?

Frankly, it appalls me that female feminists aren’t spending more time addressing issues that primarily concern men rather than women. After all, the best activists are those who haven’t personally experienced the issues they’re working on, so it’s not exactly reasonable to expect men to do this work themselves. Men should certainly be allies to women who are advocating for men’s rights, but if feminists really care about helping men as well as women, they’ll pick up the slack.

Unfortunately, rather than improving the status of men in society, feminism has actively made men’s lives worse. The truth is that until feminism came about, men simply weren’t facing all these issues. They didn’t have to feel so much pressure to be strong, “masculine” breadwinners. They weren’t expected to provide for their wives and children. It was understood that men could be just as adept at raising children and maintaining a household as are women (whereas nowadays you always see commercials in which stupid, clumsy men ruin the laundry or feed the kids cheez-its for breakfast or whatever). Before feminism, men weren’t the ones who got drafted into the military, who were expected to die for their country while women stayed safe and comfortable at home. Men who were raped and wanted to press charges were actually taken seriously.

If this sounds like a drastically revisionist version of history, maybe that’s because it is. Maybe it’s time to question the assumption that freeing people from strict gender roles could possibly free men from them as well, and that encouraging people to believe and support survivors of rape means that they would also believe and support male survivors of rape. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending that helping women succeed in their careers would mean that women would earn more money and be able to support their families as much as men can.

Or maybe I’m full of shit and completely incapable of logically justifying this bizarre worldview, and so are MRAs. Happy April Fools’ Day!

Where Feminism Fails: The Ongoing Need for Men's Rights Activism

[In Brief] Do Feminists Care About Men's Issues? (A handy list!)

Miri, , , , , 138 Comments

Men’s rights activists (MRAs) would have you believe that feminism is sexist against men because feminists don’t care about issues that affect men, such as restrictive gender roles, circumcision, sexual violence against men, the military draft, and custody rights.

That always seemed like a strange argument to me because, as a female feminist, I care about these issues quite a lot, and so do all of my feminist friends of all genders.

But of course, that’s circumstantial evidence. So I decided to make this list of articles about men’s issues written by feminists. Most of these aren’t some sort of niche feminists, either–the articles on this list come from well-known outlets like Feministing, Feministe, RH Reality Check, and Alas, A Blog.

(A note: it took me and two friends about fifteen minutes to make this list over two pages long. That should speak for itself.)

I’ve also compiled it into a Google Doc, which you can access here. I will keep updating it!

Hopefully others will find this useful in countering MRAs who claim that feminists just don’t care about men.

[In Brief] Do Feminists Care About Men's Issues? (A handy list!)