Category Archives: Gynonormativity

Gynonormativity is a cultural consensus that norms generally though of as feminine or generally enforced by women on men are morally superior to men’s own norms.

DOUBLE STANDARDS – Dick jokes, dick staring, hypocrisy and control

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EquilibriumShift commented in the thread on DOUBLE STANDARDS – Jon Hamm and the Female Gaze:

This is absolutely related to the previous post re: Adria Richards power play to police sexuality to her standards.

He’s right. This really is about women controlling men’s behavior and speech. Adria Richards had the management of a conference throw out two men based on her accusation, and this accusation later caused one of these men to lose his job. That’s power. In the case of Jon Hamm’s package, women are indulging in behavior they excoriate in men.

And that excoriation is not the impotent rage of the powerless; women have all sorts of powerful allies they can marshal against men they can portray as offending or threatening them.

It is the same vein of thinking that allows a woman to become offended when he makes a pun that alludes to a penis, when that very same woman has no problem making dick jokes herself. It’s the same thinking that allows women to become offended at the sight of pixelated titties in video games, while ignoring the hundreds (thousands?) of bare chested men. (Ever played the video game “Heavy Rain”? As a check on how highly you value sexuality of the two genders, were you more shocked by Ethan getting nude and taking a shower, or by Madison doing the same? I know I didn’t bat an eyelash when the guy got nude, but I was a little shocked I would “get to” see the chick get naked.)

Then he picks up on the false equivalence of breasts and penises when it comes to staring.

Somehow, breasts are always compared to penises, as you noted, Ginkgo. Sexual economy (and it’s inherent devaluation of men’s sexuality) at its finest. And the women who do so are the self-same writers who rage, all full of sound and fury, at “objectification” of women, and how women’s sexuality is valued so highly. Of course, they would never say it like that, because it doesn’t sound ominous that way. They would of course say a woman is judged by her sexuality, or that women only matter to men because of their sexuality. One might as well say that men only matter to women because of their ability to provide stability and safety.

This misuse of “objectification” is just one more instance of damseling, in this case, the form I call “Turning privilege into oppression.” Is female sexuality more valued than male, i.e., does it confer privilege? Then it must immediately be spun as an oppression, and the objectification narrative is trotted out.

He continues:

At any rate, I think this very well presents a solution to the argument that many 3rd wave feminists put forth:

1) An oppressed group always understands what it is like to live as both oppressed and oppressor

2) Women are oppressed by men

Therefore: Women understand what it is like to live as a man.

I don’t think the bullshit level on this argument really needs to be pointed out to people here, but the whole John Hamm situation really highlights just how wrong at least one of those two premises is. FWIW, I think both tend to be wrong, with 1) being pretty much wrong, and 2) being utter crap.

His point is that the women writing about Jon Hamm clearly have no clue about men, what men experience, what’s going on here.See Arwa Mahdawi’s article in the Guardian for an example. In other words, they are femsplaining.

To which I add:

The first half of that syllogism is false. Sun Zi tells us that if you understand your opponent and yourself, you will prevail. It follows then that if you do not prevail, you probably do not understand your opponent, your oppressor, as well as you imagine.

The second half of that syllogism is a matter not in evidence. Every instance of oppression of women that can be sited is a result of women’s social neoteny, a neoteny that obligates men to feed, house and protect women form the outside world and its perils. Women can decry this all they like but until they stop enjoying the benefits of that neoteny, those objections are hypocritical.

Hypoagency: These two cases put hypoagency and its uses on display. Here in both cases we see women being as agentive as they want to be and then disavowing that agentivity. Adria Richards aggresses two men, resulting in the loss of livelihood for one of them – and yet gets to present herself as the victim, and the believed! Women stare at Jon Hamm’s crotch, and yet somehow he’s the one aggressing them, he’s the one who needs to and his behavior.

Hypogency really is benevolent sexism. Its benevolent to women and sexist towards men.

DOUBLE STANDARDS – Jon Hamm and the Female Gaze

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His eyes are up here, you pervert!

Actor Jon Hamm has been targeted for a whole lot of snickering about his genitals of the sort that no female actor has ever been, to my memory.

Ths is in the context of decades of blue-nosed hectoring abut “sexual objectification” when men look at women’s breasts – only now when the shoe is on the other foot, it’s quite alright for women to twitter over some guy’s bulge.

Bullshit. Make up your minds. The we can agree together on a standard of behavior. You don’t get to waffle and play cute and whine “But this is different…..!”

 

Hamm was instructed to wear more concealing underwear on the set because he was showing too much. Where’s all that indignation about hijab and how it’s not women’s responsibility…..

And let’s stipulate to something: breasts and penises are not equal when it comes to gawking. This is a point that seems to elude Alyssa Rosenberg. Andrew Sullivan tries to give her credit for sympathizing, when she really isn’t; she dismisses his complaint with a false equivalence to the way women actors’ breasts are gawked at.

Remember the flap over Seth McFarlane’s ditty at the Oscars, the one about “we see your boobs”. High dudgeon, lots of young wisps harrumphing like stodgy matrons over the crudity, the effrontery, the lack of respect for women… Remember that one? So where’s the dudgeon now? Have they all fallen silent?

Crickets chirping…..

This is how breasts and penises differ when it comes to being gawked at. Where men dress to hide their penises, women dress to flaunt them. It’s quite possible to wear clothes that reduce the visual signature of your breasts, but Western women don’t dress like that (and men thank them for that!). And that’s fine. But then they don’t get to turn around and castigate men for doing what they intend them to do as a way to manufacture plausible deniability of some supposed, bogus moral looseness. “Flaunt it if you’ve got it” and then just own it. Please, a little honesty would clear the air wonderfully.

This is what would be equivalent – when is the last time you heard a woman actor’s vagina discussed or snickered about in the press or on the internet? Alyssa Rosenberg mentions Ann Hathaway’s nipples below; what do we know about Ann Hathaway’s vagina? For all we know it could be the size of the Grand Canyon. Why is no one snickering about that? Because we don’t know and because we have the sense not to go there when it’s a woman – as we should not.

And why would we anyway – camel toes aren’t really as photogenic anyway.

Let’s say we make an exception for actors. Actors get paid to show it, especially women. And while you personally may think that’s unfair, that is after all the deal they make of their own very free and very well-rewarded will, but it makes my point. A woman actor’s career lifespan is limited by age in a way a man’s is not necessarily. (Although male actors have about the same shelf life in the main as women, let’s not be coy; when was the last time you heard anything about Josh Hartnett?). Limited by her age, not by her acting skills, which presumably improve with practice – so that’s what women actors are selling, their looks and attractiveness. So why the dudgeon when someone points that out in a song?

Now penises - what happens when a man shows his penis in public? Very rarely does he get a movie contract for it. Does he? Or that a new nickname for the Sex Offender Registry? So the actor exception does not apply in this case. Request denied.

And another thing. Rosenberg doesn’t know what objectification is. When she says:

“What makes Hamm different from, say, Anne Hathaway, who had to weather discussion about the appearance of her nipples in her Academy Awards dress, is that Hamm isn’t used to being objectified.”

(Right, because the nipples she is flashing, and I do mean FLASHING, through sheer fabric - are totes identical to her genitals. Not really the same thing at all, is it?)

She is showing both that she doesn’t know what objectification is and that she is ignorant of men’s lives and the multitude of ways men are objectified in society – cannon fodder, disposable industrial labor, subjectivity denied, silenced about their issues with traditionalist macho narratives and feminist privilege narratives and obfuscations…

Here’s the deal: Women who are all affronted that Jon Hamm is showing, you’re perving. You’re perving. Don’t even bother denying it. Women keep your pervy eyes off Jon Hamm’s crotch.

That’s my job. Yeah, no. He says he’s tired of it; that’s all the rest of us need to know. Are we all clear on that , ladies?

 No. Here’s the actual deal. I have no right to tell what you can and can’t do with your eyes. JUST AS YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TELL A MAN WHAT HE CAN DO WITH HIS EYES.

So make up your mind. Either you are entitled to gawk at Jon Hamm’s crotch and have nothing to say when men stare at your boobs that you put on proud display, or else keep your eyes off of people’s genitals.

And no, you don’t get to have it both ways. You don’t get to giggle and bat your eyes and say a lady is entitled to change her mind – back and forth, back and forth. No.

 

EDIT: Re: Crickets - I spoke too soon. Brava, Arwa Mahdawi! She says a lot of the right things. But then she goes and stuffs her foot in her mouth:

“However, for the most part, men are still more relaxed about their bodies than women.”

And then the snide insinuation it’s all a publicity stunt. Why, Ms. Mahdawi, if anyone made the same suggestion about a woman fussing about having her vagina snickered at and discussed, it would be all furthering the rape culture and shit.

Oh well. It was nice while it lasted. Keep trying, Ms. Mahdawi. Treating people equally takes practice.

Nice try at empathy. It’s probably not really natural to you anyway.

 

FEMALE PRIVILEGE – Donglegate – This is what sexual entitlement looks like

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Patrick Brown makes a very good point in this thread about women imposing their own standards of decency and speech on men in the workplace, or elsewhere for that matter:

Patrick Brown on 2013-03-26 at 9:51 am said:
Thing is though – as you point out with your link – it’s not actually a female norm. Listen in to a conversation between women and it’ll be every bit as filthy as a conversation between men. The books and magazines women read are as full of sexual references as anything men consume. It is not a female norm to recoil from mild sexual innuendo. This isn’t a norm of behaviour that’s assumed to apply when it doesn’t – nothing that innocent. It’s power. Richards will make dick jokes with guys she knows and likes, because fundamentally, she doesn’t actually object to dick jokes. But she reserves the right to make men she doesn’t know or like suffer for innocuous innuendo, because she can.

In this type of sexual entitlement a woman is entitled to use sexuality as a weapon against men. She can weaponize their comments against them simply by complaining to some authority, some Daddy figure, some patriarchal power elite. It’s very Victorian. In fact it really is Victorian.

dungone on 2013-03-26 at 10:38 am said:
@Patrick, yeah I agree with you. The goal seems to be to make men as uncomfortable as possible while allowing women to express their own sexuality to their hearts’ content. It’s definitely all about power and it is reflected by the lopsided costs of sexual access in our culture.
Donglegate, the way I see it, is really no different from Elevatorgate and both are no different than this: http://now.msn.com/heather-hayes-arrested-for-attacking-boyfriend-eric-zuber-because-he-would-not-have-sex-with-her At the end of the day, each one involves an attention-starved woman who lashed out because she was not satisfied with the exact nature of the sexual dynamic between herself and a male, even though none of the men had done a single thing wrong.

Schala went on to expand the discussion by connecting it to the classing of gender. She points out that female status entitles a person to take offense at things the lower orders may not, and also to have that sense of offense taken seriously and be acted upon.

Schala on 2013-03-26 at 10:00 am said:
This is a “female gender role is aristocracy” remnant from conservative Victorian-era roles.
The slaves, the working-class people and even the middle-class people cannot complain much about what is asked of them. They do it or they get sacked, out of work, starving, no insurance, and they die. Even truly hostile environment.
But the aristocrat? Their livelihood is usually nothing that they ‘do’, unless they’re the public face of a super rich company. Regardless, they can refuse, impose their standards, and “pay someone to do it” when they don’t like the work.

This Richards Affair is ripping a lot of scabs and septic bandages off.

FEMALE PRIVILEGE – Donglegate and the colonization of men’s spaces

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Donglegate is about one more attempt to impose female norms in the workplace on the assumption that they are simply civilized norms. Supposedly one of the marks of privilege is that the norms of the privileged groups are just considered “the norm” for everyone. Donglegate is about feamea privilege and the sexism of a woman expecting her female norms of behavior to be adhered to because they are just the “normal” norms, and more than that, of an entire power structure enforcing them for her – sexual harassment policies that discriminate as to who is and is not a possible victim, laws protect abuse of these policies, firings as punishment.

This is what I mean by gynonormativity, where female norms become the general norms of the culture. It is a significant source of female privilege. In the context of the workplace, gynonormativity in the culture allowed women entering the workforce to weaponize sexual harassment and other policies, aided and abetted by apexual men.

The difference is this time there’s pushback. And this pushback is coming from a lot of people who never knew and don’t know anyone involved, because it’s personal for them for other reasons.

Richards was trying to police those two men’s speech – actually she was trying to make a bloody example of them to police all men’s speech in the industry. That’s what has brought so many bystanders into the fight – they know they are not just bystanders. And she was trying to police these men to her own female standards, in a male space. That is colonization.

(And by the way, this was a norm she clearly does not think she has to adhere to.)

And this gynonormativity in society is where these accusations of misogyny in the tech industry come from. Female privilege makes female norms “the norm’, and when someone used to that privilege goes somewhere they are not the norm, it is indeed going to feel like misogyny, when all it really is is equality.

I wonder if it would just be simpler if they hung signs over the doors of tech firms that said:

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A MALE SPACE. FEMALE NORMS ARE NOT VALID HERE.  ENTRY CONSTITUTES CONSENT TO THE NORMS OF THIS SPACE.

Or maybe it would be accurate if the sign said:

YOU ARE ENTERING A TECH SPACE. NON-TECH NORMS ARE INVALID HERE.

Because as odd as it may sound to an outsider, the tech industry is a creative enterprise, and creativity withers under strictures and counterproductive constraints.

And by the way, it might not be a bad idea to do the same at elementary schools:

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A FEMALE SPACE. MALE NORMS ARE NOT VALID HERE.

Or would that be too much clarity, would that be ripping the scab off of some fundamental problems in public education?

And now for a comment from the same and moderate middle ground, here is Marci Sischo.

FEMALE PRIVILEGE – Gynonormativity – Donglegate in the context of sexual harassment politics

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The buzz at the moment is the foofarah over Adria Richards and her behavior at a tech conference. What is interesting is not that a woman took offense at something a man said in her hearing and found a way to turn that against him and get some publicity for herself. That kind of thing is bird-in-the-backyard stuff, been going on for centuries.

I’m not going to waste your time repeating the details of this affairs. The whole thing is all over the internet.

The big news is the reaction. I don’t mean that ferocity that has been lobbed at Adria Richards. That kind of thing is also not news. And by the way, when you are the cause of someone, in this case two people, losing their jobs, in a climate where this kind of thing has happened enough that fear of it is general (see also Sexual Harassment policies, guidelines and enforcement actions just about anywhere) you have no reason to be surprised when the reaction across the community is vitriolic.

The reaction I am talking about is from women in the tech industry. SilencingNarrative on Reddit MensRights has a self-reddit up saying that he sees a turning point here, not just for himself I feeling he can trust women in that field more because of their response to the incident. He sees it as a turning point in the gynonorming trend in male-dominated fields and the workplace in general.

Women are losing no time in condemning Richards and often in quite blunt and harsh terms. Amanda Blum had quite a bit to say by way of background on Adria Richards and none of it was in her favor. She cuts to the bone on this, she says that Richards’ behavior has harmed women in the industry materially, undoing years and years of struggle on the part of women in the industry to be accepted as team members.
Amanda says Richards has painted women in the tech industry a irrational bitches no one can work with. SilencingNarrative says that the response of women in the industry has done more than reverse that harm, at least for him. Well done, Amanda Blum.

And look at this post at a blog called “….a whisper of dark wings”. It goes further in explaining the harm Richards caused, and in the process proving how adult and reasonable these women in the tech industry can be.

The misogyny underlying the assumptions that inform Richards’ actions are not lost on these women either.

And here’s a thread on Hacker News, starting with an apology from one of the guys involved, with most commenters telling him he’s not the one who should be apologizing.

Back when women started to enter the corporate world and the workplace in general, back in the 60s, people thought there would be a natural process of accomodation, but they were ignoring a feature of the gender system that constructs femininity so that women are the Moral Guardians of society.

This happens because women have an outsized role in child-rearing and socialization in our society. This gynonormativity s so entrenched in the culture that when women go into male spaces and find it not in effect, they call the situation sexist and misogynist – in other words a setting that is not female dominated, at least in its norms, is unacceptable to them.

And in the context of the tech industry, an industry staffed mainly with men who have issues with women because of the way women treat and have treated them, this gynonormativity and the tech industry culture were a combustible mixture. Adria Richards may have touched off a cleansing fire that may spread beyond the tech industry.

DOUBLE STANDARDS – Feds look into discipline rates in Seattle schools

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“SEATTLE (AP) — The U.S. Department of Education is investigating the high rate at which black students are disciplined in Seattle Public Schools, a problem that has plagued the district for decades.”

Well good for the feds; it’s high time.

This is in the context of a general culture-wide conception of black people as especially troublesome, violent, crime-prone – requiring special measures to restrain all that, for their own good of course. That’s always been the justification. That’s the justification offered for the way police interact with young black men. School is supposed to be a safe place for children? Pffft… These schools, and probably the same is true across the country, are indoctrinating these kids, and all their peers watching all this too, in the same racist lies as society at large does.

This article concerns Seattle but I doubt the situation down the road in Tacoma is much different. I don’t know the statistics for Tacoma but I do know that when I taught there almost 20 years ago a lot of elementary school teachers assumed and expected black kids to be more unruly or more troublesome even when they plainly were not. It was vague and subtle, but that is exactly the unaddressed “common sense” nonsense that quite often forms the basis for disciplinary decisions – harshness of penalties, judgment on who started what, etc.

“According to district data, in the 2011-2012 school year, nearly 13 percent of black high school students received at least one short-term suspension. The equivalent figure for white students was just under 4 percent. In middle schools, the rate was 7 percent of white students and 27 percent of blacks.”

Racial double standards are not the only double standards when it comes ot disciplinary actions in schools, are they?

So I wonder what the school districts records would show on discipline rates for boys and girls. Because as we all know, boys are just more unruly in class, concentrate less, color outside the lines more. Boys are just trouble – throw rocks at them. Actually that’s only if you can’t handle your male students as well as your female students – if you are professionally incompetent, in other words.

I really would love to see those disciplinary stats for Seattle broken down by gender, as well as the hidden disciplinary stats – the stats that show Ritalin and Adderal usage as administered in the schools.

Do you think there will be many surprises?

HYPOAGENCY – Hypoagency and Blaming Everything on Men

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I’m going to be doing a series on hypoagency and hyperagency. Typhonblue identified these as the core of the gender system we find so problematic and the more I look at them the more that analysis is confirmed.

Because this is series, I am soliciting examples of both.

Female hypoagency is what we call the cultural tendency to deny that women have agency. We are talking about imputed rather than real lack of agency. This means that when a woman does something, her agency in that act is denied, so that if that act is something bad, she will be immune from blame.

A necessary corollary of female hypoagency is male hyperagency. Under male hyperagency men are held responsible for all the things women are not.
I hope the sexism is obvious enough not to need further explanation and that the misogyny and misandry of this system is obvious too. One common form this takes is projecting women’s inaction, failures or the negative consequences of their actions onto men, as a culturral norm.

So in this first look at female hypoagency we are going to look at female immunity and how it works both in the general culture and in feminism, which claims to criticize and analyze that general culture. This is basically a list of things as they come to mind, nothing comprehensive or exhaustive, and I encourage readers to nominate other material.

Here we go:

WAR – This is the claim that “men start wars” and that war is a male problem that men foist off onto innocent civilian bystanders. This relies on a completely uninformed and naïve understanding of war as some kind of sport that all those rough boys go off and do and the stray rounds fall on peace-loving innocent bystanders – in other words a complete denial of the benefits that women and others on the winning side derive from war, and a denial of women’s role in sending men to war.

POLITICS – This is the claim that men have all the power because they hold the majority of political office, despite the fact that women outnumber men as voters, so are responsible for all these male politicians being voted in. This ignores the troublesome fact that women make up the majority of voters. The engrained belief in hypoagency is what makes this denialism possible.

BENEVOLENT SEXISM – Every time women enjoy any kind of advantage due to gender – “privilege” – that has to be spun as being due to male action, or else it has to be spun as some kind of disadvantage. Labeling an advantage “benevolent sexism” accomplishes that.

This is not to deny that benevolent sexism is a fair way to describe what’s going on. For one thing, it damned sure is sexism – sexist against men, and we don’t experience it as particularly benevolent, not in the least. But on the other hand the Golden Cage is also harmful to women. Well, that’s just one more reason to identify and destroy all forms of female privilege.

These are the big, umbrella categories. Help with specific examples.

DOUBLE STANDARDS – Disproportionate violence and false equivalence

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There is a clear gendered double standard in society when it comes to interpersonal violence, whether it is physical or emotional.

This is the script:
1. If a woman initiates violence on a man, the most he can do is restrain her to prevent further harm, and he may very well be blamed for doing even that.
2. If he initiates, she is entitled to use whatever force and inflict whatever she can, disproportionate to the initial assault or not.
3. If he commits some non-violent transgression, a transgression in her judgment alone, she is entitled to physical violence on him, to include maiming him.

This is a cultural script we are taking about, as evidenced by the way people act them out, without consideration for what the actual consequences turn out to be. We are looking at the rules people act according to.

Examples:

Commenter Sensitive Thug related this:

This makes me think of a memory from high school. I was friends with a boy and a girl. The boy made a bet with another friend that he could kiss the girl at a party. So he did and he won their bet but the girl found out. She responded by kissing him again and this time biting his tongue so hard that he couldn’t speak properly for a week.

 

Clearly the guys who made that bet were in the wrong too, so it’s a different situation to the incident in this thread. Nevertheless violence shouldn’t be seen as acceptable in either situation.

 

This is not the only incident of its kind that I remember from high school. Rarely were these girls held to account for their actions. But I’m beginning to think that this must be very frustrating and detrimental for women as well as men.

 

Not only do violent women sometimes hit other women, it goes deeper than that, as you all know. There are times when I wish I could lash out at people whenever I get upset. But on balance, I know I developed and grew as a person by being held to account for my actions.

Note how the girl reacted with disproportionate force. The injury she inflicted could easily have been permanent and disabling, and note how there were apparently no consequences.

This kind of thing is by no means anomalous, as we saw just a few days ago in this story out of Manatee County. FL where a woman thought she was entitled to start beating and scratching her boyfriend when she failed to reach orgasm. The fact that she was later arrested does not this script was not running, since obviously she acted on it.

Then of course there was the infamous case of Sharon Osbourne and the Talk. In one show she, and not only she but her whole grunting audience, in the studio and at home, thought it was all just wonderful that Catherine Kieu had cut her husband’s penis off and thrown it into the garbage disposal. Her lying apology only showed how perfectly acceptable that kind of thing was, how much it fit the script, and how many people supported her in that. (Read the comments on that one; they tear Osbourne’s lying apologist up for her sexism, while pointing out how common Osbourne’s attitude is.) And she had plenty of boot-licking apologists who tried to trivialize her sexist idiocy. Apparently a lot of people thought her reaction was quite natural and acceptable and by extension what she was reacting to was equally natural and acceptable.

So what is going on?

Clearly this reflects the hyperagency/hypoagency narrative. Hypoagency is not an objective measure of a person’s actual agentivity, it is a socially ascribed status. A hypoagentive person is expected to need excessive force to accomplish the minimal effect necessary effect. Their excessive force is justified, because it’s a David and Goliath situation.

The way this is often cast to look justifiable is false equivalence, where for example a man’s infidelity, even if only assumed or guessed at, is presented as justification for some kind of physical retaliation, however disabling.

Then there is all the objectification of men summed up in the term “male disposability.” This means that it’s permitted to violate men and their bodies if a woman feels the need. It means that their resulting pain is dismissed as their subjectivity and right to describe their own experiences is denied.

Every bit of this is part of the toxic femininity that is at the base of the rotten gender system so many people think they oppose, but instead work so hard to reinforce with their theories and advocacy. It’s interesting to see how faintly they oppose it when it collides with the values and assumptions they have been raised with in that system.

TALES OF THE RED PILL – Feminist Allies of MRAs, Part II – Double Standards

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Feminism is a men’s issue.

 Amanda Marcotte and others repeatedly insist that feminism is good for what ails men, in other words that feminists and women get to dictate to men what solutions are valid for men’s issues. This is part of the tradcon division of labor we see in so many marriages where the woman gets the responsibility and all the power over social relations - in this case, gender relations. No surprise to find a feminist of Marcotte’s sort acting as the tradcon Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Patriarchy.

However despite the fact that false rape accusation apologist man-haters like Marcotte advocate it, the idea is serious enough to merit the time it takes to refute it. Commenter Valerie Keefe did it pretty concisely here. Commenter Tamen now goes into detail specifically on the issue of rape of men by women, specifically in reference to a recent rape apologist post and comment thread* on Feministe (the “Jill” referred to here is Jill Filipovic) and offers these examples of why feminism so far, after 40 years of promising to be all about gender equality, still cannot be trusted to deal with men’s issues seriously, or even to refrain from doing active harm: 

Tamen on January 2, 2013 at 4:49 pm said:

When one disables the unidirectionalism inherent in many feminist definitions (privilege, rape culture, patriarchy/kirarchy and so on) then feminism itself does not really come off too well when it’s own theory is applied to it. Jupp’s comment about feminist’s reluctance to give up privilege is one example, Feminists track record on male victims of rape and on female perpetrators contributes to rape culture to the extent that a feminist who in an article about rape culture wrote that “only men can stop rape”. Minimizing victims of rape is rape culture according to feminists, but apparently not when the victims minimized are male and the perpetrator female. Not believing a rape victim is rape culture with the exception being if the victim is male. The exception is perfectly exemplified by Marcotte who thinks it is much more likely that a male victim faked it and is abusing the partner by being upset about sex without his consent.

And then Marcotte have the audacity to say that what men needs to address and solve their issues is feminism.

Man: There is this problem that men’s consent is implied and not really respected by women. Who can address it?
Jill: Feminism can. Men of course can say no, but if you say no to certain sex acts then I will vilify you and call you a misogynist.
Feminist X: Oh, and this is so not like calling a woman who won’t perform a blowjob/facial for a misandrist because of power differential.
Man: I see.

Man: A woman had sex with her sleeping partner because she thought the movement he made in his sleep was an invitation to sex. The man feel violated and weird and won’t touch her and now the woman feel bad and is at loss as to what to do.
Amanda: Feminism can. The man weren’t abused, he should stop being butthurt and don’t make the woman who he claim didn’t get his consent feel bad, that’s abusive.
Feminist A: The man is an idiot for making her feel bad, if he really felt violated he should dump her.
Feminist B: The sleeping man gave a signal that she understood to be consent and hence she isn’t a rapist for fucking him while he was asleep.
Feminist B elsewhere on the net: There is no way there could be any mixed signals leading to a man thinking that it’s ok to penetrate a sleeping woman.
Man: I see.

Man: I was raped by a woman. Who can address this?
Soraya Chemaly: Feminism can. Although individual stories without context about male victims of female perpetrators eliminated the qualitative difference between male-on-female rape and female-on-male rape. Raising the specter of women raping boys implies a false equivalence. Only men can stop rape. I am so not saying that boys’ and men’s experiences of assault and rape are in any way less relevant or horrific. It’s just that what I say means that female rapist of men don’t exist (are specters), but if they actually do the female rapists is not in any way responsible for what she does as only a man could’ve prevented her from raping. The rape experiences of boys and men are not specifically denied, ignored and hidden by feminism despite me writing as a feminist doing exactly that. This all makes sense to me.
Man: I see.

Man: Even though I clearly said intercourse is off the table my partner took my penis and put it in her vagina without my consent. Who can address that?
Schwyzer: Feminism can, although I wouldn’t call that rape. Because.
Man: I see.

Man: A woman (nanny) in her thirties have sexual relations with her employers 11 year old son. Who can address that?
Schwyzer: Feminism can. As the son of the employer he was privileged and hence he was a predator. The woman was disprivileged and although she shouldn’t have had sexual relations with the boy he was at least as culpable as her.
Man: Oh, what about the 11 year old girl who initiated sexual relations with her parents employee (piano teacher)? Who can address that?
Schwyzer: Feminism can. The onus is solely on adult men to set and maintain good boundaries.
Man: I see.

Man: I was raped and it took me a while to realize what happened to me and recognize it for what it was. Who can address that?
McEwan: Feminism can. You didn’t recognize that as rape because you thought “Eeeew, that would make me a woman” whenever you started to consider that you in fact had been raped. Get rid of the femmephobia and all will become clear.
Man: I see.

Feminist A: I am for enthusiastic consent. If you don’t get enthusiastic consent you are a rapist. I’ll even write in an “Yes means Yes” anthology about enthusiastic consent.
Man: A woman didn’t take no for a no and nagged her partner into sex. The man felt violated. Who can address that?
Feminist B: Feminism can. Although I probably would call it rape if a man had nagged a woman into sex I won’t call this rape.
Feminist C: Wait, that isn’t rape as that would make me a rapist (and my partner as well).
Feminist A (later): In principle I am for enthusiastic consent, but…
Man: I see.

Man: NISVS 2010 Report showed that in 2010 both 1.1% of women and 1.1% of men reported having unconsensual sex (aka rape even though CDC decides to label it “being made to penetrate” for men). 79.2% of the men who were “made to penetrate someone else” sometimes in their lifetime reported a single female perpetrator. Who can address this?
Feminist blogosphere (the adherents to tl;dr): Feminism can. What are you talking about? 1 in 5 women have been raped while 1 in 72 men have been raped.
Feminist blogosphere (those who read beyond the summary): Feminism can. What are you talking about? 1 in 5 women have been raped while 1 in 20 men have been raped.
Man: But what about the “last 12 months” prevalency numbers?
Feminist blogosphere:
………………………………………..-=Ø…………………………….
(crappy drawing of a tumbleweed blowing silently across the plain)
Man: I see.

For all the talk about how feminism is the solutions to men’s issues (the ones feminists are willing to acknowledge at least) I note that it seems like male victims of rape and sexual violence (in particular those with female perpetrators) are more likely to “come out” in MRA and other non-feminist areas than on the feminists blogs I follow.

I know why, but feminists apparently don’t.

I think feminism would be much more succesful at achieving what they claim to be by actually applying their own theories to themselves and change the aspects of feminism and feminists that fail rather than the current tactic of vilifying MRAs

 

*Feministe is currently “under maintenance” and this post cannot be linked to. Here and here are two posts by ToySoldiers that address that post.

ACTIVISM – One Piece of Advice at a Time

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“Is cunamh mór comhairle mhaith” – “Good advice is great help.”

It is also a form of activism.

Someone getting ready to marry was presented a really lopsided prenup and didn’t know what to think of it, so he asked the Reddit community on r/Mensrights. As far as he’s concerned, they came through for him.

This is what he was wondering about:

My future in-laws want to talk to me about a pre-nup and they want to add a few extra clauses in it. I have not spoken to them yet, but I suspect the clauses are: 1. My fiancee will keep all of the inheritance (probably during the marriage too, not just in the case of a divorce). 2. Assets will be split 75%-25% (75% paid by me of course) On top of this: – My fiancee will be a stay at home mom – I will probably pay an obscene amount of spousal support, especially considering the stay at home mom part.

As others pointed out, the mandated SAHM part and the weird split of assets as well as the presumption of spousal support are all big throbbing red flags. Even the part about the way her inheritance would be handled is a red flag, because it means she reamins financially separate in a way he doesn’t. In all it makes him look less like a husband and more like a live-in sperm donor.

Anyway, this is a form of activism, because after all the personal is political.

Family law is unequal in the US as are the cultural expectations around marriage. The only way to make permanent change is to work at one marriage at a time, one parenting agreement at a time, one DV case at a time. Of course there will be times when some broad institutional action is needed – an unfair law or policy has to be overturned, a bigoted judge has to disciplined or even taken off the bench. But in the end, it’s the eaches that make the real difference.