On the day that Vanessa George is to be sentenced, yet another female 'predatory paedophile' is sent down.
Carol Clarke, 46, assaulted children she followed into toilets in Grimsby and other parts of Lincolnshire, she told detectives.
Grimsby Crown Court heard she was sexually aroused by watching young children urinate and from seeing them looking distressed when they needed to go to the toilet.
Sentencing Clarke, Judge David Tremberg yesterday told her she would have to serve a minimum of four year in prison. Reference
This raises a few issues. Firstly, what is the point of sentencing people like that to shortish prison sentences, only to have them re-offend on release? What they need is some kind of psychiatric treatment, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, to try to end their sexual interest in children. In the meantime, they need to be contained for the safety of the public.
Secondly, the George case in particular calls into question the government's authoritarian, panic-stricken response, in insisting on Criminal Records Bureau checks for every adult who comes into contact with children. Vanessa George had passed a CRB check. Ian Huntley had never taken one, but had he taken one, he would have passed it. The government's measures constitute a frightening new level of state interference in the family, while doing little or nothing to protect children.
More importantly, what does the feminist movement have to say on the subject of Vanessa George and Carol Clark? Nothing. All I hear is a deafening silence. Crickets chirping. Facts like these are inconvenient for the self-serving, crypto-fascist ideologues who constitute the feminist movement.
The fact is that the feminist movement has been endorsing and concealing paedophiles for years in just the same way that the Catholic Church has. What matters to these organisations - the only thing that matters to them - is their reputations. For decades, the feminist movement has actively promoted the lie that all women are compassionate angels of mercy, and all men are savage, dangerous monsters. This poisonous mythology has been used as an instrument to break up marriages and families, and to separate men from women and children. This may serve the interests of the handful of Marxist lesbians who dominate the movement, but it does not serve anyone else's interests.
Female paedophiles like these in the news are an important type of counter-evidence, which is why we must draw maximum attention to them. The feminist movement just does not know what to say about them. It just has to hope that the rest of us will not notice. The best story they can come up with is usually that it wasn't really her fault, a bad man made her do it.
By denying the existence of this kind of behaviour, the feminist movement is hindering efforts to protect children. It is not only self-serving and dishonest, it is about as deeply socially irresponsible as it is possible to imagine.
Come on feminists! Tell us why it is that some women commit sexual offences! Stop pretending it doesn't happen!
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Porn = Theory, Rape = Practise? Another feminist failure.
When I was involved with the political Left in the 1980s, some of the young women used to wear badges on their lapels which read "Porn = Theory, Rape = Practise".
It was a dogma of the 1970s and 1980s radical feminist movement that sexual violence is caused by the perpetrator having been exposed to pornographic literature, and that such literature must therefore be banned by means of draconian state censorship of the media. This view is probably represented best by the work of Andrew Dworkin.
It is this claim that I want to examine.
What is pornography? I am not going to trouble you with attempts to formulate an academic definition of pornography. I take it for granted that we know what pornography looks like. I have a general notion of pornography as any created representation, produced in any medium, which is intended to cause the viewer to become sexually aroused.
The degree of censorship which is enforced varies according to the medium that the work is produced in. One can get away with nearly anything in prose, but that has traditionally not been the case in cinema, for example.
The upper-middle class took it upon themselves to censor the media on behalf of the working class. A good example of this is a much-repeated incident that took place during the 'Lady Chatterley' trial. The novel 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover', by DH Lawrence, was banned in Britain as obscene when it was first published in 1928. A publisher attempted to re-print the novel in 1962, and was charged with obscenity. During the resulting trial, the prosecuting lawyer asked the court “Is this the kind of book you would want your servants to read?”
Various literary figures were produced as witnesses to attest to the novel’s artistic merit. The publisher won, and the novel became available in the UK for the first time.
The poet Philip Larkin later wrote in a particularly witty moment:
Sex was invented in 1963,
Between the Lady Chatterley trial
And the Beatles’ first LP.
One unexpected outcome of the Lady Chatterley trial was that people often try to make a distinction between ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’. The difference is usually said to be due to the fact that the former possesses some kind of artistic merit and the latter does not. The defence in the Lady Chatterley trial successfully argued that no work of such merit should be banned. The clear implication, however, is that if the work had had less artistic merit, the court would have been right to ban it. This is a dangerous and unhealthy precedent. The US Supreme court now apparently defines pornography as anything which is intended to cause sexual arousal and which lacks artistic merit.
This distinction between ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’ is meaningless, for the simple reason that we have no reliable forensic test for distinguishing one from the other; when presented with a piece of work, we have to be able to say reliably which category it falls into. If we cannot do that – and we cannot – then the distinction is functionally useless.
It can only be a subjective judgement: I appreciate erotica – you use pornography. Erotica is something you like, pornography something you don’t. In practise those who hold power, such as judges, will get to ban whatever they want and allow whatever they want. As a distinction, it can only be a political one. They will tend to allow sexual representation which they deem to be politically correct for whatever reason, and disallow anything else.
The vacuity of the distinction becomes clearer when we consider that it is hardly the business of the law to arbitrate on matters of artistic merit. Since when did judges get to arbitrate on matters of artistic merit? They do not do so with regard to anything else. Judges do not ban clothes, food, furniture or music due to their lacking artistic merit, so why sexual representation? A lot of work that wins the Turner Prize lacks artistic merit in the opinion of many, but that is hardly grounds for banning it. In pretending that there is any such valid difference, we are flirting with a highly dangerous totalitarian mindset, while pretending to be terribly liberal.
A comedian once described the upmarket British publication The Erotic Review as ‘porn for posh people. It is Penthouse for people who actually live in one’. I couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself.
The ruling class have always had access to sexually-explicit art, while the working-class usually have not, and the pornography/erotica distinction tends to reinforce and preserve that kind of class privilege.
Even so, the Lady Chatterley trial was obviously a step forward towards a more open society.
Many people say that the cultural revolution of 1968 produced a more liberal society, and in many ways, that is true. It saw the decriminalisation of male homosexuality for example (female homosexuality has never been illegal in the UK).
However, that period also saw the rise of what is known as ‘second-wave feminism’, which was anything but liberal.
As a good little lefty in the 1980s, it always struck me as odd to see the feminist movement lining itself up with religious conservatives over the issue of pornography. How can we explain the fact that a revolutionary movement promoting radical social change would get into bed with a profoundly reactionary one? The answer took me a long time to come to, and Neil Lyndon got there before me. There is nothing remotely progressive about the feminist movement. It is, and always has been, a deeply conservative movement.
Neil Lyndon was an eye-witness to the events of 1968. In his seminal book, ‘No More Sex War: The failures of feminism’, he described the rise of feminism as, in effect, a reaction against the 1968 cultural revolution:
“It fell, of course, to women to bear this weight of change: not all women, just a very big group…there was a particular class of women born around the time of the second world war, who were caught dead in the middle of this sea change. To these women, it fell as an acute task and responsibility to negotiate a set of demands for personal and social change such as no women in the entire history of human beings has ever had to face. No wonder a lot of them funked it. No wonder they tried to erect an ideological Berlin Wall which could restrain and deny change. No wonder they created an hysterical dogma which was intended to keep men in their place and women in theirs, even while it was advanced as a prospectus for evolutionary change by which individuals might be released from the imprisonment of sexual stereotypes.” (pp87-88)
One aspect of the times which I believe Lyndon has underestimated was ‘the Rise of the Toms’, what Gloria Steinem termed the 'Lavender Menace'. It is simply not in the interests of heterosexual women to hate men. Who benefits from such an agenda? Lesbians.
“As in any period of uncertainty, the bumptious rose to the fore. The most radical among us struck fear into the rest with their certainty and their expert deployment of feminist guilt. I was frequently berated by the Lesbian Police in bars and clubs; for wearing red lipstick, for wearing a black biker's jacket and hilariously, on one occasion, for having "too much fun" with my mates.” Reference
The most aggressive individuals will rise to prominence, and at that time, perhaps due to both their higher aggression levels, and their greater feeling of social disenfranchisement, it was perhaps no accident that many of these emergent leaders were lesbians, who immediately set about promoting an agenda which suited themselves, rather than the heterosexual majority.
Be that as it may, however, the agenda of second-wave feminism was in many ways about holding back and constraining the overwhelming cultural changes taking place, and therefore reducing fear and uncertainty. Conservative moral attitudes have always been plain to see in the feminist movement, despite the thin veneer of radicalism.
“Feminism taught me 30 years ago that not only had women gotten a raw deal from men, we were morally superior to them. When it came to distinguishing right from wrong, the needle of our compass always pointed to true north. Our thinking was hardly radical. Victorian was more like it: Men were competitive and dangerous, women cooperative and comforting. Men were brutish, women gentle.”
Reference
Why did feminism turn against pornography? The Seventies pop star Linda Lewis described the sexually-permissive culture of the time in a recent memoir. "In those days everyone slept with everyone. If you said no, you were considered uptight". Reference
This was a sexual culture which largely benefited men. Many women no doubt felt that they had, in effect, lost the right to say no.
Access to sex is one of women's principal bargaining chips in the dating marketplace; it always has been, and will remain so. After 1968, the free availability of contraception combined with the hedonism of the time produced, for a while at least, a feeling that there was no longer any reason not to have sex, and that to refuse was actually evidence of lack of revolutionary commitment, or even mental dysfunction of some kind.
This feeling of loss of control is one of the things which would have produced anxiety in many women, and the reactionary feminist backlash was a way of trying to regain that control. Male sexuality was held to be the problem. The view of men as brutish sexual predators, and women as angelic shrinking violets was again a deeply conservative and reactionary one. This was an agenda which the lesbians in the feminist movement were quite happy to see promoted. They were after all, competing against men for mates, and the more men are demonised in the eyes of women, the more their interests are served.
The feminist movement thus turned against the newly unconstrained male sexuality, and called for powerful restraints to be placed upon it. Thus we saw feminist attacks on beauty pageants, a general call for women to dress down in response to 'The Beauty Myth', a call for a general refusal to co-operate with men's sexual demands. Feminists were opposed to any aspect of the commercial sex industry, and pornography was one of the main targets.
Pornography does of course portray women in a way which is designed to be sexually appealing to men. This was not the image of women, nor of sexual license, which the feminist movement wanted to promote.
Feminist opposition to pornography was even extreme enough to include terrorism. Adrienne Gerhäuser, one of the leaders of the German Rote Zora gang, which set off fire bombs in sex shops, surrendered recently after 19 years on the run. Reference.
The principal radical feminist argument against pornography was that it causes men who read it to become sexually violent towards women; that pornography actually causes sexual violence. That is what the little 1980s badge clearly stated.
This view was based on a deeply cynical, and frankly incoherent, view that male sexuality is essentially violent and coercive in nature. By the 1980s, feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon were claiming that all heterosexual sex is rape.
The feminist position, tempered as it is so profoundly by both Marxism and lesbianism, is openly heterophobic and misandrist, and openly promotes double-standards.
Ever since the 1960s, there have been two different opposing views of pornography: the conservative view that it is obscene, harmful and degrading, and the ‘progressive’ view that it is liberating, and enables people to explore and enjoy their sexuality. Which is true? The feminist-led Left has resolved this dilemma in its usual way: by creating double standards. Pornography aimed at women and gay people is liberating; pornography aimed at heterosexual men is obscene, harmful and degrading.
I have been in a mainstream bookshop in the UK and seen a large display of pornographic novels aimed at gay men. In the ‘Gender Studies’ section they had another selection aimed at heterosexual women and lesbians. Where is the pornography aimed at straight men? Of course there wasn’t any, because that is not politically correct. It is perfectly acceptable for everyone to use pornography except for heterosexual men.
This double standard extends into social attitudes towards male and female masturbation. It is now almost de rigeur for the Sex and the City generation to openly boast about having a drawerful of Rampant Rabbits, but ‘wanker’ is still one of the most common insults applied to men. Although we have all masturbated at some point, to admit to having done so is still to invite social ridicule: but only if you are a heterosexual man.
I once saw a young man wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Masturbation is not a crime’. More of us need to take that kind of stand.
The feminist model predicts that the more freely available pornography is, the more violence against women there will be. If pornography is an instrument of violence against women, we would expect to find that it is most prevalent in the countries in which women have the lowest status, and vice versa; The feminist model predicts that there should be an inverse relation between the availability of pornography and the status of women. In fact, we find the opposite. In those nations in which women have the lowest social status, such as the Gulf states, Africa, the Middle East, and so on, we notice that pornography is heavily censored or illegal. In those states in which women enjoy the highest status and greatest levels of personal freedom, such as the USA, Canada, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, we find that pornography is freely available. This is in fact the direct opposite of what the feminist model should predict.
It is also interesting to note that relaxing censorship actually reduces the incidence of sexual violence: "When pornography was made freely available in Denmark in the late 1960s, the incidence of sex crimes, sexual violence towards women and children, dropped markedly. In 1967 erotic material in Denmark was removed from the obscenity statute. This resulted in sex crimes in Denmark, which had been stable from 1958 to 1966, decreasing by 25 percent in 1967, 13 percent in 1968 and 30.5 percent in 1969". Patricia Petersen, Lecturer in Psychology, Central Queensland University, Brisbane. Reference
Once again, the truth is the direct opposite of what the feminists claim it is. If porn causes rape, then relaxing censorship should lead to an increase in rape; instead it leads to a decrease. By extension, we can expect that increasing censorship will lead to increased sexual violence. It is sexual repression which produces sexual violence, not sexual libertarianism.
We must conclude, therefore, that based on the evidence, the feminist model of pornography is false.
It is interesting that the feminist movement appears not to have noticed any of this. If feminists were rational, they would, on the basis of the evidence, encourage more pornography, as there is a strong correlation between availability of pornography and women's status. However, they do not do that, because they are not rational. Feminism is simply not an evidence-based theory. It is a modern-day religion, with deeply entrenched vested interests, which it does not want to see threatened.
One of the good things that the Blair government did in its first term was to liberalise censorship in the UK. One of the main reasons for that, no doubt, was the advent of mass internet access during the 1990s. The fact is that governments can no longer control the flow of information across their borders, although many still try; in Iraq under Saddam, possession of a modem was a criminal offence. Jack Straw luckily saw the writing on the wall and accepted that things had to change. It is just pointless for governments in Western democracies to try to prevent the population from accessing pornography. Censorship is just no longer relevant or possible in the way that it was half a century ago.
The feminist movement has retreated to a new defensive line. In the last decade or so, feminist attention has switched away from mainstream pornography and transferred instead on to the issue of child pornography. Why is that?
Perhaps just because they knew that they had lost the battle over pornography; their claims were shown to be nonsense, and the advent of the internet, which gave everyone access to huge amounts of pornography for free, meant that their mean-spirited and misguided dream of banning it had disappeared forever. Child pornography on the other hand, is an issue about which everyone can agree. The misandrist propaganda has switched from the claim that all men are rapists, to the claim that all men are child rapists. The message however, has remained the same; that men are evil, and that male sexuality is essentially violent and coercive.
The only solution is to treat their claims about child pornography today in the same way that we have had to treat their claims about mainstream pornography in the past. By putting aside hysteria and bigotry, and looking at the cold, hard facts. Debate on the subject of pornography – on any subject for that matter – cannot be left in the hands of these bigoted, man-hating, socially-dysfunctional harpies. Common sense must prevail.
It was a dogma of the 1970s and 1980s radical feminist movement that sexual violence is caused by the perpetrator having been exposed to pornographic literature, and that such literature must therefore be banned by means of draconian state censorship of the media. This view is probably represented best by the work of Andrew Dworkin.
It is this claim that I want to examine.
What is pornography? I am not going to trouble you with attempts to formulate an academic definition of pornography. I take it for granted that we know what pornography looks like. I have a general notion of pornography as any created representation, produced in any medium, which is intended to cause the viewer to become sexually aroused.
The degree of censorship which is enforced varies according to the medium that the work is produced in. One can get away with nearly anything in prose, but that has traditionally not been the case in cinema, for example.
The upper-middle class took it upon themselves to censor the media on behalf of the working class. A good example of this is a much-repeated incident that took place during the 'Lady Chatterley' trial. The novel 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover', by DH Lawrence, was banned in Britain as obscene when it was first published in 1928. A publisher attempted to re-print the novel in 1962, and was charged with obscenity. During the resulting trial, the prosecuting lawyer asked the court “Is this the kind of book you would want your servants to read?”
Various literary figures were produced as witnesses to attest to the novel’s artistic merit. The publisher won, and the novel became available in the UK for the first time.
The poet Philip Larkin later wrote in a particularly witty moment:
Sex was invented in 1963,
Between the Lady Chatterley trial
And the Beatles’ first LP.
One unexpected outcome of the Lady Chatterley trial was that people often try to make a distinction between ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’. The difference is usually said to be due to the fact that the former possesses some kind of artistic merit and the latter does not. The defence in the Lady Chatterley trial successfully argued that no work of such merit should be banned. The clear implication, however, is that if the work had had less artistic merit, the court would have been right to ban it. This is a dangerous and unhealthy precedent. The US Supreme court now apparently defines pornography as anything which is intended to cause sexual arousal and which lacks artistic merit.
This distinction between ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’ is meaningless, for the simple reason that we have no reliable forensic test for distinguishing one from the other; when presented with a piece of work, we have to be able to say reliably which category it falls into. If we cannot do that – and we cannot – then the distinction is functionally useless.
It can only be a subjective judgement: I appreciate erotica – you use pornography. Erotica is something you like, pornography something you don’t. In practise those who hold power, such as judges, will get to ban whatever they want and allow whatever they want. As a distinction, it can only be a political one. They will tend to allow sexual representation which they deem to be politically correct for whatever reason, and disallow anything else.
The vacuity of the distinction becomes clearer when we consider that it is hardly the business of the law to arbitrate on matters of artistic merit. Since when did judges get to arbitrate on matters of artistic merit? They do not do so with regard to anything else. Judges do not ban clothes, food, furniture or music due to their lacking artistic merit, so why sexual representation? A lot of work that wins the Turner Prize lacks artistic merit in the opinion of many, but that is hardly grounds for banning it. In pretending that there is any such valid difference, we are flirting with a highly dangerous totalitarian mindset, while pretending to be terribly liberal.
A comedian once described the upmarket British publication The Erotic Review as ‘porn for posh people. It is Penthouse for people who actually live in one’. I couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself.
The ruling class have always had access to sexually-explicit art, while the working-class usually have not, and the pornography/erotica distinction tends to reinforce and preserve that kind of class privilege.
Even so, the Lady Chatterley trial was obviously a step forward towards a more open society.
Many people say that the cultural revolution of 1968 produced a more liberal society, and in many ways, that is true. It saw the decriminalisation of male homosexuality for example (female homosexuality has never been illegal in the UK).
However, that period also saw the rise of what is known as ‘second-wave feminism’, which was anything but liberal.
As a good little lefty in the 1980s, it always struck me as odd to see the feminist movement lining itself up with religious conservatives over the issue of pornography. How can we explain the fact that a revolutionary movement promoting radical social change would get into bed with a profoundly reactionary one? The answer took me a long time to come to, and Neil Lyndon got there before me. There is nothing remotely progressive about the feminist movement. It is, and always has been, a deeply conservative movement.
Neil Lyndon was an eye-witness to the events of 1968. In his seminal book, ‘No More Sex War: The failures of feminism’, he described the rise of feminism as, in effect, a reaction against the 1968 cultural revolution:
“It fell, of course, to women to bear this weight of change: not all women, just a very big group…there was a particular class of women born around the time of the second world war, who were caught dead in the middle of this sea change. To these women, it fell as an acute task and responsibility to negotiate a set of demands for personal and social change such as no women in the entire history of human beings has ever had to face. No wonder a lot of them funked it. No wonder they tried to erect an ideological Berlin Wall which could restrain and deny change. No wonder they created an hysterical dogma which was intended to keep men in their place and women in theirs, even while it was advanced as a prospectus for evolutionary change by which individuals might be released from the imprisonment of sexual stereotypes.” (pp87-88)
One aspect of the times which I believe Lyndon has underestimated was ‘the Rise of the Toms’, what Gloria Steinem termed the 'Lavender Menace'. It is simply not in the interests of heterosexual women to hate men. Who benefits from such an agenda? Lesbians.
“As in any period of uncertainty, the bumptious rose to the fore. The most radical among us struck fear into the rest with their certainty and their expert deployment of feminist guilt. I was frequently berated by the Lesbian Police in bars and clubs; for wearing red lipstick, for wearing a black biker's jacket and hilariously, on one occasion, for having "too much fun" with my mates.” Reference
The most aggressive individuals will rise to prominence, and at that time, perhaps due to both their higher aggression levels, and their greater feeling of social disenfranchisement, it was perhaps no accident that many of these emergent leaders were lesbians, who immediately set about promoting an agenda which suited themselves, rather than the heterosexual majority.
Be that as it may, however, the agenda of second-wave feminism was in many ways about holding back and constraining the overwhelming cultural changes taking place, and therefore reducing fear and uncertainty. Conservative moral attitudes have always been plain to see in the feminist movement, despite the thin veneer of radicalism.
“Feminism taught me 30 years ago that not only had women gotten a raw deal from men, we were morally superior to them. When it came to distinguishing right from wrong, the needle of our compass always pointed to true north. Our thinking was hardly radical. Victorian was more like it: Men were competitive and dangerous, women cooperative and comforting. Men were brutish, women gentle.”
Reference
Why did feminism turn against pornography? The Seventies pop star Linda Lewis described the sexually-permissive culture of the time in a recent memoir. "In those days everyone slept with everyone. If you said no, you were considered uptight". Reference
This was a sexual culture which largely benefited men. Many women no doubt felt that they had, in effect, lost the right to say no.
Access to sex is one of women's principal bargaining chips in the dating marketplace; it always has been, and will remain so. After 1968, the free availability of contraception combined with the hedonism of the time produced, for a while at least, a feeling that there was no longer any reason not to have sex, and that to refuse was actually evidence of lack of revolutionary commitment, or even mental dysfunction of some kind.
This feeling of loss of control is one of the things which would have produced anxiety in many women, and the reactionary feminist backlash was a way of trying to regain that control. Male sexuality was held to be the problem. The view of men as brutish sexual predators, and women as angelic shrinking violets was again a deeply conservative and reactionary one. This was an agenda which the lesbians in the feminist movement were quite happy to see promoted. They were after all, competing against men for mates, and the more men are demonised in the eyes of women, the more their interests are served.
The feminist movement thus turned against the newly unconstrained male sexuality, and called for powerful restraints to be placed upon it. Thus we saw feminist attacks on beauty pageants, a general call for women to dress down in response to 'The Beauty Myth', a call for a general refusal to co-operate with men's sexual demands. Feminists were opposed to any aspect of the commercial sex industry, and pornography was one of the main targets.
Pornography does of course portray women in a way which is designed to be sexually appealing to men. This was not the image of women, nor of sexual license, which the feminist movement wanted to promote.
Feminist opposition to pornography was even extreme enough to include terrorism. Adrienne Gerhäuser, one of the leaders of the German Rote Zora gang, which set off fire bombs in sex shops, surrendered recently after 19 years on the run. Reference.
The principal radical feminist argument against pornography was that it causes men who read it to become sexually violent towards women; that pornography actually causes sexual violence. That is what the little 1980s badge clearly stated.
This view was based on a deeply cynical, and frankly incoherent, view that male sexuality is essentially violent and coercive in nature. By the 1980s, feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon were claiming that all heterosexual sex is rape.
The feminist position, tempered as it is so profoundly by both Marxism and lesbianism, is openly heterophobic and misandrist, and openly promotes double-standards.
Ever since the 1960s, there have been two different opposing views of pornography: the conservative view that it is obscene, harmful and degrading, and the ‘progressive’ view that it is liberating, and enables people to explore and enjoy their sexuality. Which is true? The feminist-led Left has resolved this dilemma in its usual way: by creating double standards. Pornography aimed at women and gay people is liberating; pornography aimed at heterosexual men is obscene, harmful and degrading.
I have been in a mainstream bookshop in the UK and seen a large display of pornographic novels aimed at gay men. In the ‘Gender Studies’ section they had another selection aimed at heterosexual women and lesbians. Where is the pornography aimed at straight men? Of course there wasn’t any, because that is not politically correct. It is perfectly acceptable for everyone to use pornography except for heterosexual men.
This double standard extends into social attitudes towards male and female masturbation. It is now almost de rigeur for the Sex and the City generation to openly boast about having a drawerful of Rampant Rabbits, but ‘wanker’ is still one of the most common insults applied to men. Although we have all masturbated at some point, to admit to having done so is still to invite social ridicule: but only if you are a heterosexual man.
I once saw a young man wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Masturbation is not a crime’. More of us need to take that kind of stand.
The feminist model predicts that the more freely available pornography is, the more violence against women there will be. If pornography is an instrument of violence against women, we would expect to find that it is most prevalent in the countries in which women have the lowest status, and vice versa; The feminist model predicts that there should be an inverse relation between the availability of pornography and the status of women. In fact, we find the opposite. In those nations in which women have the lowest social status, such as the Gulf states, Africa, the Middle East, and so on, we notice that pornography is heavily censored or illegal. In those states in which women enjoy the highest status and greatest levels of personal freedom, such as the USA, Canada, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, we find that pornography is freely available. This is in fact the direct opposite of what the feminist model should predict.
It is also interesting to note that relaxing censorship actually reduces the incidence of sexual violence: "When pornography was made freely available in Denmark in the late 1960s, the incidence of sex crimes, sexual violence towards women and children, dropped markedly. In 1967 erotic material in Denmark was removed from the obscenity statute. This resulted in sex crimes in Denmark, which had been stable from 1958 to 1966, decreasing by 25 percent in 1967, 13 percent in 1968 and 30.5 percent in 1969". Patricia Petersen, Lecturer in Psychology, Central Queensland University, Brisbane. Reference
Once again, the truth is the direct opposite of what the feminists claim it is. If porn causes rape, then relaxing censorship should lead to an increase in rape; instead it leads to a decrease. By extension, we can expect that increasing censorship will lead to increased sexual violence. It is sexual repression which produces sexual violence, not sexual libertarianism.
We must conclude, therefore, that based on the evidence, the feminist model of pornography is false.
It is interesting that the feminist movement appears not to have noticed any of this. If feminists were rational, they would, on the basis of the evidence, encourage more pornography, as there is a strong correlation between availability of pornography and women's status. However, they do not do that, because they are not rational. Feminism is simply not an evidence-based theory. It is a modern-day religion, with deeply entrenched vested interests, which it does not want to see threatened.
One of the good things that the Blair government did in its first term was to liberalise censorship in the UK. One of the main reasons for that, no doubt, was the advent of mass internet access during the 1990s. The fact is that governments can no longer control the flow of information across their borders, although many still try; in Iraq under Saddam, possession of a modem was a criminal offence. Jack Straw luckily saw the writing on the wall and accepted that things had to change. It is just pointless for governments in Western democracies to try to prevent the population from accessing pornography. Censorship is just no longer relevant or possible in the way that it was half a century ago.
The feminist movement has retreated to a new defensive line. In the last decade or so, feminist attention has switched away from mainstream pornography and transferred instead on to the issue of child pornography. Why is that?
Perhaps just because they knew that they had lost the battle over pornography; their claims were shown to be nonsense, and the advent of the internet, which gave everyone access to huge amounts of pornography for free, meant that their mean-spirited and misguided dream of banning it had disappeared forever. Child pornography on the other hand, is an issue about which everyone can agree. The misandrist propaganda has switched from the claim that all men are rapists, to the claim that all men are child rapists. The message however, has remained the same; that men are evil, and that male sexuality is essentially violent and coercive.
The only solution is to treat their claims about child pornography today in the same way that we have had to treat their claims about mainstream pornography in the past. By putting aside hysteria and bigotry, and looking at the cold, hard facts. Debate on the subject of pornography – on any subject for that matter – cannot be left in the hands of these bigoted, man-hating, socially-dysfunctional harpies. Common sense must prevail.
Man Flu
It is the season of man-flu. Have you had it yet?
Did you know that women consume far more medical resources than men do? Yet men are more likely to die than women from all major diseases, as Warren Farrell points out. It is no accident that women live longer than men.
Equal numbers die in the UK each year from prostate and breast cancers. Look at the furore over breast cancer, yet there is no screening program for prostate.
Women are more likely than men to take time off work due to illness.
Yet feminists talk of men having 'man-flu', which is basically an accusation of malingering. As a man, you have no right to be ill. You have no right to have your symptoms taken seriously. It is just a boring inconvenience for women. You can't perform and entertain them as they expect, so you are ridiculed. A sick man is a weak man. A weak man is no man at all.
Feminists try to promote the idea that women are nobly struggling in the face of terrible illness, whereas men crumble at the first sign of trouble. They are stronger than you, and therefore morally superior to you.
I find the notion of man-flu pretty offensive. Like 'wierdo' and 'pervert', it is a way of coercing men into doing what women want; of, in Moxon's terms, 'policing the male hierarchy'.
That wouldn't be so bad in itself, but it is not a relationship of equals. She can laugh at you for having man flu, but you can't tell her she's an ugly fat cow, or whatever. Your right to police the female hierarchy has been severely curtailed, while her rights have been extended.
You may think you are ill with seasonal flu, but you are not. You are a miserable, self-pitying liar. Get over yourself, you wanker.
Did you know that women consume far more medical resources than men do? Yet men are more likely to die than women from all major diseases, as Warren Farrell points out. It is no accident that women live longer than men.
Equal numbers die in the UK each year from prostate and breast cancers. Look at the furore over breast cancer, yet there is no screening program for prostate.
Women are more likely than men to take time off work due to illness.
Yet feminists talk of men having 'man-flu', which is basically an accusation of malingering. As a man, you have no right to be ill. You have no right to have your symptoms taken seriously. It is just a boring inconvenience for women. You can't perform and entertain them as they expect, so you are ridiculed. A sick man is a weak man. A weak man is no man at all.
Feminists try to promote the idea that women are nobly struggling in the face of terrible illness, whereas men crumble at the first sign of trouble. They are stronger than you, and therefore morally superior to you.
I find the notion of man-flu pretty offensive. Like 'wierdo' and 'pervert', it is a way of coercing men into doing what women want; of, in Moxon's terms, 'policing the male hierarchy'.
That wouldn't be so bad in itself, but it is not a relationship of equals. She can laugh at you for having man flu, but you can't tell her she's an ugly fat cow, or whatever. Your right to police the female hierarchy has been severely curtailed, while her rights have been extended.
You may think you are ill with seasonal flu, but you are not. You are a miserable, self-pitying liar. Get over yourself, you wanker.
Anarchy in the UK
I was one of the office workers dressing down last April during the G20 protests (although I hasten to add that I am not a financier).
I was involved in a similar protest myself as a teenager in the 1980s, and I was able to see it from the other side of the barricades, so to speak
It made me think again about the motivations of the anti-capitalist movement.
First of all they are very selective about what they are against.
Capitalism is perfectly OK as long as it is the global cannabis trade; do not try to oppress their right to sell organic hash-cookies or to buy top-ups for their pay-as-you-go mobiles.
Some would say that it is just unfettered global corporate capitalism that they are opposed to. Fair enough, but who is going to regulate it? The only entity capable of doing that is the State, and the protesters are anarchists; they do not believe that there should be a State.
The position that they take is so amorphous as to be incoherent. All they are really communicating is the message ‘young, scruffy and disapproving’. In fact, hormones played a much larger role than economic theory in the protests of last April.
It set me thinking what a nonsense the notion of anarchy is. I remember I was never really convinced as a teenager either, but I didn’t quite know how to articulate why.
Just as ‘a-theist’ means ‘without a god’, the word ‘an-archy’ means without a ruler; if a monarchy is rule by one person, and an oligarchy is rule by a small clique, then anarchy is the rule of no-one. No State.
There are only two alternatives to the State, both short-lived.
The first one is a Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’, a nightmarish gangster-run wilderness of violent competition between petty groups. The hippies tend to refer to this as ‘chaos’ rather than anarchy, and most of them espouse non-violence, but let’s consider it for the sake of argument. What would happen in the long term? Cliques would merge and become larger, wiping out or absorbing other cliques, until one dominated in the end; a State. A bit like Mongolia before Genghis Khan came along and knocked everyone into line. Or anywhere before the State emerged, in fact.
The second alternative is the anarchy the protesters love so much, a pacifist version of the same thing, a middle-class fantasy in which consenting adults form agreements with each other to mend the fence or empty the drains in exchange for all the organic stew they can eat; a kind of permanent Woodstock, but with a sense of social responsibility. A settled middle-class life in which tee-pees and wind-chimes take the place of white picket fences and lawns. There are several problems with this Eden-like vision.
Firstly, it requires an extremely high degree of co-operation, discipline and social responsibility from every individual, without any personal incentive to gain or fear of punishment. Anarchy is the system of government for a land populated entirely by saints, and with no external competition. It is unrealistic. Not even monasteries are conflict-free.
Most of the people who espouse anarchy tend to be especially lacking in the social responsibility department. They may talk endlessly about the plight of the planet, but they still manage to avoid doing any productive work.
Selfish individuals will flourish. Let’s not forget that 1% of people are psychopaths. Hustlers and middle-men will see the main chance. Cult leaders will emerge immediately and dominate the group. Many will welcome their leadership.
It will be an armchair lawyer’s heaven, a society in which everything is ultimately done by contract between consenting adults. What happens if someone reneges on the contract? There will have to be sanctions. Probably everyone will call them a fascist, go on a downer, and no-one will pass them the joint.
How will they organise boring stuff like communications and engineering? We still expect our mobiles, man. We got to score somehow. What if a foreign invasion happens? The community will have to organise a military defence or get wiped out. These things can only be done by large-scale social formations involving hierarchical organisation and central planning. That means taxation, record-keeping, the whole thing, man.
Pretty soon, in short, you will have the State back again, and that should come as no surprise, because we should bear in mind that the State emerged the first time around for exactly the same reasons.
I was involved in a similar protest myself as a teenager in the 1980s, and I was able to see it from the other side of the barricades, so to speak
It made me think again about the motivations of the anti-capitalist movement.
First of all they are very selective about what they are against.
Capitalism is perfectly OK as long as it is the global cannabis trade; do not try to oppress their right to sell organic hash-cookies or to buy top-ups for their pay-as-you-go mobiles.
Some would say that it is just unfettered global corporate capitalism that they are opposed to. Fair enough, but who is going to regulate it? The only entity capable of doing that is the State, and the protesters are anarchists; they do not believe that there should be a State.
The position that they take is so amorphous as to be incoherent. All they are really communicating is the message ‘young, scruffy and disapproving’. In fact, hormones played a much larger role than economic theory in the protests of last April.
It set me thinking what a nonsense the notion of anarchy is. I remember I was never really convinced as a teenager either, but I didn’t quite know how to articulate why.
Just as ‘a-theist’ means ‘without a god’, the word ‘an-archy’ means without a ruler; if a monarchy is rule by one person, and an oligarchy is rule by a small clique, then anarchy is the rule of no-one. No State.
There are only two alternatives to the State, both short-lived.
The first one is a Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’, a nightmarish gangster-run wilderness of violent competition between petty groups. The hippies tend to refer to this as ‘chaos’ rather than anarchy, and most of them espouse non-violence, but let’s consider it for the sake of argument. What would happen in the long term? Cliques would merge and become larger, wiping out or absorbing other cliques, until one dominated in the end; a State. A bit like Mongolia before Genghis Khan came along and knocked everyone into line. Or anywhere before the State emerged, in fact.
The second alternative is the anarchy the protesters love so much, a pacifist version of the same thing, a middle-class fantasy in which consenting adults form agreements with each other to mend the fence or empty the drains in exchange for all the organic stew they can eat; a kind of permanent Woodstock, but with a sense of social responsibility. A settled middle-class life in which tee-pees and wind-chimes take the place of white picket fences and lawns. There are several problems with this Eden-like vision.
Firstly, it requires an extremely high degree of co-operation, discipline and social responsibility from every individual, without any personal incentive to gain or fear of punishment. Anarchy is the system of government for a land populated entirely by saints, and with no external competition. It is unrealistic. Not even monasteries are conflict-free.
Most of the people who espouse anarchy tend to be especially lacking in the social responsibility department. They may talk endlessly about the plight of the planet, but they still manage to avoid doing any productive work.
Selfish individuals will flourish. Let’s not forget that 1% of people are psychopaths. Hustlers and middle-men will see the main chance. Cult leaders will emerge immediately and dominate the group. Many will welcome their leadership.
It will be an armchair lawyer’s heaven, a society in which everything is ultimately done by contract between consenting adults. What happens if someone reneges on the contract? There will have to be sanctions. Probably everyone will call them a fascist, go on a downer, and no-one will pass them the joint.
How will they organise boring stuff like communications and engineering? We still expect our mobiles, man. We got to score somehow. What if a foreign invasion happens? The community will have to organise a military defence or get wiped out. These things can only be done by large-scale social formations involving hierarchical organisation and central planning. That means taxation, record-keeping, the whole thing, man.
Pretty soon, in short, you will have the State back again, and that should come as no surprise, because we should bear in mind that the State emerged the first time around for exactly the same reasons.
From Heretic's Postbag
Dear Heretic,
I have recently read most of your blog entries, and I agree almost to the dot of the i: in particular, I tend to say that I am pro-equality, pro-man, and pro-woman, and therefore, by necessity, anti-feminist.
There is one fundamental issue, however, where I think that you misjudge
matters:
You ascribe many things to feminism (hypocrisy, inability or unwillingness to understand reasoning, ad hominem and ad virem attacks, ...) that in my experience are more related to women in general, rather than feminists in particular. For example, wrt to hypocrisy: Very many women, whether feminists or not, would consider their own cheating ``his fault'' (``He drove me to it by being an unfeeling bastard!''), while his cheating is (unsurprisingly) his fault. Such experiences I have made again and again in various forms where women are concerned, e.g. female relatives as a child, women in the office, and girl-friends. Reading online diaries or forums on relationships gives the same impression (although the latter do contain disproportionally many feminists and, obviously, women who either have genuine complaints or are temporarily emotionally upset).
Consider the following extreme example:
A few years ago, I worked eight hours a day with two women, and was regularly brought to the point that I had problems controlling the impulse to simply put one of them over my knee for a hiding: Opinions were immutable once formed; everything had to be explained thrice, and she still did not understand it; when I tried to diplomatically point out major blunders (that many others would have given her a scolding for), I received a scolding from her for the perceived presumption; she attacked others for doing the exact mistakes she herself did on a regular basis; a harsh word towards her was a deadly sin, her own viciousness towards others was not; everything had to be her way or a long argument ensued, which always ended with my having to bow out, for fear of finally snapping; etc. The more remarkable, seeing that I had thrice her experience, twice her education, at least thirty IQ points more.
(An ironic observation is that I failed as a leader by trying to be considerate, cooperative, understanding of women, etc., where a man like those portrayed in feminist propaganda would likely have been successful.)
The truth is that women are disproportionally more likely to be hypocritic, opportunistic, irrational, whatnot, than men are. Feminism is certainly something that plays on this, and which worsens the situation; however, it is not the root cause of these particular problems.
Regards,
Michael
Dear Michael,
Thank you for your email. I'm glad you found something of value in my blog. Your experience accords with mine, and that of many other men I've spoken to. I can think of countless similar experiences. One which comes to mind is of an ex-girlfriend. We were renovating an old house, and we did most of the work ourselves. She wasn't actually very interested in doing many of the jobs, but she felt that she had to prove that she could do them, or that she was allowed to do them. She would come along when she wanted, pick up some tools, work for about 15 minutes, make a complete mess of it, because she had no patience or interest, then flounce off again, complaining that she was bored. I often had to re-do her work, because it was of such poor quality. If she saw me doing this, she would become enraged. How dare I re-do her work, it's an insult. I either had to re-do it when she wasn't around, or sometimes just leave it unchanged. Then her friends would come around to the house and cast a critical eye over the work. If they found fault with it, they would blame me, because this stuff is man's work, and I am obviously a very poor husband, because I can't do this kind of work. My ex-girlfriend, needless to say, did not leap to my defence.
In another case, a woman in the work-place behaved in a similar way towards a man in the group. We were collectively engaged on a project. At least, we all were except for her. She was engaged in undermining this man's work, and his standing within the group, with a view to forcing him to leave, a plan which eventually succeeded. She forced this man out of his job because she didn't like him. The fact that this could have had long-term consequences for his whole family did not concern her. She was also engaged in trying to obtain as many privileges for herself as possible. She complained loudly that she was the only one of her grade who did not have a company car, it's so sexist, they are picking on me because I am a woman. The wimpy boss gave in to her, perhaps for fear of being sued. "We don't have a spare car right now, but you are next on the list, I promise". She eventually got the car, and then it was 'I am the only one of my grade who doesn't have a company car-parking space, it's so sexist, they are picking on me because I am a woman'.
Having watched this appalling individual at work, it struck me that far from contributing anything positive to the company or the project, she was damaging everything she touched. She had no regard for the company's long-term welfare, and thought only of herself. I have never known a man to behave in this way, and I fail to see how he could get away with it. She was only able to get away with this because men's instincts are not to confront females.
Feminists are, by and large, cynical women who have realised the possibilities that this allows, and ruthlessly act upon them, the moral equivalent of stealing a car simply because the door is unlocked.
Creating no-win situations is one of the commonest forms of female aggression. It amounts to constant criticism, regardless of action. If you perform action X you are criticised; if you do not perform action X you are criticised. The key to understanding this is to realise that action X itself is irrelevant. Five minutes later, action Y will elicit the same response. The game is really about social dominance. This is how women treat each other. The commonest form of female aggression is social exclusion, and this kind of constant criticism is itself a strategy for manufacturing social exclusion. If you are subjected to it, no-one will want to support you in case they face the same fate; you may choose to abandon the social group in order to get some relief.
Having observed behaviour such as this for many years, it is difficult to form the view that women are equal to men.
All they are really interested in is maximising their own social position. Everything else can be sacrificed to this end. This is why women have almost no grasp of the truth or evidence, and feel free to change their story from second to second if it suits them. They are pathologically concerned with avoiding blame or responsibility.
This tendency is shown in lots of small everyday ways. If a phone call had to be made which might be vaguely embarrassing, such as cancelling a social engagement, or inviting someone we hardly knew, or apologising, my ex-girlfriend would get me to make the call. "Oh no, I'm too embarrassed! I can't face it! Could you do it? Pleeeease!" I mistakenly regarded this request as the equivalent of opening a jar, something she is just too weak to do for herself. In this way, her social image remained pristine, and I was the one who ended up with the dirt on his face.
If, on the other hand, during the course of the phone call we were likely to receive thanks and praise, she would take the call herself.
It took me years to get wise to these kinds of strategies. It is easy to make the mistake of assuming that other people think the same way you do. Men, with the possible exception of psychopaths, simply do not think like this.
If people ever wake up to the reality of this in large numbers, society will have to change quite profoundly. We will have to abandon once and for all the ludicrous pretence that men and women are equal. It just isn't going to work.
I have recently read most of your blog entries, and I agree almost to the dot of the i: in particular, I tend to say that I am pro-equality, pro-man, and pro-woman, and therefore, by necessity, anti-feminist.
There is one fundamental issue, however, where I think that you misjudge
matters:
You ascribe many things to feminism (hypocrisy, inability or unwillingness to understand reasoning, ad hominem and ad virem attacks, ...) that in my experience are more related to women in general, rather than feminists in particular. For example, wrt to hypocrisy: Very many women, whether feminists or not, would consider their own cheating ``his fault'' (``He drove me to it by being an unfeeling bastard!''), while his cheating is (unsurprisingly) his fault. Such experiences I have made again and again in various forms where women are concerned, e.g. female relatives as a child, women in the office, and girl-friends. Reading online diaries or forums on relationships gives the same impression (although the latter do contain disproportionally many feminists and, obviously, women who either have genuine complaints or are temporarily emotionally upset).
Consider the following extreme example:
A few years ago, I worked eight hours a day with two women, and was regularly brought to the point that I had problems controlling the impulse to simply put one of them over my knee for a hiding: Opinions were immutable once formed; everything had to be explained thrice, and she still did not understand it; when I tried to diplomatically point out major blunders (that many others would have given her a scolding for), I received a scolding from her for the perceived presumption; she attacked others for doing the exact mistakes she herself did on a regular basis; a harsh word towards her was a deadly sin, her own viciousness towards others was not; everything had to be her way or a long argument ensued, which always ended with my having to bow out, for fear of finally snapping; etc. The more remarkable, seeing that I had thrice her experience, twice her education, at least thirty IQ points more.
(An ironic observation is that I failed as a leader by trying to be considerate, cooperative, understanding of women, etc., where a man like those portrayed in feminist propaganda would likely have been successful.)
The truth is that women are disproportionally more likely to be hypocritic, opportunistic, irrational, whatnot, than men are. Feminism is certainly something that plays on this, and which worsens the situation; however, it is not the root cause of these particular problems.
Regards,
Michael
Dear Michael,
Thank you for your email. I'm glad you found something of value in my blog. Your experience accords with mine, and that of many other men I've spoken to. I can think of countless similar experiences. One which comes to mind is of an ex-girlfriend. We were renovating an old house, and we did most of the work ourselves. She wasn't actually very interested in doing many of the jobs, but she felt that she had to prove that she could do them, or that she was allowed to do them. She would come along when she wanted, pick up some tools, work for about 15 minutes, make a complete mess of it, because she had no patience or interest, then flounce off again, complaining that she was bored. I often had to re-do her work, because it was of such poor quality. If she saw me doing this, she would become enraged. How dare I re-do her work, it's an insult. I either had to re-do it when she wasn't around, or sometimes just leave it unchanged. Then her friends would come around to the house and cast a critical eye over the work. If they found fault with it, they would blame me, because this stuff is man's work, and I am obviously a very poor husband, because I can't do this kind of work. My ex-girlfriend, needless to say, did not leap to my defence.
In another case, a woman in the work-place behaved in a similar way towards a man in the group. We were collectively engaged on a project. At least, we all were except for her. She was engaged in undermining this man's work, and his standing within the group, with a view to forcing him to leave, a plan which eventually succeeded. She forced this man out of his job because she didn't like him. The fact that this could have had long-term consequences for his whole family did not concern her. She was also engaged in trying to obtain as many privileges for herself as possible. She complained loudly that she was the only one of her grade who did not have a company car, it's so sexist, they are picking on me because I am a woman. The wimpy boss gave in to her, perhaps for fear of being sued. "We don't have a spare car right now, but you are next on the list, I promise". She eventually got the car, and then it was 'I am the only one of my grade who doesn't have a company car-parking space, it's so sexist, they are picking on me because I am a woman'.
Having watched this appalling individual at work, it struck me that far from contributing anything positive to the company or the project, she was damaging everything she touched. She had no regard for the company's long-term welfare, and thought only of herself. I have never known a man to behave in this way, and I fail to see how he could get away with it. She was only able to get away with this because men's instincts are not to confront females.
Feminists are, by and large, cynical women who have realised the possibilities that this allows, and ruthlessly act upon them, the moral equivalent of stealing a car simply because the door is unlocked.
Creating no-win situations is one of the commonest forms of female aggression. It amounts to constant criticism, regardless of action. If you perform action X you are criticised; if you do not perform action X you are criticised. The key to understanding this is to realise that action X itself is irrelevant. Five minutes later, action Y will elicit the same response. The game is really about social dominance. This is how women treat each other. The commonest form of female aggression is social exclusion, and this kind of constant criticism is itself a strategy for manufacturing social exclusion. If you are subjected to it, no-one will want to support you in case they face the same fate; you may choose to abandon the social group in order to get some relief.
Having observed behaviour such as this for many years, it is difficult to form the view that women are equal to men.
All they are really interested in is maximising their own social position. Everything else can be sacrificed to this end. This is why women have almost no grasp of the truth or evidence, and feel free to change their story from second to second if it suits them. They are pathologically concerned with avoiding blame or responsibility.
This tendency is shown in lots of small everyday ways. If a phone call had to be made which might be vaguely embarrassing, such as cancelling a social engagement, or inviting someone we hardly knew, or apologising, my ex-girlfriend would get me to make the call. "Oh no, I'm too embarrassed! I can't face it! Could you do it? Pleeeease!" I mistakenly regarded this request as the equivalent of opening a jar, something she is just too weak to do for herself. In this way, her social image remained pristine, and I was the one who ended up with the dirt on his face.
If, on the other hand, during the course of the phone call we were likely to receive thanks and praise, she would take the call herself.
It took me years to get wise to these kinds of strategies. It is easy to make the mistake of assuming that other people think the same way you do. Men, with the possible exception of psychopaths, simply do not think like this.
If people ever wake up to the reality of this in large numbers, society will have to change quite profoundly. We will have to abandon once and for all the ludicrous pretence that men and women are equal. It just isn't going to work.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Quelle domage, feministes!
The outing of the notorious blogger Belle de Jour as scientist Brooke Magnanti, is another severe blow for the Labour-wimin's moral crusade against prostitution. Following so quickly after the revelation that sex trafficking was a pack of lies designed to demonise all prostitution in the eyes of the public, the news that an intelligent, articulate woman chooses prostitution of her own volition and makes a handsome living from it, is yet more evidence that the feminist victim culture is as wrong-headed and deceitful as it is sordid and pathetic.
It took me a long time to understand why it is that feminists do not support prostitutes. Surely prostitutes are independent, self-employed women, expressing their sexuality and making their way in the world, showing courage and entrepreneurship? Surely a women's movement would applaud them just for that alone? But no. The fact is, prostitutes are letting the side down.
As I have argued elsewhere, the feminist movement is essentially a protectionist trade organisation, like a union. It seeks monopoly control over the price of sex. Prostitutes are, in effect, blackleg labour, strike breakers. They undercut middle-class women. If men can go and pay for sex with someone like Brooke Magnanti, why on earth would they bother to put up with the endless screaming demands, the controlling behaviour, the constant low-level mental abuse, the endless tears and hissy fits of the average middle-class princess? They wouldn't. That is why feminists want to make sure that men have got nowhere else to go. They exercise monopoly control over the price of sex, and the deal is, take it or leave it. The sex industry in all its forms threatens this monopoly control.
How ironic it seems at first sight that the women's movement should have such apparent disregard for the welfare of female sex workers, whom it claims to champion. In fact, feminists care nothing for the interests of female sex workers. This is obvious from the fact that they are forever in conflict with prostitutes' representative organisations, and the fact that time and again, they advocate increasingly draconian laws which will make life ever more dangerous for these very women they claim to be protecting. If prostitutes are driven ever further towards the margins of society, beyond the protection of the law, beyond help, further and further into danger, that is absolutely fine by the feminist movement. If a few working class women have to die every year pour encourager les autres, so be it.
There is nothing new in this kind of hypocrisy and cavalier disregard for people's lives - it has always been a feature of Leftist thinking. The Communist parties of the 20th century claimed to champion the interests of the working class, and yet thought nothing of causing the deaths of millions of them, and holding the survivors in abject servitude. How exactly this served their interests, it is difficult to see. In fact it served the interests of the Communist Party, not the people.
The feminist movement is on a moral crusade against prostitution, again. It has a habit of going on moral crusades against this, that or the other, and most of these turn out to be utterly disastrous. Feminists were largely responsible for the introduction of the Volstead Act, which gave rise to alcohol prohibition in the USA.
Many of the same characteristics can be seen between that disastrous effort, and the current anti-prostitution hysteria.
The feminist failure to learn lessons is all the more unforgivable when one considers the fact that they got the logic correct on the topic of abortion. They saw clearly that making it illegal would not stop it happening, it would simply drive it underground, etc, etc. We have all heard the argument, and it does have some merit to it. The difference is of course, abortion is something that feminists want; prostitution is something they don't want. They cannot even be honest enough to tell the truth. Prostitutes will continue to exist and die on the margins of society, so that dishonest and ideologically-driven organisations such as the Poppy Project (whose website apparently states, in the turgid prose of a 1970s Sociology Department, that prostitution "helps to construct and maintain gender inequality") can continue to enjoy their generous sinecures at taxpayers' expense, under the pretext of 'rescuing fallen women'. In fact, their agenda is essentially a Marxist one.
The mask is beginning to slip though. You can't fool all of the people all of the time. La Harman and La Smith's moral crusade against the sex industry is sinking fast, along with the rest of the Labour ship. Quelle domage! Aux bateaux! Les dames et les enfants avant!
I take my hat off to you, Miss Magnanti.
It took me a long time to understand why it is that feminists do not support prostitutes. Surely prostitutes are independent, self-employed women, expressing their sexuality and making their way in the world, showing courage and entrepreneurship? Surely a women's movement would applaud them just for that alone? But no. The fact is, prostitutes are letting the side down.
As I have argued elsewhere, the feminist movement is essentially a protectionist trade organisation, like a union. It seeks monopoly control over the price of sex. Prostitutes are, in effect, blackleg labour, strike breakers. They undercut middle-class women. If men can go and pay for sex with someone like Brooke Magnanti, why on earth would they bother to put up with the endless screaming demands, the controlling behaviour, the constant low-level mental abuse, the endless tears and hissy fits of the average middle-class princess? They wouldn't. That is why feminists want to make sure that men have got nowhere else to go. They exercise monopoly control over the price of sex, and the deal is, take it or leave it. The sex industry in all its forms threatens this monopoly control.
How ironic it seems at first sight that the women's movement should have such apparent disregard for the welfare of female sex workers, whom it claims to champion. In fact, feminists care nothing for the interests of female sex workers. This is obvious from the fact that they are forever in conflict with prostitutes' representative organisations, and the fact that time and again, they advocate increasingly draconian laws which will make life ever more dangerous for these very women they claim to be protecting. If prostitutes are driven ever further towards the margins of society, beyond the protection of the law, beyond help, further and further into danger, that is absolutely fine by the feminist movement. If a few working class women have to die every year pour encourager les autres, so be it.
There is nothing new in this kind of hypocrisy and cavalier disregard for people's lives - it has always been a feature of Leftist thinking. The Communist parties of the 20th century claimed to champion the interests of the working class, and yet thought nothing of causing the deaths of millions of them, and holding the survivors in abject servitude. How exactly this served their interests, it is difficult to see. In fact it served the interests of the Communist Party, not the people.
The feminist movement is on a moral crusade against prostitution, again. It has a habit of going on moral crusades against this, that or the other, and most of these turn out to be utterly disastrous. Feminists were largely responsible for the introduction of the Volstead Act, which gave rise to alcohol prohibition in the USA.
Many of the same characteristics can be seen between that disastrous effort, and the current anti-prostitution hysteria.
- Rather than ceasing to exist, the illegal industry was simply taken over by gangsters.
- The products did not become any more difficult to obtain, perhaps even easier.
- The whole industry became a lot more more dangerous for everyone involved.
- Feminists took this harmful social fallout as evidence that they had been correct all along in trying to ban this nasty business, instead of realising that they themselves had caused the harm, by the very act of making it illegal in the first place.
The feminist failure to learn lessons is all the more unforgivable when one considers the fact that they got the logic correct on the topic of abortion. They saw clearly that making it illegal would not stop it happening, it would simply drive it underground, etc, etc. We have all heard the argument, and it does have some merit to it. The difference is of course, abortion is something that feminists want; prostitution is something they don't want. They cannot even be honest enough to tell the truth. Prostitutes will continue to exist and die on the margins of society, so that dishonest and ideologically-driven organisations such as the Poppy Project (whose website apparently states, in the turgid prose of a 1970s Sociology Department, that prostitution "helps to construct and maintain gender inequality") can continue to enjoy their generous sinecures at taxpayers' expense, under the pretext of 'rescuing fallen women'. In fact, their agenda is essentially a Marxist one.
The mask is beginning to slip though. You can't fool all of the people all of the time. La Harman and La Smith's moral crusade against the sex industry is sinking fast, along with the rest of the Labour ship. Quelle domage! Aux bateaux! Les dames et les enfants avant!
I take my hat off to you, Miss Magnanti.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Women who cry rape will ALWAYS be sent to prison, appeal court warns
"Women who cry rape were warned by the Court of Appeal today that prison was 'inevitable' for an offence which attacks the criminal justice system.
Rejecting a sentence challenge by a woman jailed for two years after making a false allegation against an innocent man, two senior judges emphasised the impact of such a crime on conviction rates." Reference
Great news! But sadly, the judge in question seems to have little concern for falsely-accused men. All he is concerned about is the effect that false accusations have on the conviction rate. Still, it's a good start.
Rejecting a sentence challenge by a woman jailed for two years after making a false allegation against an innocent man, two senior judges emphasised the impact of such a crime on conviction rates." Reference
Great news! But sadly, the judge in question seems to have little concern for falsely-accused men. All he is concerned about is the effect that false accusations have on the conviction rate. Still, it's a good start.
Friday, October 30, 2009
The Feminist’s Guide To Debate Tactics
I wanted to draw your attention to this article on the excellent website The Spearhead:
Observing comments made by feminists on MRA blogs – or on any blog or forum post which is even slightly critical of any aspect of feminism – for the last few years has made something very clear: feminists have no idea how to debate.
This is probably due to the overwhelming feminist hegemony in educational institutions. Women dominate the teaching profession, particularly in grade school, and all of these women are feminists. Girls have a powerful innate need to please the authority figures in their lives, and all they have to do to please their teachers is parrot feminist propaganda on cue. This leaves them completely unprepared for the outside world, where reciting this bunk results in demands that they produce facts and logic, things they have never been asked for before. The poor feminists are startled that their dutiful recitations do not result in a pat on the head, but instead in challenges they do not know how to meet.
So as a public service, I am providing this handy guide for feminists on common debate mistakes. This way, the next time you encounter one of those nasty old misogynists, your attempts at argument will not simply confirm his existing low opinion of women!
Mistake #1: “You’re only saying that because you never get laid!”
There are two problems with this argument. One is that in many cases, it isn’t true. Most of us misogynists started out believing all the bullshit about female equality we heard in school and on TV. It took a great deal of experience with women, in the workplace as well as in dating, to make us realize that in fact, women are very different from men, and in most respects inferior. Most feminists are straight women, so you’ll just have to take my word for this: having sex with women does not in any way enhance respect for women. Quite the contrary.
The second problem is, even if the man you are addressing is celibate, this proves nothing. It has no bearing whatsoever on sex discrimination laws, child custody agreements, polemics about the “male gaze”, women in combat, or anything else you might be debating. A very smart man in ancient Greece called this the “ad hominem” argument. You have probably seen this phrase in internet fora, but it is usually used incorrectly, by people who apparently have no idea what it means but know that it is a bad thing. An “ad hominem” argument is an attack on the person making the argument in lieu of a reasoned rebuttal of the argument itself.
Mistake #2: “You must have a small dick!”
This is another ad hominem argument. Once again, men with small dicks are still capable of stating facts which are correct. Unless you have some scientific studies that show that men with small dicks are always wrong, it’s best not to use this one. Besides which, MRA’s have all heard it so many times that it makes them conclude, probably correctly, that you don’t have any actual information that might back up your contentions. “You must have a small dick!” is basically feminist code for “I have no clue what I’m talking about!”
Mistake #3: (used against female antifeminists) “If it weren’t for feminism, you wouldn’t have the right to keep a blog!”
I have seen this charge levelled against women whose antifeminist opinions are far more moderate than mine. Feminists seem to believe that women used to be barred from the First Amendment until some heroic feminists got us in on it. The fact is, women and men have always had the same degree of freedom of speech. In the days when the Inquisition could burn people at the stake for heresy, men did not get away with any more heresy than women did. In Europe today, men and women, at least white ones, are equally subject to spurious hate speech laws. That women pre-Women’s Lib did not have freedom of speech would have come as a great surprise to Sojourner Truth, Carry Nation, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abby Kelley Foster, Madame de Stael, Renee Vivien, Radclyffe Hall, Rebecca Protten, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Baker Eddy, Mary Hunt, Elizabeth D. Golek, etc. etc.
If you want to use this argument, if you want it to be taken seriously you must offer the names of these mysterious feminists who gave women the right to blog. Dates and how they went about doing so, as well as some sort of evidence that women used to be kept silent, would also be useful.
Mistake #4: “Okay, so it’s true that women aren’t as good at science and stuff, but that’s because girls are raised differently from boys! If we were raised the same we’d be just as good at it!”
First, we don’t know that. The only reason to think that it is the case is that feminists want to believe it. There is no evidence. Your wishes are not a valid argument.
Second, there is considerable evidence that sex differences are innate. Feminists who try to teach their boys not to be violent are invariably dismayed when their toddling sons use the dolls they’re given as weapons. A boy who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision knew even before he was eventually told the truth that he wasn’t actually a girl, and the attempt to turn him into one resulted in severe psychological problems; he ended by committing suicide at 38. For more on this, go to my blog and see the sidebar sections on “What Schools Are Doing to Boys” and “Biology Is Destiny”.
Mistake #5: “Women were too busy taking care of children and doing housework to invent things or discover things!”
And just what do you imagine men were doing while your ancestresses were cooking dinner or sewing clothes? The vast majority of them weren’t lounging happily in a library devising the principles of geometry or gazing through a telescope. They were mostly breaking their backs on farmland or in mines or smithies, enduring months of malnutrition and brutality aboard trading ships, getting shot at in armies, and other such fulfilling career paths. Yet somehow, men managed to build civilization in between.
For thousands of years, babies were delivered by midwives. Women had complete control of this profession. It never even occurred to the men who ruled the societies to interfere with midwifery. None of these women with the freedom and opportunity for hands-on experience invented the forceps. Instead, a man named Peter Chamberlen invented them around 1600, when the idea of male doctors delivering babies was still a controversial idea, and one chiefly engaged in by the decadent rich. In other words, men had scarcely arrived on the scene before they were inventing things that women had not imagined in thousands of years.
Commenter Paul came up with another excellent example: for the last few centuries, upper- and middle-class women were encouraged to learn to play musical instruments. A lot of these women had the leisure to spend a great deal of time on their music. Yet there have been very few female composers of any note, and black American men – not a privileged group by any means – invented both blues and jazz.
Finally, in the last few decades a great deal of effort has been expended on “encouraging” women and girls to achieve in traditionally male fields, and the lower and higher education systems are feminist-dominated. Where is the Renaissance of female creativity? Where are the female Leonardos, Isaac Newtons, and Mozarts? Women have made achievements – before and after feminism – but they are not equal to those of men.
Mistake #6: “Men have higher IQs, but that’s because the IQ test doesn’t measure female aptitudes!”
First, demanding that the rules be changed because you are losing impresses no one.
Second, the historical fact is that the IQ test is rigged in favor of women.
“The one exception to the general rule that different groups or populations usually differ in average IQ is that both sexes have approximately the same average IQ on most tests. This is not, however, a true empirical finding but a consequence of the manner in which the tests were first constructed…the two sexes were defined to have equal intelligence rather than discovered to have equal intelligence.” (Evans and Waites, 1981, 168).
(Evans, B.. & Waites, B. (1981). IQ and mental testing: An unnatural science and its social history. London, UK: Macmillan.)
More discussion of the slanting of the IQ test to minimize differences between men and women can be read here, here, here, and here. And despite the slanting in women’s favor, men still score consistently higher on them.
Mistake #7: “I guess Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress wasn’t oppressed then, huh!”
Hijacking the misfortunes of other groups – slavery, the Holocaust, indentured servitude, dhimmitude, the potato famine, etc. – is tacky and does not prove that women are equal to men.
Mistake #8: “I cannot believe how ignorant you are!”
I think that feminists don’t know what the word “ignorant” means. It means that the person doesn’t know something. For example, I am ignorant of the Mandarin word for “insect”, because I have never studied Mandarin.
The only way this charge would make sense would be if you thought that the person you were talking to had never heard the glad tidings that women are equal to men. Unless you can come up with convincing evidence that someone on this planet hasn’t heard this nonsense, calling an MRA “ignorant” makes no sense whatever. We have all heard the feminist gospel. We aren’t ignorant of it. We simply don’t believe it. Indeed, given that feminists apparently believe that it was a heroic feminist campaign that won women the right to keep blogs and clearly don’t know that IQ tests are slanted against men, you are clearly the ignorant ones.
Of course, as a male blogger pointed out and I discussed, what women actually mean when they say this is that it’s stupid to believe unfashionable things because unconventional opinions make it harder to be socially accepted. For women, who are by nature dependent creatures, this is of paramount importance; the abstract value of truth has little appeal for most women.
Mistake #9: “I think this site must be a joke! You’re a troll!”
The world is full of people who disagree with you. Facing this fact is part of growing up.
Mistake #10: “You’re just too immature to handle a relationship with an independent woman!”
First, see #1. “Ad hominem”, remember that?
Roger Devlin handled this one quite ably:
A highly successful women’s magazine editor has written a book of advice for young wives stating: “Giving, devoting, sacrificing … these are the actions of a good wife, no? No. These are the actions of a drudge, a sucker, a sap.” Instead, women are urged to emulate a wife who threw her husband’s clothes into the garden to teach him not to leave socks on the floor: “He understood I meant it.” Or another who wanted her husband to help with the laundry, and hollered at him: “Are you a f***ing retard that you don’t see me running up and down stairs? Listen to me and stop your bulls**t.” Or another who discovered this interpersonal skill: “Just stand there and start screaming. If you stand there and scream long enough, someone is going to realize that you’re standing in the middle of the room screaming [and ask] ‘Why are you screaming?’” (pp. 245-47)
What could be wrong with men these days that they refuse to commit?
Mistake #11: “I am so very upset by what you’ve said! I nearly fainted! I almost threw up! I am trembling in horror!”
Evolution has designed women to use their emotions to manipulate their mates into providing for them and tending to them. We know you can’t really help it, but in a debate, particularly one about the alleged equality of women, it isn’t appropriate.
We know that a lot of what you’re doing here is putting on a display for other feminists. “See how terribly upset I am by this heresy! I am one of you! I am, like, totally sincere!”
But when debating with us, all that such “arguments” do is convince us that we’re right, that women should, for the most part, be kept out of masculine realms such as industry and science, because they are too weak to endure hearing facts they don’t like.
When Nancy Hopkins responded to Larry Summers mentioning the possibility that men might be somewhat naturally better suited to science – he even added, “I hope it isn’t true” – by fleeing from the room in a nauseated swoon, all she actually accomplished was to demonstrate to the world that women are too delicate and fragile for serious business like science. Do male scientists flee from the room when they hear hypotheses they hope aren’t true? Even black men respond more constructively to discussion of the black-white IQ gap.
If this is how women react to disagreement, it is a matter of public safety to keep them legally unequal:
Somebody in the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles needs to look into suspending Dr Hopkins driver’s license. She obviously doesn’t need to be driving.
Now, I’m not saying that women can’t drive, nor am I implying that Ms Hopkins’ remarks are evidence in that direction. Republican women mostly seem to do ok at it, anyway.
However, given her self-reported reactions to Summers remarks, what would happen if she were driving down the street and accidentally punched up Rush Limbaugh on the radio, for example? Rush makes one of his “feminazi” jokes, and she throws up and blacks out.
When she then plows into a busload of innocent children, the blood will be on Rush’s hands, obviously. Still, that doesn’t help The Children.
Source: Should Nancy Hopkins be driving?
Also? Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Mistake #12: “What are you smoking and where can I get some?”
This was funny the first 5,000 times we heard it, but it’s getting old. More importantly, it’s irrelevant. I don’t use illegal substances, but even if my bloodstream were a cocktail of half the things Americans can be arrested for using, I might still be right.
Mistake #13: “Just because I’m wrong about the trivial details doesn’t mean that there were no Battles To Be Fought for women’s rights.”
Vague, sweeping assertions are not a viable argument. Those “trivial details” you can’t be bothered with are. If you don’t have any concrete facts, your rhetoric is just that.
So what kind of arguments will MRAs listen to?
We like facts. Go looking for dates, names, legislation, documentation, and statistics. Find a scientific study, if you can, that indicates that women might in some field have the potential to be equal to men. Find statistics showing that society has become better in some way since women’s privilege, er I mean feminism, took root. Of course, you’re at a disadvantage here, since all of the facts show that women are innately inferior, that women of superior achievement will always be in the minority, and that women’s liberation leads to all sorts of social pathologies – rampant divorce, child abuse, inflation, eating disorders, and a general lowering of standards so that women can keep up. But if you hope to change our minds, you’ll have to try to find some facts that support your case instead of ours. Good luck!
Observing comments made by feminists on MRA blogs – or on any blog or forum post which is even slightly critical of any aspect of feminism – for the last few years has made something very clear: feminists have no idea how to debate.
This is probably due to the overwhelming feminist hegemony in educational institutions. Women dominate the teaching profession, particularly in grade school, and all of these women are feminists. Girls have a powerful innate need to please the authority figures in their lives, and all they have to do to please their teachers is parrot feminist propaganda on cue. This leaves them completely unprepared for the outside world, where reciting this bunk results in demands that they produce facts and logic, things they have never been asked for before. The poor feminists are startled that their dutiful recitations do not result in a pat on the head, but instead in challenges they do not know how to meet.
So as a public service, I am providing this handy guide for feminists on common debate mistakes. This way, the next time you encounter one of those nasty old misogynists, your attempts at argument will not simply confirm his existing low opinion of women!
Mistake #1: “You’re only saying that because you never get laid!”
There are two problems with this argument. One is that in many cases, it isn’t true. Most of us misogynists started out believing all the bullshit about female equality we heard in school and on TV. It took a great deal of experience with women, in the workplace as well as in dating, to make us realize that in fact, women are very different from men, and in most respects inferior. Most feminists are straight women, so you’ll just have to take my word for this: having sex with women does not in any way enhance respect for women. Quite the contrary.
The second problem is, even if the man you are addressing is celibate, this proves nothing. It has no bearing whatsoever on sex discrimination laws, child custody agreements, polemics about the “male gaze”, women in combat, or anything else you might be debating. A very smart man in ancient Greece called this the “ad hominem” argument. You have probably seen this phrase in internet fora, but it is usually used incorrectly, by people who apparently have no idea what it means but know that it is a bad thing. An “ad hominem” argument is an attack on the person making the argument in lieu of a reasoned rebuttal of the argument itself.
Mistake #2: “You must have a small dick!”
This is another ad hominem argument. Once again, men with small dicks are still capable of stating facts which are correct. Unless you have some scientific studies that show that men with small dicks are always wrong, it’s best not to use this one. Besides which, MRA’s have all heard it so many times that it makes them conclude, probably correctly, that you don’t have any actual information that might back up your contentions. “You must have a small dick!” is basically feminist code for “I have no clue what I’m talking about!”
Mistake #3: (used against female antifeminists) “If it weren’t for feminism, you wouldn’t have the right to keep a blog!”
I have seen this charge levelled against women whose antifeminist opinions are far more moderate than mine. Feminists seem to believe that women used to be barred from the First Amendment until some heroic feminists got us in on it. The fact is, women and men have always had the same degree of freedom of speech. In the days when the Inquisition could burn people at the stake for heresy, men did not get away with any more heresy than women did. In Europe today, men and women, at least white ones, are equally subject to spurious hate speech laws. That women pre-Women’s Lib did not have freedom of speech would have come as a great surprise to Sojourner Truth, Carry Nation, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abby Kelley Foster, Madame de Stael, Renee Vivien, Radclyffe Hall, Rebecca Protten, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Baker Eddy, Mary Hunt, Elizabeth D. Golek, etc. etc.
If you want to use this argument, if you want it to be taken seriously you must offer the names of these mysterious feminists who gave women the right to blog. Dates and how they went about doing so, as well as some sort of evidence that women used to be kept silent, would also be useful.
Mistake #4: “Okay, so it’s true that women aren’t as good at science and stuff, but that’s because girls are raised differently from boys! If we were raised the same we’d be just as good at it!”
First, we don’t know that. The only reason to think that it is the case is that feminists want to believe it. There is no evidence. Your wishes are not a valid argument.
Second, there is considerable evidence that sex differences are innate. Feminists who try to teach their boys not to be violent are invariably dismayed when their toddling sons use the dolls they’re given as weapons. A boy who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision knew even before he was eventually told the truth that he wasn’t actually a girl, and the attempt to turn him into one resulted in severe psychological problems; he ended by committing suicide at 38. For more on this, go to my blog and see the sidebar sections on “What Schools Are Doing to Boys” and “Biology Is Destiny”.
Mistake #5: “Women were too busy taking care of children and doing housework to invent things or discover things!”
And just what do you imagine men were doing while your ancestresses were cooking dinner or sewing clothes? The vast majority of them weren’t lounging happily in a library devising the principles of geometry or gazing through a telescope. They were mostly breaking their backs on farmland or in mines or smithies, enduring months of malnutrition and brutality aboard trading ships, getting shot at in armies, and other such fulfilling career paths. Yet somehow, men managed to build civilization in between.
For thousands of years, babies were delivered by midwives. Women had complete control of this profession. It never even occurred to the men who ruled the societies to interfere with midwifery. None of these women with the freedom and opportunity for hands-on experience invented the forceps. Instead, a man named Peter Chamberlen invented them around 1600, when the idea of male doctors delivering babies was still a controversial idea, and one chiefly engaged in by the decadent rich. In other words, men had scarcely arrived on the scene before they were inventing things that women had not imagined in thousands of years.
Commenter Paul came up with another excellent example: for the last few centuries, upper- and middle-class women were encouraged to learn to play musical instruments. A lot of these women had the leisure to spend a great deal of time on their music. Yet there have been very few female composers of any note, and black American men – not a privileged group by any means – invented both blues and jazz.
Finally, in the last few decades a great deal of effort has been expended on “encouraging” women and girls to achieve in traditionally male fields, and the lower and higher education systems are feminist-dominated. Where is the Renaissance of female creativity? Where are the female Leonardos, Isaac Newtons, and Mozarts? Women have made achievements – before and after feminism – but they are not equal to those of men.
Mistake #6: “Men have higher IQs, but that’s because the IQ test doesn’t measure female aptitudes!”
First, demanding that the rules be changed because you are losing impresses no one.
Second, the historical fact is that the IQ test is rigged in favor of women.
“The one exception to the general rule that different groups or populations usually differ in average IQ is that both sexes have approximately the same average IQ on most tests. This is not, however, a true empirical finding but a consequence of the manner in which the tests were first constructed…the two sexes were defined to have equal intelligence rather than discovered to have equal intelligence.” (Evans and Waites, 1981, 168).
(Evans, B.. & Waites, B. (1981). IQ and mental testing: An unnatural science and its social history. London, UK: Macmillan.)
More discussion of the slanting of the IQ test to minimize differences between men and women can be read here, here, here, and here. And despite the slanting in women’s favor, men still score consistently higher on them.
Mistake #7: “I guess Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress wasn’t oppressed then, huh!”
Hijacking the misfortunes of other groups – slavery, the Holocaust, indentured servitude, dhimmitude, the potato famine, etc. – is tacky and does not prove that women are equal to men.
Mistake #8: “I cannot believe how ignorant you are!”
I think that feminists don’t know what the word “ignorant” means. It means that the person doesn’t know something. For example, I am ignorant of the Mandarin word for “insect”, because I have never studied Mandarin.
The only way this charge would make sense would be if you thought that the person you were talking to had never heard the glad tidings that women are equal to men. Unless you can come up with convincing evidence that someone on this planet hasn’t heard this nonsense, calling an MRA “ignorant” makes no sense whatever. We have all heard the feminist gospel. We aren’t ignorant of it. We simply don’t believe it. Indeed, given that feminists apparently believe that it was a heroic feminist campaign that won women the right to keep blogs and clearly don’t know that IQ tests are slanted against men, you are clearly the ignorant ones.
Of course, as a male blogger pointed out and I discussed, what women actually mean when they say this is that it’s stupid to believe unfashionable things because unconventional opinions make it harder to be socially accepted. For women, who are by nature dependent creatures, this is of paramount importance; the abstract value of truth has little appeal for most women.
Mistake #9: “I think this site must be a joke! You’re a troll!”
The world is full of people who disagree with you. Facing this fact is part of growing up.
Mistake #10: “You’re just too immature to handle a relationship with an independent woman!”
First, see #1. “Ad hominem”, remember that?
Roger Devlin handled this one quite ably:
A highly successful women’s magazine editor has written a book of advice for young wives stating: “Giving, devoting, sacrificing … these are the actions of a good wife, no? No. These are the actions of a drudge, a sucker, a sap.” Instead, women are urged to emulate a wife who threw her husband’s clothes into the garden to teach him not to leave socks on the floor: “He understood I meant it.” Or another who wanted her husband to help with the laundry, and hollered at him: “Are you a f***ing retard that you don’t see me running up and down stairs? Listen to me and stop your bulls**t.” Or another who discovered this interpersonal skill: “Just stand there and start screaming. If you stand there and scream long enough, someone is going to realize that you’re standing in the middle of the room screaming [and ask] ‘Why are you screaming?’” (pp. 245-47)
What could be wrong with men these days that they refuse to commit?
Mistake #11: “I am so very upset by what you’ve said! I nearly fainted! I almost threw up! I am trembling in horror!”
Evolution has designed women to use their emotions to manipulate their mates into providing for them and tending to them. We know you can’t really help it, but in a debate, particularly one about the alleged equality of women, it isn’t appropriate.
We know that a lot of what you’re doing here is putting on a display for other feminists. “See how terribly upset I am by this heresy! I am one of you! I am, like, totally sincere!”
But when debating with us, all that such “arguments” do is convince us that we’re right, that women should, for the most part, be kept out of masculine realms such as industry and science, because they are too weak to endure hearing facts they don’t like.
When Nancy Hopkins responded to Larry Summers mentioning the possibility that men might be somewhat naturally better suited to science – he even added, “I hope it isn’t true” – by fleeing from the room in a nauseated swoon, all she actually accomplished was to demonstrate to the world that women are too delicate and fragile for serious business like science. Do male scientists flee from the room when they hear hypotheses they hope aren’t true? Even black men respond more constructively to discussion of the black-white IQ gap.
If this is how women react to disagreement, it is a matter of public safety to keep them legally unequal:
Somebody in the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles needs to look into suspending Dr Hopkins driver’s license. She obviously doesn’t need to be driving.
Now, I’m not saying that women can’t drive, nor am I implying that Ms Hopkins’ remarks are evidence in that direction. Republican women mostly seem to do ok at it, anyway.
However, given her self-reported reactions to Summers remarks, what would happen if she were driving down the street and accidentally punched up Rush Limbaugh on the radio, for example? Rush makes one of his “feminazi” jokes, and she throws up and blacks out.
When she then plows into a busload of innocent children, the blood will be on Rush’s hands, obviously. Still, that doesn’t help The Children.
Source: Should Nancy Hopkins be driving?
Also? Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Mistake #12: “What are you smoking and where can I get some?”
This was funny the first 5,000 times we heard it, but it’s getting old. More importantly, it’s irrelevant. I don’t use illegal substances, but even if my bloodstream were a cocktail of half the things Americans can be arrested for using, I might still be right.
Mistake #13: “Just because I’m wrong about the trivial details doesn’t mean that there were no Battles To Be Fought for women’s rights.”
Vague, sweeping assertions are not a viable argument. Those “trivial details” you can’t be bothered with are. If you don’t have any concrete facts, your rhetoric is just that.
So what kind of arguments will MRAs listen to?
We like facts. Go looking for dates, names, legislation, documentation, and statistics. Find a scientific study, if you can, that indicates that women might in some field have the potential to be equal to men. Find statistics showing that society has become better in some way since women’s privilege, er I mean feminism, took root. Of course, you’re at a disadvantage here, since all of the facts show that women are innately inferior, that women of superior achievement will always be in the minority, and that women’s liberation leads to all sorts of social pathologies – rampant divorce, child abuse, inflation, eating disorders, and a general lowering of standards so that women can keep up. But if you hope to change our minds, you’ll have to try to find some facts that support your case instead of ours. Good luck!
What has feminism ever done for men?
The F-word
Written by Tuval Dinner
Tuesday, September 29 2009 18:35
"Last week I was hanging out downtown with my baby when a group of young women approached me and asked if they could interview me for a class assignment. First they asked me what my definition of feminism* is and then they followed up with a whole series of questions relating to feminism. The whole thing caught me off guard; I usually don't hear the word feminism in public nevermind being probed on the subject by a group of strangers. But their final question was the most surprising and interesting of all. They asked me, "what has feminism done for you?"
My immediate reaction was to say that feminism is the reason the government allows me to take paid time off of work to be with my newborn son (in Canada men can take parental leave). I didn't get past that comment before the students were off and searching for the next stranger to interview. But the question really stuck with me and I've been thinking a lot about what feminism has done for me and for men in general.
Usually, when people talk about feminism in relation to men it is in a very negative way. There are organizations (particularly in the USA) of men and women dedicated to the opposition of feminism and its perceived negative impact on society. In my mind feminism has only had positive impacts on my life. To me gender equity is a win-win scenario not one in which men lose and women win.
I would love to hear from men what they think feminism has done for them..."
Please write and tell him.
Written by Tuval Dinner
Tuesday, September 29 2009 18:35
"Last week I was hanging out downtown with my baby when a group of young women approached me and asked if they could interview me for a class assignment. First they asked me what my definition of feminism* is and then they followed up with a whole series of questions relating to feminism. The whole thing caught me off guard; I usually don't hear the word feminism in public nevermind being probed on the subject by a group of strangers. But their final question was the most surprising and interesting of all. They asked me, "what has feminism done for you?"
My immediate reaction was to say that feminism is the reason the government allows me to take paid time off of work to be with my newborn son (in Canada men can take parental leave). I didn't get past that comment before the students were off and searching for the next stranger to interview. But the question really stuck with me and I've been thinking a lot about what feminism has done for me and for men in general.
Usually, when people talk about feminism in relation to men it is in a very negative way. There are organizations (particularly in the USA) of men and women dedicated to the opposition of feminism and its perceived negative impact on society. In my mind feminism has only had positive impacts on my life. To me gender equity is a win-win scenario not one in which men lose and women win.
I would love to hear from men what they think feminism has done for them..."
Please write and tell him.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
A Deafening Silence
Dear Anna
Have you reached a conclusion about the issues I raised in my email of 9th October?
Is it acceptable for there to be a ratio of 3.3 female teachers to each male teacher? The attached link makes it clear that the Electoral Reform Society and the NAS / UWT consider an inequality of 5:1 unacceptable and worthy of protest.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/wpe24.pdf
Where does the tipping point lie? At a ratio of 4.1:1?
Regards
Peter Blades
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: pbla927
Date: Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 6:27 PM
Subject: Fwd: FW: Under-representation of men in primary school teaching
To: Anna Banton, Glenn Sacks
Dear Anna
Have you had any luck finding the answers to the queries in my previous email?
regards
Peter Blades
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: pbla927
Date: Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 7:19 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Under-representation of men in primary school teaching
To: Anna Banton
Cc: Glenn Sacks
Dear Ms. Banton
Thank you for your reply to my recent request. I have looked at the spreadsheet provided and have a few more follow up questions.
I see that the gender ratio of teachers employed is 3.32 Female to 1 Male for 1997-98 and 3.31 Female to 1 Male for 2007-08. Given these figures would you say that the efforts to bridge the gender gap in teaching recruitment have been successful?
As I understand it, these figures show the gender ratios for teachers across all pupil age groups. Are there no figures available at all for the gender ratios for teachers teaching 4-10 year olds or 4-7 year olds where;
a) the teacher's influence over the child's lifelong psychology, and consequently
b) the need for positive gender role models
...are the greatest? Surely a 3:1 gender disparity between female and male teachers in all pupil age groups can only place young men at a consistent disadvantage in the learning environment (given Harriet Harman's conviction that gender balanced groups make for better judgements). This might provide answers as to why young men are being consistently out-performed academically by young women in later school years.
If no such figures are available would it be a good idea to conduct more research? All that would be required would be a simple email poll amongst teachers with an email address, asking the recipient for their gender and the age group they teach (this would not generate any data protection issues as the respondents would not be providing information that could be used to identify them personally). Even a 10% response rate would provide a representative sample. Having spent £92,000 in the calendar years 2005-2009 on targeted recruitment, the results of this poll might help concentrate efforts more effectively towards the pupil age groups where the gender disparity is the greatest, and provide more specific answers as to why the money spent has not influenced the gender ratio over the 10 year timescale shown in the spreadsheet.
Many thanks for your help so far
Peter Blades
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Anna Banton wrote:
Dear Mr Blades,
Thank you for your e-mail of 8 August 2009 to Harriet Harman regarding the under-representation of men primary school teachers. Your letter has been passed to me for reply. I am very sorry for the delay in responding to you.
In April 2009 we published the new Equality Bill. The Bill will expand the way positive action can be used so that employers can pick someone for a job from an underrepresented group when they have the choice between two or more candidates who are equally suitable, provided they do not have a general policy of doing so in every case. Positive action allows employers to make their workforces more diverse if they want to.
An example of where positive action can be used is to redress the imbalance of men primary school teachers. This example has been used by Vera Baird QC MP in media interviews.
Please note the Bill will not allow positive discrimination, which will remain unlawful.
Turning to your request for statistics, the data available which we can provide is based on an overall number of entrants by gender to full and part-time regular teaching service in local authority maintained sector schools for each year 1997-1998 to 2007-2008, on a March to March basis and not June to May (see table in sheet 1 of the attached spreadsheet).
The table does not show the number of contracts commenced each year as requested, but just the number of individuals who were in service at the end of the year who were not at the start. These are not the number of recruits either as some of them will have been in service before. These are entrants to regular service (i.e. excluding occasional teachers with short or no contract) and cover those with qualified teacher status (QTS) only. Where a teacher was previously teaching but did not have QTS, but then attained it, they are counted as an entrant. Where a teacher was teaching outside of the English local authority maintained sector and moved to within it, they are also counted.
The table in sheet 2 of the attached spreadsheet, provided by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), represents funds spent on advertising for ‘men into primary’ which is only available from 2005 to the present day.
The TDA has done a lot to attract men to train to be primary teachers - with more male centred recruitment campaigns, stressing the financial rewards and career development prospects, and taster courses.
I hope this is of assistance.
Kind regards
Anna Banton
From: Peter Blades [mailto:pbla927@googlemail.com]
Sent: 08 August 2009 01:01
To: HARMAN, Harriet
Cc: glenn@glennsacks.com
Subject: Under-representation of men in primary school teaching
Ms. Harman
In a recent interview quoted at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2523671.0.harman_blames_men_for_the_credit_crunch.php
...it was reported that you said:
"I didn't actually say you can't trust men, I basically said you get better decision making in a team if it's a balanced team with women and men working alongside each other," she said.
I appreciate that you are not in a position to influence what was reported on this website, and that the comment was made in the context of a gender disparity in recruitment to posts in the City of London.
Did the website report your comments accurately?
Can you direct me towards a public record of any statement you have made on the under-representation of men as teachers in primary schools?
I would like you to provide me with a report showing a count of;
a) the number of women and
b) the number of men
...who began a contract to teach children aged between 4 and 10 years in fully state-funded schools between the dates 01/06/1997 and 01/06/2008. I would like the report to show a sub-total of the number of men and the number of women recruited in each year (contract start dates 1st June to 31st May) within this date range.
Next to each yearly sub-total I would like you to show the government spend (in pounds) allocated in that year (calendar year or 1st June to 31st May - whichever best represents your view of the efforts made) on advertising aimed at attracting the gender that is less well represented (in terms of members recruited in that year) into the profession.
Bearing in mind the standard checks made on prospective primary school teachers, and the nature of the data they are required to provide, you will be aware that the information I am asking for is held centrally and can be provided without disproportionate cost. The advertising figures can be rounded to the nearest £10,000. If no advertising effort has been made to target the under-represented gender in a specific recruitment year please give a brief description of why (next to each sub-total), and the name and contact details of the officer responsible for making this decision.
I have made this request on 08/08/2009 and - given your position - I feel I need not remind you of your obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Peter Blades
Have you reached a conclusion about the issues I raised in my email of 9th October?
Is it acceptable for there to be a ratio of 3.3 female teachers to each male teacher? The attached link makes it clear that the Electoral Reform Society and the NAS / UWT consider an inequality of 5:1 unacceptable and worthy of protest.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/wpe24.pdf
Where does the tipping point lie? At a ratio of 4.1:1?
Regards
Peter Blades
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: pbla927
Date: Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 6:27 PM
Subject: Fwd: FW: Under-representation of men in primary school teaching
To: Anna Banton
Dear Anna
Have you had any luck finding the answers to the queries in my previous email?
regards
Peter Blades
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: pbla927
Date: Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 7:19 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Under-representation of men in primary school teaching
To: Anna Banton
Cc: Glenn Sacks
Dear Ms. Banton
Thank you for your reply to my recent request. I have looked at the spreadsheet provided and have a few more follow up questions.
I see that the gender ratio of teachers employed is 3.32 Female to 1 Male for 1997-98 and 3.31 Female to 1 Male for 2007-08. Given these figures would you say that the efforts to bridge the gender gap in teaching recruitment have been successful?
As I understand it, these figures show the gender ratios for teachers across all pupil age groups. Are there no figures available at all for the gender ratios for teachers teaching 4-10 year olds or 4-7 year olds where;
a) the teacher's influence over the child's lifelong psychology, and consequently
b) the need for positive gender role models
...are the greatest? Surely a 3:1 gender disparity between female and male teachers in all pupil age groups can only place young men at a consistent disadvantage in the learning environment (given Harriet Harman's conviction that gender balanced groups make for better judgements). This might provide answers as to why young men are being consistently out-performed academically by young women in later school years.
If no such figures are available would it be a good idea to conduct more research? All that would be required would be a simple email poll amongst teachers with an email address, asking the recipient for their gender and the age group they teach (this would not generate any data protection issues as the respondents would not be providing information that could be used to identify them personally). Even a 10% response rate would provide a representative sample. Having spent £92,000 in the calendar years 2005-2009 on targeted recruitment, the results of this poll might help concentrate efforts more effectively towards the pupil age groups where the gender disparity is the greatest, and provide more specific answers as to why the money spent has not influenced the gender ratio over the 10 year timescale shown in the spreadsheet.
Many thanks for your help so far
Peter Blades
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Anna Banton
Dear Mr Blades,
Thank you for your e-mail of 8 August 2009 to Harriet Harman regarding the under-representation of men primary school teachers. Your letter has been passed to me for reply. I am very sorry for the delay in responding to you.
In April 2009 we published the new Equality Bill. The Bill will expand the way positive action can be used so that employers can pick someone for a job from an underrepresented group when they have the choice between two or more candidates who are equally suitable, provided they do not have a general policy of doing so in every case. Positive action allows employers to make their workforces more diverse if they want to.
An example of where positive action can be used is to redress the imbalance of men primary school teachers. This example has been used by Vera Baird QC MP in media interviews.
Please note the Bill will not allow positive discrimination, which will remain unlawful.
Turning to your request for statistics, the data available which we can provide is based on an overall number of entrants by gender to full and part-time regular teaching service in local authority maintained sector schools for each year 1997-1998 to 2007-2008, on a March to March basis and not June to May (see table in sheet 1 of the attached spreadsheet).
The table does not show the number of contracts commenced each year as requested, but just the number of individuals who were in service at the end of the year who were not at the start. These are not the number of recruits either as some of them will have been in service before. These are entrants to regular service (i.e. excluding occasional teachers with short or no contract) and cover those with qualified teacher status (QTS) only. Where a teacher was previously teaching but did not have QTS, but then attained it, they are counted as an entrant. Where a teacher was teaching outside of the English local authority maintained sector and moved to within it, they are also counted.
The table in sheet 2 of the attached spreadsheet, provided by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), represents funds spent on advertising for ‘men into primary’ which is only available from 2005 to the present day.
The TDA has done a lot to attract men to train to be primary teachers - with more male centred recruitment campaigns, stressing the financial rewards and career development prospects, and taster courses.
I hope this is of assistance.
Kind regards
Anna Banton
From: Peter Blades [mailto:pbla927@googlemail.com]
Sent: 08 August 2009 01:01
To: HARMAN, Harriet
Cc: glenn@glennsacks.com
Subject: Under-representation of men in primary school teaching
Ms. Harman
In a recent interview quoted at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2523671.0.harman_blames_men_for_the_credit_crunch.php
...it was reported that you said:
"I didn't actually say you can't trust men, I basically said you get better decision making in a team if it's a balanced team with women and men working alongside each other," she said.
I appreciate that you are not in a position to influence what was reported on this website, and that the comment was made in the context of a gender disparity in recruitment to posts in the City of London.
Did the website report your comments accurately?
Can you direct me towards a public record of any statement you have made on the under-representation of men as teachers in primary schools?
I would like you to provide me with a report showing a count of;
a) the number of women and
b) the number of men
...who began a contract to teach children aged between 4 and 10 years in fully state-funded schools between the dates 01/06/1997 and 01/06/2008. I would like the report to show a sub-total of the number of men and the number of women recruited in each year (contract start dates 1st June to 31st May) within this date range.
Next to each yearly sub-total I would like you to show the government spend (in pounds) allocated in that year (calendar year or 1st June to 31st May - whichever best represents your view of the efforts made) on advertising aimed at attracting the gender that is less well represented (in terms of members recruited in that year) into the profession.
Bearing in mind the standard checks made on prospective primary school teachers, and the nature of the data they are required to provide, you will be aware that the information I am asking for is held centrally and can be provided without disproportionate cost. The advertising figures can be rounded to the nearest £10,000. If no advertising effort has been made to target the under-represented gender in a specific recruitment year please give a brief description of why (next to each sub-total), and the name and contact details of the officer responsible for making this decision.
I have made this request on 08/08/2009 and - given your position - I feel I need not remind you of your obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Peter Blades
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