Reblogged from here:
1. You have no problem with the gender wage gap. But you hate having to pay for dates.
2. You insist that it’s a scientifically proven fact that men are stronger than women. But you complain about society believing that it’s worse for a man to hit a woman than for a woman to hit a man.
3. You believe that the age of consent is unfair and that there’s nothing wrong with having sex with teenage girls. But when you find out that a teenage girl enjoys sex, you believe she’s the biggest slut in the world.
4. You hate when a woman automatically assumes that a man is a douchebag before getting to know him. But when you like a woman who likes another man, you assume he’s a douchebag just because he’s not you.
5. You believe that if women want equality, they should be drafted into the military. But you also believe that the military is not a place for women.
6. You hate when women assume that men are like wild animals. But you believe that a woman who doesn’t cover up and make herself invisible to men is just like someone wearing a meat suit around wild animals.
7. You hate the fact that men are bullied for not conforming to their male gender roles. But when you find out that a man disagrees with your beliefs about women’s rights, your immediate response is to try to emasculate him by comparing him to a woman as an insult.
8. You hate when women assume that there are no nice guys. But you call yourself a nice guy and act like it’s a rare quality that should cause women to be all over you.
9. You hate when women assume that men just want to get laid. But when you find out that a man is a feminist, you assume that he’s just doing it to get laid.
10. You hate when women make generalizations about all men. But when a woman calls you out for being sexist, you claim that all men think like you.
11. You insist that women should be responsible for protecting themselves from being raped. But when they follow the one piece of advice that actually works, which is being aware of red flags, you complain about them assuming that all men are rapists.
From a t-shirt, that, frankly, would just give people a reason to stand there and stare at your chest for half an hour trying to make all the text out.
Also, if I wore it, people would totally assume that I was just trying to get laid.
I believe some have.
Men are generic, women are special.
Consider wether generic or special is the best. Think a long time on it. Especially if the specialness is presented as something good, more moral, and more beautiful than the generic, which is…well “meh”, fungible, “nothing special”, the generic is only better when it evolves above it (when this person is also wealthy, with influence, power etc), but not as is.
3400 persons dead, amongst them 50 women and children <- who is made invisible in that statement?
Which must be why maleness is presented as a negative for humanity, a beast of impulsiveness, violence, stupidity and who wields unmerited power in bad ways. Where is the positive? In the few examples held as models?
On the one hand, maleness is presented as a curse (maleness itself is bad), where only excellence redeems it, and femaleness as a blessing (femaleness itself is good), where only evil taints it.
Schala @136:
Half-true. The Aka tribe do have gender roles, they just don’t permanently assign them to men or women:
The core strength of human beings is flexibility, by making tools and using our big brains to compensate for our deficiencies. A hunter-gatherer tribe that forced all women to do child-care, and forbid all men from helping, is artificially giving up that flexibility, and is going to have problems if there are too few women or men to fulfill their roles. Anthropologists have been slow to realize this, preferring to view the cultures they study through their own cultural biases, but if you look carefully you can find evidence for this flexibility.
That’s great.
By the way, when I say “it made sense” I’m not advocating them, or approving them. I think oligarchy makes sense and is almost inevitable, and yet I abhor such societies and would prefer a socialist order with extremely high taxes so that the chasm between poor and rich is never that big, while having liveable minimum wages for all, including those who cannot work. Such a society would probably need to control most or all variables of cost of living (food, shelter, transportation availability and cost at the very least).
Similarly, I want even more flexible roles than the tribe you cite. I want individual talents to have primacy over whatever people deem as “should” or “ought” based on birth characteristics. I want toys to all be gender-neutral, and even clothing. If you want to illustrate yourself you can do so as an individual, without needing to do so as an entire sex. You only need enough security in believing who you are without external proof, such that you never feel the need to confirm or conform to stereotypes.
Scalia @136:
I agree. No, really; gendered roles are less useful now than they’ve ever been in the past. Sometimes, you sound quite feminist in your outlook.
And sometimes…
Nooo, sorry. That’s what many opponents of feminism think patriarchy means. The majority of feminists view patriarchy as a social system which devalues people based on their gender. Men and women contribute to it, and while women tend to bear the brunt of it, patriarchy also constrains men to a gender role and is especially harsh on transgender people and those who fall outside the binary.
Some feminists prefer the term “kyriarchy,” which removes the gender-specific component and is more in line with modern Third-wave thinking. I think it has merit, but it tends to confuse non-feminists (and I’m a bit of a traditionalist). 😉
This was all laid out in the Wikipedia entry, by the way; did you miss the part where patriarchy was labeled “as an unjust social system that is oppressive to women?” To be fair, you may have been led astray by someone’s defacement of that page, as what you quote is not from bell hooks and nothing like what she argues.
“I blame the patriarchy” (the blog and the attitude) and Marxist points of view about oppressor class and oppressed class are the things I find the most unjust about this view.
I’m not for 1950s gender roles, Leave it to Beaver or anything like that. For sure, I might even be more leftist and/or extremist than many feminists who want to keep distinctions of gender differences (ie goddess feminism, Dianism and such). I only disagree about how the current roles came to be, for what reason, and who’s oppressed. I think everyone is oppressed by the system, it’s so-designed.
It’s very rare that feminism will acknowledge that men can be oppressed as men (without being gay, poor, black, disabled, trans, also, just as men too). This probably stems from Marxism positioning one class against another, and so they question “who” could be oppressing men? The “men oppress women” notion is one I find overly simplistic:
The system rewards both men and women, for oppressing other men and women, treating each sex separately, differently, using double standards. It’s not analog to straight and gay, cis and trans, majority-white vs minority-black (being white in Japan is no advantage). If being gay or being trans had no more legal, social or societal-level repercussions than being straight or cis has, then maybe it would be the same.
Being trans DOES have advantages, but they’re nothing compared to being overly unemployed, murdered, raped, homeless and forced into sex work. Absent those, trans advantages could have weight. The perspective is one. Few people get to see how both sexes are treated during one lifetime from a firsthand perspective. And you get to question stereotypes without having 20 years+ of “you have to do this” inside your head, way easier for me to reject make-up as useless rather than essential (I’d never think my naked face means “I’m naked” like that Cover Girl).
Being male vs being female has different double standards that have different subjective values to most people. Not everyone wants to be a bigwig. Many, maybe most, want the cash, the status of the bigwig, but maybe not the sacrifices needed to get there (hours, effort, family time, etc), and the “step on other people’s toes” lack of ethics that’s also needed to reach it (some people have too much empathy to fire or ruin other people’s lives on purpose). Not everyone wants to be a full-time parent either. It also involves many sacrifices (hours, effort, career development, etc) and it needs a high level of patience and dedication.
Between a manager-level career in a mid-size company and full-time parent with a decent/liveable family income (from the other parent), neither is definitely the better position. Not from an objective point of view anyway.
Between being assumed competent (except with the public), capable (except childcare and housekeeping/cleaning), independent, and “not needing help”, vs being assumed to be more competent with the public (but not with highly-technical stuff), more nurturing and able with children (but less physically strong/less stamina), being considered as needing/desiring someone to help (ie, being supported by someone’s wage) and being considered someone worthy of helping, because more fragile (victim services). Which is better? Depends who you ask.
Basically, it comes down to invulnerable super powerful, with no safety net – regardless of the truth of your individual circumstances, vs fragile and assumed weaker, but more sympathic, with more safety net – regardless of the truth of your individual circumstances.
And that, until gender roles completely go away.
I was given physical warehouse-type jobs pre-transition, despite my size then (5’6″ 105 lbs) being a bit on the low side to do the demanded work (40 lbs and higher boxes often). I was presumed strong, due to the power of the penis. Not to my advantage. I’m sure other people have anecdotes where gender roles disadvantaged them by presuming the opposite of their own inclination. They should go away because they are prescriptive.
I wasn’t oppressed by women, or by men, I was oppressed by the system itself.
Stoicism and an attitude that “men can take care of themselves” (but not women) is responsible for most of the disparity regarding suicide rate, murder rate, assault rate, death at work rate and life expectancy. Also the rate of consulting a doctor (men wait way longer, if they even go).
Because fewer people are tempted to help suicidally depressed men (more “man up” than actual help), men are acceptable victims of murder (at least more than women) for most criminals, and most soldiers, the notion “don’t hit girls” makes assault against women look worse and assault against men look benign or merited. Employers think newspaper articles about men dying on their worksite will soon be forgotten, no need to take special measures, unless forced by the government to do so. As for life expectancy, it would be pretty weird to say that 7 years less is all due to biology, given how socialization affects so many things already.
That’s the downside to being considered independent, able to take care of yourself, and not needing help – without a safety net life. It makes the perspective of being treated as someone “fragile and weak” seem less like condescension, and more like actual caring, when the alternative is throwing you to the wolves.
Oh and some more backwards countries do “throw women to the wolves”, or have them with no or little safety net. I’m thinking some Middle-East countries, possibly India (don’t know enough about laws and applications thereof), and possibly China. (There might be others, I just don’t know the entire world).
My comment in 154 applies to the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and other first-world countries in the West that I can actually know about.
Nepenthe @ 139: “You know that the temperance movement in the United States was propelled by women who were sick of their hard working husbands getting drunk and beating the shit out of them and their children, right?”
Yes, and it was the first and greatest failure of the progressive movement. Why would I want to follow these people?
hjhornbeck@ 144: “Disanalogy. My phrasing was in the form “I desire X implies that I like X,” which you interpreted as “men desire X implies women desires Y.”
Yes, for the ice cream example, not the original example. The original example was women desire to stay home and take care of the kids more than men do, so men don’t like kids. The disanalogy was yours.
And, no, I don’t think men, as a rule, are inferior to women when it comes to child care. What gave you that idea?
-Jut
hjhornbeck @ 145: “I presented evidence that this isn’t the case. Are you going to refute that evidence, or just repeat your opinion until it becomes the truth?”
Yes, you presented evidence that some managers presume that women will want to take it easy after having a child. You have also presented evidence that some women don’t want to.
So what? I don’t believe anything I said constitutes a blanket statement that leaves no room for exceptions.
But, I will go a step further, even if managers presume that a new mother will want to take it easy, I would hardly characterize that as “thrusting” such a thing on her. If the women is still ambitious, dedicated, etc., she should attempt to correct any such misunderstandings, unless she simply wants to play the victim card.
And, just to anticipate your next argument, the fact that I believe some new mothers are as ambitious and dedicated to their jobs as they were before pregnancy does not mean: 1) they hate their children; or 2) they are inferior caregivers, as compared to the respective fathers.
-Jut
hjhornbeck @146: “So you do think men are inferior at child care?”
No, I simply said that there are biological ways in which mothers bond with their children that are different from the way fathers do.
“Bonding” does not equal “child care.”
And, no, by this argument, I am not stating that: 1)women are inferior at child care; or 2) the father-child bond is superior to the mother-child bond; or 3) that desiring ice cream makes you a star baseball player.
-Jut
There you have it! If you’re not fortunate enough to be a member of one of the approved groups, standing up for your rights = playing the victim card.
garybannister: “standing up for your rights = playing the victim card.”
No, that is the opposite of what I said. I said “If the wom[a]n is still ambitious, dedicated, etc., she should attempt to correct any such misunderstandings, unless she simply wants to play the victim card.”
In short, you don’t let people “thrust” their expectations on you. If their presumptions about you are incorrect (for whatever reason), you speak up. If you do not stand up for yourself, but would rather complain about how people have certain erroneous assumptions about you that you are not willing to correct, then you are playing the victim card.
-Jut
Jutgory, how dare you play the “playing the victim card” card.
You have copious links pointing to peer-reviewed research on psychological bonding and how female vs. male biology affects that, of course.
SallyStrange: “You have copious links pointing to peer-reviewed research on psychological bonding and how female vs. male biology affects that, of course.”
You got me. No. Do I need to? Allow me to lay bare the baselessness of my claim, which contains many, many unstated assumptions:
1. Sexual intercourse can lead to pregnancy. (I think I saw that on a Simpsons episode.)
2. The vast majority of pregnancies are a result of sexual intercourse. (This was based purely on anectdotal evidence.)
3. Only women get pregnant. (Okay, this was in Genesis, so God is my authority on that, but it was also confirmed in the movie Junior, with Arnold Schwarzenegeer and Danny DeVito; I think it was Emma Thompson’s character who explained that.)
4. People have this thing called a “pituitary gland.” (There is this homeless guy outside my building who goes on and on about his “pituitary gland.”)
5. The “pituitary gland” releases this chemical that sciency-type people call “oxytocin.” (According to this computer “SCIENCE” I met at Starbucks one day.)
6. “Oxytocin” helps people facilitate a sense of attachment to other people. (I read that on a feminist blog, which was reporting on a CNN story.)
7. “Oxytocin” helps the labor process by: a) helping the cervix dialate; b) contracting the uterus; and c) preventing blood loss after the placenta detaches. (I think I saw a film strip on this.)
8. “Oxytocin” helps a mother breastfeed because it is through contractions in the breast that help push the milk through the milk ducts. (Filmstrip, again.)
9. Men don’t breastfeed babies. (Sugarbear from Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.)
So, from all of this, I made the wildly unsubstatiated conclusion that there are biological ways (“oxytocin”) in which a mother bonds with a child that is different than the way a father does.
So, I guess, without a peer-reviewed study on all of these points, I can’t have any opinion at all about maternal bonding. But, now that you mention it, I am not sure that homeless guy is a good authority on whether people have this so-called “pituitary gland.” Maybe I will start with that….
-Jut
Your source, then, is “common sense”?
You might want to start here: http://io9.com/5606765/myths-about-the-love-hormone-oxytocin-that-could-ruin-your-love-life
Sure, it’s only io9, but it asks the scientists about the pop-sci interpretations of their oxytocin studies. You might find there’s a lot of “common sense” that’s flat wrong.
Men can breastfeed (and I don’t mean trans people, cis men can breastfeed), and both men and women can (but won’t necessarily) have oxytocin release following sex acts. Oxytocin will also bond a father to a child he’s always cared for, possibly more if he thinks/knows it’s his own (possibly less to an adopted child he knows is adopted). He doesn’t have to be 24/7 hands-on for this to happen.
Heck, I bonded to a stray cat that’s not even mine (she lives upstairs at my boyfriend’s, but comes here every morning).
So oxytocin works in mysterious ways. Sex is just straightforward.
at my boyfriend’s mother*
Are you nitpicking out of boredom, or out of a genuine concern? Because it seems to be the former. Or it’s just trollish.
It’s obvious that breastfeeding is not necessary to bond. It can help because it’s obviously some intimate activity. Young animals raised together, regardless of breastfeeding occurring or not, have bonded together, even if they’re normally natural enemies (think bird+cat, cat+dog, lion+hyena).
It’s neither nitpicking nor trollish to lay bare the blatant falsehood that is the “common sense idea” that women are biologically better attuned than men to bonding.
(Let’s nobody mention the misandry behind JutGory’s claims about men here.)
So, jutgory, would you say that women who can’t or don’t breastfeed don’t bond with their babies?
Jason, I see where JutGory used the term “different” in regards to how biology affects the way women bond (as opposed to the way it affects the way men bond). I don’t see where JG says it’s “better.” That appears to be your term, and your conclusion that JutGory is being misandrist also seems to flow from your choice of word, not JG’s.
Dangit, yet again I get busy and miss out on all the fun! Old business first:
Schala @137:
Well, feminist.org links me to the Daybreak Crisis Recover Centre, where thanks to their 1-800 line any “woman, man or child who is victimized by a sexual predator shall be believed, supported, counseled, and advocated for by the staff and volunteers of this center.” While many of the organizations listed there have “women” in the title, most do not.
That’s in line with modern feminist thought, which I’ve already linked to, which does concern itself with the plight of male victims of sexual assault.
Schala @143:
Two issues:
1. With male victims of sexual assault, 94% of the perps were men. Statistics have shown, time and time again, that men commit far more sexual assaults than women. So you’re factually wrong.
2. At least four feminists disagree with the exclusion of envelopment, including me. I’d link to more, but it seems there are far more MRAs saying feminists don’t care about envelopment, than feminists who’ve discussed it.
Schala @147:
True, but can you become a star player without “really wanting to” play baseball? I doubt it. The two roles aren’t analogous, either. Star baseball players earn money by playing baseball. What do people earn by becoming parents? And why is there a gender difference?
Schala @150:
Women. Think about it: plane crashes make the news, because they are rare. Car crashes do not, because they are common. We highlight the exceptions and ignore the default or normal.
Who’s being highlighted there? Women and children, because they are outside the norm, they are unexpected. Men are the default, so there’s no need to explicitly mention them; everyone will assume you’re talking about men, unless you state otherwise.
As well, you completely missed a hidden assumption: by lumping women and children together, you are saying they are equivalent. Are you arguing they deserve special protection, just like children? Are you arguing women have less autonomy than men, just like children? That latter statement is a form of erasure, as it denies women are as human as men.
To hjhornbeck’s point at 173, I posted lauding the DoJ standards of rape, after they redefined it to include forms of rape other than aggressor-penis-in-victim-vagina. Meanwhile, MRAs ignored it (until enough feminists sneered at them for ignoring the point, then some MRAs started covering it).
Feminists are on top of this shit, and are fighting for the very positive changes MRAs complain most about. MRAs aren’t. It’s almost, sometimes, as though they’d prefer to keep using the facts of those injustices as clubs against feminists.
Schala @150:
I’ve mentioned you can be remarkably feminist at times. This is one of those; most feminists nowadays are third-wave, and argue against restrictive gender roles. Most feminists would therefore agree with you.
Schala @154:
I just recently attended a screening of a documentary on that state of feminism in Canada, and the third question asked was “why didn’t the film mention transgender?” and the fith-ish was “why didn’t this film include men?” This crowd was almost entirely female, by the way.
I’ve been pointing you to the works of bell hooks and R.W Connell, but you could also have just Googled the subject to find out men are quite central to feminism. Heck, there’s even an encyclopedia on the subject.
Schala @154:
I picked that one up from Natalie Reed back in 2011:
If you’d have ditched that one section I noted above and posted the rest of your comment at a feminist website, I don’t think a single person would have thought you were opposed to feminism. That’s how close your views are to contemporary feminism.
JutGory @156:
Where’s the disanalogy? Or are we back to haggling over the exact definitions of “desire” and “like?”
JutGory @157:
Oh, I see. If women encounter discrimination in the workplace, they should be the ones to work past it, the people doing the discrimination shouldn’t have to change their attitudes for them. If they fail, it’s the victim’s fault. Is that what you’re getting at?
JutGory @158:
What ways are those? We’ve already pointed out men can both “breastfeed” and, with the help of a little technology, breastfeed. If you are arguing that men lack the proper biology to bond, what biology is that? If you are instead arguing that we bond differently due to biology, are you arguing that penises and vaginas are important for bonding with children?
hjhornbeck @ 173:
hjhornbeck, Schala is right and you are wrong.
Here is the FBI’s new definition of rape:
The definition excludes envelopment, which is the most common way women rape men according to the the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey [NISVS] Report (pdf). (Note that this NISVS also excludes ‘rape by envelopment’ as “rape,” but since it does at least report it as a specific form of sexual assault, we can compensate for their linguistic error and assess how common such assaults are.)
As for the notion that most male victims of sexual assault were assaulted by men, you cite a secondary source (the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services) which itself appears to be relying on a 1997 American study (Paul J. Isley & David Gehrenbeck Shim, Sexual Assault of Men in the Community, 25 J. COMMUNITY PSYCHOL. 159 1997) which does not appear to be available online. It is therefore impossible to determine whether that study includes rape by envelopment as rape, or assess exactly how they tallied women sexually assaulting men. Given that official statistics even today don’t recognize the reality of rape by envelopment, I’m extremely skeptical that this source did. If you can provide an online primary source to support your argument, everyone could then assess its reliability.
Your second statistic referring to …
… goes to a Toronto police site which lists a number of different sex crime statistics. I can only assume you’re referring to its mentioning that “In reported sexual assaults, 97% of sex offenders are men (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 2003).” I do not believe a decade-old statistic which relies on reported-to-authorities figures will accurately convey the frequency with which men were sexually assaulted by women. I would wager that the average person even today is unlikely to see a woman enveloping the penis of a man as a serious sex crime that merits prosecution, and that was no doubt even more true a decade ago.
To get a reliable sense of this sort of victimization of men, you need a survey of victims, not a tally of how many reported the attacks to the police. The best, most recent study appears to be the 2010 NISVS Report which indicates that in the most recent year they studied, there were a roughly equal number of female rape victims and male victims who were forced to penetrate someone else. They also indicate that 80% of those ‘forced to penetrate’ were assaulted by females.
So no, hjhornbeck, you are factually wrong, and Schala is correct, as she has been throughout much of the discussion here.
I’m glad you’re arguing against the exclusion of envelopment from the definition of rape, but if you really want to be helpful in this arena you should be more attentive to the accuracy of what you’re stating.
Oh, and I know there are at least five feminists arguing against the exclusion of envelopment in the definition of rape — (I’ve been making that argument since 2009) — but that still falls well short of making it the prevalent feminist stance. But I do think you’re right (and unwittingly undermine your own position) when you state that there are “far more MRAs saying feminists don’t care about envelopment, than feminists who’ve discussed it.”
Elision. See tables 2.1 and 2.2 in the PDF you linked. We can compensate for it but it still amounts to 1 in 2 women experiencing some form of sexual violence, vs 1 in 5 men. And again, they didn’t break out rape-by-envelopment of a vagina vs an anus or mouth, the latter two would comprise most of the rape-by-envelopment by men. Given that we still know most rape is done by men, even if we consider all rape deplorable and fight rape-by-women as a problem (and dammit, feminists do NOT deny this as a problem as a plank toward being a feminist, so stop assuming it’s one), we must recognize the fact that rape-by-men is a far more prevalent problem.
And if I might correct hjhornbeck — there are far more MRAs saying feminists don’t care about envelopment than there are feminists who don’t care about envelopment. If you want to know if a feminist cares about rape by envelopment, ask them. Though when making this request, pick an appropriate time to make the “what about the men” argument, rather than being, say, during some outrage over the latest news story of a woman being raped. (Perspective. And stage. And framing. Keep those in mind.)
(and I say this last, knowing there are far more feminists than MRAs. So far more MRAs making arguments that are untrue about feminists, despite feminists vastly outnumbering MRAs.)
Jason:
There appears to be an awful lot of ‘bureaucratese’ in the document your cited post refers to. In a casual scan, I’m unable to find their definition of rape to determine if they now include ‘rape by envelopment.’ If they do, that would be a truly progressive step forward, but I strongly suspect they do not (given that no other federal authorities that I’m aware of recognize the reality of envelopment as rape). If you can quote the relevant section where they do, in fact, make this change, that would be enlightening (and IMHO extremely surprising).
However, I did stumble across this little gem in the revised standards:
In other words, male staff will no longer be able to pat down female inmates … but apparently female staff will be able to continue to pat down male inmates. This ban appears to me to be sexist. Who’s to say that the same-gender staffperson in question isn’t gay or bisexual (and therefore just as theoretically capable of deriving sexual pleasure from inappropriately touching an inmate)? If opposite-gender pat-downs are such an inherent problem, why are female staffers still permitted to pat down male inmates? This is especially odd since around 2/3 of the more than 50,000 male inmate victims of staff sexual misconduct reported being victimized solely by female staff (see Table 18 of the “Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-09” with h/t to Tamen)
I’m not claiming that you’re wrong in saying the new standards represent significant progress for what is clearly a catastrophically violent and inhumane system of incarceration. But — for whatever it’s worth — it appears to me that these new standards still have a ways to go to get to true gender egalitarianism.
Jason, I agree that rape-by-men is a more prevalent problem than rape-by-women; I disagree that it is a far more prevalent problem. Your assertion appears to be contradicted by the 12-month data in the NISVS report, which indicate that there were roughly equal numbers of female and male rape victims (when you include ‘being forced to penetrate someone else’ as rape). Strictly speaking, the report does not give us the gender of the assailant for the 12-month male rape victims who were ‘made to penetrate,’ but does note that in about 80% of the ‘made to penetrate’ lifetime encounters, the male victims report solely female assailants, as I mentioned above, and I see no reason to assume that the 12-month perpetrator gender breakdown would be significantly different in the absence of evidence to the contrary. I would, of course, be very interested in any citation you have for your assertion that most of the ‘rape by envelopment’ is — contrary to the report stat I just cited — committed by men, and not women.
Since the overwhelming majority of male rape victims fall into the ‘made to penetrate’ category (by a margin of more than 3-1), this means that the clear majority of rapes of men were perpetrated by women, not men, given the above interpretation. Men may, indeed, commit more rape overall than women, but if the NISVS 12-month figures are an accurate reflection of today’s reality, the ratio of rapes-by-men vs. rapes-by-women is in something like the 3-2 range, not the 10-1 or 100-1 range that is implied by a great deal of mainstream feminist rhetoric (i.e. signs that say “only men can stop rape” etc.).
Forgive me for jumping out of order, but STATISTICS.
ballgame @183:
To the general public, true. But with university access, you can download it from CRKN Wiley Online Library or Academic Search Complete.
Which I just did.
Drum roll, please:
Of course, the above passage only demonstrates that the study considered envelopment, it says nothing about how common envelopment was. THIS passage, on the other hand…
Incidentally, I see StatCan offers public-use microdata for their 1999 General Social Survey Victimization survey. These surveys involve telephone and personal interviews, instead of police statistics, so they’ll probably be closer to the true numbers. I’ve gotten in touch to request a copy, you might want to snag your own too.
I don’t see how this follows. You appear to be assuming that the person being penetrated is the same as the person forcing the man to penetrate. You also appear to be assuming that only women rape via forcing someone else to penetrate them, and men never do. Do you have evidence to justify making those assumptions? Is the study’s data that fine-grained?
SallyStrange, thanks for seeking my clarification here. I’m not making either assumption that you’re worried about; here is the passage from the study:
(Emphasis mine.) The use of the phrase “female perpetrator” is pretty unambiguous.
hjhornbeck: I’m glad you’re digging further into the nature of the evidence you’re citing. Your quote appears to affirm that the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services is relying on data which has the same defect as the Toronto Police data: namely, it’s tallying the numbers being passed along by agencies that male victims were going to more than two decades ago to report having been sexually victimized. The survey and followup questionnaire referred to in your quote are clearly going to the agencies, not the actual male victims. I doubt if many males today who were compelled to penetrate a woman are going to report that violation to an authority, and it’s almost certainly true that even fewer were doing that two decades ago.
The Canadian Public Use Microdata file you link to looks like it could merit investigation.
Is it possible to have floor space inside too? When I talk about rape shelters or rape crisis centers, I’m mostly talking about the face-to-face help. Phone and hotel vouchers can only help so much.
Consider that my analogy refers to being very eager to play baseball, before EVER playing it. The way many women are (imo) conditioned to want babies, before having any experience with it. It’s simply overhyped. It starts with baby dolls, and it continues with Barbie dolls, babysitting being considered a “female occupation” and later on with talks about “biological clock” and birthing being “the purpose of a woman’s life*” (according to many women themselves on both the left and right)
*There really is no “The purpose” of life, but people like to think there is something bigger than themselves, and having kids is low-hanging fruit. If you bear the kid and everyone tells you motherhood is so good (and sooo female), it might help making it more female than male hype.
Even if you’re very eager to do something, you can be downright awful doing it (this includes parenting).
I’m clumsy (despite lots and lots of hand-eye coordination training from decades of videogames), I could be very enthusiastic about playing some sport. And mess it up badly. I’m just naturally clumsy (thanks, asperger). I would never be a star player, I could still want to play at first (or even after) way more than people who are actually very good at it.
Or it could be:
We highlight the outrageous and don’t care one bit about the default.
Men dying is nothing special, and nothing to care about.
Women dying is horrible, they are fragile and worth protecting.
Children dying is horrible, they are fragile, innocent, defenseless and worth protecting.
This is the view of society on deaths, and part of the reason for hesitating putting women in combat roles in the army, and much of the reason for not conscripting women in most countries either.
Tell society that. Society is the one making a big deal out of protecting women (and only women, not men). VAWA is part of that erasure of women as humans. So is the existence of only (publicly funded) women’s battered shelters.
If its men like Hugo Schwyzer and Julian Real, it doesn’t really talk about men’s problems.
Both are self-flagellating “excuse me for being born with a penis” male feminists who think women can do no bad and no evil, and men need to change (in every domain). They’re white knights who cross Victorianism (men bad women good) with feminism, possibly because they’ve personally done bad in their life (we know about Hugo), and blame it on maleness instead of themselves. It’s just a way of avoiding responsibility for their own personal acts by blaming it on something bigger (like patriarchy).
I’ve been told by Julian Real that I should defer to cis women, and consider their feelings as more important than mine (as a trans woman) regarding my presence in women’s space. Conservative people argue the exact same. So I call it Victorianism. TERFs are conservatives in disguise too.
My being assertive about my presence in women’s space is all the proof TERFs need about my male privilege’s existence. But if I was passive and quiet, I would again show my male privilege by projecting the image of a submissive woman as the ideal. You just can’t win.
It doesn’t surprise me that trans people are more of a hot topic than men in general, within feminism.
Finally Feminism 101 argues that men can be oppressed by intersectionality. That is, by being gay while male, trans while male, disabled while male, etc. But not male itself. Only femaleness can be oppressed in and of itself. Because they say so.
My experience doesn’t agree with Natalie Reed’s.
The difference between my old life and my new one…
I feel less misandry now than I did then (and when you consider transphobia against trans women is often based on misandry, ouch). I feel way way more freedom of expression than I ever did in my life. I feel more safe in the streets, at work and mostly everywhere (my previous life was constant expectations of being beaten up, with no one to prevent it, and no “don’t hit boys” to mitigate it).
I feel equally valued for my contribution in work if I work (my last workplace was videogame testing, and they don’t care if you’re a blue unicorn, as long as you perform right. I did get some transphobia, and was outed by the workplace due to legal name at the time, but very mild compared to expectations).
I also feel equally valued as a gamer by other gamers I care about (a very small number of people). I’ve “proven myself” and my demographics are nothing to them. I even “taught” my brothers to play, so they respect my game wisdom. I don’t care what trolls think about me.
I do feel part of my being accepted as female and as a gamer unconditionally, comes from my being much of a tomboy in interest (videogames, anime, manga, action movies, thrillers, horror – but no “chick flicks” like Twilight) and outlook (ie not half as vain as magazines would tell me to be). So I’m “one of the boys”, no need to take white gloves with me, to check your language (as in swearing), or put me on a pedestal. Like I said; Debrah Morgan is very similar, though more extroverted.
As I said in the other article, I think much of the vanity and “I’m fragile, treat me with kid gloves” is socialized. And that I think there are a lot of women with inclinations like mine who fear not fitting in enough to ignore their inclinations.
I haven’t encountered much misogyny so far. The worst I see in media is the notion that I’m extremely superficial (because I’m anti-superficial) and more of a neat freak (I’m not). Though being considered a slob is not that much better (men are dirty vs women obsess over cleaning).
I’m happy to note that my cleanliness standards have not changed since my transition, they’re still generally low. It’s entirely socialized. And mostly about receiving visitors (there are people who can’t fathom dirt or a unclean house to any degree, that’s neat freak, possibly OCD).
Misandry I fought with before include the notion that I’m hypersexual, basically an erection on legs, despite being asexual (transition changed it to slight-libido pansexual). The notion that I’m naturally violent, or easy to make violent because of testosterone, or prone to violence due to socialization (I dislike all 3 notions equally – the first notion is conservative, the third is radical feminist, the second I can’t say). The notion that I’m naturally dominant or ought to be, or I’m a loser (and femdom fantasy drives the point home with gusto – that male submission is extremely loser). That kindness in a male is a weakness, and worth taking advantage of instead of nurturing. And lastly, the notion of “don’t hit the weaker/smaller/shorter” don’t apply to weaker/smaller/shorter boys and men, only to the disabled and girls and women regardless of their size.
My sense of justice is very big, so the last notion I found patently unfair more than others. And I voiced it a lot.
Not about penis vs vagina. Only applies to women who bear the kid and birth the kid. Men can bond, but those women who bear the kid might bond more initially. Adopted kids should be bonded equally, since neither births the kid. It’s a slight difference and shouldn’t direct any policy.
Btw, when there are “female versions” of toys/objects which originally did not (Lego, Kinder Surprise toys), it’s an effort on marketers to go into “an untapped market”, even if the original toy was not gendered.
IMO it’s also about making the parents buy different (and thus more) toys for their kids if they’re not the same sex.
Instead of playing with the same Lego sets, siblings would play with Lego and Lego”for girls” separately. That’s 2 sets.
And making “for girl” versions is both misandrist and misogynist, when the original is not gendred, wether it’s Lego, Kinder or videogames.
It assumes that girls are uninterested because it’s not girl-coded with enough pink, glitters and Barbie-esque things like having a Hair Salon building.
And secondly, it ignores boy’s preferences and makes something off-limits to them, on top of everything already off-limits to boys.
Hockey probably has mostly boys, even at low ages (like 6-7), but a girl can easily play without being beaten up for it. She’ll just be an outlier. If a boy does ballet, he won’t just be an outlier, people will assume something is wrong with him, and that it needs to be beaten out of him.
Doing “hockey for girls” is no better (I’m looking at you, ringuette), they could have just removed contact and fights instead of making a ghetto, insuring hockey remains mostly-boys forever.
Just a quick one:
ballgame @187
Agreed. The authors were perhaps arguing for a power gradient, that as men are considered to be either stronger or more “powerful” than women, being patted down by a man is more threatening than being patted down by a woman. I don’t buy it; thanks to knives, shivs and the like, size and strength aren’t proportional to damage dished out. As a feminist, I’m on your side here.