The Myth of the Angry Feminist

[IanVanCheese]

Wow this thread got out of hand. Anyway i've read through this and a few things i wanted to say

Firstly i consider myself a modern, equal rights sorta guy. I cant stand racism, sexism or most other -isms to be honest, -isms in general are bad . I'll still laugh at a joke about black people, women, fat people, ginger people <--------- that's me, etc etc if its funny, but that's because the joke is not being told, nor laughed at with malicious intent.

Anyway, this whole women get raped more than men thing. Sadly nothing to be done about this statistic. Only men are equipped to rape people........most men are straight and therefore attracted to women. Just the way it goes, and anyway i don't think that little statistic will be of any comfort to those men who have been raped. To put it in another, much stupider way a cow would kill and eat a lion just as readily as a lion would the cow if it could, but it cant so only lions eat and they tend to prefer the taste of cow over other lions. Ok that's done.

There will always be the ill educated people who think they are better than someone who is different. This whole rights issue cant be argued as simply as right and wrong anyway. Just as your entitled to equal treatment, isn't a misogynist entitled to his own opinion. Or is he not, are we having freedom of speech but only if we agree with you? Freedom of speech is the one right which cripples all other rights because it gives people the choice to think what they want.

And another thing, i have to agree that there is a lot of fair weather feminists out there, those who want equal rights as long as its convenient. Our university has a woman's society, comprised of equal numbers of sane people/mythical creatures. However if i were to go to the union and tell them i wanted to start up the man's society i'd get my ass kicked straight outta there. I have a friend who gets angry when i hold the door for her, but at the same time she goes out with her tightest tops on trying to get drinks bought for her by guys.

Equal rights? fine wonderful i'm all for it and as far as i'm concerned you have them, in fact scratch that. My saying you have equal rights implies they are mine to give to women, they are not. We are equals in that respect. But most feminists aren't after that these days. They remind me of rambo. He comes home after the war is over and realizes that war is all he's ever known, hes trained for nothing else so he finds a way to keep the fight going.

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense and jumps around a bit but its late, i'm tired and there are 7 pages of argument to disect.

 

[Shadowkire]

Snip

Summary of your post:

You presented needless insults
You insulted my opening point without providing a counter point
Your "Arguement" consisted of rehashing what I said with more arrogance and self importance
You come off as a "I know better than you do" sort of jerk and therefore ARE what I was discussing in closing elements of my post.

Have a nice day.


EDIT:

Just to clarify, I come from a loving home with an awesome mother who just goes over the top on this subject. The fact that you saw this as an arguement when it was simply my opinion on the matter says that its probably you who needs the therapy kid.

Your post basically says my opinion was wrong and I laughed for real when I read "In my experience" because you dont know me from jack therefore you cannot over ride my thoughts with your own.

So yeah,
Troll on.

Lol, so I made a few statements that could be considered insults by someone who is overly sensitive in response to your original post which is all about insults, then you called me out on it. Nice job troll.

Sorry for the phrase "Says crap about..." I should have typed stuff/things instead of crap.

You come off as a "I know better than you do" sort of jerk and therefore YOU ARE what you were discussing in the closing elements of your post.

I suppose I should have clarified what I mean by mistreatment at the hands of your family members, I apologize if that statement was too personal.

I apologize for assuming that all those attacks and insults to the OP were an argument. If your opinion about a subject is filled with needless insults toward others I reaffirm my previous statement: you may need some therapy.

And your thoughts can't "override" my own, stalemate.

You're cearly the sort of loser who sits online and thrives on causing internet arguements.
So I am going to say this:

Heres a wall, feel free to yell at it because I can assure you, it cares more about your hapless whining than I do and it might even find you to be clever and witty cause no one else here does.

Wait, hang on...

The wall is speaking...

It says... Stop trying to act like the victim you dirty trolling C**t.

Harsh words indeed.

"Lol, so I made a few statements that could be considered insults by someone who is overly sensitive in response to your original post which is all about insults, then you called me out on it. Nice job troll."

Wall says, it saw the troll thing in my post, it wants you to stop ripping off everything I say and trying to use it against me. Its not working and just shows the inferiority of your under-educated intellect and lack of mental diversity.

Oh and you didnt make "Statements" you made insults, stop trying to attack and withdraw so as to avoid getting called out on your hypocracy. I didnt make insults, I made cynically cutting remarks based on my own observations of the female gender and called the OP out on her ego. If you perceive them as insults then your mind is weaker than you your abbility to provide worthwhile counter points or reading material.

Incedently a Troll is someone who starts arguements online for the purposes of gaining attention and I think you will find my 1st post contained the words "in a humorous way", whilst yours subjectively initated an arguement.

Fail troll is fail.

Mhmmm cant be easy living your life as a social reject in both the real world or here. You'll have to write a whiney thesis on it for us and post it sometime.

(I'll await you copy pasting that in a reply against me, I expect royalties this time,)

"You come off as a "I know better than you do" sort of jerk and therefore YOU ARE what you were discussing in the closing elements of your post."

Yeah once again, just rehashing what I said.
I guess you dont actually understand how this "discussion" thing works?

Here let me explain - I say something, you say something different back, rinse repeat.
So thats twice in 1 post and about 6 times over all now.

"If your opinion about a subject is filled with needless insults toward others I reaffirm my previous statement: you may need some therapy."

You mean just like your 1st post?
Walked right into that one didnt you. Haha.
Self rightous prick is self righteous... and a tad hypocritcal it seems.

"And your thoughts can't "override" my own, stalemate."

I never said they did, christ where are you getting this stuff from?
So desperate to gain some sort of high ground that you're just running into walls.

Next time sit and actually think about what you want to say before attacking someone clearly much more your intellectual superior. I will admit, I am still curious as to why you are defending a woman you have never met so fervourantly, Do you think she is going to come confess her undying love for some geek who defended her on a web forum once?

That said however,

Bored now.

Gonna walk away now as I aint going to get dragged down into the cesspool you call an existence by wasting my time arguing with someone clearly desperate for attention and doesnt have a clue what they are talking about.

And Im taking my wall with me, it begged me not to leave it with you and I get a better grade of discussion out of it than I ever will with you.

Bye now <3

TL;DR

Wow you know how to rant. only managed to get through a couple of sentences and laughed when you claimed I was uneducated as you lack grammar and spelling.

Lol your trolling is so trite.

 

[xdom125x]

"Ultrafeminists," "Feminazis" and "The PC Police" are strawmen created by misogynists who don't want to be called out for their own bigotry.

These strawmen are created using the same logic that right-wing Christians use to claim that anyone who believes differently from them is actively oppressing them and wanting to disenfranchise them, or that racists use to take down affirmative action (by claiming that "there is no racism anymore, so stop whining").

Actually, those terms are thrown around when they are called for as well, not just when people want to frame the debate. Strawmen by their very nature are distortions of real beliefs and not the true belief. I wouldn't consider it a strawman if its components are held by a relatively well known group. For example, saying that the WBC represents the beliefs of all Christians would be a strawman but to say they exist isn't a strawmanning of Christianity. There are people that go to far in the name of "equality" and deserve to be called out on it even to the extent of being called "utrafeminists and feminazis" if they are going for female superiority as oppose to equality. There is still some improvement necessary to close the gap between men and women in society but people fighting for superiority on the right side isn't helping anyone but the bigoted jerks that want to limit actual rights.

 

[chainer1216]

myth? MYTH?


i was at a holloween party, and one of the guys there came as a cross dresser, he was having a conversation with a group of friends when a friend of mine told him that his opinian didn't count because he was in a dress, a woman, who has previously called herself a feminist, over head this and began PUNCHING my friend in the head!

why? because she took what he said to mean that womens opinians didn't matter.

when my friend punched her in the stomach to make her stop hitting him the the face, she yelled out that men aren't supposed to hit women.


yeah.

feminists (all) are dumb, you eather have the type from the above story or the type who actually think theyre cause is equality, when the name feminist itself means otherwise.

dont get me wrong, i'm all for equal rights, wages, education and opportunity to all human beings, but anyone who considers themselves an "ist" isn't looking out for anything but theyre own gain, and will only diminish theyre own cause.

 

[Gigano]

...
Sorry to hijack respond in your place but you speak in, in my opinion, unnecessarily technical terms and I wanted to dumb it down for my own sake.
...

Not at all, you said pretty much what I would've responded, and unlike me did so in a way humans can understand anyway.

So thanks!

snip

To satisfy my need for illegible ramblings anyway:

That a choice made by an individual of sound mind and mental maturity (something we can all agree any normal adult woman possess) be respected, when it's of the oldfashioned family form, is just as important to me as respecting a choice not to adopt such oldfashioned roles, but live in a more modern way.

Everyone have full rights to choose their own way of live as long as it does not harm others, but conversely, if they end up limiting themselves and regretting their choices at a later point, it's entirely their own responsibility as well.

Some influential forms of feminisms seem to conflict with this, believing such roles to be inherently bad; De facto condemning - or least branding as inferior - the lifestyle some of their sisters have chosen for themselves. I see little difference to those branding gay marriage as a "wrong" form of lifestyle there, and find such discrimination of both harmless individual choices equally reprehensible.

linebreak

I furthermore believe that tit-for-tat is the most successful strategy to deal with pretty much anything, since self-interest is a very powerful motivator, and it ensures that people are taught to reciprocate good if they want any for themselves.

What exactly is wrong with requiring feminists to take an active interest in the world's problems (i.e. your concerns) if you are to take an active interest in theirs? That they adopt a larger perspective to make others do the same? Is it not (harsh but) fair?

 

[Zaik]

No point to it.You equal and every little issue you see involving society is by your choice.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/04/28

I suppose military rape wouldn't be an issue if we'd stop trying to be equal/serve our country and just go back to the kitchen...

So, is your concern the totally baseless "1/3rd" claim, or the covered up rape/death claims?

Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from non-combat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by "natural causes," and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain that were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. 5 deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.

If it's the latter you're barking up the wrong tree, 15 is kind of petty compared to the other cover-ups the Army is doing over there.

If it's the former, I can make totally baseless claims too.

Half of men in Africa will be raped to the point of hospitalization or death by groups of women at some point in their lives.

We start off with a fact(men getting raped to death or near it by groups of women), and then move to a totally fake percentage we attach onto it with no real proof that it's true. It's a classic way to start a stink without all the difficult and risky statistic gathering that can wreck your entire argument when you find out you're wrong.

 

[Simulated Eon]

snip
[edit]
ooh, and religion. I have the right to marry a woman, so why shouldn't a woman too?
snip

Sorry I just have to ask but are you advocating gay-marriage here?
Nothing against it but I fail to see what it has to do with feminism?
Or is it about something I have failed to notice?
If so then please tell me about it.

(sorry if this seems sarcastic it's not meant to be.)

I am not advocating anything, merely pointing out that for men and women to have the same rights would logically mean either nobody can marry or either gender can marry either gender([edit] or for marriage to be defined as not being a right).

This logic would also indicate that religious arguments against same sex marriage will eventually become an obstacle to the feminist's fight for equality.

Ahh okay I wasn't sure what you meant but I still think that that is out of the feminist struggle (perhaps a bad word for this) for equality between the genders.

And as it is now isn't it equal between men and women? Neither can marry the same sex (or both can marry the same sex in parts of the world.)

But yes it is a step towards greater equality indeed.

(Sorry for late answer.)

 

[LordFisheh]

I'm totally for actual feminism, but the crazy nutjobs are far from. mythological. Just recently, I had the pleasure of hearing a woman on the radio complaining about the fathers being present at their children's births. Apparently, they haven't suffered for it like the mothers have and so are just trying to cash in on the glory...

 

[DuctTapeJedi]

Spoiler

No point to it.You equal and every little issue you see involving society is by your choice.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/04/28

I suppose military rape wouldn't be an issue if we'd stop trying to be equal/serve our country and just go back to the kitchen...

So, is your concern the totally baseless "1/3rd" claim, or the covered up rape/death claims?

Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from non-combat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by "natural causes," and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain that were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. 5 deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.

If it's the latter you're barking up the wrong tree, 15 is kind of petty compared to the other cover-ups the Army is doing over there.

If it's the former, I can make totally baseless claims too.

Half of men in Africa will be raped to the point of hospitalization or death by groups of women at some point in their lives.

We start off with a fact(men getting raped to death or near it by groups of women), and then move to a totally fake percentage we attach onto it with no real proof that it's true. It's a classic way to start a stink without all the difficult and risky statistic gathering that can wreck your entire argument when you find out you're wrong.

It was more the statement that any sufferings were due to personal choice that I was objecting to, but hey, why not, go nuts...

 

[Diligent]

The negative feminist attitude comes along far too often not to be ignored. Take this recent facebook exchange from someone I know:

"HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY LADIES! Oh..and I guess to the amazing men that support us "

See, that's fine. That's perfect. She didn't even have to mention men in her post, nor would I expect it. A few replies later though, one of her friends pipes up with:

"guys are fkn goofs!..and actually becc i went to an international womans day breakfast and talk!"

See, it's comments like this one that give the impression that any time you have a Woman's rights discussion somebody is going to turn it around and start bashing men, or at least make a broad sweeping generalization about all men.
Men are "fucking goofs" why? Because There is a day dedicated to recognizing the plight of women in less accepting cultures. Does she truly believe that zero men had a hand in organizing this day? Bah, that's why I don't like "those" feminists.

 

[taciturnCandid]

Why are feminists so mad? Because women have been treated so badly in the past!

Yes, some become a bit too negative. But when you consider the responses that they get from men, it is a bit more understandable.

"I think women should have equal rights{

Reply?
"Shut up and go back to the Kitchen"

Wouldn't that piss you off too.

As for the superiority thing...I don't fully understand that. That makes them no better then men

 

[IanVanCheese]

The negative feminist attitude comes along far too often not to be ignored. Take this recent facebook exchange from someone I know:

"HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY LADIES! Oh..and I guess to the amazing men that support us "

See, that's fine. That's perfect. She didn't even have to mention men in her post, nor would I expect it. A few replies later though, one of her friends pipes up with:

"guys are fkn goofs!..and actually becc i went to an international womans day breakfast and talk!"

See, it's comments like this one that give the impression that any time you have a Woman's rights discussion somebody is going to turn it around and start bashing men, or at least make a broad sweeping generalization about all men.
Men are "fucking goofs" why? Because There is a day dedicated to recognizing the plight of women in less accepting cultures. Does she truly believe that zero men had a hand in organizing this day? Bah, that's why I don't like "those" feminists.

For our international womens day the womens society had posters up saying they were having a talk on female genital mutilation from some crazy woman.

I had the misfortune of meeting the president of the society at a union meeting, she was the biggest stereotype i've ever seen, the exact sort of person who gives real feminists ie normal women a bad name.

 

[Terminal Blue]

That is precisely what you are doing. Who are you to decide whether someone who decides to be a housewife or a househusband is a victim or not? Unless that was your point, I'm not sure.

Well, I'm kind of not. I did say I was playing devil's advocate. I'm just saying that the logic of choice as the ultimate moral get-out clause is kind of flawed (albeit very symptomatic of the liberal/individualistic position). It assumes that choices are taken in a vacuum where they can be freed from forms of expectation, including sexed/gendered expectation.

I don't honestly care whether the housewife is more or less of a victim than the husband who works a job he hates every day (and that's just my family). I'm interested in why that happens, how people absorb and maintain the expectations of certain types of behaviour based on what it's meant to say about what they have between their legs.

There's are deeper (and shallower) levels to privilege than just who gets 'valued' more. It includes things like who is listened to more in a social arena, who is assumed to have more sexual agency, who finds it materially easiest to leave an abusive marriage (for example). It's not really acceptable in feminist writing to keep bleating about victims and aggressors as a universal which is not affected by other things, but it would also not be acceptable to ignore the widespread structural elements of privilege simply because they aren't universal.

I will concede though that with the gender roles (not gender, I resent that Americanisation of a Scientific term) there are those that are judged to be worthwhile and those that are not; most of the typically male ones are worthwhile and the female ones aren't. There you have a very valid point.

Considering the word (as a reference to the social elements of sexed behaviours) dates to before America was founded and was popularized by a Frenchwoman, I'm not sure you're really justified in calling it an Americanization. What do you mean by 'scientific', because it's certainly an academic term in everyday use across a range of fields and backed up by considerable observation and empirical study - I really don't see what you're getting at there.

Do we go about fixing that by removing gender roles until we are left with just roles? Or do we go about showing the worth of the previously scorned and derided attributes? You seem to erring toward the first, I'd much prefer the second.

Personally, and this is where I'm not speaking for all modern feminists because the outcome is where things tend to differ (hence why I say feminism is a set of techniques, not a preset objective) I don't think there is a simple fix. We don't live in age where universal social engineering on that scale is possible.

What I think is important is putting the ideas into social vocabulary.

That said, if it comes down to a choice, I'd choose the former. For one the 'equal but different' approach assumes a heterosexuality which I, for one, don't have. For those of us who have partners of the same sex, your approach still leads to assumption that one of those partners has to break with socially assigned gender in order to perform the roles which need to be done. Sure, there can be a perverse joy in that, but expecting it as standard is frighteningly heteronormative.

You also assume that cooperative coupledom (very relevant to me and my research) is necessary. Heck, a lot of heterosexuals aren't living in nuclear families any more. The existence of gender roles still assumes the need for a binary partnership with one partner to fill each role. Personally, I think 'whatever works' is a fairer mode of organization for those people than 'masculine'/'feminine'.

What he's saying is that you do nothing to help him, ergo why should he do something to help you? The you being feminism and the him being non women. Admirable it is not but it is a perfectly reasonable response. As he said earlier, he's merely reciprocating indifference. And because indifference is shown to other issues that may or may not be more serious than those that feminists deal with respect is lost.

To repeat myself again.

'Fem' =/= women.

My research, and the research of many feminists, is intimately concerned with men. Feminist academics have devoted their entire careers to the study of masculinity. Let me get this straight one more time, men are gendered they do not pop out of the womb as fully formed little men. They are shaped in relation to gendered concepts, and if you don't think 'femininity' or 'effeminacy' or 'feminization' or any of the other 'fem' words are important to understanding how men come to understand themselves as men, I think that's a bit short sighted.

This has been one of the key shifts in trajectory in modern feminism. Wheras it used to be that 'patriachy' meant 'oppression of women by men', nowadays the word is seldom encountered. What is much more relevant is the way in which men are able to access male privilege insofar (and only insofar) as they 'perform' masculinity. That doesn't make that privilege not there, but there are power distributions between men based on 'fem' concepts which are of intimate concern to feminists.

An umbrella humanist organisation with the serious backing that feminism gets could do some widespread good.

Last I checked, 'humanist' academic departments (which is to say almost all of them) get massive funding. Most NGOs function on humanist principles. Are you seriously this averse to the idea that gender blindness might not be a good thing?

You're not promoting some radical idea here, you're repeating an ideology which is hundreds of years old and from which women have been consistently excluded.

 

[Meowshi]

Why are feminists so mad? Because women have been treated so badly in the past!

Yes, some become a bit too negative. But when you consider the responses that they get from men, it is a bit more understandable.

"I think women should have equal rights{

Reply?
"Shut up and go back to the Kitchen"

Wouldn't that piss you off too.

As for the superiority thing...I don't fully understand that. That makes them no better then men

You really shouldn't excuse discriminatory language.

I personally don't understand it at all. I don't care how bad you've been treated, if you're just going to turn around and act the same way towards someone else. There is no difference.

Maybe that guy told them to get back into the kitchen, because he was angry at being called a rape apologist by some vitriol-spewing feminist the day before.

 

[Eternal_Lament]

Looking through the thread and seeing the amount of people who have mentioned meeting several people who would qualify as the "Angry Feminist" that you are trying to say does not represent the norm, it is clear that while these incidents don't make up the majority, they are certainly in a higher percentage than what you seem to give credit for.

For the record, I'm a male equalist, which means I think discrimination against all genders is wrong and should be fought against. I'm often told that I should just call myself a feminist because feminists fight for equal rights, but I don't buy that argument. Not because I don't think feminists dont fight for equal rights, but because I don't see why I should change my belief system into one that has a more gendered name and definition, especially if the belief system is often seen to be biased by others. I myself don't hold any anger or spite towards those that identify themselves as feminist just because they are feminist, but I have met people who do identify themselves as feminist that I find annoying and biased, to the point where I can't call them out on it without being called "mis-guided" or "over-reacting", even if they themselves feature those traits and ignore that fact.

My criminology tutorial leader is an example of this. Any time I tried to bring up the issue of sexual assault crimes (by which I specifically said sexual assault crimes, without a gendered connotation), she will fill in the rest of my sentence or observation to bring it into an argument about how men always mistreat women. When I correct her and say I was simply reffering to just sexual assault as a whole, she'll either say "Well yes, men can be victims now that gay marriage is allowed" or "She was probably only accused for sexual assault so that she couldn't claim being raped first or becuse she was simply seen as a slut" (different responses to different contexts of what I was saying in class). I try to talk to her about this stuff afterwards, and she seems to legitimatly think that men are the only instigaters of sexual assault, and that any man who fears being sexually assaulted by a woman or being falsely accused of sexual assault is either over-reacting or is simply trying to find ways to make a woman out to be a slut (only moments before saying how she thinks any woman who doesn't fear being sexually assaulted when they are alone with a man isn't reacting enough). When I told her after class one day that I was an equalist, she told me "Except the only people who are being discriminated aginst are women, so fighting for more rights for others does nothing", and when I told her some of the issues that plague non-women, she simply said "Yeah, I guess, except the benefits of those genders outweigh any problems, so they shouldn't complain". And she claims to be one of the more level-headed femenisits at my school, I'd hate to see what her definition of the "extreme feminists" would be.

Again, I don't think all femenists are like this. Even if I haven't read anything about it I have a feeling not all feminist theory follows the angry ideals, but I have little reason to think that angry femenists don't make up a larger percentage than others like to think (certainly not the majority), and to pass some of these people off as simply "passionate" is nowhere close to a good solution, especially if these "passionate" people are members of unquestioned authority.

 

[Vuljatar]

Every time I hear the words "angry feminist" I think of that deranged ***** who wrote about how Joss Whedon hates women, mainly focusing on "examples" from Firefly.

You know the one.

I realize, of course, that she is in the vast minority of even the angriest feminists, but still. That kind of human being is a blight on this earth. A detriment to mankind. (lol mankind)

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

I support equality, and when I can get job security by having a nice ass, even when my job is of a completely performance based nature, or when I can get a job somewhere for my pretty face.

The end of life I live in, women have the edge, they control the situations we supposedly dominate, they get the jobs, they get whatever they goddamn want.

of course maybe that's cuz I'm speakin from a level of life too low to have any real difference in wages or any power in any way, I'm just saying, the wage differences are pretty minimal overall, since they only really start appearing above the level where you can live anyway, I'm a lower lower class man, living in a city where middle class is poor... at my level, I look at life and see that I gotta compete for jobs and security in them with lil whores who strut their stuff in direct violation to uniform regulation and get nothin done to em where a dude wears shorts cuz the job's hot as hell and gets fired for breach of code... might just be that all the goddamn employers are male, and like to have eye candy...


still once women get as ugly as us, and don't have the ability to use their more attractive nature as a weapon against us, and absolutely have to work their asses off to even make grade like us... then I see feminism as obsolete, they're equal enough to gain superiority... least around here.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Of feminists and dumb.

Your friend has actually shown himself to be a great feminist there, by being equal and punching a woman like he would any man!

Power to him.
Ha, ha, ha!