Shrunk wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Shrunk wrote:I'm not sure that the "ironic misandry" descrived in the article qualifies as a reductio ad absurdum, but maybe that's because I misunderstand the term. That pedantic point aside, I think the "Men's Tears" mug achieves its goal perfectly, and agree that the OP fails in a most fail-y manner.

And its goal is what, exactly?

To make MRA's and other anti-feminists look stupid and ridiculous. Not exactly a difficult task, of course.

In whose eyes? People who already agree with the radical, intolerant feminazis?

It's easy enough to preach to the choir, choirboy.

Animavore wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Animavore wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

I did, yes. I did so to expose the fact that the argument provided was not a reductio ad absurdum. Presumably you accept that "female supremacist" is a term that makes sense, and does actually apply to some people (even if it is just a tiny number). Provided you accept those things, then my analogy is fine, because I'm using it to show that the form of the argument is flawed. I am not trying to say that all feminists are female supremacists.



Oh yes you can, as you've just demonstrated nicely. The words "even if some of its adherents do" is an acceptance of my point, which you then follow by a claim I've "failed". You apparently can't follow an argument. And not for the first time.

There is no point in having an argument based on the assumption that "feminism" or "the feminist movement" or "feminists" refers to a clearly-defined and uniform thing. That is part of the problem here. In the past in the west, and today in places like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, we don't need to have a careful think about what "feminism" means, because it is obvious what "not equal" means. In the modern western world the situation is not so simple, for the simple reason that most of the historical battles that feminists had to fight were won long ago.

I was wrong. It can get more fail-y.

I note your convincing argument, rather than just a baseless claim that your opponent is hopelessly wrong.

I already gave the convincing argument. You're comparing the whole of feminism, on the basis of a few of its adherents personal opinions, to white supremicists and all of its adherents and their stated goal.

Nope. I am saying that there really are misandrist, man-hating feminists. If you think I said anything about "the whole of feminism", please point out which post it was.

Pay closer attention.

You failed. Badly.

So you keep saying. Repeatedly claiming you've won an argument isn't the same as actually providing a decent argument though.

UndercoverElephant wrote:Nope. I am saying that there really are misandrist, man-hating feminists. If you think I said anything about "the whole of feminism", please point out which post it was.

Pay closer attention.

You used "white supremicism" as an analogy for "feminism". Point out where you said it. Your whole OP. That's where.

UndercoverElephant wrote:
So you keep saying. Repeatedly claiming you've won an argument isn't the same as actually providing a decent argument though.

I didn't say I won an argument. I said yours (if you can call it that) failed.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:

Sendraks wrote:
And I still don't see the problem with inhabiting an implausible to distortion of your position to show that such a distortion is ridiculous, as a shortcut to dealing with ridiculous arguments.

Because there's nothing wrong with it.

Sometimes the lies people tell about you are so fucking ridiculous that they don't deserve a sincere refutation. Mockery is far more reasonable a response. For example, a member of this forum has said I probably like to murder neonates (a distortion of my pro-choice feminism). This does not deserve a sincere refutation. Far more effective is laughing at the ridiculousness of the accusation than actually treating the person making the accusation as if they're deserving of my time.

No, that doesn't fly. It might sound OK to you, but if you follow the logic then you end up with the same sort of absurdity as the racist argument in the opening post. In other words, if you don't provide a sincere refutation then you leave yourself wide open to the accusation that you've not provided a refutation at all.

If they're a complete fucking idiot, yes, they will have trouble seeing the ridiculousness of the accusation for what it is and laughing along with those whose time is too valuable to waste on individuals making the accusations.

It's plain to see these women who live with, work with, socialise with men don't hate them. It's no different than atheists proudly chuckling about baby eating. Do we owe people who accuse us of that a sincere refutation too?

If they sincerely believe it? Yes, you bet you do. You are trying to compare accusations of "baby eating" with accusations of misandry within the feminist movement. Sorry, but this doesn't fly. Nobody actually eats babies. Some feminists really are misandrists.

To use another example, if you're faced with a room full of people who've been taught "creation science" instead of evolution and you decided that because creationism is so fucking ridiculous it doesn't deserve a sincere refutation, then you aren't going to get very far. It may be true that creationism is fucking ridiculous, but if you're faced with somebody who doesn't agree with you then you need to offer a real refutation instead of laughing at it.

For this to be analogous, people would have to be under the impression that feminists HATE TEH MENZ already. I don't think most people are that stupid or socialised to think such ridiculousness.

Well, that's good for you, but in case you hadn't noticed there is an ongoing backlash against radical feminism, led by women. So even if you think that "most people" don't agree with them, you'd be foolish to ignore the possibility that the number of people who agree with them is growing.

http://womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/

You're treating man-hating as the default feminist position that's supposedly been earned by hundreds of years of chopping off men's balls and taking their child support cheques to buy SHOES!

I didn't say anything about "default" positions. What I have actually said is that in the western world, where most of the "default" feminist battles have already been won, it is not clear, anymore, what "feminism" is for. There is no easy default definition of "feminism" in the modern western world.

No one is indoctrinated into man-hating feminism like they are into white supremacy or Christian fundamentalism.

And likewise, no-one (in the west) is indoctrinated into women-hating "rape culture", but this is what the radical feminists try to brainwash people into believing. Apparently I'm a "potential rapist" because I'm a western male. Culture made me this. Oddly enough, I've never considered raping anyone.

And the problem here is that I simply don't accept the claim that there aren't any genuinely misandric feminists. So offering irony instead of an actual argument is just going to look, to me, like a cover for somebody who doesn't have an actual argument.

Being afraid of what you think women are going to do to you is a terrible way to live. I dated someone for a year who was afraid of women. It's not healthy.

I'm not afraid of women. Or radical misandrist feminists...

You're spewing your bile over people that have no problem with you and it's creating hostility where there needn't be any.

That is exactly the way I feel when presented with a mug or T-shirt reading "I bathe in male tears."

Shrunk wrote:Can someone give examples of some of these "man-hating" feminists that everyone is talking about here?

http://vimeo.com/73587193

Robin Thicke is sleazy and his song wasn't exactly intellectual. But did he sing about female genital mutilation and the de-feminisation of women, and present it as a joke? Nope.

It's not even funny. This is funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:Because the accusation is false. Hatred of dudes has never been a characteristic of the feminist movement. It's a characteristic of a few feminists who one could rightly fling the accusation at.

This is a "no true Scotsman" logical fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

And more fail.

It would be an example of No True Scotsman if I had claimed the manhating variety weren't feminists. I don't and they are. Their manhating isn't relevant to their feminism or feminism in general though.

That's splitting hairs.

Sorry, but I don't agree. The problem here is the few who really do hate men, not least because they are some of the loudest and most prolific. If they didn't exist, then the accusation of misandry would be unjustified. But they do, so it isn't.

This is delusion, not reality. The manhating contingent of feminism has never been prolific. It has never had a foothold in reality nor has it ever reflected the mainstream majority of feminism.

Well, that is a matter of degrees, and opinion. Strangely enough, my opinion differs from yours.

Yeah, historically it's been loud. Haters are loud. That's their schtick. Doesn't mean their ideas have penetrated deep or been held by any significant number of individuals or had any consequences for the people they target.

Well, as a man, I feel they are beginning to have negative consequences on the society I actually live in. I sympathise with much (not all) of what is said by the women posting on that "women against feminism" tumblr. I know women who have been attacked by feminists for not signing up to the agenda.

When people such as yourself go after people like Amanda Hess you are demonstrating the classic use of the accusation of misandry. It's utterly false and directed at feminist women as a silencing tactic. You're not going after feminists who hate men or anyone who hates men for that matter. You're just rambling about manhating and then failing to point your finger at anyone guilty of it, instead implicating feminism in the crime. Unhelpful.

Actually I was going after Amanda Hess for not knowing what "reductio ad absurdum" means.

Except that no one claims someone stops being a vegetarian when they start hating omnivores. The problem is YOU JUST HATE OMNIVORES being flung around to shame and silence vegetarians in general and those in particular who aren't guilty of the accusation.

I'm not trying to shame and silence feminists. I'm trying to get them to be more willing to address the extremists in their own ranks, instead of turning a blind eye.

Perhaps I can use another analogy.

We have a political party in the UK called the UK Independence Party, whose stated goal is getting the UK out of the EU. Fine...even if you don't agree with that political goal, most people would accept that it is at least a reasonable thing to campaign for. It's not ethically reprehensible.

But UKIP have a bit of a problem with certain members coming out with all sorts of unacceptable nonsense, some of which is of a racist nature. So UKIP are vulnerable to accusations that it is a racist party. Now...most UKIP members have never provided the world with any evidence that they are actually racist, and the official line, as well as the majority view of real members is that racism is not part of their ideology. They have a significant number of non-white Councillors and plenty of non-white members. But a minority are indeed racists.

So the question is this: what, as a non-racist member of UKIP, should you do in response to the accusation that UKIP has got too many racists in it, or that it is a racist-leaning partly.

Should you

(a) Admit that it is a problem, and say that your party isn't racist and that the racists aren't helping the cause of the party, and should be dealt with accordingly.

or

(b) Adopt "ironic racism" and wear "I BATHE IN DARKIE'S TEARS" T-shirts in an attempt to show how silly it is to accuse UKIP of having racist tendencies/members, and to promote unity within UKIP and keep morale up.

?

The problem is that if you choose (b), it looks mightily like you are actually a racist, and trying to get away with being openly racist and dressing it up as some sort of highly-intellectual joke. You get to say something uber-racist, but at the same time claim to be undermining the very notion that UKIP might have a problem with racism. And you wonder why some darkies don't think the joke is funny?

This analogy is a bit better. Clearer as to what your point is.

I think the main difference is that in the case of feminism it's often unjustly called "misandric", not because of any man-hating individuals, but because some men feel threatened by it on principle. I think this is who the slogans are aimed at.

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Shrunk wrote:Can someone give examples of some of these "man-hating" feminists that everyone is talking about here?

http://vimeo.com/73587193

Robin Thicke is sleazy and his song wasn't exactly intellectual. But did he sing about female genital mutilation and the de-feminisation of women, and present it as a joke? Nope.

My God! They're....making...parody videos! I'm sorry I doubted you. I didn't know human beings could commit such horrors!

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Shrunk wrote:Can someone give examples of some of these "man-hating" feminists that everyone is talking about here?

http://vimeo.com/73587193

Robin Thicke is sleazy and his song wasn't exactly intellectual. But did he sing about female genital mutilation and the de-feminisation of women, and present it as a joke? Nope.

Who's 'he'?

Animavore wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Shrunk wrote:Can someone give examples of some of these "man-hating" feminists that everyone is talking about here?

http://vimeo.com/73587193

Robin Thicke is sleazy and his song wasn't exactly intellectual. But did he sing about female genital mutilation and the de-feminisation of women, and present it as a joke? Nope.

Who's 'he'?

I also managed to miss the original, until the feminist furore that followed (it was banned by lots of universities). He is a mid-table Canadian R-n-B singer who sang the following hit record (actually written by Pharrell Williams of who wrote the song "Happy", that a bunch of people recently got 100 lashes for dancing on video to in Iran), with an unintellectual video shot by a woman (who claimed she put the women in a position of power, looking at the camera, while the men looked ridiculous, and that everybody ignored her views):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU

Shrunk wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Shrunk wrote:Can someone give examples of some of these "man-hating" feminists that everyone is talking about here?

http://vimeo.com/73587193

Robin Thicke is sleazy and his song wasn't exactly intellectual. But did he sing about female genital mutilation and the de-feminisation of women, and present it as a joke? Nope.

My God! They're....making...parody videos! I'm sorry I doubted you. I didn't know human beings could commit such horrors!

They are singing about male genital mutilation (castration). It's not actually a parody. The Weird Al Jaknovic thing is a parody. The "feminist parody" is just vile, aggressive feminazi hate. Parodies are supposed to funny. Do you think that video is funny? If so, I have to ask whether you have gender-related problems of your own.

By the way...same guy (Pharrel Williams) was heavily involved in the biggest hit of the previous year: "Get Lucky", that won lots of awards. What was it about? A guy who goes to a party/club and stays up all night in the hope of "getting lucky". Hmmm...what could this song be about? Ah, but there's no woman in the video for him to get lucky with, so the feminazis kept their mouths shut for this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5EofwRzit0

Oh, and he's black, but that's getting complicated...

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Shrunk wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Shrunk wrote:Can someone give examples of some of these "man-hating" feminists that everyone is talking about here?

http://vimeo.com/73587193

Robin Thicke is sleazy and his song wasn't exactly intellectual. But did he sing about female genital mutilation and the de-feminisation of women, and present it as a joke? Nope.

My God! They're....making...parody videos! I'm sorry I doubted you. I didn't know human beings could commit such horrors!

They are singing about male genital mutilation (castration). It's not actually a parody. The Weird Al Jaknovic thing is a parody. The "feminist parody" is just vile, aggressive feminazi hate. Parodies are supposed to funny. Do you think that video is funny? If so, I have to ask whether you have gender-related problems of your own.

It's not that funny, I agree. But it's not hate. If that's the worst example of "feminazi hate" you can find on the whole internet, then I'd say this discussion is over.

UndercoverElephant wrote:To use another example, if you're faced with a room full of people who've been taught "creation science" instead of evolution and you decided that because creationism is so fucking ridiculous it doesn't deserve a sincere refutation, then you aren't going to get very far. It may be true that creationism is fucking ridiculous, but if you're faced with somebody who doesn't agree with you then you need to offer a real refutation instead of laughing at it.

Firstly, no, you don't need to explain that creationism is idiotic to creationists. Creationism will continue to be ridiculous whether you do or don't. While you're unlikely to convince a creationist of the idiocy of their beliefs via mockery, you're also unlikely to do so via reason. My money would actually be on mockery as the stronger tool.

Secondly, you've smuggled in the "faced with a room full of people" who disagree aspect. What about a biologist with a coffee cup mocking creationism in the faculty kitchen? Sure, it's preaching to the converted. So what? The feminist cup with ironic misandry is not a tool for converting non-feminists, it's an in-joke whose intended audience is people who get it. All you've demonstrated is that you don't get it. Whether that's because of an irony deficiency or a prejudice against feminism is hard to tell, but it seems to be one of the two.

Thommo wrote:maybe I'm missing something

Yep. Irony.

(I'm not for a moment you're not suggesting that you're not also missing other things, such as the difference between jokes/insults that align with social power imbalances, and those that go the other way. And possibly other things besides...)

Animavore wrote:I think the main difference is that in the case of feminism it's often unjustly called "misandric", not because of any man-hating individuals, but because some men feel threatened by it on principle. I think this is who the slogans are aimed at.

I think we can also go to unpick this further, in that while the basis for misandry against an individual male might be sound (albeit unhealthy), applying the same criteria to all men as a justification for hating them is patently ridiculous. However, because feminism isn't a political party to which an individuals membership can be revoked, there is nothing that the average everyday feminist can do to "get rid" of misandrists who give their movement a bad name.

In the UKIP examples UE put up, the party certainly can kick out anyone who is overtly racist and deny them membership. UKIP does have a degree of control over its public face and happily tolerates xenophobes, homophobes and general bigotry as long as it is kept low profile. UKIP can take action to shut such criticisms down in the public arena, whereas there is little feminists can do.

There is also the consideration behind the origins of racism or homophobia, vs why someone might hold a misandrist or misogynist p.o.v. Racism and homophobia is pretty irrational and the arguments behind such views are easily picked apart. Whereas an individual may have pretty solid grounds for holding a misandrist or misogynist p.o.v based on their life experience. Of course this doesn't stop the more charismatic individuals of this sort swaying sheeple to also hold their p.o.v. (despite the sheeple having no real experience to justify holding such a view), at which point you can have misandrist and misogynist movements which are every bit as irrational as the homophobes and racists.