thread for contemplating the serious issues raised by the Men's Rights movement

because it's more than just neckbeards and friendzones, people

the "rights" part of mra is the really objectionable bit. it should be the MIA ("issues") movement.

this is a truth bomb basically

― thus spake darraghthustra (Noodle Vague), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:35 (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Men dont have rights they have issues

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:39 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're telling me

― thus spake darraghthustra (Noodle Vague), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:42 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

rights issues

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:43 (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

deems im not sure what your feelings about reddit/mra/whatever actually are, and why you feel it necessary to have feelings about them?

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, 18 November 2013 11:44 (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Have no feelings about em, as such, but as a bundle or as separate topics they seem to be the type of trigger (ever more common) for ilx smug triteness nahmsayn

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:52 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean id consider startin an mra thread but if im honest it would be more to annoy the ppl that it would annoy than i) to discuss mra or whatever (i dont think ilx is capable any longer of an interesting discussion on this or similar grey-area/devils advocate or w/e topics without the discussion itself being attacked and ii) i drgaf either

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:55 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure it's an easy target and they will always attract rote dismissals, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying the content pplains is posting here right?

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, 18 November 2013 11:56 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in the ongoing kneejerk liberalism vs kneejerk lib-baiting wars i feel like one hand is washing the other

― thus spake darraghthustra (Noodle Vague), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:57 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

God no, long may pplains mine the net for our delectation imo

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:58 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree with Mordy that there are interesting issues raised by MRA but i feel like most of those issues are fairly easily explained and so the conv doesn't go much further than that

― thus spake darraghthustra (Noodle Vague), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:58 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean i dunno if we wanna look at how patriarchy diminishes men too then Middlemarch was written a good long while ago i don't think the MRA guys have discoverd a new planet now i shd get this off the reddit lulz thread

― thus spake darraghthustra (Noodle Vague), Monday, 18 November 2013 11:59 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mra is clearly a piece of shit though, said without knowing anything about the 'movement' beyond what pplains and others post here, but simply that for those relatively very few instances in which men suffer while an equivalent woman would not, it is illogical and grotesque to co-opt the language of minoritarian rights rather than the general right

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, 18 November 2013 12:01 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You couldnt even bring yrself to use a proposed 'matriarchy' as a zingy absurdist example could you

Can u see what they make us give

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 12:02 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3l5oy3_aSAY/UIk-HdLd-oI/AAAAAAAAGMA/IrQA7r3GDxw/s1600/minifeatLibQual.png

i don't even think i want to fight over this bone right now but hiving it off appeals to my sense of decorum

a rain shall come

is there a core Men's Rights movement? and what are its ideological assumptions and demands?

U forgot: this thread is a safe space

absolutely. i am serious about that and i wd like the comedy image macros to stay in one of their other homes.

in what ways can men as a category claim to be genuinely oppressed by forces susceptible to change eg legal, economic?

are all arguments pro masculinity based on essentialist notions of gender and performance?

This is not one to visit deep thoughts upon from a phone interface tbh

feel like with the Robert Bly stuff - and tbf i haven't really read it first hand - it's cool if you want to get your hands and face mucky and be dudes in the wild but nobody's really stopping you from getting out there and doing it? and it's probably not that important a manifestation of dudery if you work an office job

i mean i am no more or less happy being me than most people i guess but i don't try and parcel off my likes and interests into me being "manly" or not

i don't even really know if i'm bothered about having an identity to connect with. a lot of the Iron John stuff is about authenticity isn't it?

vmic of me to goad u to this and then say soz dude i got nothin but soz dude

i got nuthin, vmic of me to want to ponder out loud and say "maybe" and "kinda" a lot

i was thinking this thread might be useful for Mordy or somebody later tho

i subscribe to /r/MensRights so i am willing to testify as an expert witness

I could burrow round for irish suicide rates and trend of gender-differentiated school reports, homelessess, drug abuse stats and and all that but i mean who cares tbh

manplaining

iirc, the first ten or twenty usages of mansplaining on ilx were assumed to mean just that, wins (iirc because they were used p stupidly but only iirc eh)

It's an awkward coinage, kinda funny that it needed explaining tho

I could burrow round for irish suicide rates and trend of gender-differentiated school reports, homelessess, drug abuse stats and and all that but i mean who cares tbh

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 12:41 (13 minutes ago)

why?

The contrast is even greater today, with WHO statistics showing China as the only country where the suicide rate of female matches or exceeds that of males.[22]

The story says that when the King locked up the Wild Man, “he gave the key into the keeping of the Queen,” but we were only about seven then, and in any case our father never told us what he had done with it. So where is the key?
I’ve heard audiences try to answer that one: “It’s around the boy’s neck.”

No.

“It’s hidden in Iron John’s cage.”
No.

“It’s inside the golden ball.”

No.

“It’s inside the castle...on a hook inside the Treasure Room.” No.

“It’s in the Tower. It’s on a hook high up on the wall!”

No.

The Wild Man replies, “The key is under your mother’s pillow.”

The key is not inside the ball, nor in the golden chest, not in the safe . . . the key is under our mother’s pillow – just where Freud said it would be.
Getting the key back from under the mother’s pillow is a troublesome task. Freud, taking advice from a Greek play, says that a man should not skip over the mutual attraction between himself and his mother if he wants a long life. The mother’s pillow, after all, lies in the bed near where she makes love to your father. Moreover, there’s another implication attached to the pillow.
Michael Meade, the myth teller, once remarked to me that the pillow is also the place where the mother stores all her expectations for you. She dreams: “My son the doctor.” “My son the Jungian analyst.” “My son the Wall Street genius.” But very few mothers dream: “My son the Wild Man.”
On the son’s side, he isn’t sure he wants to take the key. Simply transferring the key from the mother’s to a guru’s pillow won’t help. Forgetting that the mother possesses it is a bad mistake. A mother’s job is, after all, to civilize the boy, and so it is natural for her to keep the key. All families behave alike: on this planet, “The King gives the key into the keeping of the Queen.”
Attacking the mother, confronting her, shouting at her, which some Freudians are prone to urge on us, probably does not accomplish much – she may just smile and talk to you with her elbow on the pillow. Oedipus’ conversation with Jocasta never did much good, nor did Hamlet’s shouting.
A friend of mentioned that it’s wise to steal the key some day when your mother and father are gone. “My father and mother are away today” implies a day when the head is free of parental inhibitions. That’s the day to steal the key. Gioia Timpanelli, the writer and storyteller, remarked that, mythologically, the theft of the key belongs to the world of Hermes.
And the Key has to be stolen. I recall talking to an audience of men and women once about this problem of stealing the key. A young man, obviously well trained in New Age modes of operation, said, “Robert, I’m disturbed by this idea of stealing the key. Stealing isn’t right. Couldn’t a group of us just go to the mother and say, ‘Mom, could I have the key back?’?”
His model was probably consensus, the way the staff at the health food store settles things. I felt the souls of all the women in the room rise up in the air to kill him. Men like that are as dangerous to women as they are to men.
Getting the key back from under the mother’s pillow is a troublesome task. Freud, taking advice from a Greek play, says that a man should not skip over the mutual attraction between himself and his mother if he wants a long life. The mother’s pillow, after all, lies in the bed near where she makes love to your father. Moreover, there’s another implication attached to the pillow.
No mother worth her salt would give the key anyway. If a son can’t steal it, he doesn’t deserve it.
"I want to let the Wild Man out!"
"Come over and give Mommy a kiss."
Mothers are intuitively aware of what would happen if he got the key: they would lose their boys. The possessiveness that mothers typically exercise on sons – not to mention the possessiveness that fathers typically exercise on daughters – can never be underestimated.
The means of getting the key back varies with each man, but suffice it to say that democratic or nonlinear approaches will not carry the day.

i think that's my favorite image from the iron john book. it doesn't resonate much with me anymore, but when i was a teenager it helped me contextualize the feelings i had about expressing my own agency v. allowing my parents (and mother) to express it for me.

mennns riiiights (james franco voice)

Core MRA ideology IME:
Men get abused more than women.
Only the rape of males is under-reported!!!!
Liberal judges hate men in custody battles.
Alimony and child support are bullshit, maaaaan

i'm not really interested in oppression shop-talk no matter who is making it

hey you guys know what day it is today right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Toilet_Organization#World_Toilet_Day

cba finding that little tick you do but imagine it here

thread needed the fabled duvet of DNRIYHM in the title tbh

http://i.imgur.com/CZC4xZ8.jpg

doesn't look like he's completely surrendered yet

ban dayo from thread pls mods

are you trying to restrict the expression of a man dmac

Im doubtful as to his ally credentials tbph

deems could you write one clear paragraph explaining why the issues raised by this movement are issues that should be addressed through the framework of men's rights

Ilx isn't the place for it also phone also my goodness is that the time

iirc

Serious question, does Fight Club figure into any of this

only in the sense that male expression as free violence + physical force reifies particular views of masculinity

What are the issues raised by the movement and what framework are you referring to tbh?

Typed on my phone while i grabbed a quick cuppa at work, fu wins

I guess I'm also thinking of the parts where they blame their own emasculation on the lack of fathers, or strong father figures, in their lives

maybe w/ stronger father figures they could've developed a sense of worth that didn't result in punching strangers in dimly-lit underground parking lots - if anything tho the problem of fight club wasn't that they were emasculated but that they tried to compensate for that emasculation self-destructively.

they masculated

How does having a strong father figure affect a sense of worth

a father can model how to be in the world

Would you say that a father is sufficient but not necessary for modeling how to be in the world, or is a father both sufficient and necessary for modeling how to be in the world

dgmw daz I'm down with ur evasion of specifics, it's easier to maintain series continuity if deems dastardly gets away just in time at the end of each ep

i don't know if it's necessary, but i can certainly see how lacking a role model for how to perform in certain ways could lead to undesirable results. even having a father is not sufficient bc lots of fathers are terrible father figures.

My evasion of specifics is usually (and u will note it as a constant across most themes) related to my ignorance of the topic at hand, like im not gonna study up on mra to argue about it on ilx, likewise astrology or w/e.

Despite the nomer I don't think this thread is about MRA as exemplified by reddit

Desite requests otherwise iirc, ilx is hardly gonna bother with a separation there i'd imagine

and like if the behavior being modeled is heinous, maybe better to be without entirely. but i think it's natural as a human to look to ppl older than you for guidance on how to act. i have studied (consciously + subconsciously) my parents both to figure out what to do and what not to do. in some ways i've reflected my father in my marriage + as a father myself, and in some ways i've moved away from him, but having him a basis to start from has been a tremendous boon in my life. and on a more esoteric/distant level, i think that our 'forefathers' can have a similar place - something to adopt or reject within the context of a personal familial tradition.

Desite requests otherwise iirc, ilx is hardly gonna bother with a separation there i'd imagine

― 30 ch'lopping days left to umas (darraghmac), Tuesday, November 19, 2013 9:44 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark

Take strength from the courage of your convictions and make a stand against your oppressors, for once

i posted this in hey jews a bit back but i think it's relevant here too

Rav Soloveitchik distinguished between the Sinai covenant that teaches what a Jew should do and the Patriarchal covenant (Brit Avot) – the “I’ awareness of the Jew. 94% of the Jews in the entire study had that awareness. Rabbi Soloveitchik clearly stated that precedence goes to the Patriarchal covenant. How do we learn about this covenant? Rabbi Soloveitchik answered that we learn through exemplarity; Abraham was kind to strangers and argued for justice.

My evasion of specifics is usually (and u will note it as a constant across most themes) related to my ignorance of the topic at hand, like im not gonna study up on mra to argue about it on ilx, likewise astrology or w/e.

― 30 ch'lopping days left to umas (darraghmac), Tuesday, 19 November 2013 14:42 (3 minutes ago)

just glad we know it's the usual deems triangulation thing where you disavow ilx' customary treatment of a subject, then disavow any interest in or concern for the subject itself because you don't want to seem wounded on behalf of its proponents

so you don't REALLY give a shit but give enough of a shit to pretend you don't give a shit

xp ive related a general lack of conviction already tbph

and like if the behavior being modeled is heinous, maybe better to be without entirely. but i think it's natural as a human to look to ppl older than you for guidance on how to act. i have studied (consciously + subconsciously) my parents both to figure out what to do and what not to do. in some ways i've reflected my father in my marriage + as a father myself, and in some ways i've moved away from him, but having him a basis to start from has been a tremendous boon in my life. and on a more esoteric/distant level, i think that our 'forefathers' can have a similar place - something to adopt or reject within the context of a personal familial tradition.

― Mordy , Tuesday, 19 November 2013 14:44 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why does this need to be gendered though? Why the assumption that you can learn more from your father than from your mother, or even different kinds of things?

idk shit about mra either but we both know or can imagine the laundry list of complaints the mra luther will nail to the door of their nearest hooters, and if you can't see why it is ludicrous to list them together as 'men's right's, or alternatively argue that there is a coherent reason for that umbrella of majoritarian special pleading, then you shouldn't have pretended to be interested in the first place

xp lol idk about 'wounded' but will admit a propensity to argue against specific cases rather than for any given thing, other than that eh...

if your arguments are consistenly aligned against the same stuff, then a consistent if vague argument for can be inferred, unles you want us to believe that all your oppositional arguments are just chosen entirely randomly, in which case it's a miracle how consistent they seem

mra is dogshit, mra advocates are delusional victimhood queens, there are instances where men suffer unduly, these need to be remedied but they are not to be understood within a communitarian 'rights' analysis

do you agree or disagree with this formulation? you have to choose one or the other, it's decision time deems

xxxxp i'm not going to take a gender essentialism approach bc i don't believe in one, but speaking personally the things i have learned from my mother are not the things i learned from my father. maybe this is bc of historical cultural mediation, or bc of some level of gender essentialism (having children has clarified for me that some gender distinctions - like regarding pregnancy, breastfeeding, etc - are real + relevant), but whatever it is, my father was able to model to me how to be an adult male and my mother did not. obv for someone like me who participates in a culturally historical community that still operates heavily on gender lines (men wear tefillin and kipot, women light candles friday night) having that male role model might be more significant/important than someone operating in a different environment.

also, despite disavowing gender essentialism, i don't necessarily agree w/ the tenant that, genitalia aside (and sometimes not even that), men + women are exactly the same. if not the least bc of reproduction, but also bc even if gender is *just* culturally mediated doesn't mean it's ignorable or avoidable. i'm not convinced that you can will the reversal of hundreds of thousands of years of gendered performance.

You can challenge it, though! Cultural mediations must be constantly questioned. I am not sure that mothers and fathers are so prescriptively different in their effect on children. A fluid perspective is necessary. And it must take the form of a direct challenge to widely-spoken orthodoxies. Hence why this thread might serve some purpose if retitled and radically centred upon the changing potentialities of 'maleness' vs the marketings of masculinity proponed by a necessarily reactionary consumerist agenda

mra is dogshit, mra advocates are delusional victimhood queens, there are instances where men suffer unduly, these need to be remedied but they are not to be understood within a communitarian 'rights' analysis
do you agree or disagree with this formulation? you have to choose one or the other, it's decision time deems

Ive agreed with this at least twice in the past two days?

Re: arguments against w/e forming a vague argument for 1/(w/e), nah

I agree lj, tho I think a challenge must take the form of an alternative construction as opposed to a simple rejection. Xp

Started new thread

I could burrow round for irish suicide rates and trend of gender-differentiated school reports, homelessess, drug abuse stats and and all that but i mean who cares tbh

― bachmansplain jenny turner overtalk (darraghmac), Monday, 18 November 2013 12:41 (Yesterday)

so what is the relevance of this laundry list?

LJ did we need another thread on this topic

Relevance in the 'who cares tbh' insofar as you are exercised re my position or lack thereof i spose?

yes we did, we needed to have this convo under different & more positive auspices

Looks like it's off to a swimming start

deems i'm just trying to get you to explain why you brought up a list of XY victimhood grievances in the men's rights thread

yes we did, we needed to have this convo under different & more positive auspices

lol no we didn't

i assume the reason there is anxiety about discussing maleness, or men's issues, is bc maleness has been historically hegemonic. when an ilxor asked me why there's a women-only thread but not a men-only thread, i joked that it's bc the rest of ilx is men-only. i don't actually believe that to be true, but i do think there might be a radical component in discussing maleness as a specific phenomenon. instead of assuming that maleness is the default and already well-represented, by keying in on it specifically it disentangles male experience from the 'patriarchy.' left unspoken it just remains this amorphous ruling aesthetic, even though it may not actually operate that way for countless individuals enmeshed in it.

the very invocation of 'maleness' seems to set up some useless dyad of unreconstructed, dogfighting and grain liquor masculinity counterposed against some cool new progressive lifestyle masculinity which will either fail for being too 'emasculated' or too much like a thinly veiled rebranding exercise, it's one of those words that can only fester neurosis and evasion

this reminded me i was going to look up an ol' dirty bastard interview from the nme circla 2000 the other day

there may be value in unearthing historical, cultural alternative definitions of maleness as competitive narratives. surely dogfighting and grain liquor masculinity has a long history in certain western cultures, but it is not the only mode of maleness, and it's kinda, idk, anglocentric to pretend that this is the only dyad worth considering.

http://biblehub.com/genesis/25-27.htm

The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents.

two modes of masculinity there - and acc to the torah it's the later that is emphasized ('staying at home among the tents' is oft explained as staying at home learning/studying texts)

yes the english speaking world represents an anomaly where the rest of the world eschewed violence and selfdestruction

you're not wrong, but for the sake of my theoretical project we have to pretend that historically there have been legitimate variations on male physical expression, even if yr right that male violence is ubiquitous.

It hadn't occurred to me when I clicked on this thread that people would actually be discussing this self-evidently moronic concept seriously.

nobody is discussing it, we're trying to discern why deems made it into a thing

Mordy otm, I'm militating for neither end of nakh's knowingly false dichotomy

Idiot thread hijacked by srs discussion, srs discussion thread hijacked by idiocy, world turns

mordy i was responding to lj in the sadly misbegotten maleness thread which described 'maleness' asa bankrupt orthodoxy, so taken to read the worst excesses of dope lifestyle affliction t-shirt culture rather than the kindly father guiding his sons or whichever contrary historical archetype of benign patriarchy one could invoke

http://i26.tinypic.com/2udyu5e.jpg

unsex me here

don't you have a dope lifestyle to pretend to inhabit gr8s?

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/4281/tynan6in.gif

thread for contemplating the serious issues raised by Max Bygraves

true/false - some males (particularly on ilx) have extreme anxiety when it comes to discussing their own personal histories in the context of gender/sexuality? either g80-style irreverent photo bombing, darragh dissembling, or matt dc's blanket disavowal. surely we're shaped by our genders - either through society or biology or other - so why shouldn't that be relevant to discussion? do ilx women feel the same anxiety discussing femaleness?

Deconstruct 'em Mords - I have lessons now

For my part, I have absolutely surety that most of the ILXors who like to discuss these things have almost zero frame of reference for any facet of my experience of "maleness" and that attempting to discuss it with them would generate a self-perpetuating fountain of well-meaning racism that no one actually wants to read.

fwiw, DJP, I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic. partially bc i imagine your social relationship to a religious community has ramifications for your views on gender/maleness, and partially bc i think some courage is going to be needed to discuss subjective/intimate associations w/ maleness. actually i suspect that MRA comes from an inability to produce an authentic voice of maleness. in the vacuum of its lack of rhetorical expression it gets filled w/ minoritarian oppression discourse. since that's how other identity groups organize, men who otherwise lack a voice latch onto these terms of 'rights,' and discrimination. we all agree that such an approach is at best a waste of time and at worst sexist/inane/moronic/etc, but then what do you fill instead? maleness should not remain this empty vessel - as tho it were the default gender. that's the original problem.

FWIW I am blanketly disavowing the concept of "men's rights" rather than maleness per se.

intersectional maleness def encouraged

http://i.imgur.com/WMtiUoG.jpg

Nakh ill have time to address u fully on friday all goin well if my input to the thread is yr main amusement with it but i threw out those things (really the first two) as two instances that would strike me where there is fairly clear statistical trends suggesting a male-specific issue that might merit discussion... idk if thats a huge prob for u man

drugs/homelessness from professional experience i came across many more men than woman- tbh this can be written off as a product of the prioritisation of families (ito of housing) which in irish system (and most others i assume) grants custody in first instance to the mother so that explains that aspect.

Enjoying mordys posts/thoughts itt.

Am the product of a violently fucked family unit myself without significant female input for most of my early to adolescent life, balanced against an absent but dominant father figure- idk how much i attribute to this in my formulation as a 'male' when i consider these/gender issues and how much comes from wider societal input etc which in rural ireland would prob also leave me at significant variance from ilx proper.

thanks i just wanted you to clarify! though don't you think those issues are best dealt with in specificity rather than considering them subsidiary to some misandrist trend in public life? i'm sure you are correct on the specifics wrt housing because the same disparities exist here, and the family court system is always subject to criticism, some which is warranted

I wasnt criticising tbph, as i say i met these guys

there are a load of shitheads here who seem to have some possibly valid objections to the rulings of the family courts but protest against them in the most self-indulgent way possible, to the extent that they have typecasted fathers in custody disputes as vindictive psychos and lessened sympathy for any injustice that might have occurred

I think all issues are best dealt with in specific tho! Hence my admittedly vexatious habit of kicking against setbuilding exercises here and elsewheres (hence my objection to yr suggestion of 'against x is for y'

fair enough

Cycled home in meantime

Yeah dads4justice are an awful bunch. A terrible men.

So, have men been feminised by society recently?

I would answer that in the negative, bcoz a) essentially 'masculine' or 'feminine' traits, if they do exist, turn out to be pretty hard to find empirically and b) it's just too much of a 'good old days' scenario – once I could have lived up to the ideal of a Man, but that was in the old days, before (whoever) got in the way and also before I was born

(by traits I mean personality traits and behavours, not penis and vagina)

However, in the UK at least (and in the US?) there has been a measurable shift in society with industrial jobs vanishing through being outsourced and a rise in service economy and intellectual labour: anecdotally I know lots of people who were left behind by this shift, could this be a genuine thing, the real story behind the talk of feminists taking over and forcing men to be feminine that one hears so much about on men's rights activism websites

This is generally how I feel about most of the MRA talking points, anyway: their framing of the situation is all wrong and ends up blaming Mummy or Women generally, but there is often some genuine problem or complex underlying it which can and should be talked about without necessarily being shouted down by LOL MALE TEARS.

The talk of 'nice guys' being put in a 'friendzone' is, a percentage of the time, pure dodgy whining, however, some men from certain backgrounds and youths and upbringings will have reason to feel ... a certain way about standards of masculinity (you're only a man if you hate pakis and faggots) that defined who got the girls (who were for shagging, gi a fuck if they get pregnant) and which effectively shut these men out of life (or so it may seem, subjectively) ... a lot of these men could be forgiven (?) if they get their keels caught on the barrier reef of 'I'm a nice guy, why won't people have sex with me' and associated lyrics

iirc donna haraway actually refers to part of that change/process as the feminization of labor—the replacement of stable, career-track jobs w/ less-stable part-time, freelance, etc jobs that resemble the types of work traditionally afforded to and/or forced upon women

xp

Looking at it from another angle, I have often found MRA talk to be a kind of 'overshooting' or 'doth protest too much' discourse, e.g.,

We can all see that Walter White has attractive elements to him, let's discuss that, but woah, you actually think he's the hero of the show?

Yeah, I don't like yuppies either, calculating their relationships like that but woah, hang on guys, you do realise male yuppies are as bad as female yuppies? Right? Oh.

Yeah, sure, 'surface' people seem to do alright for themselves, aren't they awful ... but woah hang on guys women wearing makeup are hardly the worst example of this I mean is that even ...

whenever I stumble upon any of this talk it's like I've fallen into some alternate universe. friendzone? mra? wtf. apparently I am old.

FWIW, there's a handy chart someone's done showing the contradictions of 'The Red Pill', an example of an MRA community on reddit:

http://i.imgur.com/qutEGRb.png

akm, the friendzone is where a woman uses a man (a 'nice guy') for lifts/money/affection, keeping him erotically interested, whilst never planning to bring him into a sexual relationship. The friendzoning woman is supposed to reserve her intimacy for 'bad boys'. The rube tags along, putting the woman on a 'pedestal'. But swallow the Red Pill, and you can escape this 'matrix' of female lies, etc.

It may sound like the sort of thing teenage lads would go on about but no, it's apparently very popular with adult men on the internet and even a few of my IRL acquaintances have been heard to talk about it.

(What, Cardamon, have you honestly never felt like you were this rube? Not quite, at times I've just barely avoided adopting this piece of wisdom, and what prevented me from getting on board with it, even in my saddest little moments, was the undertone of about 'women using thuh men for thuh money'. I've never been in a position to throw money around to try and get sex, so have never really come round to see myself as a man of means at risk of depletion)

i have known men to actively "friendzone" themselves, in what seems a sort of deliberate avoidance strategy. such men befriend attractive young women, shower them with expensive gifts, emotional support, time & attention -- all the while (and somewhat resentfully) hoping for sexual favors that will clearly never materialize. i tend to view such arrangements as the "dating behavior" of guys who are too afraid to actually pursue viable romantic relationships, subbing a glamorous fantasy for the risks & complexities of the real thing.

the idea of just one mra type getting into donna haraway via the feminization of work thing is pure bliss to me

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419F5rPaj7L.jpg

Thread for the focusing on the clownishness of yr stereotypical mra as clowned on every other internet site not actually run by such.

http://i.imgur.com/UiJ6paV.jpg

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/08/american_mens_hidden_crisis_they_need_more_friends/

Funny how for these dudes becoming friends with a woman is like the worst thing thing that can happen

Just another thought: Its ironic that we would find any of this surprising when you realize that all the places where men had access to each other and build friendships have been criticized and demolished.

Mens clubs, the smoke rooms, even sports teams and the military- essentially all the spaces where men were able to bond with each other and build relationships in a way that men could feel comfortable with- have been invaded, criticized and blown open by women and feminism in an effort to undo "patriarchy"

Literally 99% of the comments are like this.

"patriarchy"

The article itself is valid though and not mra-related at all. Macho self-sufficiency is an inhuman value code and trying to live by it leads to loneliness.

The article itself is good (apart from the "man up" ending which I agree with the commenters on).

Self-sufficiency isn't always cos machismo what about social anxiety and stuff?

i have loads of men friends we talk about manly stuff mostly we meet in this men's space called the pub

i am very sympathetic to male social anxiety as that basically is my entire life in three words but at the same time i don't think there's anything to it that is specific to males or maleness xp

in fact i could imagine having many more things to be anxious about on a day to day basis were i a woman

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

Stemple, who works with the Health and Human Rights Project at UCLA, had often wondered whether incidents of sexual violence against men were under-reported. She had once worked on prison reform and knew that jail is a place where sexual violence against men is routine but not counted in the general national statistics. Stemple began digging through existing surveys and discovered that her hunch was correct. The experience of men and women is “a lot closer than any of us would expect,” she says. For some kinds of victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences. Stemple concluded that we need to “completely rethink our assumptions about sexual victimization,” and especially our fallback model that men are always the perpetrators and women the victims.

ok i'm pretty sure that no boys thread is basically just misandry at this point - it's not acceptable when a bunch of men sit around complaining about women, the reverse is equally gross.

no

yup

lmao

liberté, égalité, misandré

you're either trolling or being willfully obtuse

but in case you're not, by some miracle

it is not the same thing because of the various historical, institutional, and societal supports that misogyny has propping it up (cf. cracker vs the n-word)

that's a lovely thought but utter bullshit. the historical reality of misogyny does not excuse a bunch of ppl of a particular gender or race sitting around talking shit about another gender or race. it's not cool and the "historical, institutional, and societal" argument needs to be retired. nb i realize that there's no way i can make this argument without someone going "TROLLING."

like i'd never say "cracker" is as bad a word as the n-word but if a bunch of black ppl started a "no whites allowed" thread and started talking about how white ppl are always doing X, Y, and Z that would be equally uncool. even tho historically white ppl have not been victims of racism.

will no one think of the white men

saying it's okay to shit on someone bc they're a white man is bigotry whether or not they can handle the heat.

tbh i hadn't read the no boys allowed thread b/c it's on some sub-board but now i have read the past 50 or so posts and *applause* everywhere and also none of it is remotely surprising and the shit-talking is about a hundredth as vicious as it could rightly be

it's kinda shocking i even need to be saying this. it should be self-evident.

i don't think *ahem* ALL men are being impugned in that thread, dude

http://i0.wp.com/www.postbourgie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/so-if-its-not-racist-to-have-a-black-history-month-why-cant-we-have-a-white-history-month-hmmm.jpeg?fit=400%2C400

or, to draw a subtle distinction, all of men

when male friends sit around complaining about their wives not ALL women are being impugned but guess what? all women are actually being impugned. that's the nature of gender-based stereotyping, even when it's not about "all men" or "all women"

lol you guys are so gone into the rabbit hole that this very obvious point is eliding you. i'm not calling for a white history month, or claiming that white men experience unfair racism or sexism in society. i agree that white men are at the top of the hierarchy. that's a totally different conversation. i'm saying that just bc they have tons of societal "privileges" doesn't mean it's suddenly fair game to start maligning them as a group.

http://jolulipa.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/misandry-it-has-a-wikipedia-page.jpg

http://37.media.tumblr.com/43d8b3653a56ef93b53fe163f077de43/tumblr_mk4ussZOWB1rl6c79o1_r1_500.gif

fuck off, phil.

http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me0u38mR5U1rl6c79o1_500.gif

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8i3nuOqFW1qb0k5e.gif

misandry gifs <3

absolutely. i am serious about that and i wd like the comedy image macros to stay in one of their other homes.

― thus spake darraghthustra (Noodle Vague), Monday, November 18, 2013 7:13 AM (6 months ago) Bookmark

‘”Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine. So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. “I mean,” I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.” “They’re afraid women will laugh at them,” he said. “Undercut their world view.”

Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?” “They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.’

Margaret Atwood, Writing the Male Character (1982)

http://37.media.tumblr.com/16b69727bed47a5c48ebab4ec1eb00f9/tumblr_miss3lycZ21rl6c79o1_500.jpg

i think your inability to interact w/ this on any kind of level besides google image search copy/pastes is indicative of yr immaturity phil

I think you need to triple your weed intake and stop being an uptight fuck.

I have never lost a minute of sleep worrying that black people might sit around and talk smack about white people *as a race*. I hope they do!

Who is losing sleep? I'm talking about a public thread on a message board.

I'll take that under advisement.

And I was afrad ilx might be boring today.

Mordy, they're just joking in the no boys thread, no need to be all emotional/irrational/sensitive about it.

I only skimmed it but most of what I see in the no-boys thread is not about "hating men" so much as complaining about actual subtly oppressive things real men do or have done to them.

yknow i support misandry and am fully behind the #killallmen project but i dunno, spike hammered into the brain seems a tad harsh.

i grew up in a community where ppl talked shit about "goyim" my entire life, but my parents taught me that bigotry is wrong even when directed from the powerless against the powerful.

http://media.tumblr.com/ee3c57ad6f14d095b6b84ddde88e13c9/tumblr_inline_n38lwms4bg1rkrx3m.jpg

Mordy, what the fuck?

I only skimmed it but most of what I see in the no-boys thread is not about "hating men" so much as complaining about actual subtly oppressive things real men do or have done to them.

― Hier Komme Die Warum Jetzt (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 11, 2014 2:31 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, come on. It's not about hating men at all. It's about actual lived experiences that we are sharing only to find out whoa, hey, other people have this same experience!

I'm sorry if it upsets you. Maybe you need a break from the internet right now.

I only skimmed it but most of what I see in the no-boys thread is not about "hating men" so much as complaining about actual subtly oppressive things real men do or have done to them.

― Hier Komme Die Warum Jetzt (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:31 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the nub, really, Mords

Black Person: "I can never get a cab in the city, these cabbies are so racist"
Mordy: "Bigotry is wrong, whether based on skin color or occupation."

oh, so as long as i've personally experienced being mugged at gunpoint by a black man, it's okay to talk about how black ppl are always mugging you. NOT ALL BLACK PPL. #yesallwhites

cant groan loud enough @ mordy

Jesus Mordy.

no, it's cool, we're just talking about real lived experience so it's okay

u might get more of what you seek at the washington post op-ed page, dude

you all realize this is just about Mordy trying to get someone kicked off of ILX again, right

I love the idea that Mordy just keeps hitting F5 on the "no boys" thread looking for things to be pissy about.

I think I'll go down to the synagogue on the corner tonight and smh at all the people davening while getting offended that they don't think I'm one of God's chosen.

trust me, the things i've heard in the orthodox community about gentiles goes way beyond "not God's chosen."

you all realize this is just about Mordy trying to get someone kicked off of ILX again, right

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Wednesday, June 11, 2014 2:38 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A specific person? Because baiting someone (especially with this amateur hour bullshit) until they leave/get kicked off a website is particularly atrocious behavior.

xp can't he just go troll her on Twitter or does she have him blocked?

xxp I live in a community where little kids wearing yarmulkes and tzitzit stare at the goyim (i.e., me) like they're zoo animals. I'm well aware.

oh ffs, DJP has no idea what motivates me. he's just speculating.

hey bro just man up

Mordy what statement in that thread actually offended you as a man?

Why are you yelling, Mordy? Stop being so sensitive!

guess what - ppl have often told me to stop yelling when i was just speaking sternly to them. it's a gender-pervasive issue that ppl often mishear criticism in a louder voice than it was actually made. women have even told me to stop yelling when i wasn't actually yelling.

gender-pervasive? gender-spanning. or whatever.

women have even told me to stop yelling when i wasn't actually yelling

It's because they're too polite to shut say shut the fuck up.

Oh well, since someone has told you to stop yelling when you weren't yelling, women in the "no boys" thread are definitely misandrist saying that every man is terrible.

That makes perfect sense.

yes, i think taking universal human behavior and ascribing it to a particular gender is sexist

carl a. I think u need to calm down

hey phil, can we maybe have a discussion w/out ur worthless snarks every other post?

Is it because I said to punch men in the dick when they accuse women of yelling when they aren't yelling? Because I definitely meant that women should always punch every man they meet in the dick all the time, definitely, no exceptions, no questions asked. 24/7 dickpunching.

xp

You're asking for it, Phil D.

yes, i think taking universal human behavior and ascribing it to a particular gender is sexist

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 2:50 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is there room in your thinking to acknowledge that women experience this from men more than men experience it from anybody else?

Based on the fact that women are telling you this is what happens to them.

xxp I wouldn't get my hopes up, frankly, since you're being kind of a dumbshit here.

you know ilx turned into mordy's troll zone/abyssal primal scream therapy appointment so gradually i didn't even notice.

it's certainly possible but i think you have no idea who experiences it more commonly. you only have access to your own experience. xxp

just remember that mordy is a boardgame playing stoner

Whereas you have access to so much experience that you can say for sure what is more common? xp

And actually, I have access to any experience that other women share about it, such as on the no boys allowed thread. You have access to that experience, too.

no, but i can tell you that i've experienced the same thing

Black Person: "I always get followed around in every store I shop in."
Mordy: "I was once followed around in a store too. It's not a race thing."

I don't know. This is getting kind of boring.

Mordy, you should go outside and get some fresh air, try to look at this a little more rationally instead of just getting upset and taking something that is in no way shape or form directed at you so personally.

Mordy: "I was also once wrongfully stopped by the police. There's no profiling, police just make mistakes."

once? i've had this experience hundreds of times! being told not to yell is a recurring feature in my life.

http://blog.syracuse.com/specialreports/2007/09/medium_John%20Roberts.jpg

my parents taught me that bigotry is wrong even when directed from the powerless against the powerful.

Mordy, you should go outside and get some fresh air, try to look at this a little more rationally instead of just getting upset and taking something that is in no way shape or form directed at you so personally.

I hope this is a joke right and you didn't just tell me to look at this rationally and not get so upset?

because if it's not a joke, then that's my point

Wow, you don't have much of a sense of humor about this do you?

The only charitable guess here is that it's possible to develop an Ultra Bad Vibes w33d strain and that Mordy accidentally got some of it. Otherwise, smdh.

Sometimes you've just got to respect a poster for uniting ILX like this.

idgi, if your point is that these put-downs are just as natural when directed from a woman to a man, then yes, i agree? you think no one has ever told me to get a sense of humor about something before? only women have experienced that particular repression of their feelings + emotions?

I respect him for proving that "Flag Post" is bullshit.

maybe you have a loud voice mordy.

i do have a loud voice

Mordy, my point is that you're full of shit and I've seen this argument out of you before and I know actually attempting to discuss it with you goes nowhere and trolling you is getting boring and I've got work to do.

i've spent many years practicing lowering + modulating it bc of the feedback i've gotten from my normal speaking voice.

women have even told me to stop yelling when i wasn't actually yelling.

um...

yes, stevie. duh.

Mordy, my point is that you're full of shit and I've seen this argument out of you before and I know actually attempting to discuss it with you goes nowhere and trolling you is getting boring and I've got work to do.

― carl agatha, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 11:03 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

my point is very simple - don't talk about men in a way that would bother you if you heard men using it to talk about women. the only person being maligned + degraded for expressing their opinion here is me. i haven't accused you of trolling, or said you're full of shit. if you really can't discuss this respectfully consider that it's because you recognize on some level that you're wrong.

Dude stop yelling.

I feel like I should be playing Reddit bingo

Mordy, what post on that thread actually offended you?

And ftr, while it sucks to be told "stop yelling" when you're not yelling, there is a big contextual difference between a man yelling at a woman and a woman yelling at a man, in most cases.

why are yall engaging with this

slow work day

Personally, I was procrastinating drafting a settlement agreement.

xp ha

carl u get a medal of honor today

Personally, I was procrastinating drafting a settlement agreement.

― carl agatha, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 11:11 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

loool I am procrastinating finalizing a settlement brief

"Oh boy"s allowed

Gonna start a butthurt boys' treehouse thread for Mordy

it's interesting how i can make a very simple argument w/ no cursing, capital letters, insults, etc, and the overwhelming ilx reaction is "relax, don't be so butthurt."

it's almost like pointing out the obvious - that a woman's only thread that complains about men is probably sexist - is upsetting to ppl

taking the rational man track, conventional move but safe

a woman's only thread that complains about men is probably not sexist

Shhh, quiet everyone, Mordy is BLOWING OUR MINDS.

carl massively otm in this thread, but also props to NA for his very otmness re: 'Flag Post' being utter bullshit

lol jon, you can never resist an opportunity to jump on a clusterfuck pile can you? you must be the most insecure human alive.

the one woman's only thread that we have as evidence isn't sexist

i read it occasionally, seems mostly like people recounting specific instances of x or y thing

you must be the most insecure human alive.

irl busted gut at this one

as a meta point i really wonder if you thought reviving this thread of all threads (with that complaint of all complaints) would change discourse on that other thread at all

"oh my god, we've been so unfair. what have we become..."

it's almost like pointing out the obvious - that a woman's only thread that complains about men is probably sexist - is upsetting to ppl

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 11:21 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Are you somehow thinking that this is all that goes on on that thread?

no, i'm aware that other things go on in that thread. i'm not talking about those things.

most (if not all) of the women who post here are perfectly affable people so i try not to freak out if i read something makes me uncomfortable on the no boys allowed thread. it's a thread for sharing & comparing experiences, and some of that includes collective experiences of misogyny & patriarchy. don't take what you read on that thread personally because it's not about you personally! i think that thread is a good thing for ILX and for ILXors. if you think there needs to be a thread where e.g. men & women alike can talk about annoying assholes who tell you to calm down & stop yelling, you can start one anytime

hella xposts

as a meta point i really wonder if you thought reviving this thread of all threads (with that complaint of all complaints) would change discourse on that other thread at all

i guess we'll see. i've been shit on for an opinion before by the ilx majority but found the discourse shifted after it was expressed. so who knows? i think if ppl consider a counterfactual where ilx has a men's only thread and the men on that thread start complaining about things women do that they don't like, they'll understand where i'm coming from. unless they disagree fundamentally with the idea that certain ways of speaking are problematic no matter who it is directed at.

you must be the most insecure human alive.

. . . says the guy monitoring the women-only thread for MISANDRY.

i read the thread bc some of my favorite posters (including the one whose IM on fb this morning inspired this bump) post there. i don't monitor it.

BTW you've been asked several times to point to specific posts that you found problematic and have declined to do so, so idk. Maybe you don't think women should have their own spaces.

where ilx has a men's only thread

this is most threads on ilm, yes?

no, there are no threads on ilx where a woman can be thread-banned for posting on it

(and there shouldn't be.)

certain ways of speaking are problematic no matter who it is directed at.

Maybe Morby's issues are more about language and use of language than sexism per se.

everyone piling on the uberjewish guy ITT, maybe idk consider the optics here.

nagl IMO.

yo I don't have time to look for image macros that combine misandry and antisemitism, let's just stick to the topic

i think if ppl consider a counterfactual where ilx has a men's only thread

You might want to consider a bigger counterfactual re: the power balance of men and women in the world. Why on earth are you bothered by a thread that's a safe space where female posters can talk without someone butting in to say "not all men"? Who's it hurting?

it's just kind of a weird coincidence that ilx always chooses to go after its most prominent jewish poster

Maybe Morby's issues are more about language and use of language than sexism per se.

― Comfrey Mugwort (Bob Six), Wednesday, June 11, 2014 10:36 AM (51 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah no duh he's hung up on the semantics of "sexism" instead of the realities/practicalities of sexism which is fine until playing word games becomes an excuse for real discrimination.

yeah iatee, I'm sayin

that or one of the Irish ime

i guess the core of my argument is that the presence of sociological/historical inequalities does not erase the stigma of bigotry. i don't think any identity group complaining about any other identity group is somehow a good thing bc they've been historically oppressed. it's just reifying these gender/race bigotries in a new form. it's punching up, so obv it's nowhere near as bad as the same thing punching down, but it's in no way a good thing. it perpetuates the fundamental dichotomies that need to be challenged, not reaffirmed.

So your point is "get over it"

I think it's time to bring up the issue of goy privilege

"You've been fucked over for thousands of years and the system is still intrinsically biased against you, but get over it"

exactly

honestly this bump started bc someone IM'd me to say "you should start a 'no goys allowed' thread" and i realized how ridiculous + offensive such a thing would be.

I don't remember doing that but I can't outright deny it tbh mordy

like seriously, if i started a no goys allowed thread and then all the jews posted complaints about gentiles as a group -- idk, i don't think anyone would feel comfortable with that. and not bc "sure you've been oppressed for thousands of years but you should get over it."

it wasn't you deems

I'd be fine with that. Sounds boring tbh.

ok i need to go to some luncheon at my daughter's school. feel free to clusterfuck w/out me

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/CylonInTheMirror.jpg

98% of ILX would be delighted by a "no goys allowed" thread tbh

It honestly sounds like something that might be useful and educational for you.

the serious issues

Speaking as a white male goy I couldn't possibly give a shit if you started such a thread.

can the jews get a secret board

is there any way to be sure a poster is Jewish...?

why is this board different from all other boards?

One of the Orthodox Jews in my neighborhood stole our Obama lawn sign in 2008. That wasn't very nice.

phil are you sure you aren't jewish, that is a very jewish question

The funniest thing is that two bumps above is a discussion of the problem with the lack of 'men's clubs' and other safe places for male discussion...

That is what the 'no boys allowed' thread is, a safe space. I've read stuff there where I've thought 'NOT ALL MEN', but then again, who cares? I've also read stuff that blew my mind on how behavior I just considered friendly and funny could be perceived. I like that thread, it's very insightful, though ocasionally I disagree with posts. I would also love a 'no goys allowed' thread.

i guess the core of my argument is that the presence of sociological/historical inequalities does not erase the stigma of bigotry. i don't think any identity group complaining about any other identity group is somehow a good thing bc they've been historically oppressed. it's just reifying these gender/race bigotries in a new form. it's punching up, so obv it's nowhere near as bad as the same thing punching down, but it's in no way a good thing. it perpetuates the fundamental dichotomies that need to be challenged, not reaffirmed.

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 11:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We know what you think Mordy. Your thinking on this is just way out of step with the values of the community of ILX. There are plenty of other boards where you will find like-minded individuals on this point though.

congrats mordy you've convinced me to reconsider my long-standing objection to the use of flag post

i too would support a no goys allowed thread

Thing is there's actually an intelligent and nuanced conversation to be had about misandry and where it genuinely does exist (and it's just as likely to be directed by one group of men against another) but that hardly ever happens because dudes just prefer to throw up their hands and act outraged because women are discussing their experiences of misogyny on the internet.

(Not all dudes)

phil forgot to post this one so i'm taking care of it

http://i.imgur.com/gctAV6q.jpg

i don't know where mordy is going with this one tbh but folks around here sure have a negative reaction to having their assumptions challenged. glad everyone is so confident in their truth that it needs no examination. pillory the mordys and fete the nabiscos, the repackagers of our collective received wisdom.

Wow, makes you think

about the efficacy of flag post.

Mordy, my point is that you're full of shit and I've seen this argument out of you before and I know actually attempting to discuss it with you goes nowhere and trolling you is getting boring and I've got work to do.

― carl agatha, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 3:03 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is why i didn't engage and went for a run instead but full applause to everyone for dealing with this nonsense so well

I didn't realize so many of you had caught on to Mordy.

Don't get misandry in yr shorts

I think Mordy's point, once filtered of its bullshit 'misandry' canard, concerns the exclusionary 'safe space' aspect of the no boys thread. This does merit consideration. I would suggest, as a thought experiment, moving the thread to ILE and renaming it 'Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate'.

pls tell me that post is a self-deprecating joke

my 5th FP itt now

Ain't deprecating me. I do believe we're fighting the same cause?

That FP wasn't for me? I'm fairly obviouly jibing (affectionately but firmly) at Mordy here

fuck off

Oh go to hell you moron

sometimes in a safe space you only want to be safe from ppl who rly enjoy loudly having opinions about everything.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/cm/roadandtrack/images/b8/2005-chrysler-crossfire-convertible.jpg

the no boys allowed thread was, iirc, instituted because a number of ilx women felt it was impossible for them to discuss gender-specific issues w/out ilx dudes coming in and either derailing things via perhaps-well-meaning but-still-digressive digressions, or ilx trolls derailing things because they are just fucking awful. i am a boy and it does not hassle me one bit that the thread exists - what bums me out is that the climate here (and elsewhere) was (and clearly is) such that the ilx women who started it felt they would not be able to have the conversation they desired without explicitly excluding men.

i really do not see why this is hard to understand or why anyone would be so un-self-aware as to get all #notallmen about it.

#yesalltrolls

xp otm

not too hard to understand unless you are either dim or an asshole

I fucking know why you need safe spaces esp if part of victimised community, I was pointing out there was already a place to engage with these issues on ILE, what the fuck do you think I am

Tonedeaf idiots

heh

yeah I would think Mordy should perhaps consider why, on a forum filled with straight white boys, he is the only one who seems visibly bothered by the existence of a girls-only thread. kind of makes me think it's more to do with his dislike of one of the contributors.

i don't know where to put this so i'm putting it here

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/authorities-wealthy-men-drugged-nyc-strippers-24085220

So wait, they drugged the dude who went on the record and took him to the strip club he goes to all the time anyway?

that's a hell of a "I caught it off the toilet seat, darling" effort imo

mordy where is your indignation

i mean dmac

I'm chill today tbh. I like the thread in q I think its a cool space. its been used like twitter by the odd poster the odd time but not too often, and obv I disagree with almost everything anyone says in it, but that is tbh my normal experience and no reason I begrudge a single thread where I forbear arguing the toss.

[odd poster

http://i.imgur.com/QixWagJ.jpg

I mean, I'm not on Mordy's side here (everyone has the right to whatever fucking form of discourse they reasonably desire, and if this is a women-only support thread then that is surely reasonable, given the nature of shared female experience and its often negative distinction from a male counterpart - the same goes for the trans* thread, although they seem cool w/ cis participation as long as it doesn't set the agenda. Gay thread ditto. Those are threads with very clear agenda-setting principles, though - establishing a safe space for female experience-sharing is much murkier and so it may well be safer to exclude the male voice for now), BUT

ILX can be fucking useless at engaging sometimes, preferring to take a swing before fully understanding what someone is trying to say. Intellect sacrificed, zing privileged. Largely male posters, I dare add

http://i57.tinypic.com/dc8q2r.gif

I am fully clear on what Mordy is "trying to say." It is neither novel nor consciousness-expanding in any way. I have heard this "nuanced point of view" a million times before, including from Mordy. It is an obtuse and point-missing POV.

I am cool with a "no goys allowed" thread

If I didn't like something posted there, I could look at the thread title and think "well, this isn't for me" and leave

Kind of like how some posters, when they post in a certain way, really irritate me. But they seem to provide something for other people, and no one really takes their words to heart, so who cares? I can skip those posts.

I mean, I guess I could just killfile darragh, but that seems like overkill

sorry, I meant to type "some posters" in that last bit, no offense meant

feel like mordy is calling for Good Discourse. 'safe spaces' are bubbles & that effects discourse in different ways. in more extreme cases than a lone ilx thread, the concentration of similar views can lead to them being reinforced, cemented or escalated. all the ridiculous extremes tumblr politics - cf. http://twitter.com/TumblrTXT - were only ever going to develop within a more limited network of ppl who can refine their own agreement & common experiences. but so what?

lots of discourse has problematic elements to it, even when its deeply cathartic. where discourse feeds into a power imbalance (&c.) you have egalitarian grounds to intervene, but there's no position above from which 'punching up' can be policed. all you can really do is create self-awareness & awareness of how other modes of discourse function.

depends on if you think confronting ppl about their unacceptable talk is appealing to some universal etiquette or if you think it's about trying to avoid the more injurious elements of power imbalances

look how many people itt are just thrilled about the idea of a separate space just for the jews.... http://i60.tinypic.com/2ufr4pf.gif

lol pwn

fwiw, if the Hey Jews thread was constantly interrupted by goys *just pointing out* that there were other atrocities besides the holocaust and that they had also been called money-grubbing before it's really not a religion thing, or even if it was just 70% goys giving their opinions on Jewish topics, then I would see the need for a no goys allowed thread.

I want to clarify that though I mentioned a consideration about that thread being a possible exclusionary spaces, I don't have any issue with 99% of the things posted on it. I think that the particular discourse of complaining about male behavior (obligatory "notallmale" joke here) would be better served in a co-ed space where men can interact with the complaint. Maybe the people complaining will discover that their complaints are more universal. I understand the assertion that the thread allows women to share experiences that they would otherwise not be able to share - but as a man who has grown up surrounded by women I would assert that these spaces are not uncommon. I've been hearing women complain about men in their lives my entire life. I don't think complaining about men is a feminist thing.

And Hurting, I think you'd find gentiles posting a lot more on Hey Jews if the thread participants ever started talking about the negative experiences they've had with gentiles and how it's endemic to society. (We actually have a thread like that - it's called the anti-semitism thread and gentiles do post on it talking about how they don't think a particular thing is anti-semitic.)

somebody get this guy a bigger shovel.

jon, go start a racewar.

i sometimes read the "no boys" thread, though i haven't in a while. i usually think it's one of the best threads on ILX and that i wish the rest of the board (hell, the rest of the internet) were more like it. it's generally chill, funny and informative, mostly free of blowhard ranting and "look at me" info flexing. a nice place.

i read it this afternoon in the wake of all this fuck cluster and thought more-or-less the same. except [redacted] bugs me and her posts make me ia. nothing particularly "sexist" abt the discussion tho. i dunno, maybe there should be a guys only sweatbox treehouse thread for cootie-free discussion of man stuff. i don't imagine it would get much use, though. the whole fucking world is p much "safe space" for men to vent about their issues.

the entire reason there is a thread is that we do have threads where men can chime in, and women felt uncomfortable on those threads at some points. you can post in them about this!

uh - i am. it's not like i hijacked the boys old thread to talk about this. i found a totally different thread to discuss it. and btw, ppl don't have to feel compelled to chime in just bc this conversation is going on. like surely the thread title should've tipped anyone off that they might not agree w/ what is found within?

boys old = i meant to say no boys allowed

the "suspected ringleader's" name is SAMANTHA BARBASH?? haha

it's also gross that your response is to tar an entire thread with the "all women" brush when it's most likely one or two posts you take issue with, and you feel "all men" are being impugned

btw not all women are partaking in whatever the fuck it is you think it is

Mordy, if there are really posts that offend you, you can literally cut and paste them into the other gender thread and discuss them there. I have now asked you three times to identify a single post that actually offended you, and you have not.

like why aren't you addressing specific points instead of impugning the thread

btw women, Mordy doesn't speak for me, not that I think anyone identifying as a woman on ilx is dumb enough to think he does

Maybe the people complaining will discover that their complaints are more universal.

I mean probably mean get catcalled and street-harassed and threatened with violence if they turn guys down all the time, probably.

mean=men, lol freud

Is it still unacceptable to make dongle jokes in mixed company?

And fwiw, I think it would actually be fine to have a thread to legitimately discuss specifically "men's issues" or whatever you want to call them. But I think any such discussion would have to take into account that gender is not some kind of level playing field where all perceived slights are equal and can be freed from their context. There are plenty of things arguably wrong with the way our society views/treats men, but you can't discuss them as the mirror image of women's issues. It's not the same dynamic.

ffs. i didn't post quotes bc a) i thought that posts in that thread were supposed to remain in that thread and b) bc i thought ppl could read it themselves and get a sense of the conversation w/out needing specific quotes but sure what the hell

Oh god, yeah. In man-speak "she was YELLING AT ME" means basically "she contradicted in any way." Like the moment one of these men encounters any kind of resistance from a woman, they are instantly 3 years old and back in the nursery and MUMMY IS BEING UNFAIR!!!11

It makes me so angry, the way we are *constantly* expected to manoeuvre and dodge and generally compensate for men and their weird attitudes about women, but god forbid, you ever develop any coping strategies, then that's "manipulative")

What would be a good comeback?
Punch in the dick?

I think that the particular discourse of complaining about male behavior (obligatory "notallmale" joke here) would be better served in a co-ed space where men can interact with the complaint.

if this is what it comes down to then no i don't agree. what you're describing is the whole rest of the planet

the entire rest of the planet is full of men complaining to men about women and women complaining to women about men. it is not full of men and women discussing their issues together.

I wonder why that is? I bet women have some strong opinions on that, let's ask some.

Literally every post you make Phil is some little shit snark, and it has been for as long as I've noticed you posting on ilx.

even granting that that is true, do you expect the women of ilx to want to sit down a discuss their issues with you now? like even tactically this whole thing you're pulling today is asinine

Literally.

Mordy is boredy

I think that the particular discourse of complaining about male behavior (obligatory "notallmale" joke here) would be better served in a co-ed space where men can interact with the complaint.

what are the features/objectives of this that would be better served w/ male input? I think discussion of how maleness functions as an impersonal force is worthwhile

I love dogs of all sizes, doesn't matter. Unfortunately, we don't have one; we've had our cats a long time and I don't think they would adjust well.

One of my friends has a mastiff named Sasha, who is the sweetest, friendliest dog around. Sasha can stand on her hind legs and put her paws on my shoulders without stretching, and I'm 5'9". Another has an adorable little Schipperke. They're all awesome!

― Disagree. And im not into firey solos chief. (Phil D.), Wednesday, June 11, 2014 9:29 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was gonna call you out for this post, phil

also, mordy, while i often side w/ you in discussions of this sort, i think you're being awfully obtuse in seeming to suggest that "discussions between women of men" and "discussions between men of women" take place on equal footing. it's perhaps tiresome to trot out patriarchy, centuries of often violent oppression, massive persistent power imbalances, deeply sexist culture at large, and all that, but these things have to factor in. a group of relatively disempowered and oppressed people "complaining" about the behavior of their relatively empowered oppressors is not in any meaningful way equivalent to the same discussion with the tables turned.

xp lol

I mean, the internet is replete with stories of women from all social strata, of all races, of all gender and sexual identifications, of all professional and educational levels, participating in such co-ed spaces and being roundly shouted down by, contradicted by, talked over by, and/or condescended to by the men participating. I can come up with ten zillion examples in about five minutes, were I so inclined. So it is either pointless trolling, breathtaking naivete or haughty stupidity to take the pose Mordy is taking here.

(Lest we forget, the term "mansplaining" -- which I know Mordy hates -- was coined by an author after being repeatedly told by a man at a dinner party that a book she had written was by someone else, almost certainly another man.)

There's your fucking snark.

i didn't suggest that the two take place on equal footing (and i distinguished above between punching up + punching down), i'm suggesting that despite is being much different than the opposite phenomenon, women talking about men in a women's only space is not liberatory, but just more of the same.

I think that the particular discourse of complaining about male behavior (obligatory "notallmale" joke here) would be better served in a co-ed space where men can interact with the complaint.

hell no. if you can't read the women's thread without going into full meltdown about the fact that you're not allowed to argue back, then maybe you shouldn't be reading it in the first place. it's not like there aren't other threads to read.

women talking about men in a women's only space is not liberatory, but just more of the same.

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 11:28 AM (10 seconds ago)

who are you to say? it's not your space. let it go.

xp contenderizer otm (/nosnark)

Full meltdown? I think you're misreading my tone. I'm not angry at all.

I'd love to talk about how the term mansplaining is patently sexist tho.

if you can't read the women's thread without going into full meltdown

I'm a male being accused of having an intense emotional reaction that doesn't fit my demeanor or expressiveness at all. This is not a phenomenon unique to women. It's common.

I'd love to talk about how the term mansplaining is patently sexist tho.

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 2:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

go for it ace

not that this is my space or my issue, but...

what you're calling "complaining", mordy, others used to call "consciousness-raising", and i'd argue that it does have real value. it helps people understand that their individual experiences are valid, shared, larger than themselves. i do not think that a man's instruction to women that they should avoid critiquing men lest they become sexist themselves in any way helpful. it's frankly condescending.

as an aside, i've found that being criticized and not being allowed to snap back can be a marvelous (if bitter) tonic. stockholm syndrome, yadda yadda...

Don't you think it's at least a little bit ironic, Mordy, that the very posts you're complaining about are primarily about the topic of men using tactics to prevent or detract from women from expressing themselves?

Because it takes a negative behavior (patronizing/condescending) and implies that it is uniquely applicable to a particular group of ppl (males). I can't think of any other example of adding a group of people to a negative behavior that wouldn't be immediately, self-evidently a problem.

And suddenly you're complaining about the fact that you can't skydive into their thread and tell them, in that thread, why they're wrong.

Do you believe that having someone disagree with you represses your ability to express yourself?

I find the things that inhibit my ability to express myself are being banned from spaces (like FP threats), dismissive mockery, and being ignored. I've never felt that someone arguing with me suppressed me - and in fact, I think arguments often help me express myself better since there's something to push against.

I believe that if an entire race of people who, on average, were larger, more aggressive, and physically stronger than me were constantly not only loudly disagreeing with me but telling me that I was "crazy" "overemotional" "hysterical" etc. for feeling the way I felt, and also sometimes -- not constantly but not infrequently either -- backing their words with physical violence, it would repress my ability to express myself.

Because it takes a negative behavior (patronizing/condescending) and implies that it is uniquely applicable to a particular group of ppl (males).

Of course, it does no such thing. In fact, it's the exact opposite; it characterizes a pattern of behavior in which women are presumed by men to know less about a topic - even a topic on which they are an expert - by virtue of their gender.

Mordy, think about it this way: Do you actually feel like YOU need a safe space to express yourself, or are you just offended by being excluded from someone else's? It seems to me that you are saying you don't actually feel the need for a safe space. Well guess what, some of the female members of this board feel that they do. Why do you think that is? Has it ever occurred to you to stop and try to empathize with them instead of just viewing everything through the lens of your experience? It seems implicit to me that, if you do not take seriously their expressed need for that thread, then you don't take them seriously either. Which just kind of further justifies the thread existing.

IME, it seems MRAs are nearly singularly concerned with things like child support and parental custody issues in terms of legitimate concerns. Seems to me like the whole scene is a mixture of divorced dads who feel disenfranchised and opportunist misogynists looking to legitimize their cracked take on feminism and identity politics.

However, I have often heard the refain of "you men made that up yourselves" (as if we are a monolith) from tumblr social justice ppl when the issues and feelings of a lack of agnecy when it comes to constricting and harsh male gender roles are brought up. Personally, if there's any men's issue tackling, I think its the dismantling of male gender norms and I think some men feel left out of the party when femisism continues to focus most of it's attention on dismantling female gender norms.

So if this is something men want to band together and tackle I don't see a problem with it, but the MRA scene is just not progressive in that way and filled with too much of the vindictive, entitled "nice guy who got friendzoned" mentality.

tl;dr: #KillAllAlphaMales.

mordy, there is some very basic point on which i think we strongly agree. maybe it's the insistence that even laudably-motivated identity/social justice politics can be harmful to discourse and critical thinking in general. maybe that's just the whimper of the curtailed overseer, i dunno, but i do stand by it. i get pissed when people read this as "devil's advocacy", but ILX being what it is, i've more or less made my peace.

despite that basic agreement (perhaps imaginary?), i don't get why you're digging in on this particular fight. like goole said, even from a tactical standpoint, it makes no sense.

*men's issue WORTH tackling (XP)

I don't know that I'm digging in on this! I don't think I've argued this particularly strenuously. I get that ilx is kinda allergic to dissent of any kind but I think ppl reading this read need to relax.

reading this thread*--

Hurting, I understand that POV, and I do take seriously the request to have a safe space to discuss. I wonder if a) that space would be better on an invite-only board, and b) I can't help but question its necessity on ilx (who do the women of ilx need to be protected from? me? deems? certainly not the 99% of posters arguing on this thread). But you notice I'm not imagebombing their thread. I'm expressing delicate dissent elsewhere.

Why do you think it's your place to decide, sorry, to have any say whatsoever, in how that space would "better" be operated, and who the women of ilx "need to be protected from"?

I don't think I have any say outside expressing my opinion. I certainly don't have a vote and I'm not in a position of power to make any changes.

Like what's your question? Why am I even talking? How dare I even have an opinion? Or how dare I express my opinion and not just suppress it?

one key thing I am keenly aware of when listening in on discourse amongst ppl who are in some sense less privileged than me is that there is a v powerful sense in which my opinion is completely worthless & unwelcome & I am cool w/ it. it's good just to listen sometimes

Like what's your question? Why am I even talking? How dare I even have an opinion? Or how dare I express my opinion and not just suppress it?

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 2:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, you should not have an opinion on whether women feel safe.

You do not get to have an opinion about what other people feel.

well that's not strictly true, everyone gets to have an opinion on everything; it's just good to be prepared for reactions when you start sharing your opinions

i have an opinion that a place does not need to protect you from dissent to be considered safe. it's not one i'm going to give up.

and if someone feels that dissent makes them feel unsafe, i don't have an opinion about whether they truly feel that way (how could i know?) but i do have an opinion about whether that's an appropriate feeling

lol @ even calling this "dissent"

Like do you know what the word dissent even means? Every post you make is dripping with failure to get it.

what else would you call it? i'm certainly not hurting anyone or threatening anyone. there is no danger to anyone's safety in this thread. if someone tries to construe it otherwise then they are wrong imo.

"appropriate feeling"

I like dissent! I disagree with a lot of what is written in the 'no boys allowed' thread, but I still learn from it. I disagree with most of what you, mordy, write on Israel and anti-semitism, still find it interesting and useful. What you're writing in this thread is klichés I've seen a million times before, it's boring and useless and dull.

i have an opinion that a place does not need to protect you from dissent to be considered safe. it's not one i'm going to give up.

ok, but obviously it carries v little weight given the dynamics involved & ppl are going to make fun of you if you insist on voicing it

I'd join your safe-space Mordy, because I have a deep interest in smashing gender norms and engendering an expression of emotions other than the "acceptably male" ones of anger and smug self-confidence. I believe that the current kyriarchy leads men, consciously or not, to act out these obnoxious and sometimes quite dangerous behaviors as a form of socio-cultural acting in accord with how men are "supposed to act" and I think it would be an interesting experiment to see if these breakdown and dissipate within a true safe-space for men to explore their fears and true feelings.

Of course, I also think there are a lot of dude-bros who have been so well socially indoctrinated that they have no concept of a true self outside of gender norms and expectations of mindless consumerism. Perhaps re-education camps are a solution (j/k but kinda not a j/k).

The word "dissent" means minority opposition to a dominant position. A man cannot "dissent" to women expressing their frustration at feeling shut up by men.

Hurting, I'm pretty sure my opinion on this thread is in the minority on ilx.

Describing how everyday phenomena -- someone ignoring someone, shouting them down, being rude or condescending -- form part of a larger system of oppression is part of feminism. I think in the macro this is totally right, all the male behaviors described in threads like the no boys thread are real and dealing with them is a large part of women's experiences that men can't really relate to. Sometimes though this lens isn't 100% foolproof for evaluating particular instances and men can get tagged as mansplainers or something for behaviors that don't warrant that label. But the patterns are still true, even with the million and one exceptions so it's not invalid for women to think about these patterns when evaluating their interactions with men. Basically there's no avoiding having women regard you skeptically and this is perfectly fair, circumstances being what they are. You can't get the benefit of the doubt all the time. I don't think it makes sense to dismiss these patterns of microaggressions as "stereotypes" because they are elucidating as well as distorting rather than just distorting.

I'm sure this experience happens to both men and women universally, if they would just sit down together and TALK about it.

phil, you've convinced me that women experience sexism and problems that men do not. since that is definitely what i was arguing about, you've performed a valuable service.

Phil D, being persistently sexually harassed on the job by larger, more physically intimidating people is equally bad whether it happens to men or women.

I can't help but question its necessity on ilx (who do the women of ilx need to be protected from? me? deems?

jfc empathy fail

If nothing else I've irritated you, which is sufficiently valuable that I feel like I can take the rest of the day off.

oh phil you don't need to make a special effort to irritate me. just go about your normal posting business.

Both men and women can be bigots. For example, men try to shut women up, and women complain about men trying to shut them up. Neither is ok.

Hurting, wait until I tell you who the real racists are. It's gonna rock your world.

lol you don't think women try to shut men up? what planet do you live on?

you are so obtuse. I'm done.

so i don't really want to participate in the conversation that is currently happening here but i am sort of curious about the relationship btwn white hetero men and the proliferation of discussion for/by various identity groups that seems to have really blown up on ilx and on what i'm going to lazily call the liberal/left areas of the internet (blogs, news sources, my fb/twitter feeds and perhaps yours too) over the past 1-2 years. and there is this cycle of self-congratulation that happens whenever something, and it's frequently a trivial thing, gets called out as racist or sexist or w/e, and the audience for the self-congratulation prob includes members of the impacted identity group as well as liberal/left-leaning white hetero men who are totally sympathetic to the identity group and who yeah may get tired of being told daily that their group is causing all these problems, and they know it's true but this stuff is not reaching ppl who are doing the real oppressing, it's just endlessly echo chambering on facebook, and god why did i post this i'm going to stfu now.

http://www.reddit.com/user/RedditorBingo

lol sorry CAD, that was poor timing on my part

aw you jerk

*sheepishly updates tumblr*

but this stuff is not reaching ppl who are doing the real oppressing

It's a marathon not a sprint

I often wish I had turned out to be a str8 man bcz i believe women like me more than gay men do, but this thread has made me fall to my knees in thanksgiving for my Kinsey number.

more like whack a mole than either marathon or sprint imo.

I don't think that the "women of ilx" ever said they needed to be protected from anyone, I believe it was expressed several times on this thread that female posters felt that their discussions were frequently derailed by male posters and therefore never went anywhere. I don't think that was at all unclear. If you disagree that anyone was derailing the discussions that's fine, but it's clearly not the experience of the people participating.

I find the social media shaming/calling out circle often frustrating myself, but I don't think this exactly qualifies. I'm usually more of a lurker but a lot of Mordy's posts seem designed to provoke as much as possible without being obviously insincere or trolling.

probably being capt obvious itt but w/e

jeez what'd I do to you this time mh

ok i'm pretty sure that no boys thread is basically just misandry at this point - it's not acceptable when a bunch of men sit around complaining about women, the reverse is equally gross.

― Mordy, Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:05 (5 hours ago) Permalink

I want to clarify that though I mentioned a consideration about that thread being a possible exclusionary spaces, I don't have any issue with 99% of the things posted on it. I think that the particular discourse of complaining about male behavior (obligatory "notallmale" joke here) would be better served in a co-ed space where men can interact with the complaint. Maybe the people complaining will discover that their complaints are more universal. I understand the assertion that the thread allows women to share experiences that they would otherwise not be able to share - but as a man who has grown up surrounded by women I would assert that these spaces are not uncommon. I've been hearing women complain about men in their lives my entire life. I don't think complaining about men is a feminist thing.

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 6:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I find the social media shaming/calling out circle often frustrating myself, but I don't think this exactly qualifies. I'm usually more of a lurker but a lot of Mordy's posts seem designed to provoke as much as possible without being obviously insincere or trolling.

― JoeStork, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 3:35 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i basically agree and the word misandry should obv never be used in a serious conversation i'm just noting that ilx has mirrored a larger internet phenomenon w/r/t identity politics and this is one of the results.

ftr did the no boys thread start specifically as a "safe space" because the first 50 posts are pretty casual/jokey and 1p3 was always good for some comedy bannings? like it's fine if that's what it evolved into but i'm trying to understand if that is a newer phenomenon?

uh contenderizer maybe watch it with the k-bombs

i <3 darragh, you're just always such a good sport

I think arguments often help me express myself better since there's something to push against.

Mordy, have you considered that starting altercations isn't the way to get into a rousing discussion? Because a lot of people think someone being argumentative is just dickish behavior.

that is kind of a "lol mens" stance to begin with, needing an argument or fight to be able to interact with other people

can't even put it down to being Irish tbh

Mordy, it's not clear that you've read the thread very carefully. no one in that thread is attacking "male behavior" writ large. women are complaining about sexist ways in which they've been dismissed, esp via being characterized as emotional, esp in professional settings where the stakes are fairly high. do you honestly believe that's misandry?

there's no such thing as a safe space and no, the no boys thread didn't start as such. it has definitely evolved, though.

also I would caution against the complacency that "the real oppressing" is always bring perpetrated by some other group of people some other place.

bring? being, I meant

You're bringing it though, horseshoe.

horseshoe, i'm a little burnt out on this thread today but i don't want it to seem like i was ignoring you, esp bc i like you a lot + think you're a great poster. i understand that the conversation was not about "all men" or male behavior writ large. my complaint was that complaining even about some men (as men - not as individuals), in an all-female space, has, idk, optics that bother me. i'm not saying this is 100% true of that conversation but i've heard enough conversations in my life to know that complaining about some ____ (fill in the blank) but not all ____ is often really just an expression of complaining about all _____. like ok, the good ones aren't like that. but enough of them are. i feel tired + chastened enough that at this point tho i'm willing to withdraw the argument entirely and if pretty much anyone else but u had bumped i wouldn't have bothered responding.

okay. I only just saw that this thread had been bumped today, and I don't mean to pile on. your post makes me consider why it might seem to you like these complaints are against men in general. I think in part it may be because when a woman is dismissed in this way, often by an otherwise decent man, as was pointed out in the thread, it seems like there's no way to understand the moment except as an epiphenomenon of a sexist culture. iow it's clearly not about individual men anymore. that gets us into necessarily imprecise territory, not because women are over generalizing, but because the sources of these moments are genuinely diffuse and hard to pin down.

Mordy otm re horsehoe

so i don't really want to participate in the conversation that is currently happening here but i am sort of curious about the relationship btwn white hetero men and the proliferation of discussion for/by various identity groups that seems to have really blown up on ilx and on what i'm going to lazily call the liberal/left areas of the internet (blogs, news sources, my fb/twitter feeds and perhaps yours too) over the past 1-2 years. and there is this cycle of self-congratulation that happens whenever something, and it's frequently a trivial thing, gets called out as racist or sexist or w/e, and the audience for the self-congratulation prob includes members of the impacted identity group as well as liberal/left-leaning white hetero men who are totally sympathetic to the identity group and who yeah may get tired of being told daily that their group is causing all these problems, and they know it's true but this stuff is not reaching ppl who are doing the real oppressing, it's just endlessly echo chambering on facebook, and god why did i post this i'm going to stfu now.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 3:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What I find most distasteful abt this is how it ends up being more about the echo chamber participants signalling something about ~themselves~ than it does about creating meaningful change/teaching people about something -- let alone being self-critical w/r/t this stuff.

I don't know anyone on this board personally so not necessarily extrapolating to here, but one of the people at the fringes of my irl friend group is a facebook spammer of SWM I-can-relate backpatting of incomparable scope, and irl he's a really skeezy guy (to my SWM pov, and to the pov of those with different bkgds who I've talked with abt it). And I'm sure he doesn't realize it! But that anecdote and something deeper it touches on makes me skeptical towards this whole charade, because (a) I'm deeply uncomfortable with the thought that these important causes are worn only like an Urban Outfitters messenger bag (containing Whole Foods-bought organic soy products!) and an American Apparel shirt, showing the world that ~you care~, that you're ~thoughtful~ and ~progressive~ and a lot of other fashionable adjectives for the urban late twenty-somethings of my peer group (a not insignificant number of whom -- for my friend group, that is -- are otherwise working or hoping to work well-paying jobs that continue cycles of entitlement to the empowered classes); (b) it can, it seems, stand in for actual reflection, self-criticism, and self-improvement in these areas ("my creepy behavior w/r/t landing a date isn't inappropriate toward women -- see I post buzzfeed articles about feminism all the time!"); and (c) it refuses to engage reasoned argument and instead leans on othering as a means of persuasion, which I find both lightly ironic but more importantly largely unsuccessful.

(c) I'm least concerned about, though: there's a point at which an argument has been made and contended with many times, and is best responded to by shutting it out instead of wasting of effort -- we could be figuring out how to solve what we agree to be a problem rather than contending with facially regressive arguments. (E.g. if someone started leaning on the zodiac for their argument, I'm not going to bother engaging on its terms -- both because, just no, and because I could better spend my time problem-solving from an agreed-upon foundation than arguing with fundamental dissenters.) But I do think there are times we're (writ large, not just ilx) too quick to post image macros and pat each other on the back rather than consider substance.

jesus that was an essay

You probably want the Marc Loi thread The best of Marc Loi : Facebook Feminist

that's a good post

I'm v positive today tbh I might get my temperature checked

I obv don't post on the women only thread but do read it and if nothing else it made me recognize behavior that I myself probs if not def exhibited at least wrt to mans plainsong in some situations and I'd like to think it's helped me improve in some ways. Also (I think it was) LL's story about going to a school w boys for the first time is one I think abt a lot.

you know, that mournful mans plainsong we all sing

"mans plainsong"

Hope this is an oblique hit on the Cure

and I know that I didn't really address the part of your distaste that's about the thread being women-only. That's because I am a fan of women-only spaces in a kind of old-fashioned, second-wave way. iirc there are plenty of women on ilx who have no investment in them.

just want to chime in and say i agree with what a lot of mordy is saying here. i think that there is an element of hypocrisy on display when ostensibly liberal hetero men rush in to support their self-exclusion from this conception of a 'safe space.' on one level, isn't it something that privilege has allowed them to do? it feels patronizing and reifying to me, fundamentally dishonest. i also agree that sometimes, 'starting an argument' leads to actually changing discourse and opinions.

i can't speak for roxy but the impression i got from that thread early on was a combination of gender-identity self-empowerment and sort of serious fun from saying like, no really, no boys allowed, we will ban u, go away king boy pato. kind of a real power from which positive self-identity can grow which seems very desirable to me. i think the exclusionary aspect is questionable, sort of taken advantage of, when combined with posts like carl agatha's above which does sound man-hatey even in a jokey way, and yes, that's a real thing, and a fraught and potentially negative damaging dead-end thing imo and ought to be open to discussion but too often isn't because too many men seem to be so completely under the mistaken impression that they are independent creatures beyond the influence of abusive language or behavior from women (case in point, the extreme blanching at the concept of 'misandry,' which is ridiculous, and if you really don't think it exists, you are not correct). i think the problem isn't that there is a 'no boys allowed' thread but that it's difficult to conceive of a 'no girls allowed' thread that could function in the same initially positive way.

my mans plain songz

I think in part it may be because when a woman is dismissed in this way, often by an otherwise decent man, as was pointed out in the thread, it seems like there's no way to understand the moment except as an epiphenomenon of a sexist culture. iow it's clearly not about individual men anymore.

I think you're right that is what I'm responding to - but also bc I wonder about whether these things are about sexist culture and not just about things like ppl in offices often have conflict. I mentioned above that I've been told to stop yelling by men + women when it didn't seem to me like I was (often, even - like weekly this happens), and even in this thread ppl kept telling me to chill out when I felt perfectly chill. I've been called out for being emotional, and I've even been mansplained (and womansplained) to - well, patronized by ppl of either gender. So understanding an office conflict as sexism, and particularly as male behavior (again, not "men" writ large, but certainly a "male" practice) seems inexact and possibly idk, wrong.

idk, I was just thinking about this time on Channukah when I was driving my father's car to run some errands and I parked in a spot in this very quiet area that I've often parked in without any problem. I parked the wrong way, and I got a ticket for it. But I had never gotten a ticket for it before and the only thing that was different is that my dad's car had a giant menorah strapped to the roof. So I wondered immediately, OMG I wonder if this was anti-semitism? But like I didn't have any evidence for that, and it was a silly temporary thought and ultimately I understood why I got the ticket, bc I broke the law. And sometimes someone tells me to stop yelling at them and my first thought is "omg what is wrong with this person I am speaking perfectly calmly maybe a bit sternly but that's what the situation calls for!" But then my second thought is, "you know I have a very loud voice and ppl have been telling me that all my life so probably it's innocent."

You probably want the Marc Loi thread The best of Marc Loi : Facebook Feminist

― 龜, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 5:09 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Unlike you, I can get a woman off" -- Marc Loi, master of zings

you don't understand, on Facebook Marc loi was actually unliking that person at the time, while getting a woman off

booming post matt

Sharpening up my ear and my race analysis is a lesson I'm learning kinda late in lyfe but being a decent and unoffensive person meanwhile in majority POC groups is made much easier by just seeing what men say about feminism & women's spaces and voices, and then never ever emulating it.

tbh I think half the time when people on ilx accuse you of being emotional in argument they are unconsciously trying to discredit your argument by saying you argue like a girl. Insert shrug/agree to disagree emoticon here. do you believe a woman when she tells you that her whole life men in authority have dismissed her emotions/dismissed her by characterizing her as emotional? it's a real thing, but I feel like you have to take it on faith.

an Urban Outfitters messenger bag (containing Whole Foods-bought organic soy products!) and an American Apparel shirt, showing the world that ~you care~, that you're ~thoughtful~ and ~progressive~ and a lot of other fashionable adjectives for the urban late twenty-somethings of my peer group

lol all of these signifiers using companies that are libertarian- or republican-owned or known for exploitation of workforce

i believe a woman who tells me that her whole life men in authority have dismissed her emotions/dismissed her by characterizing her as emotional, but i also have a ton of women in my life who haven't had that experience so i'm not willing to accept that it's true in 100% of situations for 100% of women. i think it's true in some contexts of some women.

like #yesallwomen okay, but i discuss this stuff w/ the real human women i see everyday and a lot of those things were really #yesmanywomen

(nb to give some context, i often go into conversations irl from the pov of someone who learns about feminism + sexism mostly from jezebel/tumblr/ilx/the internet and i am almost always arguing the most radical position in a rl conversation. so it's not like i'm shouting the women in my life into submission. i'll be like 'has this ever happened to you?' and they say 'no, that's not my experience.')

I think some women are like you in that car ticket moment and choose not to focus on it/believe they don't have solid evidence. or aren't complainers by nature. or wouldn't feel comfortable airing such complaints in front of you. or other men in their lives. but it affects all of us.

an old man thought I was a woman today because he was sitting far away and couldn't really see me very well

i think that there is an element of hypocrisy on display when ostensibly liberal hetero men rush in to support their self-exclusion from this conception of a 'safe space.' on one level, isn't it something that privilege has allowed them to do? it feels patronizing and reifying to me, fundamentally dishonest.

I used to feel this way sometimes, but then I realized... I have a shitload of spaces, if people want one, they don't need my voice to have it? I used to think that it was my place to bow out completely, because any group should be able to speak for their own merit. But if I can tell my peers to knock it off, it's worth it occasionally.

there are a group of old men who meet for their atheist support group at a coffee shop I do work in sometimes

that's a p strong statement though, horseshoe? I know you're not disregarding those experiences but IMO its v close to telling them that they're experiencing it incorrectly?

today they had a rousing discussion about how disgusted they are by the 22 Jump Street poster, and how sad it is that nobody makes any Moonstruck's anymore

anyway one of them stopped talking about moonstruck so loud because, according to him "there was a lady in the room"

and then another member of his group was like "no that's a man he has a beard"

I guess what I mean is I think the evidence of a sexist culture is all around us and doesn't depend on all women to perceive it as such for verification.

xp I misread "moonstruck" as "moonlighting" for a bit and though these guys were hoping for... the return of bruno

Mordy was suggesting the women in the no boys thread were experiencing their world incorrectly, right?

and then I nodded and they talked about gun control

is there a tendency on ilx to dismiss the other viewpoint in the arguments/experiences above as unfeeling/emotionally retarded? like, idk, there's an ideal level of emotion and in ilx opinion favours the high end of that spectrum (I'm clumsy here its not my day to get into this but eh its the day it seems)

i believe a woman who tells me that her whole life men in authority have dismissed her emotions/dismissed her by characterizing her as emotional, but i also have a ton of women in my life who haven't had that experience so i'm not willing to accept that it's true in 100% of situations for 100% of women. i think it's true in some contexts of some women.

― Mordy, Wednesday, 11 June 2014 21:23 (7 minutes ago) Permalink

Mordy is the Nate Silver of women's experiences

i'll be like 'has this ever happened to you?' and they say 'no, that's not my experience.')

I think a lot of men do this but the funny thing is lots of people both men and women dont actually realize its being done to them, lotta non-listeners out there

Well, I do have the experience (w/ one of the posters in that thread) of someone claiming that this is happening to them (being called emotional to discount their opinion as a woman) when in fact the way they were acting would've drawn comments coming from either gender. But maybe they're just so battleshocked from dealing w/ this so much that they can't even tell the difference.

do not think that ilx favors emotional arguments. I do think if you suggest you as a man might have a better take on something a woman experienced than she does, you're going to raise a few eyebrows. that's not about emotion, though.

I thought you were done here Hurting.

Mordy, seriously: you've been told repeatedly to cut this shit out WRT women's space/experiences so please DROP YOUR CHEW TOY.

oh good, suzy is here.

i mean this half in jest but maybe don't compare me to a dog when trying to make your points okay?

Mordy, I'd think that the ilx experience will be better for all of us if you just didn't interact with that person, or took things with a grain of salt when evaluating how others react to said individual?

You taking this person's words literally has only lead to clusterfucks in the past, and reading between the lines, you might realize that most of us shrug off a lot of repeated junk from the same posters instead of making it an issue. Like maybe off-board you can talk to another ilxor and say "what is such-and-such's deal with this issue?" and shrug and drink a beer.

XP ya that's fair, horseshoe, and he's taking his lumps ITT for it, and also I get that that's not a symmetrical comparison either.

but my experiences of always knocking heads with ppl (who I like! we covered that ITT before) on this stuff here then waking up from ilx and being the right-on killjoy IRL, or discussing this with the women I know irl and eh hardly ever seeing these POV's replicated, it def does not lead me to an acceptance of one universal experience as constantly pushed by the wider agenda.

its v close to telling them that they're experiencing it incorrectly?

Whole can of worms in this one - peoples description of how they experience things isnt always how they actually experienced them. and even when it is, people dont always understand whats happening to them until much later on, or assume its somehow their fault - can be aware something isnt right, but unable to tell what exactly, particularly if you are feeling disempowered in some way

Its sorta in a way like the result of a conversation, or a realization of something, doesnt always come today or tomorrow

yes, and also works both ways as well

there definitely isn't a universal experience! Sexism is real, is all.

well yeah, despite what phil + hurting would have you believe i'm not arguing against the existence of sexism.

I know you're not. I was just trying to clarify my earlier post about "it affects all of us"

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, literally all my posts are shitty snark. Or snitty shark, or wtf ever.

that wraps up another busy day folks namaste

well yeah, despite what phil + hurting would have you believe i'm not arguing against the existence of sexism.

― Mordy, Wednesday, 11 June 2014 21:48 (5 minutes ago) Permalink

And I never said you were arguing "against the existence of sexism." It just seems to me that you are arguing "sexism cuts both ways" and "all sexism is equally bad" therefore women complaining about being treated in a sexist way by men in a women-only thread, while perhaps overgeneralizing a bit is somehow equivalent to men treating women in a sexist way, because all of these things are "sexist" and therefore "wrong."

honestly it feels to me like the way you argue w/ me - in seemingly the most reductive, ungenerous way possible - you might as well be arguing that i don't believe in sexism

idk its almost like there's guys so overprotective ITT theyre mad afeart that Mordy might get space enough beside the women to say what he's actually saying

which seems.....idk

BTW my joeks is joeks but yr last post was so far offtm in so many ways that to start into it wouldn't be worth it for anyone involved imo

I don't think the way I'm arguing with you is reductive at all, I think I am succinctly describing exactly what you have been doing throughout this thread.

BTW mh that is xp

XP mordsplaining

It just seems to me that you are arguing "sexism cuts both ways" and "all sexism is equally bad" therefore women complaining about being treated in a sexist way by men in a women-only thread, while perhaps overgeneralizing a bit is somehow equivalent to men treating women in a sexist way, because all of these things are "sexist" and therefore "wrong."

Okay, obviously I wasn't arguing that "all sexism is equally bad." Do you think I believe that the comments on the "no boys" thread were an equally bad example of sexism as Elliot Rodgers? I hope not. When I wrote: "it's punching up, so obv it's nowhere near as bad as the same thing punching down, but it's in no way a good thing," did you feel that didn't do enough to demonstrate that I knew the difference between men complaining about women and vice-versa?

I don't think the way I'm arguing with you is reductive at all, I think I am succinctly describing exactly what you have been doing throughout this thread.

Like this is just clearly not true. I assumed you realized that but you thought that it was more important to shout me down bc, idk, my thoughts were malicious even if they weren't exactly as construed.

can't believe I missed 7 hours of this thread today

btw there is yet *another* use of a govt name upthread that said poster has *repeatedly* requested that people don't use

the rush to pillory mordy by aggressively conflating what he is saying with the grotesque arguments of the men's rights movement et cetera is really ridiculous, like reddit-level discourse even if it's "for the left".

Maybe not helped by him posting his thoughts on this thread: thread for contemplating the serious issues raised by the Men's Rights movement

can't believe I missed 7 hours of this thread today

― kinder, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 10:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

simultaneously sad & glad about this but the whole thing was worth it to see hurting, mh and co lay the smackdown on mordy. i can quite understand why, apparently, most of the no boys allowed denizens just rolled their eyes and didn't even bother arguing this basic-level shit with wilfully obtuse posters like mordy and darragh who may or may not get it but who will definitely never admit to it in public. whatever, we don't need you, we shall progress without you

(nb: i can think of a million examples of occasions where, at the time, i would have hesitated before ascribing my treatment to racism or homophobia, but looking back, it's very clear; it's rarely because i realise that the person in question was being intentionally racist or homophobic, more that they were, maybe subconsciously, abiding by the rules of a society which is systemically racist and homophobic. which is exactly what the women on the no boys allowed thread are talking about.)

i just think it's funny to say you're guessing a no-boys thread is "basically just misandry" and then a couple hours later say you've got no beef with the content, it's just that everyone'd be better off with you in it

bookmarking this clusterfuck for some bedtime reading later

actual lols croup

A+ xxp

Sufjan ftr imago & I talked it out elsewhere, enjoy yr reading

wrt the comment upthread about the kneejerk dismissal of 'misandry,' it's not that misandry doesn't exist, it's that the term, in the context of the Men's Rights thread, is a signifier of a ludicrous view of society in which misandry is a powerful social force on par with or surpassing misogyny. And really, I don't have any scientific backing for this but I'd be willing to bet that the majority of women who post supposedly misandrist things online have respectful friendships with men in their lives. I wouldn't be so sure about the majority of men who post misogynist bullshit.

this went well

at least you got an opportunity to type out BB's name again, kudos on that

Phil I wanna shake your virtual hand for your work here today

on one hand I'm enthused that lex knows who I am, but on the other I am not sure how to take his enthusiasm

while we're shaking hands, huge props to hurting, horshoe and in orbit for service above & beyond.

could you at least ask the mods to fix your (deliberate?) mistake? links are helpful.

I think it's already fixed actually

no worries, it's already been edited out (lol, using exactly the language i'd have requested)

xp yah

i don't agree with the points mordy made in this thread but the congratulations are stupid. i mean, has there ever been a more predictable clusterfuck? all the familiar (if largely true) arguments were trotted out in familiar ways. the only actually interesting post here today is matt's.

congratulating the posters i mentioned mostly for their patience and willingness to respectfully engage, far beyond the point where courtesy required any such thing. would have been a much uglier thread w/out that.

i think the exclusionary aspect is questionable, sort of taken advantage of, when combined with posts like carl agatha's above which does sound man-hatey even in a jokey way, and yes, that's a real thing, and a fraught and potentially negative damaging dead-end thing imo and ought to be open to discussion but too often isn't because too many men seem to be so completely under the mistaken impression that they are independent creatures beyond the influence of abusive language or behavior from women (case in point, the extreme blanching at the concept of 'misandry,' which is ridiculous, and if you really don't think it exists, you are not correct). i think the problem isn't that there is a 'no boys allowed' thread but that it's difficult to conceive of a 'no girls allowed' thread that could function in the same initially positive way.

― mattresslessness, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 2:13 PM (5 hours ago)

this post? tbh, i'm fairly glad it sank quickly. that's not 100% snark - i just can't imagine anything positive coming from an ILE discussion along these lines. maybe that's a failure on my part...

Mordy I like you and I consider you an irl friend but using that thread for your little thought experiment is just...

I'm embarrassed

I don't know if you really *understand* that the women who post itt do so because it's a supportive space. there's a lot of trust and honesty in there that I enjoy being a part of

but what it's not is some kind of weird pedestal for you to hash out your 'thoughts' w/r/t/ #yesallwomen or whatever made you wake up today and decide that you need to set up the dominoes in a new way just to see what happens. I'm not a mouse in a fucking maze and don't you dare use us for a few checkmarks in your science log.

this whole thing was just...it's incredibly tone deaf and speaking personally it made me pretty angry

fin

i'm sorry, veg :(

can't believe I missed 7 hours of this thread today

― kinder, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 5:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seriously. None of my bookmarks were updating and I just sat at my desk wondering, where are they all at today?

xp contenderizer

too many men seem to be so completely under the mistaken impression that they are independent creatures beyond the influence of abusive language or behavior from women

this part, specifically, seemed interesting. there is this prevalent idea that if men are upset they should just take it and not even attempt to express their feelings constructively and is a classic patriarchal canard that finds a neat expression in things like #maletears jokes.

if mordy's first post was an attempt to express his feelings constructively i would say he failed

Yeah that is an interesting and probably worth discussing sentiment, however things just so much got off on the wrong foot in this discussion (mostly thanks to Mordy's first posts on the topic), not to mention that this is all taking place within a thread with "men's rights" in the title, that it wasn't really going to lead to productive discussion. I was totally serious about not having a problem with the idea of a thread in which men discuss and work out male gender issues, as long as it's not framed in "men's rights" terms.

when i said it would be great to have a thread for men to discuss and work out male gender issues, NV made this thread so

there is this prevalent idea that if men are upset they should just take it and not even attempt to express their feelings constructively and is a classic patriarchal canard that finds a neat expression in things like #maletears jokes.

― Treeship, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 8:13 PM (48 seconds ago)

yeah, i'm with you there. the trick is "constructively". discussion seems too polarized atm to allow much habitable middle ground between "aha, MISANDRY!" and "boo-hoo, boy tears!" which sucks, but it's not a problem with which i'm interested in engaging (at least not here).

honestly if it wasn't for the gif parade it's doubtful mordy's issue with the "gross" thread of presumed "misandry" would have been nuanced/backpedaled.

At about three quarters of the way through, I thought there'd certainly be a congratulations from Treeship for me at the finish line. I'm too scared to ask for one now.

lol hi 5 everyone since tbs, tbs

lex is it better to be wilfully obtuse or to blissfully exist that way completely naturally? interested to know.

Lots of Andy Dufresne vs Warden Norton obtuse calling in this thread.

when i made this thread i probably sounded a shade snarkier than i meant to

i think there should be a conversation about constructions of masculinity and about the limitations and pressures experienced by men within existing social structures. personally i think all of that stuff is a function of patriarchy, but examining our situation in the world is good.

i don't think any of that is excluded or threatened by man-free conversations. i think there's a real phenomenon when some of us - i include myself - contribute to conversations and end up pushing an agenda of our own that is really not the point

got to go - wanted to say a little more - i feel like maybe my reading the "no boys" thread is counter the spirit of that thread but yeah i peep in occasionally. not just there but elsewhere on ilx female posters have made me think A LOT about the shitty things i've done, unthinkingly, to women in my life because i'm a product of a deeply misogynist culture. and i appreciate that and i hope i've learned something from it. and i think i learn best in those situations when i shut up and listen because i've come to the conclusion that sometimes it's really good for me to shut up and listen.

Is reading the no boys allowed thread counter to the spirit? I...actually dont know! But, if not, people could benefit from being in a place where they're allowed to read, but not to post. To be better at listening, to have time to think about a response before posting it. You get more out of life if you can listen, you don't always have to add your book to the shelf. It can be liberating not to have to have an opinion too, but to make a space where a new opinion might go

i think there should be a conversation about constructions of masculinity and about the limitations and pressures experienced by men within existing social structures. personally i think all of that stuff is a function of patriarchy, but examining our situation in the world is good.

i support a good (non-snarky) conversation like this on ILX. This thread (judging by the title) feels more like a critical dissection of the mens' rights movement which is something slightly different

I wish I would've participated in this thread from the beginning.

Now reading all of it to catch up seems daunting. So, sorry if this is off-topic/has been discussed before:

Too bad because after being in some relationships and talking to girls, I do feel like men and masculinity are almost as equally misunderstood and taken advantage of as women and femininity. Maybe this isn't the right thread, because I'm not referring to "MEN'S RIGHTS" in civic life/society, but more of men's role in society in general.

I try to reason with girls about for example what is expected from a man in a relationship, because this is where you really see gender roles come out in all their glory, and I get the feeling a lot of women I talk to are sexist.

I mean, on the one hand, I don't want to whine and complain about sexist women, but on the other hand, it does kind of hurt a little. But when I express these feelings and try to rationalise them, a lot of these girls tell me, "You are a very sensitive person". But this sounds like a cop-out.

I mean, it is possible both sides (men and women) are hurting and misunderstanding each other. The focus is now on women and their rights and how our culture is not aware enough of a lot of turmoil and disrespect that women experience, and I am on board with that.

But it would also be nice to not make sweeping generalisations about men. I know dudes that say this are usually way off the mark with regard to women's rights and stuff, but this isn't my case. It'd just be nice to have open discussions without one side thinking that they're being attacked, but more of a learning experience. Like, if I say something offensive, I am capable of admitting it if you show me the reason. And maybe the cause of my not being aware that I say or do something offensive, despite trying not to, shows how deeply our society has ingrained in us a male-centric culture.

Am I way off here? Maybe I should take it to the gender roles thread?

Is it possible that we've now reached peak troll? I can't even tell, which makes me think maybe yes?

^I wasn't trolling, for whatever it's worth. Just throwing ideas because I'm feeling emo today

Just spitballing, you know how it is! Just throwing out ideas, like about how women are the real sexists and ruin open discussions by playing the victim all the time. And who inexplicably aren't lining up to be insulted by me and my ignorance, and gently take my hand and lead me through their world of `*~ideas~*` again and again until I feel sufficiently pacified and convinced that their points of view are valid.

You sound like fun.

Hey are you free on Tuesday? I was going to help women come up with strategies to make their lives better and less dangerous but f that, there's a questioning young man who needs me.

Like, if I say something offensive, I am capable of admitting it if you show me the reason.

for starters, you might want to re-read your post and note your two references to "girls", hope I don't have to explain why that's offensive

not even gonna get into the rest of your post, in orbit OTM

@in orbit

Sorry, I probably didn't articulate my post that well, because that's not what I meant at all.

I think the focus and discussion on women's rights and role in society that's going on right now is a positive and it will only help become a much fairer society.

Like, if I say something offensive, I am capable of admitting it if you show me the reason.

for starters, you might want to re-read your post and note your two references to "girls", hope I don't have to explain why that's offensive

not even gonna get into the rest of your post, in orbit OTM

― polyamanita (sleeve), Thursday, June 12, 2014 6:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't see anything wrong with examining male gender roles, though. you can't make progress w/ women's issues if you don't make progress w/ men's issues right alongside it since each situation is an interaction b/t people of different genders. so i'd imagine it'd be more effective to make progress in bettering women's lives by working with men, too, because they're the ones who have these unhealthy beliefs about women in the first place.

i don't see why this isn't actually 100% essential to bettering women's lives. if you don't take men's issues seriously and with compassion, it's like trying to fly with only one wing, you're gonna spin around and get nowhere. which is exactly what's happening. i mean, you'd have to let go of your anger, and desire for vengeance, and the pain of the unfairness of being born unequal in a world that can threaten your life just for your gender, which isn't easy, but that's life and life can fucking suck sometimes.

Hey are you free on Tuesday? I was going to help women come up with strategies to make their lives better and less dangerous but f that, there's a questioning young man who needs me.

Seems like you have quite a bit of free time to engage in snarks and zings. I am beginning to doubt your commitment to the revolution.

and the pain of the unfairness of being born unequal in a world that can threaten your life just for your gender, which isn't easy, but that's life and life can fucking suck sometimes.

No, no, I was wrong. NOW we've reached peak troll.

I might in theory agree with this: if you don't take men's issues seriously and with compassion, it's like trying to fly with only one wing, you're gonna spin around and get nowhere. which is exactly what's happening.

But the problem is that such discussions always seem to bring out people making head-up-ass statements like this:
i mean, you'd have to let go of your anger, and desire for vengeance, and the pain of the unfairness of being born unequal in a world that can threaten your life just for your gender, which isn't easy, but that's life and life can fucking suck sometimes.

lol xp orbit

why is that a head-up-the ass statement? i've been raped, i've almost been murdered, and that's not even the worst of it. it's not like i'm unfamiliar with how brutal life can be.

Like, if I say something offensive, I am capable of admitting it if you show me the reason.
for starters, you might want to re-read your post and note your two references to "girls", hope I don't have to explain why that's offensive

not even gonna get into the rest of your post, in orbit OTM

― polyamanita (sleeve), Thursday, June 12, 2014 6:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think my experience with girls is representative of all women. But I can only talk about my very limited experience with them. These girls are also not American, so yeah. Maybe I'll do some reading before I participate in this one.

http://imagineeringnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/the-point.jpg

(Hint: If you're not going to refer to men as "boys," don't refer to women as "girls.")

^Ah. I totally didn't see that. Duly noted. (I didn't mean to belittle women by calling them girls.)

∞ i know you're being sincere but you're just asking to be eviscerated. if there's a lesson anyone should have learned by now it's don't talk about this shit on ILX.

alongside, you know, all the other important lessons about acknowledging & respecting women's experiences

xp word, it's almost enough to turn someone republican

I think the thing being danced around here is the idea that "patriarchy" and "men" are overlapping logical entities rather than synonyms and that we should probably agree on the definition of the former before we can fruitfully talk about issues facing the latter. I think very few people here would argue against the idea that the damaging societal behaviors that everyone here is reacting against are driven by the patriarchal society we live in and that everyone in it, knowingly or unconsciously, does things to reinforce that society because it's what we grew up with; that's the way we know how to behave/react to things.

It may also be worth exploring societal behaviors that are not damaging and figuring out which of these behaviors, damaging and non-damaging, are directly attributable results of a male-default society. I have the sense that, without this type of background, any conversation is doomed to devolve.

Broadly speaking, yes to all of that, but then the convo inevitably moves to whose job it is to DO all the learning and teaching and explaining and figuring out of what comes next for masculinity and equality and dismantling patriarchy and so on. And in particular lately, whether we can even have that discussion without #notallmen happening like constantly. No one gets to opt out, you can't be like, "It wasn't me, I never did {that thing} so you have to be nice to me and not make ME feel bad" and then legit compare your feelings getting hurt to the actual harms done by your privileged class to the others who you claim to be listening to.

It's the exact same problem when dealing with racism. (One of the rare times you'll catch me equating -isms!)

Yes, totally.

∞ i know you're being sincere but you're just asking to be eviscerated. if there's a lesson anyone should have learned by now it's don't talk about this shit on ILX.

― macklin' rosie (crüt), Thursday, June 12, 2014 7:20 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And you know, sorry (not sorry) to do a little gate-keeping around serious discussions of misogyny and etc but often when individual men are taken on trust and accepted into those discussions, they end up not actually having done the homework needed to participate before they start sharing all their *wisdom* and *honest questions, I mean, guys, did you ever think about how men feel?* and using up an unfair % of the air in the room, and then you have to extricate yourself and your trust and conversation from them anyway, which is just more work for you.

I mentioned above that I've been told to stop yelling by men + women when it didn't seem to me like I was (often, even - like weekly this happens), and even in this thread ppl kept telling me to chill out when I felt perfectly chill.

dude you're probably not going to like this, but it seems pretty clear to me this is less about you being disenfranchised the same way women are when they're told to calm down and more about you actually presenting yourself aggressively and belligerently and perhaps not being super aware of it.

if people all day long tell you you're yelling and you're not, and to chill down when you're chill, what about what you're doing is making them take it as a yell/unchill vibe?

And sometimes someone tells me to stop yelling at them and my first thought is "omg what is wrong with this person I am speaking perfectly calmly maybe a bit sternly but that's what the situation calls for!" But then my second thought is, "you know I have a very loud voice and ppl have been telling me that all my life so probably it's innocent."

they end up not actually having done the homework needed to participate before they start sharing all their *wisdom* and *honest questions, I mean, guys, did you ever think about how men feel?*

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Thursday, June 12, 2014 7:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry.

I think the thing being danced around here is the idea that "patriarchy" and "men" are overlapping logical entities rather than synonyms and that we should probably agree on the definition of the former before we can fruitfully talk about issues facing the latter. I think very few people here would argue against the idea that the damaging societal behaviors that everyone here is reacting against are driven by the patriarchal society we live in and that everyone in it, knowingly or unconsciously, does things to reinforce that society because it's what we grew up with; that's the way we know how to behave/react to things.

It may also be worth exploring societal behaviors that are not damaging and figuring out which of these behaviors, damaging and non-damaging, are directly attributable results of a male-default society. I have the sense that, without this type of background, any conversation is doomed to devolve.

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Broadly speaking, yes to all of that, but then the convo inevitably moves to whose job it is to DO all the learning and teaching and explaining and figuring out of what comes next for masculinity and equality and dismantling patriarchy and so on. And in particular lately, whether we can even have that discussion without #notallmen happening like constantly. No one gets to opt out, you can't be like, "It wasn't me, I never did {that thing} so you have to be nice to me and not make ME feel bad" and then legit compare your feelings getting hurt to the actual harms done by your privileged class to the others who you claim to be listening to.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:36 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These are both great posts. If I can just add one thing that I think ties into both of them: the problem that I have not yet figured out how to solve is how to discuss the ways in which patriarchy also informs society's (including women's) expectations from men in a harmful way without, as you put it, the whole thing becoming men taking up an unfair % of the air in the room and even at times refashioning misogyny in "enlightened" terms. Which is why part of me thinks a men's issues thread would be a good idea and part of me thinks it's a terrible idea.

you can't make any progress w/ this w/o focusing on men's issues. otherwise it's just a one-sided conversation. and i'm not talking like, "this is how MEN feel!!!! HEAR US!!!" like, idgaf about this MRA crap. i'm just talking from a practical standpoint, because yeah, i'm a dude, maybe i haven't done my "homework" or written the final exam, but i do think it's bullshit how women are treated and i'd like to see that situation improved.

clearly the first step is for all of us, no matter who we are or what our own experience is, to treat each other like shit, that way we're all on level footing

And sometimes someone tells me to stop yelling at them and my first thought is "omg what is wrong with this person I am speaking perfectly calmly maybe a bit sternly but that's what the situation calls for!" But then my second thought is, "you know I have a very loud voice and ppl have been telling me that all my life so probably it's innocent."

― Mordy, Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:46 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but if they do it on the internet where they cant hear your voice maybe its something else...?

my best friend leslie said "oh he's just being mordy"

well, I guess I'd be interested in hearing from contenderizer which of my posts led him to believe I was having a meltdown. maybe i need to modulate my posting style if that's the impression i give off.

That was probably my first mistake. I'm tempted to do this more often online because of the ease of just jumping in and typing something.

There's also the (wholly understandable) instinct to distance yourself from repellent behavior; I fall prey to this a lot, sometimes to the point of baldly lying to myself about my behavior so that I can continue thinking I am not That Guy when any of has has or can be That Guy given the right set of circumstances, largely because that is what society in general teaches us to be.

The closest I come to getting past this (because I don't know that it's possible for anyone in my generation as a whole to fully get past it) is to be much more thoughtful of contexts and the appropriateness of my comments. This is magnified by a lot of my humor being driven by the conflict between respectful interaction and absurd, over-the-top satirical offense; my first impulse in conversation is usually to say something absurdly offensive/crass in an ironic manner and that is not always appreciated, even among people who have known me forever and usually think that type of this is funny, so part of the feedback loop is knowing when I need to shut up and/or be serious. Also, knowing that I ultimately can only take responsibility for myself and my actions and, if I want to see positive change in the world, I need to actively put that positive energy into it otherwise nothing has a hope of changing.

clearly the first step is for all of us, no matter who we are or what our own experience is, to treat each other like shit, that way we're all on level footing

― write 500 words of song (sleepingbag), Thursday, June 12, 2014 11:58 AM (29 seconds ago)

otm. this is key. also: when someone says something you might disagree with, it's best always to go with the least charitable, most insulting interpretation of their statements possible. this will foster civil discourse & mutual understanding.

as opposed to your approach, which is to split hairs into intellectual infinity until everything loses its meaning?

well, I guess I'd be interested in hearing from contenderizer which of my posts led him to believe I was having a meltdown. maybe i need to modulate my posting style if that's the impression i give off.

― Mordy, Thursday, June 12, 2014 12:03 PM (4 minutes ago)

well, you started from a more aggressive position than you later seemed willing to admit and steamrolled several invitations to drop down from "no it's just wrong for them to do this" to a more nuanced discussion of the issues involved. you just kept pushing your one-note line. which, even if you weren't slinging f-bombs in all caps, made you seem a little wound up. perhaps i misinterpreted your tone, and in that case, i apologize. for what it's worth, i've often been called on seeming angry when i didn't feel angry, on being pushy & argumentative in discussions, so i know how you probably felt here.

as opposed to your approach, which is to split hairs into intellectual infinity until everything loses its meaning?

― polyamanita (sleeve), Thursday, June 12, 2014 12:12 PM (1 minute ago)

i weep for lost meaning. you don't even know.

Srsly Mordy just go back to the place where you bumped the thread (you are the one who bumped THIS thread, I might add) and start rereading. If you can't see it then there is no help.

No one is a mind-reader. The responsibility of the people you are talking to is to hear the words you're saying and respond to them; if the words you are using make you sound like chauvinistic misogynist, it's your responsibility to reword what you're saying to make it clear that you aren't, not everyone else's responsibility to assume that you're a nice person who means well.

If you want unconditional goodwill when discussing sensitive subjects, talk to a mirror.

I guess there's no help. I see where what I said was provocative for ILX but it seems very calm.

Maybe Hurting you can find me a particular post of mine that you think indicates that I was lashing out, emotional, melting down, etc?

^^^ today's installment of "smartest thing I read on the internet today" xxp to DJP

Like, if you believe that these are the words of an angry chauvinistic misogynist I'd suggest you are projecting:

lol you guys are so gone into the rabbit hole that this very obvious point is eliding you. i'm not calling for a white history month, or claiming that white men experience unfair racism or sexism in society. i agree that white men are at the top of the hierarchy. that's a totally different conversation. i'm saying that just bc they have tons of societal "privileges" doesn't mean it's suddenly fair game to start maligning them as a group.

The closest I come to getting past this (because I don't know that it's possible for anyone in my generation as a whole to fully get past it) is to be much more thoughtful of contexts and the appropriateness of my comments. This is magnified by a lot of my humor being driven by the conflict between respectful interaction and absurd, over-the-top satirical offense; my first impulse in conversation is usually to say something absurdly offensive/crass in an ironic manner and that is not always appreciated, even among people who have known me forever and usually think that type of this is funny...

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Thursday, June 12, 2014 12:04 PM (10 minutes ago)

gah, this is me in a nutshell. have to work awful damn hard to bite my tongue on what seems like the most obvious & "hilarious" satirical response to any given situation.

try saying these phrases out loud in the calmest voice possible, it's fun

that's a lovely thought but utter bullshit.

lol you guys are so gone into the rabbit hole that this very obvious point is eliding you.

i think your inability to interact w/ this on any kind of level besides google image search copy/pastes is indicative of yr immaturity phil

i don't know how you can say the last one in any voice besides a calm one. too many words to shout out.

http://www.therpf.com/attachments/f9/hal-9000-panel-2001-space-odyssey-pg-5-final-update-hal_ap-333_1-jpg-77231d1323553283

fuckin duh, mordy. starting with, "you guys are so far gone into the rabbit hole" probably didn't help. it can't be news to you that the metaphor you chose suggestds that the "you guys" in question are so consumed by tinfoil-hat bullshit that they've lost the capacity for clear perception and rational thought.

okay, but it was in response to Phil posting gifs of men asking for a white history month when that clearly wasn't my argument. i was responding to the immediate reduction of what i was saying to most asinine uncharitable interpretation and suggesting that they were doing it bc they couldn't imagine any critique that wasn't immediately linked to the most insane MRA remarks.

Mordy you keep saying that you're not saying that but you kind of are saying that by suggesting that it's all "equally gross." Whether white men are at the top of the hierarchy is not "a totally different conversation" at all, it's an essential part of the same conversation.

some great DJP posting here this afternoon, btw

Rich man to poor thief: "I recognize my class privileges here, but that's a totally different conversation. You have stolen my loaf of bread."

I understand Hurting. You believe that if you malign a privileged group it's not a problem. I don't misunderstand your POV, which is similar to the idea that you can't be racist against white people. But the fact that I disagree with that doesn't mean that I suddenly become a chauvinist. You need to create space in your worldview for people with slightly different opinions from yourself.

"all i did was say that the no-boys thread was probably misandry and equally gross as a boys-only thread and people just assumed the most uncharitable things about me"

I didn't mean the thread as a whole, I meant that particular conversation that was dominating the thread that day. The one about how if a man asks you not to yell you should punch him in the dick.

and i know you later backpedaled on equally gross too, revealing you knew the difference between punching up and punching down. but what you said four hours later isn't what you said then.

Women: "We'd like a space where we can freely discuss issues of importance to us as women without worrying about being shouted down by/condescended to by men."
Homer Simpson Mordy: "Why won't those stupid idiots let me into their crappy club for jerks?"

Phil, I really don't have an issue with you disagreeing with me but I constantly feel like you don't understand anything that I say. And not just today or yesterday. So many days.

Can someone find the one where he charmingly told them they were having inappropriate feelings? I don't want to click "load all" here at work.

xp refer to DJP's post above

and if someone feels that dissent makes them feel unsafe, i don't have an opinion about whether they truly feel that way (how could i know?) but i do have an opinion about whether that's an appropriate feeling

― Mordy, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 3:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Such a damning post I made! Maybe I really am so totally out of step with the values of ILX.

The one about how if a man asks you not to yell you should punch him in the dick.

― Mordy, Thursday, June 12, 2014 12:26 PM (2 minutes ago)

this will never not be funny

my favorite Friends episode

all dick punching, all the time

mordy if it hurts to think of it as a boys-only thread just think of it as a thread where you can't make harsh accusations and then backpedal them over a day and a half as a bunch of folks dogpile on you - is it so bad that there's one? just one?

Bump this thread again when there's an actual epidemic of women punching men in the dick and a dearth of men gaslighting women.

lol djp

lol i meant a "no-boys" thread obv

Maybe Hurting you can find me a particular post of mine that you think indicates that I was lashing out, emotional, melting down, etc?

― Mordy,

I wouldnt worry about any of your posts, people are just misreading them because you typed them in a loud voice

Mordy - for me your best bit was:

my point is very simple - don't talk about men in a way that would bother you if you heard men using it to talk about women. the only person being maligned + degraded for expressing their opinion here is me. i haven't accused you of trolling, or said you're full of shit. if you really can't discuss this respectfully consider that it's because you recognize on some level that you're wrong.

but diminishing returns...and the issue of the women-only space was essentially a unworthwhile diversion, I didn't really agree with.

Whilst I' in a reviewing mood, I thought Imago's interim summary of this thread was good:

Intellect sacrificed, zing privileged

Of course to sacrifice intellect, you first of all have to have one - and for posters whose main repertoire is shouting "You're full of shit" or posting inflamatory gifs, the evidence is still inconclusive on that point.

The one about how if a man asks you not to yell you should punch him in the dick.

― Mordy, Thursday, June 12, 2014 12:26 PM (2 minutes ago)

this will never not be funny

― sci-fi looking, chubby-leafed, delicately bizarre (contenderizer), Thursday, June 12, 2014 1:31 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for boys who have been the victims of sexual assault, it might not be.

just por exemplo

Eh, the chimps flinging shit for social justice may have been kind of an embarrassment to their side throughout this, but I can understand. I was young once too.

x-post

plus, it's a literal example of punching down

x-post

this may be moving things to a uselessly abstract place but here goes:

i think at the heart of all this is a kind of old question: can discourses or communities organized around "emancipatory" goals engage in exclusion or certain modes of speech, voices, etc? i think the answer is absolutely yes! it's a necessity. there is no master discourse, no way to include "all voices," all individual feelings, without degenerating into chaos. as in orbit points out, a call to include excluded voices will often to derail the goal of the discourse/community. it flounders. this means that a discourse like feminism will have to erect boundaries, select for certain voices and modes of speech at the expense of others, and in this way it has to sacrifice "universality" for the sake of a pragmatic and organized direction and goal (define that how you will). this is ultimately a good thing, i think, even if it sometimes puts those discourses/communities in tension with more universalist emancipatory goals (the inclusion of "all voices") and risks re-inscribing a kind of logic of oppression or exclusion. but that's the cost of achieving anything politically, pragmatically.

I don't think it's a good thing (see, for example, the marginalization of women of color in the feminist movement) but I also don't see how it can be avoided, given where we are as a society and how broaching concepts like intersectionality and privilege make people into the most regressive people they can possibly be.

well, only "good" in that embracing partiality exposes the very exclusions that can't be avoided.

like, joking about sexual violence against men is ok because men are not vulnerable. i think a part of sexual inequality is rethinking vulnerability vis a vis physical size, doing the work to see how we are all equally vulnerable and dispensing with the protector myth. xps

also, see the link i bumped the thread with before this most recent bump

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

Stemple, who works with the Health and Human Rights Project at UCLA, had often wondered whether incidents of sexual violence against men were under-reported. She had once worked on prison reform and knew that jail is a place where sexual violence against men is routine but not counted in the general national statistics. Stemple began digging through existing surveys and discovered that her hunch was correct. The experience of men and women is “a lot closer than any of us would expect,” she says. For some kinds of victimization, men and women have roughly equal experiences. Stemple concluded that we need to “completely rethink our assumptions about sexual victimization,” and especially our fallback model that men are always the perpetrators and women the victims.

Sometimes I wish there were real misogynists on this board so people could use all of this pent up righteous anger to good use. If Mordy is the worst sexist on the board than this fucking place is pretty damn milquetoast.

this means that a discourse like feminism will have to erect boundaries, select for certain voices and modes of speech at the expense of others, and in this way it has to sacrifice "universality" for the sake of a pragmatic and organized direction and goal (define that how you will).

This then suggests that feminism is not about equality. If equality is a goal than you can't be exclusionary. At least, that's my thinking... And yeah, hearing all voices, even repugnant ones, is a messy and annoying and possibly dangerous practice. No one suggested democracy was anything but that. Unless y'all want a violent revolution. Sign me up for that.

this may be moving things to a uselessly abstract place but here goes...

no, that's a useful, illuminating point. i can understand why such restriction might be necessary in defining identify and goals. the problem, as i see it, is that the insistence on such restriction can make engagement with larger and more diverse groups difficult. i'd suggest that while discourses like feminism might require specific and tightly-held boundaries/voices/modes, no actor (no individual, group or movement) is well-served by restricting itself to a single "style" that it applies uniformly in all circumstances. the mode chosen in-group probably shouldn't be the default mode in all other social circumstances, for exactly the same sorts of reasons that the in-group mode has value in its appropriate context.

joking about sexual violence against men is ok because men are not vulnerable

reaaalllly? tell me more about this fantasy land where all men live risk-free lives from sexual abuse.

like, joking about sexual violence against men is ok because men are not vulnerable. i think a part of sexual inequality is rethinking vulnerability vis a vis physical size, doing the work to see how we are all equally vulnerable and dispensing with the protector myth. xps

― mattresslessness, Thursday, June 12, 2014 3:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Punching men in the dick" is not what is typically referred to by "sexual violence against men." I sincerely, sincerely hope this clears up some of your extreme confusion about reality.

obv the road to rethinking our assumptions about sexual victimization starts with calling out a dick-punching joke after everyone's mocked your anger about a women-only web forum thread.