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This quote starkly lays out exactly what is at stake when it comes to the politics of gender and those who follow its dictates.
So no, feminism is not about being mean to the poor menz, it is fighting against the oppressive shit that hurts women. Focusing on how the conception of gender is problematic for everyone involved isn’t ‘phobic’ – it is an attempt to recognize, deconstruct, and tear down a bastion of sexism in our society that has been polluting our civilizations for hundreds of years.
http://tehbewilderness.tumblr.com/post/162769340129/appropriately-inappropriate
Non-prostate owner, uterus bearer, non-male. JFC. Female is still a word despite the gender bullshit that has clouded the waters – please use it.
The RPOJ comes for thee.
It has been way to long since the last RPOJ post. My apologies faithful readers.
Today’s lovely winner is Anthony writing on his blog ‘How to be Happy’ – with the catchy tagline ‘Personal philosophy driven by experience and reason’. My suggestion is to clarify his tagline a bit, I’m thinking along the lines of ‘How to be happy’ – ‘Just get a mirror so you and I can admire the stupid bloviation drizzling straight out of my asshole. ‘
Anthony while explicitly stating that there are no judgments being made, proceeds to glorify and argue (and thus judge) for a host of negative stereotypical roles associated with females. Surprisingly uncommon practice for dudes…
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“First of all, I’m fully aware that some men out there date women who are just as, if not more, successful and career-focused than they are. And I think that is perfectly fine. The goal of this piece is to explain why some people act a certain way—not to condemn anyone or state how things should be.”
I’m guessing that your piece is going to be outside the realm of sociological interviews and surveys; thus you will be taking your opinions and generalizing them to men as a whole in an attempt to make your shit smell marginally sweeter. (kinda like focusing on the corn kernels, but that might be a touch on the gross side)
I’m not sure what is worse, dealing with actual dirtbag MRA’s who state their misogyny straight up, or the pseudo intellectual poltroons that try to obfuscate their dire man-wank arguments in bland generalizations and stolid prose.
“I want to address the question: Why are some men (I’d say, more than half) less attracted to women who are very career driven?”
My question is why all the damn covert ops? These are your (thinly veiled) preferences, and in reading your article, it sounds like the ‘ideal woman’ for you is the insipid patriarchal standard woman version 1.0 – Demure, supportive, submissive and preferably pregnantly barefoot in the kitchen while being totally dependent on you and thus a slave your manly whims.
You sir, at your earliest convenience, fuck right off.
*Phone ringing*…
*Arbourist answers:* What are you saying? I’m jumping to conclusions before presenting the evidence?? – oh jebus its so painful to read this shit and deconstruct it.
*Arbourist still talking on phone:* Pulling shit out of my ass? Fine. FINE. Let’s go see what Douche-stick McClown-Nozzle (‘Anthony’) has to say and demonstrate the slightly rancid smell and lousy arguments that typify his MRA’s codswallop.
“Why are some men (I’d say, more than half) less attracted to women who are very career driven? I think lots of women assume it comes from jealousy, insecurity, or sexist beliefs. I’ll try to present a more nuanced explanation, based partly on my own sentiments.”
Manslator: Tut-tut! You women and your frilly pink woman brain judgments. It will take the intellectual prowess(?) of a man to break this hard cookie of a conundrum down and show you how nuanced the answers really are. I mean ascribing insecure sexist behaviour to men is really quite unreasonable. Instead, let’s focus on how women’s actions are making men do bad things, because as we all know women are responsible for what men do…
“Having children has become de-emphasized over the years, but I still believe it’s a strong motivator of serious relationships. After all, it is a natural thing, an ability we share with other animals, and so it’s deeply rooted in our psyche: like the urge to have sex.”
Ah yes, because natural means ‘good’ right? Measles are natural, Polio is natural yet somehow we don’t automatically make that rhetorical jump of Polio (being natural) is good because it is in nature (which is inherently good, somehow.)
Sex is a natural act but, participating in said act are two human beings with feeling and preferences. Some people may not like having sex it doesn’t mean they are unnatural, or wrong, it just means they are autonomous human beings with preferences of their own. Stop moralizing on the basis of what is ‘natural’.
“Of course, if a man plans to have a family, it’s important to him and probably not something he’ll compromise on. Plus, even if he’s not sure, but he might want one, he’s going to want a woman open to the possibility.”
Given a man’s contribution to having children is quite insignificant to the female input involved, finding a woman who wants to endure pregnancy, labour, and child rearing seems like a good plan.
“So, suppose I am interested in kids. Suppose also that I work hard and have a stable career (after all, most successful women are attracted to men at least as successful as them). Then, I would naturally be wary about dating women who have careers that require similar or more effort than mine. The fear is that, once we have children, both of us will be too busy to give them quality time: to make their meals, help them with homework, take them to events, etc.”
You cheeky fucker. You didn’t just dress up the patriarchal notion of women being the ‘proper’primary care givers, with concerns about (what about) the children? Cleaning the
house, cooking food, interacting with children can be done by either sex (*mindblown!*). The notion that women should be the primary care givers and thus expected to give up their personal ambitions to raise your brood is on page one of the ‘How to Patriarchy’ manual.
Hold on. I might be jumping to the worse case scenario here. Let’s wait, and see. Perhaps Professor Dipshit von Clownstick (‘Anthony’) is going advocate for the solution of equally sharing the work between parents or a similar arrangement in which both parties make compromises in order to parent their children.
“You might say it’s not fair to expect the woman to do be the one to care for the kids. But it’s not about fairness, it’s about compatibility. If I want a family, but I have a PhD and I’m doing research everyday and I’m passionate about it, I’m naturally going to look for a woman who has a less demanding job, so someone will have time for the kids.”
Being proved right is going to my head.
Assumption one: Male careers are more important than female careers.
Assumption two: My passion for ‘x’ makes it a physical impossibility for me to take care children.
Conclusion: Anthony needs, not a equal female human being, but rather he needs a Den Mother who has less lofty aspirations and importance in the world. To receive sperm and raise his whelps while Anthony engages in the manly man business of being a real, successful human being.
Also Concluded: I am much in love with ‘natural’ patriarchal stereotypes that place my interests above those who are unlucky enough be born with a vagina.
“And if I meet a girl who’s just as absorbed in her work as I am, I’m not going to hate on her, but I’ll be less open to a long term relationship. I want someone who complements me, not someone exactly like me.”
Because having to do equal time on the second shift is completely unacceptable! I have the man-parts that naturally disqualify me from such unsavoury scut-work. (*near terminal eye-roll*)
“Finally, there is the fear that a career-focused woman will wait before having children, or put her job before her family.”
Oh you mean put her interests first and achieve for herself instead of being the submissive self sacrificing walking womb that you desperately desire. Anthony, your take on the humanity of female-folk seems rather dim.
“Personally, I find women who place their personal material success before their family life unattractive. Again, I am not judging them; it is just how my attraction works. And I believe a lot of men (and women) feel the same.”
Men place material success ahead of their family all the damn time. In some places in the world, where your patriarchal (wet-dreams) stereotypes are not as strictly enforced, I’m deeply sorry (not sorry) that you have to deal with these uppity women and their notions of autonomy.
Also, was I not totally right on scrying that “a more nuanced explanation” would equal -“pulling my own sexist stereotypes out of my ass and generalizing them to look more palatable”
Boom.
“As I said, it seems common that successful women like men who are at least as successful as they are. The problem is, men with intense jobs like someone who balances them out, not someone exactly like them.”
Manslator: I want a domestic servant and someone who prioritizes my needs over their own.
“For example, imagine I’ve had a long day doing research, and I’m a bit stressed. I’d rather come home to a wife who could ask me about my day and have a meal ready and diffuse my stress with a carefree attitude, than a wife who had an equally stressful day and wants to vent about it. “
Because women should not talk about their stress, man-stress is much more important, because men say so.
“Also, if I am naturally a very busy person, it will be hard to schedule quality time together if my partner is just as busy.”
JFC. I haven’t looked at any more of Anthony’s blog, but I can bet he’s also an egalitarian, at least as far it means – “I get to do what I want as my boundaries are sacred, *you* on the other hand, are going to have to schedule yourself around me and the other inconveniences of adult life.
“I can’t generalize, but I can say that in my limited experience, on average, I’ve found women who are more career focused to be harder to get along with.”
Really? I just can’t see it. Women who have to put up and compete against misogynistic men in the work place don’t have time for your vacuous patina of woman hating pablum?
Shocking.
“I think some women have experience with men doubting their competence, and so they react by always trying to prove themselves, even to men who aren’t trying to start anything. “
Just wow dude. You have no idea do you. It seems like you’ve talked with, or at least talked at with women and the point they were making grazed you as it flew over your head. Everything in patriarchy that women do is called into question. Women usually have to work twice as hard, just to stay even with their male counterparts.
Perhaps just for instant exercise that withered area of your brain that is in charge of empathy and imagine what it would be like if you were not in the default category of male human, that your competence was questioned at every turn.
Might make you a little defensive and quick to react no?
“It makes a guy constantly on edge because he is afraid she will start an argument.”
Getting called out on your shit isn’t a pleasant experience. Oh my fair summer child, the patriarchy is strong with you.
“Also, in my experience, successful women can be more likely to find faults in their partner and be critical, rather than accept him as is.”
Having standards and not putting up with his shit – ’tis a sin according to Anthony. Of course women acting like full human beings and not submissive birthmares seems to put all the bees in Anthony’s bonnet. Women with high standards and low tolerance for bullshit seem to be quite literally Anthony’s kryptonite. Tough cookies to you Anthony, but believe it or not females are fully human beings with similarly important dreams and aspirations that, *gasp* may not centre around what a dude wants. :)
These are not good for women and men in society, let’s do our best not to replicate them. No thanks to Anthony mind you…
Hmm. Time to give some side eye to queer theory as it seems to go against much of what feminism is about. Let’s examine a part of an essay by Susan Cox writing on the Feminist Current.
“Feminists defied patriarchal ideology by declaring that we do not have “wandering uteruses” that make us prone to “hysteria” and inherently inferior to men. Feminists also argued that men are not biologically destined to be a bunch of rapist cavemen, and that we should therefore hold them to higher standards, in terms of their treatment of women. We showed that these ideas were were social constructions artificially imposed on males and females.
Queer theory flipped that whole framework upside-down.
In a textbook example of what is known as “patriarchal reversal,” queer theory embraced the idea that womanhood is defined by femininity (described as gender “performance”). In other words, the things feminists worked so hard to show were not essential to women — makeup, skirts, and coquettish mannerisms, for example — are now said to be the things that make a person a woman. This implies that if a woman rejects her oppressive gendered role, it probably means that she was never really a woman at all.
Queer theory claims to have an interest in the feminist project, which has confused discourse on women’s issues. Recently, an email conversation I had with a male philosopher who has published on feminist theory revealed he didn’t actually understand the difference between sex and gender.
He wrote to me:
“I’m not a macho man. I don’t like violent sports, and I’ve undergone a lot of self-reflection and critique from feminist friends to get to a place where I don’t treat women in the brutish heteronormative way that patriarchy prescribes. So, in many ways, I’ve come to have an identity that reflects my gender and not my sex.”
He seemed to be referring to his “sex” as synonymous with masculinity and using “gender” to mean “personality.” I replied:
“Your sex (male) doesn’t automatically make you a rapey, macho asshole. That is actually the gender role you’ve been assigned under patriarchy. You rejecting the norms of masculinity is you rejecting gender — not identifying with it.”
You know we’re in desperate times when a young scholar has to explain basic feminist theory to someone who’s supposedly been studying it for decades.
Right now, it’s crucial that we remember the feminist critique of biological determinism. We don’t need to pretend as though biological sex doesn’t exist or isn’t important, because sexual difference doesn’t naturally cause male supremacy or female subordination. Acknowledging biological difference is, in fact, very important — we need to know who and what we are talking about, in order to address and remedy the unjust power relationship between males and females.
Patriarchy claims that male supremacy is encoded in the sexed biology of maleness and femaleness. And perhaps it’s an indication of something significant when queer theory says exactly the same.”
So much confusion surround the ideas of sex and gender, I wonder who that could be benefiting…
http://tehbewilderness.tumblr.com/post/162144889809/mypowerourpower-yayfeminism-screencaps-from
Articles like this highlight the systemic, societal based normative attitudes that we are bathed in. Male violence is looked on in a sympathetic light and the narratives spun around them serve as a justification for their actions.
Lying in wait with a shotgun under your family’s car and then dispatching your wife and daughter with a shotgun is not a fucking act to by sympathized with. This sort of violence and abuse is the hidden backdrop of our society and needs to brought to light in a most unsympathetic and biased toward the victim way. Laying low at the root of situations like these is the male patterned socialization that states that using violence is an acceptable way to solve problems – coupled with the notion that women somehow are property and less than human leads directly to shit like this murder suicide.
We need to change the programming for our men and despite the insidious backlash of from the patriarchy about letting ‘boys be boys’ we need to get them early and counter these messages that glamorize violence and dehumanize women.
This is what radical feminists mean when we say that feminism isn’t about equality, but is about the liberation of female people from male people. We don’t want to be as violent as men are.
Such a simple concept, yet so many seem not able to grasp the idea. Equality in itself isn’t a bad goal, but obtaining equality requires changing the groundwork of society that currently make it biased toward men and concomitantly disadvantageous toward women.
This bias, know in radical feminist literature and praxis is called Patriarchy. No version of equality achieved under patriarchy is particularly valid, since the ground rules and societal expectations are still fundamentally skewed. Thus, what radical feminists seek to do is discover, critique, and move toward the dissolution of patriarchal structures and products in society.
For example, the move toward the Nordic Model to help women exit prostitution because the majority of women involved in prostitution are there unwillingly and want to get out of the forced rape trade given the option. Prostitution is a corrosive force in society, as it is often paired with the human trafficking reinforcing the idea that women are second class citizens whose objectification is more important than their humanity.
It is the systemic dismantling of the structures of patriarchal male privilege that make radical feminism so threatening to some members of the class of men. It is also the best way to get a feel for how effective your feminism is – no pushback from the dudes means their privileged status isn’t being threatened – so what exactly are you doing (see most of liberal feminism)?
Pushback from the dudes usually means you’re on to something and should be impetus to hold to your criticisms and deconstructions. Nine times out of ten, you will be battling a social patriarchal construct or ‘that’s just how things are here’ type of situation. It’s a long haul, but even laying one brick for the next woman to stand on to carry on the fight just a little further is a laudable action, and sadly must often be the only notion that keeps a feminist going.
Bill C-16 is problematic for women. Go read the entirety of Megan Murphy’s article on the Feminist Current, I’ve excerpted a key bit here though. :)
Bill C-16 passed at the Senate on Thursday. Under this new Canadian legislation, which follows similar laws in a number of Western countries, a person can determine their gender or sex via self-declaration at any time and for any reason. It’s considered a human rights violation to question it. No criteria, physical markers, or tests have been identified to determine trans status. As an inherently individualistic idea, gender identity isn’t tethered to any external reality and is therefore considered immune from qualification or broader critical analysis.
If an individual’s identity doesn’t impinge on anyone, it’s easy to accept it at face value. But when an individual transitions into a group of people who face different challenges, questions will naturally arise about whether opportunities reserved for those who are marginalized in their own right will be inevitably claimed by these new members, once again making it more difficult for the original members to get ahead. Already, we’ve seen a handful of examples of males who transitioned later in life showered with praise and handed awards reserved for women, who have spent their entire lives enduring patriarchy as females.
Remarkably, troubling philosophical questions remain unaddressed. If gender identities are determined on an individual basis with no parameters around what they mean, it follows that there can be as many genders as there are human beings. If each individual has a purely self-determined identity, then, by definition, these inherently unique identities can’t be shared with anyone else. No one person can experience another person’s thoughts or feelings to verify that they are thinking or feeling the same things. How can males, or anyone for that matter, know that they feel like a woman? Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the tautology that a woman is a person who identifies as a woman, the logical conclusion is that “woman” can mean anything and therefore means nothing.
And yet women exist.
Despite a lack of clarification and broad consensus on this, women are vilified simply for asking questions. We’re expected to abandon all prior experiences and notions of ourselves, most especially those that relate to our female embodiment and the oppression that stems from it. Sex-based protections have been effectively dissolved. When it comes to female-only facilities, human rights law is clear: a male who claims the identity of “female” or “woman” can’t be turned away. If a woman has concerns or is in a vulnerable position, her options are to somehow get over it or leave. What this tells women and girls who are survivors of male violence is that females’ right to refuge and privacy away from males is negotiable and that they come last. This is an insidious form of grooming that tells women and girls that they are hysterical for recognizing the epidemic of discrimination and violence directed at them and that they must prioritize the feelings of others over their own sense of self-preservation.
Though frequently twisted, the argument here isn’t that trans people in particular pose a threat. The issue is that as long as gender identity rests on self-declaration, it is impossible — and illegal — for females to distinguish between males who simply wish to live as transgender women and other males. This is an unwarranted burden to place on women and girls, who shouldn’t be obligated to have or divulge a history of trauma in order to justify maintaining independent spaces (not that it makes a difference when they do anyway).
Laws based on personally subjective, indescribable feelings are bad news, not only Canadian women, but the rest of society as well.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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