14 comments on a post about an ad of a man being abused. 94 comments on a post critiquing a Feministe post. 15 comments on a post about masculist views of social welfare policies. 255 comments on a link to a Shakesville post about rape of men, mostly talking about how Shakesville got it wrong.
Guys, we have a problem.
Judging from our comments section, the single worst problem facing men today is– no, not coercive gender policing, not men living five years less than women, not the treatment of men as success objects, not the way male rape survivors have their experiences ignored and denied, not even the family court system or false rape accusations– but feminism.
You get this behavior, sometimes, in Internet Social Justice Warrioring, which Ami Angelwings has named “Moby Dicking.” Someone has a target they’re obsessed with, and they will not let it go come hell or high water. They derail completely unrelated threads to discuss the topic they’re Moby Dicking. They see every issue through the lens of their monomania. Like Ahab sailing the sea, harpoon in hand, in search of the whale that ate his leg, they search the comments sections of the Internet to find those who have not yet been told the great truth that feminists sometimes don’t pay as much attention to the experiences of male survivors as they should.
But that’s not the only or even the biggest problem the masculist movement faces, and to hammer at it as the Most Important Issue obscures other important issues. While criticism of feminism is certainly possible in a masculinist movement, focusing on that to the
exclusion of other issues ends up hurting men overall.
Constant critique of feminism actively harms NSWATM as a blog. Noah and I have both had the experience of feminists– feminists who care about men, feminists who engage with masculist issues, feminists who are The Good Guys– saying “I love your blog, but I’d never comment there.” Our comment threads are literally chasing away allies. That is not a good thing. If we create a more welcoming comment space, we can have a diversity of opinions that create a more flourishing discussion.
There is a very good single-issue blog for discussing the failures of feminism. It’s called Feminist Critics, and it’s worth visiting. This, however, is not a single-issue blog about criticizing feminism, and we do not intend for it to become one. We are going to talk about making the world a better place for men, because that’s what we’re actually here for, and the comment section should respect that.
Therefore, the moderators and contributors will be watching threads for signs of imminent Moby Dicking. If a thread seems to be derailing in an unproductive direction, we will ask the commenters to refrain from Moby Dicking. Repeated ignoring of the contributors’ directions on this matter will lead to banning.
my impression is that a lot of terrorist attacks are against police and security guards A lot are. A lot are also against “government officials, religious figures, state employees, law enforcement […] academics, journalists, lawyers and judges [and] religious and ethnic minorities” See this UNAMI Human Rights report or any of the dozen and a half other reports in the series. And a lot are just aimed at civilians. From the same report: 31. Civilians, in general, have not been only victims of indiscriminate violence during the reporting period but also of targeted attacks. Sheikh Wahhab Al Mandeel Al Obiedi… Read more »
In regards to deaths in Iraq, my impression is that a lot of terrorist attacks are against police and security guards, which I assume are mostly or entirely men.
In that context, it made perfect sense for activists to start calling those crimes “violence against men.” In no way were they implying that violence against women was more important; they were saying that these crimes were equally important, and should be treated as equally important by society. The demand of the international VaW movement is not that we “criminalise” violence against women”, but that we “end” or “eliminate” it. Society has not achieved this in respect of the forms of violence that most often affect men, and there is no demand that it should. So in addition to erasing… Read more »
@ Daran
“The more control the attack method gives to the attacker over who exactly they do and don’t kill, the greater the proportion of males killed.”
🙁 This is really upsetting.
Actually, after doing ^F and finding every post by Eagle33, he never associates those girls with feminism, except to say that he’s run into many feminists who act just like those girls did (which is most definitely not calling them feminist or saying they did those things in the name of feminism). He does, however, mention feminists (plural) having minimized his experience and then goes on to point out one particular situation in which there was one feminist.
He did mean something different than “a feminist minimized one experience,” which is why he wrote something different from that.
Ampersand: I think the clearest example of violence against men in recent history is “gendercide” in war-torn countries, in which “battle-age” men and boys are taken apart and slaughtered (in Kosovo, for example). It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is going on somewhere in the world right now. It’s going on now in DRC and Iraq. In Libya there have been mass executions of prisoners, in Syria, indiscriminate mass arrests of males. (I don’t doubt that there have been massacres of men there, though I have not heard or read any specific reports.) Iraq is instructive, according to… Read more »
I know this is a thread hop, sorry: For the umpteenth time, I never said Feminism was responsible nor did I ever think those girls and women were feminists. I said when I brought these experiences up to those militant feminists, they minimised and told me it was nothing compared to what women go through amongst other things. But you didn’t, actually, say that. You said that a feminist had dismissed one of your experiences, and then you brought up a bunch of times you were bullied by girls and associated those girls with feminism. Clearly you meant something different,… Read more »
“Yet another example is how our society is willing to ignore issues of workplace safety when these issues primarily affect men. Particularly poor rural men. ”
Saw a documentary about rural China and miners, mostly men, who end up dying in mines often, much too often for even our standards, because the mine owner can’t afford it until they strike it rich (and then it’s too late, hundreds died already). The government is not there to impose standards, or even (financially or otherwise) help with that to preserve the lives of those men.
@ Amp
And this is where the problem with ‘violence against women’ lies.
Saying that domestic violence and rape is ‘violence against women’ completely and utterly disenfranchises male victims of these crimes. Regardless of how many there are.
@ Amp “The term “violence against women” came in a historic context in which crimes that happened mostly to men — muggings, for example — were widely acknowledged as crimes. In contrast, many violent crimes that happen mostly to women — acquaintance rape, marital rape, being beat up by a spouse or s.o. — were barely acknowledged as crimes at all, and frequently not taken seriously by police, prosecutors or courts.” None of this is proven fact. Evidence exists that, inside of relationships, violence and rape is equal opportunity in modern times. We don’t really know what it was like… Read more »
“Another example in our culture is the violence directed towards gender non-conforming boys. Gender non-conforming girls get more of a pass and actually have to preform more extreme forms of gender non-conformance to get noticed. I would consider this an example of violence against men.”
Even the incredibly backwards (because this doesn’t define transsexual people in reality) definition of gender identity disorder in childhood states a double standard:
-Male assigned people have to prefer feminine clothing just some of the time.
-Female assigned people have to prefer masculine clothing pretty much at all times or exclusively.
“In contrast, many violent crimes that happen mostly to women — acquaintance rape, marital rape, being beat up by a spouse or s.o. — were barely acknowledged as crimes at all, and frequently not taken seriously by police, prosecutors or courts.”
And now they’re taken as crimes that can only, or even by definition, only happen to women, and only be committed by men. This includes all but prison rape.
@ Collette “That is a hilariously dishonest and disengenuous framing.” I don’t think so. Framing something as ‘violence against women’ emphasizes women’s role as passive recipients of other people’s actions. It does, in fact, prioritize women as in need of protection and defined by their need for protection. If it’s balanced out with a corresponding and equal in importance analysis of how men are acted upon and made victims, fine. But it isn’t. @ Son “I cannot think of a similar example specifically targeting men, because they are men, while I’m sure there are, and that is a sad thing… Read more »
“If most of the perpetrators are men, are male victims not more likely to have what they want if that is their goal? ”
You mean getting beaten up, mugged, or dying?
“Schala: Do you believe addressing intragendered school bullying with the same approach as violence against women because they are women be useful?”
“Do you believe addressing domestic violence against men with the same approach as violence against women because they are women be useful?”
No, I think it should be treated as neutral and not categorically different, because it completely ignores trans people (like me). And it also sets up a dichotomous gender war, and we don’t need more of that.
Brain fart; I should have typed, “In that context, it made perfect sense for activists to start calling those crimes “violence against women.””
The term “violence against women” came in a historic context in which crimes that happened mostly to men — muggings, for example — were widely acknowledged as crimes. In contrast, many violent crimes that happen mostly to women — acquaintance rape, marital rape, being beat up by a spouse or s.o. — were barely acknowledged as crimes at all, and frequently not taken seriously by police, prosecutors or courts. In that context, it made perfect sense for activists to start calling those crimes “violence against men.” In no way were they implying that violence against women was more important; they… Read more »
I cannot think of a similar example specifically targeting men… I think the clearest example of violence against men in recent history is “gendercide” in war-torn countries, in which “battle-age” men and boys are taken apart and slaughtered (in Kosovo, for example). It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is going on somewhere in the world right now. At 1, studies overwhelmingly say it’s much more equal. That’s not true. Studies that MRAs and anti-feminists prefer to cite say that, but many studies have found that intimate violence (that is, violence within romantic relationships) is mostly perpetuated against women… Read more »
Schala: Do you believe addressing intragendered school bullying with the same approach as violence against women because they are women be useful? “Domestic violence that is male on male or female on male is specifically targeted because they’re men, because this mostly happens in relationships where the person is only attracted to this particular sex.” Do you believe addressing domestic violence against men with the same approach as violence against women because they are women be useful? “And lastly, random street violence, muggings, and random murder (don’t know the person) target men much much more than women in the West… Read more »
P.S. Your final point is not borne out by the numbers there is a difference of only a few percent, and seemingly shrinking.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/vsx2.cfm
From the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Really the most interesting thing is that you used to possibly have a point 30-40 years ago.
Schools, not scholars, you know elementary and high schools?
At 1, studies overwhelmingly say it’s much more equal. I’ll let others get them because I’m bad with searching that kind of stuff (I hit paywalls all the time).
@schala 1. Well, no, it’s not hardly ever that, that’s just, off the bat, wrong. Secondly, domestic violence towards men is an issue as well as against women by women, however, the majority of it is man on woman, and this makes it the biggest problem to address, you want to address woman on man or woman on woman domestic abuse? Make a petition I’d sign it, there’s nothing wrong with addressing those issues either. 2. “Scholars?” that’s basically vague enough as to be useless, if you want to cite something go ahead, otherwise saying what “scholars” say is pretty… Read more »
“Because there is no ‘violence against women’ there is just violence against people.
The ‘violence against women’ framing really only supports the ‘woman as need object’ narrative in society because it implies that violence against women is somehow more important then violence against men (…)”
That is a hilariously dishonest and disengenuous framing.
“I cannot think of a similar example specifically targeting men, because they are men, while I’m sure there are, and that is a sad thing that ought to never, ever, happen, I would be willing to bet good money, that, in general, it is far more common for gender related violence to be perpretrated upon women.” Schools disagree with you, most bullying male on male happens to be physical. It’s violence specifically targeted upon boys because fighting girls is unacceptable, or else it might be more equal opportunity, who knows (never hit a girl). Domestic violence that is male on… Read more »