Sendraks wrote:

TMB wrote:[ By definition segregation on the basis of a persons sex is sexism (or racism etc), and becomes an issue when it is done to favour one sex (or race).

Apparently there is only one version of sexism and it is the version which best suits TMBs argument. As opposed to.

Segregation on the basis of a persons sex is done to mitigate discrimination that results from sexism, it only becomes an issue because the removal of discrimination also reduces privilege or advantage that one gender has over another, where the gender losing privilege perceives themselves as being disadvantaged.

OK, lets go with your definition, now apply this to the case that women playing their own sex segregated events event deserve the privilege of getting the same reward as men whose merit is higher and the audience value of the event also brings in more sponsorship and higher gate money (like it does for tennis). BY the same token athletes who performance is also lower, for example younger, older and disabled athletes all get paid less than open, abled athletes.

So tell me what discrimination is happening to women in sport that necessitates them to have their own event to mitigate this discrimination? I get that men lose privilege to women when the male winner gets paid the same as the female winner, and when the male 200 seed, who is probably more meritorious than the top women, gets paid far less. Equal pay for equal work or not?

Sendraks wrote:The frustrating thing is that TMB is operating from a position of absolutes and assumes that anyone who disagrees with him is doing the same. Plus, he's not here to discuss and learn but, win at all costs. And as he's already made his mind up that anyone who disagrees is wrong, it is pigeon chess all the way down.

Are some feminists actually just frothing misandrists with a hugely negative view of men, who want to establish female privilege? Yes, yes they are. I've seen them in action and it is deeply unnerving stuff.

Do they represent the majority of feminists? No
Do they represent feminism? No.
Are the a problem? Yes.

But, it simply isn't possible to have a discussion about that without TMB without him twisting it around into blaming all feminists for the actions and views of a minority and coming back to arguing a distorted caricature of feminism as being fact.

There is a significant number of both men and women who support and do not question many assertions made by vocal and high profile feminists, or the many female athletes who are demanding equal reward for less merit. I accept that there are extreme feminists and more moderate ones, so I am not specifying feminist groups like SCUM or the MRA. What you post misses is that I am taking a specific scenario and arguing about what is being presented, so if you can rebut the details of how I criticise the current, and increasing groundswell that will see women in sport be given more and privilege without having to perform at the same level as men do, and it all gets carried under the banner of unfair discrimination against women. Focus your efforts on the content of what is being debated instead of chucking in red herrings.

A good example of 'feminist' thought is in a book by Laura Pappano and Eileen McDonagh, called "playing with the Boys" and while the specific points they are trying to make are unclearly presented, the book is underlaid by the fact that women just need to get a better deal, and to do this they fudge the facts. Many readers might not examine their claims very closely (as this one reviewer did not), but it creates false information about what the real situation is. Ironically Pappano and Donagh appear to argue that women can and will be beat men in certain events, and should be allowed to compete in a single event, however they have to bend the facts to do this.

In this review below, the author says this, and because she probably wanted to believe what she was reading, she did not bother to check the facts. The gem of the three example of Boston marathon, Ultramarathons and Iditarod is the statistical manipulation of the Boston Marathon figures that compares men and women runners. Can you see the error?

http://isreview.org/issue/72/are-men-re ... r-athletes

"When it comes to endurance sports, women can often leave men in the dust. Women’s greater amounts of estrogen seem to play a role in enabling some women to outperform men in endurance sports, especially in what are known as ultra-endurance sports. At marathon distances, twenty-six miles, women can perform identically to men—and in Boston’s 2003 Marathon the mean running time for the top 207 runners showed women’s times to be nearly five minutes faster, a mean time of 2:36:55 versus men’s men mean time of 2:41:33. But men on average have a harder time keeping up with women in ultra-endurance races of fifty-five miles or more.

Alaska’s Iditarod, the ultimate ultra-endurance sport, an annual 1,200-mile dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, is frequently won by women. In addition to women’s capacity for greater stamina, it is one of several sports where women’s higher percentage of body fat also plays a role in providing a biological advantage."

Sendraks wrote:Indeed, you cannot fully appreciate or understand feminism until you have heard the original mansplaining.

SEXIST.

A description from any gender is as valid as any other.

TMB wrote:So tell me what discrimination is happening to women in sport that necessitates them to have their own event to mitigate this discrimination?

This has already been explained to you in previous posts in this thread. There is no need to regurgitate that which has already been adequately answered.

TMB wrote:I get that men lose privilege to women when the male winner gets paid the same as the female winner, and when the male 200 seed, who is probably more meritorious than the top women, gets paid far less. Equal pay for equal work or not?

I've covered this in the post that you have, thus far, not responded to but, I imagine you will get round to that eventually.

Thommo wrote:

Hobbes Choice wrote:However, most feminists have not managed to think themselves out of attacking sexism with more sexism as this thread shows.

Where does it show that?

Of the people in this thread who identify as feminists, you're suggesting that "most" attack sexism with sexism. Right now, I can't see anyone doing that. At worst I see a single sarcastic use of "male" (non-plural) in #43 and even stretching the point to breaking, that's not sexism.

Asserting that men and women remain in SEPARATE contests whilst enjoying the SAME benefits is inherently sexist.
As far as I can see no one has challenged the inherently sexist position of ghettoising women to a "women only" contest, rather than allowing them to compete EQUALLY regardless of gender.
Giving either sex advantages whilst not on a level playing field is sexist.

Thommo wrote:That's an interesting perspective. I'm not sure I entirely agree, but there is certainly a disparity between "real value" and the financial rewards under capitalism.

I'm not sure that says much about capitalism though, since non-capitalist attempts to describe value (e.g. Labour theory of value) have generally failed even more spectacularly.

Are Labour market problems down to the market being too "free" or "capitalist", or are they down to the market being too "restricted" or "socialist"? Or perhaps the problem is to do with information and social constraints on movement of labour that have lie off that axis altogether?

I suppose I probably lean towards the latter explanation, but I'm not sure any one answer will really satisfy me. But then I'm not an idealist, I'm a pragmatist.

I would be inclined to agree with you in leaning towards the latter explanation.

Hobbes Choice wrote:
Asserting that men and women remain in SEPARATE contests whilst enjoying the SAME benefits is inherently sexist.

Asserting this doesn't make it so. And neither does writing in caps lend any weight to your comments.

Hobbes Choice wrote:As far as I can see no one has challenged the inherently sexist position of ghettoising women to a "women only" contest, rather than allowing them to compete EQUALLY regardless of gender.

Actually I did because, I'm not using the same flawed definition of sexism that you are.

Segregation on the basis of a persons sex is done to mitigate discrimination that results from sexism, it only becomes an issue because the removal of discrimination also reduces privilege or advantage that one gender has over another, where the gender losing privilege perceives themselves as being disadvantaged.

Evolving wrote:

TMB wrote:...no one, not even men, really bother or are vocal about scenarios where men are at a disadvantage. Very different for women.

That's not really true, in my observation. I was listening to a contribution to Woman's Hour recently, a daily radio programme on the BBC dealing with the sort of thing that the BBC thinks ought to interest women (that perception has changed a lot since it was first broadcast, before most of us were born).

This particular item was about a woman who had been convicted of murdering her husband after a long period of physically abusing him. One of the aspects discussed was why the husband, who was an educated and articulate man (he was a solicitor), evidently felt unable to approach anybody about his situation and seek help. Another aspect that was raised was, predictably, how rare such cases are this way round.

Anyway: it's not ignored.

So what action has arisen due to this scenario? Do you think there will be moves afoot with both men and women supporting men to assess if they are indeed needy victims, and set up shelters and a ministerial office so they can get the help they need? Some countries had laws in place that drafted men only into the military, like the US did until 1973. I say men but in reality many were just boys, and the pressure to be brave in some cases meant that under 18's lied about their age so they could also have a chance of getting killed, A form of the draft still exists in the US with fines etc if men between 18-25 do not register in the contingency of being needed to fight a war. Arent these 18 year old men victims? Or is it because neither men nor women really see men as victims?

Your example appears to be offered to show that men are victims, but in fact it looks like you are using to show that the reality is that men are more likely to physically abuse their female partners, and this is true, however your use of this to try and carry another argument is disingenuous. I have no issue if you want to compare men and women as victims of physical violence but prefer if you are a more transparent about it.

Thommo wrote:The most underprivileged class in Britain right now are poor, white men. This is the fundamental problem with couching things in terms of privilege, it doesn't actually explain anything.

It's not, and never has been the case that "even" privileged classes have problems that need addressing. People have problems that need addressing, "privilege" is simply a way of labeling particular problems.

I'd agree that "privilege" is a bad way of looking at these inequalities. It's perhaps best suited to a binary division on a single axis. For instance - AFAIK - it was first developed to look at black/white racial inequities in the US. And it's kind of descriptive. The problem comes when one considers other sources of inequality. And no, "intersectionality" is not the solution. "Privilege" can - kind of - describe the relationship between black and white or latino and white, but what about the relationship between black and latino? Black and asian? Asian and latino?

Perhaps a better way to look at issues like this would be to consider the idea of ... lets call them "narratives". The stories we tell about this group of people or that group of people.

Thommo wrote:Men's rights issues have a huge brand problem, in that no moderate, genuine person can afford to be associated with the men's rights brand because otherwise well meaning people are just going to assume they are prejudiced and sexist. All we ever see on these boards are the very worst handful of examples brought up over and over again. In most cases if people behaved in the exact same way towards feminists there'd be a storm of complaint.

In fact, many of the "criticisms" made about the MRM seem to me to be deliberate smear attempts. Like the "MRAs Boycotting Mad Max" bullshit that I started getting on Facebook last year.

Never mind that the writer of the article in question does not identify as an MRA. Never mind that he posted his idiocy on a site openly hostile to MRAs (at the time the article was posted, the site's "about" page explicitly disassociated itself from the MRM).

A kind of circular logic develops where someone posted some misogynistic shit therefore they must be an MRA because MRAs post misogynistic shit like the stuff that this guy posted.

Of course, behind these smears there are occasionally good things to come out of the MRM (the idea of male/female gender roles as hyperagency vs. hypoagency is my favourite). At this stage they are mostly "consciousness rising" types of things; one can't after all get society to address a problem until society admits the problem exists. And what happens when MRA groups try to organise for this most basic step? What happens when, for example, a group tries to hold a talk on the topic of male suicide? Or the "boy crisis" in schools?

I suppose it's six of one half a dozen of another. There's plenty of people within the MRM who seem intent upon being as confrontational and unpleasant as possible. But there's also plenty of people outside the MRM who seem to see gender issues as a zero-sum game: if a men's issue gets attention, women lose.

Thommo wrote:An organisation like fathers4justice has its problems, but we never hear about them because people would rather bash the same soft targets, like AVFM, over and over. The divide here is about noisy twats on the internet, not about real activism or real issues. Of course there are twats on the internet who are MRAs, maybe there are even disproportionately many compared to twats on the internet that are feminist activists, but even supposing that is a fact (and asserting it is not the same as showing it, as I hope we're all aware), what exactly is supposed to follow from that fact? Does it have a use beyond dismissing certain people as "undesirables" in threads like this one?

I'd say not.

TMB wrote:Your example appears to be offered to show that men are victims, but in fact it looks like you are using to show that the reality is that men are more likely to physically abuse their female partners, and this is true, however your use of this to try and carry another argument is disingenuous. I have no issue if you want to compare men and women as victims of physical violence but prefer if you are a more transparent about it.

You misunderstand. My post was in response to this statement:

TMB wrote:...no one, not even men, really bother or are vocal about scenarios where men are at a disadvantage. Very different for women.

Nicko wrote: But there's also plenty of people outside the MRM who seem to see gender issues as a zero-sum game: if a men's issue gets attention, women lose.

I think this is reasonable view to hold, especially where one is considering legislative solutions to a problem and the amount of legislative resource is finite. Any set of proposals to tackle one issue will mean, by default, not tackling another issue. Although that doesn't mean that just because an issue concerning Men is being looked at, doesn't mean that by default a woman's issue must to be. The system could choose not to tackle one of many other issues.

And whilst there remain a good many issues of concern to women that need to be addressed (because centuries of inequality do not disappear overnight or even over decades), this isn't a justification for not tackling issues which concern men.

Sendraks wrote:

TMB wrote:
You will need to support your assertion about me 'women bashing' with something less emotional and more objective if you want to be a rational sceptic.

My assertion is supported by the content of your posts. That you do not see that, is not my problem and I've already outlined the difficulties of trying to have a reasoned discussion with you on this point.

TMB wrote:I have no issue with women competing in their own events, I just don't agree they should get the same reward for lower merit.

For someone adopting the pretence of not "women bashing" you do not choose your words carefully or at all.

Your position of "lower merit" is, in spite of your reliance on performance metrics, both subjective and prejudiced. The "merits" of sporting events are not readily quantifiable and factor in such things as "entertainment" which is really what they are all about. Ultimately the punters decide what is most "entertaining" and that is what commands the cash value.

At a very superficial level, yes it doesn't look fair that some women's events like Tennis, the competitors are getting paid more per set than male competitors are. Indeed in the work place, you'd pro-rata the pay of the person working for less time and no one would think anything of it. After all, a person in a conventional job has outputs which can be readily determined and reasonable assumptions made about what they can deliver in less time compared to colleague who works more hours. Of course, this is still a rough measure, because we all know people who work shorter hours and still churn out a full weeks work in comparison to their colleagues. They don't get paid anymore though, unless they're on commission.

However, sporting events and all forms of "entertainment" suffer from less quantifiable metrics for what people deem to be entertaining. The only measures you've got is how much people are willing to pay to see (or sponsor) a given form of entertainment and that in turn influences the prize money given out.

Is there a reliable metric which says the sets of tennis men play is more entertaining than the fewer sets that women play? Would tennis be more or less entertaining if men played less sets?

A happy medium might be that men played 4 sets and women played 4 sets. That would at least look "fair" on paper, although I imagine some would still argue that men work "harder" in their sets, trotting out metrics about ball velocities and what not. So you'll never get to a point where everyone is content that the equal prize monies are "fair."

Ultimately the "merit" of the competitors is whatever the prize money says their merit is, which is tied to whatever the punters will pay to see that "merit" and the sponsors will stump up for that "merit."

Don't like that? Don't be part of that system. Which is basically just capitalist principle of people paying whatever they think something is worth.

You are incorrect, its very clear in both mens and womens event that specific metrics exist to decide who is the better player and in each engagement. When Serena beats another woman she is seen as having played better than her opponent in that engagement, and as one approaches the finals spectators are prepared to pay more money because there is an expectation of greater quality, merit, skill – call it what you will. Its not ambiguous and its very quantifiable. When athletes qualify for the Olympics it is based on very clear metrics and 100th of second is all it takes to qualify or miss out. When Usain Bolt wins the 100m sprint we can tell to 100th of second how much better he is than 2nd place. What are you thinking? Cash value is important, and mens finals commands higher gate than womens finals

The set count is a furphy, bottom line is that Serena Williams would be thrashed by the top 10 mens players and probably beaten by at least the top 200 men. The difference in merit has very little to do with the level of work Serena puts in, it’s the quality where women fall short

And tennis is like a job that is paid commission. In sales, like in sport, no one really cares how hard you try if you do not get the results you don’t get the reward. Serena often uses the argument that they put in as much effort as the men so they should get paid the same, but plenty of men and women players put in plenty of effort but do not have enough talent to get the results – and they don’t get paid for effort. You answered your own question here. Someone sitting on their arse getting paid by the hour is hardly merit and any company that wast to be productive, needs productive employees that add value when they work, sales commission is directly linked, other roles are not quite as easy but most organisation have performance evaluation and not just time clocked.

You are wrong again. Even if people think Sharapova is better to watch and give sponsorship to rather than Serena is, will still be OK if Serena wins the match based upon merit only and gets the winners purse. Its quantifiable, measurable and generally people pay to see winners play winners all the way up the to the top. The only reason why Serena gets more purse money that the other women, is because she usually n=beats them. Not because of her fashion sense, or her coachs birth sign, its based purely on merit of tennis. Likewise, it would be very easy to see if Federer was a better tennis player than Serena and that would be by letting them play under the same rules. Once again sponsorship exists and Sharapova gets more than Serena, but not in prize money. Sharapova and Kournikova are both very good women tennis players, compared to men they would be anonymous, but as women they are good enough to get into the public eye and play great tennis (for women). Their bonus is that people think they are great looking, so fans will wear their fashions, get their hair cut like them, use the same tennis rackets and just generally wish they looked as good as they did, so the sponsors see them as a better business proposition that Serena. You don’t see the same thing in the men. The best players get the most sponsorship (until they are caught using drugs etc, but mens looks don’t seem to count much)

Irrelevant metric, men play better tennis, and fans want to see top quality, and pay accordingly. And the game scoring is designed to produce a winner that plays better than the loser (in most cases, luck in injury also happen). What we know is that no one will pay money to watch really crappy tennis get played because many people can do that all by themselves. As you introduce competition its about winning and being better, not about how hard you try or even how nicely your playing style is, you need to win to get to the next round

You are missing the point of merit based systems. If women played tennis to the same standard as men, this would not be an issue because a single event would exist, but women play lower quality tennis, so to keep them in the game a separate event must exist. Just like it does for disabled, younger and older athletes. But they get paid much less because the quality is lower and pull of the audience is lower

There are two separate metrics. One is the competition to select the best merit. Annike Sorensdam tried this by entering a mens golf tournament. She was the best women player by far and thought she stood a chance in a mens game. She did not make the cut, but still got publicity as a woman, but the men who were equally placed were nobodies even though they played as well as she did. This means as a woman she gets noticed by playing at what is a good standard for a women, but an indifferent standard for a male professional. This is what the prize money is for.

The other metric is crowd appeal. All sportsmen and women have personalities and can be entertaining on and off court, but it usually comes down to their skill at the game they play, and if they don’t do well at the quantifiable metrics they don’t get onto the court to show off their personality. If they are great at telling jokes they can give up tennis and do comedy shows, if they are women and conform to specific standards of beauty more people want to watch them and be like them. For men its mostly just the preference metric, the better you are the more prize money you get and the more sponsorship and the more people find them attractive (as opposed to good looking).

Evolving wrote:

TMB wrote:Your example appears to be offered to show that men are victims, but in fact it looks like you are using to show that the reality is that men are more likely to physically abuse their female partners, and this is true, however your use of this to try and carry another argument is disingenuous. I have no issue if you want to compare men and women as victims of physical violence but prefer if you are a more transparent about it.

You misunderstand. My post was in response to this statement:

TMB wrote:...no one, not even men, really bother or are vocal about scenarios where men are at a disadvantage. Very different for women.

In that case give me a response about the military draft laws that apply for men, and see how we don't see men as victims.

Why are you asking me about military draft laws? I gave you an example of a radio magazine whose target audience is women, being "vocal" about where men are at a disadvantage. I'm baffled by your response to this.

Thanks for that response TMB, you basically just handwaved away everything I said with a wall of text that predictably just regurgitates what you've said many times before already and thusly confirmed that engaging with you is a pointless exercise.

You're not hear to discuss or listen, you've already rehearsed your arguments and reached your conclusion with the kind of terminal intensity I normally see from fundamental theists.

Evolving wrote:Why are you asking me about military draft laws? I gave you an example of a radio magazine whose target audience is women, being "vocal" about where men are at a disadvantage. I'm baffled by your response to this.

It isn't baffling when you realise he's not here to listen or have a discussion. Anything that conflicts with his idea of reality just gets handwaved away or otherwise ignored.

TMB wrote:

Sendraks wrote:The frustrating thing is that TMB is operating from a position of absolutes and assumes that anyone who disagrees with him is doing the same. Plus, he's not here to discuss and learn but, win at all costs. And as he's already made his mind up that anyone who disagrees is wrong, it is pigeon chess all the way down.

Are some feminists actually just frothing misandrists with a hugely negative view of men, who want to establish female privilege? Yes, yes they are. I've seen them in action and it is deeply unnerving stuff.

Do they represent the majority of feminists? No
Do they represent feminism? No.
Are the a problem? Yes.

But, it simply isn't possible to have a discussion about that without TMB without him twisting it around into blaming all feminists for the actions and views of a minority and coming back to arguing a distorted caricature of feminism as being fact.

There is a significant number of both men and women who support and do not question many assertions made by vocal and high profile feminists, or the many female athletes who are demanding equal reward for less merit. I accept that there are extreme feminists and more moderate ones, so I am not specifying feminist groups like SCUM or the MRA. What you post misses is that I am taking a specific scenario and arguing about what is being presented, so if you can rebut the details of how I criticise the current, and increasing groundswell that will see women in sport be given more and privilege without having to perform at the same level as men do, and it all gets carried under the banner of unfair discrimination against women. Focus your efforts on the content of what is being debated instead of chucking in red herrings.

A good example of 'feminist' thought is in a book by Laura Pappano and Eileen McDonagh, called "playing with the Boys" and while the specific points they are trying to make are unclearly presented, the book is underlaid by the fact that women just need to get a better deal, and to do this they fudge the facts. Many readers might not examine their claims very closely (as this one reviewer did not), but it creates false information about what the real situation is. Ironically Pappano and Donagh appear to argue that women can and will be beat men in certain events, and should be allowed to compete in a single event, however they have to bend the facts to do this.

In this review below, the author says this, and because she probably wanted to believe what she was reading, she did not bother to check the facts. The gem of the three example of Boston marathon, Ultramarathons and Iditarod is the statistical manipulation of the Boston Marathon figures that compares men and women runners. Can you see the error?

http://isreview.org/issue/72/are-men-re ... r-athletes

"When it comes to endurance sports, women can often leave men in the dust. Women’s greater amounts of estrogen seem to play a role in enabling some women to outperform men in endurance sports, especially in what are known as ultra-endurance sports. At marathon distances, twenty-six miles, women can perform identically to men—and in Boston’s 2003 Marathon the mean running time for the top 207 runners showed women’s times to be nearly five minutes faster, a mean time of 2:36:55 versus men’s men mean time of 2:41:33. But men on average have a harder time keeping up with women in ultra-endurance races of fifty-five miles or more.

Alaska’s Iditarod, the ultimate ultra-endurance sport, an annual 1,200-mile dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, is frequently won by women. In addition to women’s capacity for greater stamina, it is one of several sports where women’s higher percentage of body fat also plays a role in providing a biological advantage."

Well done, you've found three people who hold a silly view.

I can do that too:
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/pseud ... t8539.html

Nicko wrote:<stuff>

Thanks for your comments Nicko, I read them and thought about them and enjoyed them and followed the supplied links, but have nothing in particular to say in reply.

Hobbes Choice wrote:

Thommo wrote:

Hobbes Choice wrote:However, most feminists have not managed to think themselves out of attacking sexism with more sexism as this thread shows.

Where does it show that?

Of the people in this thread who identify as feminists, you're suggesting that "most" attack sexism with sexism. Right now, I can't see anyone doing that. At worst I see a single sarcastic use of "male" (non-plural) in #43 and even stretching the point to breaking, that's not sexism.

Asserting that men and women remain in SEPARATE contests whilst enjoying the SAME benefits is inherently sexist.

Firstly, I don't see anyone making that assertion here. So let me ask "Where does it show that?"

Secondly, this is a different claim, to the first (still quoted there in the nest) claim, to which I ask "Where does it show that?".

Thirdly, I do not think you're right, there is no doctrine of male or female supremacy in the request that men and women compete separately, but that those contests are held as equally important.

Hobbes Choice wrote:As far as I can see no one has challenged the inherently sexist position of ghettoising women to a "women only" contest, rather than allowing them to compete EQUALLY regardless of gender.

Possibly because that position is a fiction. Aside from misusing the word ghettoising (which means to relegate to a slum) to describe women's sport, which is anything but a slum, it overlooks the fact that in most instances so called "men's" events are actually open events.

Perhaps you're angling after the admission that in athletic terms men consistently outperform women? If so I give it gladly. Men are generally "better" at most sports than women. But that doesn't inform my view. I know some women. I like some women. Many of those women are people too. They want to do normal, human stuff, like play sport, watch sport, go to the gym in their spare time or keep fit by going for a run. They want women's sport to "be a thing", to be able to watch it on TV and have role models and a space in which they can compete with others of their own level. Having entry categories for women in top level events helps support that system, and it contributes towards my own entertainment. I watched several women's world T20 cup matches and enjoyed them on TV. I gain nothing by a pretense of equality that wipes that event off the face of the Earth for some ideology, so I don't support it.

Hobbes Choice wrote:Giving either sex advantages whilst not on a level playing field is sexist.

Neither traditionally recognised sex has such an advantage, so it's rather a moot point. Even if it wasn't, I disagree anyway. I've watched U21s football and didn't see ageism. I've watched middleweight boxing and didn't perceive fatism.

At the end of the day, I've told you what I'd recognise to be sexism - the doctrine that one sex is inherently superior to another - and this certainly isn't it. If I accepted your idiosyncratic definition, then I'd simply be saying that there's "good sexism" and "bad sexism", just as I'm forced to do when someone chatters about Islamophobia being any criticism of Mohammed, or antisemitism being any criticism of Israel.

Sendraks wrote:

Nicko wrote: But there's also plenty of people outside the MRM who seem to see gender issues as a zero-sum game: if a men's issue gets attention, women lose.

I think this is reasonable view to hold, especially where one is considering legislative solutions to a problem and the amount of legislative resource is finite. Any set of proposals to tackle one issue will mean, by default, not tackling another issue. Although that doesn't mean that just because an issue concerning Men is being looked at, doesn't mean that by default a woman's issue must to be. The system could choose not to tackle one of many other issues.

I agree that it is a reasonable view to hold for an interest group for "women's interests". That is, if one is only claiming to be a special interest group for issues that affect women, all well and good. Where I think many* feminist groups go wrong is claiming they are for "gender equality" when they are in fact only addressing areas where gender inequity adversely affects women and ignoring - in some cases actively discouraging efforts to address - areas where gender inequity adversely affects men.

If feminist groups simply said, "This is not something we are going to address. Only so many hours in each day, people. If someone else wants to get this, fine." then there would not be a problem.

Where I think the justifiable** antagonism towards feminists from the MRM comes from is that every time they try to do the things you were under the impression they never do, there are feminists standing in their way. Stating that feminism is all the fuck over this problem and that the MRAs should go home or join up with them.

The problem for this argument is that the MRM has a number of prominent figures who did try to address men's issues from within feminism. And it didn't work out well for them.

It is simply not rational for anyone advocating for men's issues (oh, how I hate the term "Men's Rights") to regard any feminist group as anything other than a potential obstacle. Hopefully that will not always be the case, but for the moment anyone trying to get men's issues addressed - or even recognised as issues at all - will reliably find themselves opposed by people who at least call themselves "feminists".

For example, anyone advocating for male victims of Intimate Partner Violence in a jurisdiction where the Duluth Model holds sway are just not going to be able to do that without pointing out that a bunch of feminists got this stuff wrong. The "feminist" Duluth model does not even describe the majority of male violence against a non-violent female partner.

Some group trying to address the "boy crisis" in education are going to come smack up against a feminist group insisting against all evidence that it's girls who are still disadvantaged.

Someone trying to advocate for a presumption of equal time in child custody disputes is going to come up against - in the US at least - the National Organisation for Women.

I really do understand that this is Not All Feminists. Most people who call themselves feminists are too busy living their lives, genuinely trying to not be sexist and genuinely trying to fight sexism where they encounter it, to be bothered opposing men's issues. Many might be under the - usually false - impression that someone in their movement is all over this shit. I mean, feminism fights for gender equality, right? Surely someone, somewhere, has this? But when any group or individual starts trying to address men's issues they will find people calling themselves "feminists" in the way.

Which, again, is excusable for a special interest group competing for scarce funding. It is utterly inexcusable for a movement claiming to be for equality.

Sendraks wrote:And whilst there remain a good many issues of concern to women that need to be addressed (because centuries of inequality do not disappear overnight or even over decades), this isn't a justification for not tackling issues which concern men.

Personally, I think that - at least in modern developed democracies - things have progressed at least to the point where real progress on gender issues is not going to be achieved by just getting "stuff" for one gender. Issues like women's lack of credibility in the workplace when bucking for promotion are just not going to be addressed in any truly meaningful way until we look critically at just why - to use the reverse example - the criminal behaviour of women is also taken less seriously.





* I actually don't know of any exceptions. I'm just hedging my bets.
** Not that there is not also unjustifiable antagonism. Destroy a movement's credibility on the Left and it will reliably fill with Right-wing wingnuts.