Differing reactions to men & women getting abused

[Loppan Torkel]

:-/ that one back-fired..

 

[Borachio]

@Oruc

My question was about whether he had attempted to understand views which were not his own. He seemed to outline something about such views can evolve from "MRAist" to "enlightened feminist". Or something along those lines.

I didn't find it unconvincing. How about you?

 

[Borachio]

That kinda misses the point of the internet

Isn't there a difference between fruitless arguing back and forth, and reasoned discussion which seeks to discover the truth?

(Oh, bugger it! Double post.)

 

[Oruc]

@Oruc

My question was about whether he had attempted to understand views which were not his own. He seemed to outline something about such views can evolve from "MRAist" to "enlightened feminist". Or something along those lines.

I didn't find it unconvincing. How about you?

I didn't find it convincing, everybody changes I was raised to vote labour. MRAs and feminists are practically the same at their worst they became violent and at their 'best' they are whiny complainers who hope someone else fixes their problems.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Isn't there a difference between fruitless arguing back and forth, and reasoned discussion which seeks to discover the truth?

Certainly, the joke was that many people prefer winning over truth on the internet.

 

[Light Cleric]

I did not say they could not argue, I said that they should try and listen for a change.

Maybe you should stop assuming that other people's opinions aren't informed by women. I tried to point this out in a previous thread when you complained about this, I even explicitly pointed out that I had spoken to women that shared my opinion, though you may bailed out by then, I honestly don't remember. I DO distinctly remember coming back to that thread after having literally just asking a woman their opinion that sign, seeing you make that accusation, and kinda wanting to punch you in the face, though. Just because the women I speak to differ on things from the women you speak to does not put you in any position to cast judgment upon people, which you seem to do quite frequently, nor does it make it right for you to assume what people's opinions have been informed by. Maybe it does in your mind, but you shouldn't get indignant when people don't think your opinion is of any more value than anyone else's.

Perhaps you should also consider not being blatantly provocative all the time. Really, as soon as I saw the title of that thread you created, I knew that was going to be an utter train wreck. Aside from referring to it as a "hissyfit"(which seems like an odd word choice, considering most childish behavior does not result in a bunch of people with bullets through their skulls) and berating people for not expressing well-wishes or empathy, which you yourself did not show a shred of in your opening post or anywhere else that I saw, you also ridiculed the idea that this might have been caused by mental illness. Indeed, I considered asking what the missing ingredient would be here as opposed to other twits with the same mindset as this guy who haven't shot people. I disagreed with some of the things posted in that thread by others as well, of course, but again, I saw an impending lock coming and didn't bother getting involved.

 

[Traitorfish]

I certainly see your point here and I am willing to concede that I lack adequate awareness of their troubles. I see how important that is and how at the same it is all too convenient to not bother with that as much as it would be necessary.
However, I still can not befriend myself with the dogma of "our worry needs to be starting point of it all". People come from different angles and life experiences and I am with Borochia that the most fruitful approach is to respect every one of those equally. Whereas respect means they deserve engagement and recognition. Not just dismissal.

It's not about "respect". It's nothing so moralistic. The reasoning is, oppression exists, and the oppressed understand their experiences better than those who merely witness their oppression. Women understand the experience of being women in a sexist society better than men do. Black people understand the experience of being black in a racist society better than white people do. The same doesn't work in reverse: there is little about being a white person that would be alien to a black person, because white people are the cultural default. With gender it's a little trickier, I think, because masculinity carries certain ideals in a way that whiteness doesn't (it's been noted that gender simultaneous functions as a bipolar and a unipolar system, depending on context), but the difference in experience is still in favour of women.

None of this means that women or people of colour are always right. They disagree amongst themselves, so at least some of them must be wrong some of them time. And it's not to say that experience is everything, because arguments for the existence of racism and sexism are strongest when they can call upon empirical evidence. But it's a recognition that experience is central, and that any movement towards equality begins from the experience of inequality. That lends women, people of colour, and other marginalised people are certain epistemic privilege over us cultural defaults, and that places a duty on us to shut up and listen.

 

[Crezth]

Good luck with trying to change biology and evolution. We have been taught that free sex does not come with a price. So all we are going to get is arguments over the reality of the situation. There will never be any resolution though.

If you say so. Doesn't mean I'll stop trying.

I'm talking about the frequent framing of this issue (and many others) in popular left-of-center media with an exclusive focus on women.
They could really only do any worse if they wrote op-eds about the terrible effect of prostate cancer on women (wait, actually i bet they've already done that).
What you can of course do is to assert that this is not feminism, that this is merely intelectually light-weight journalists trying to do feminism and succeeding only in part, to put it mildly.
If that is so, then there has to be a push among feminist academia to actively grab the mic and do these things right before incompetent slightly feministy journalists do it wrong.

I think you're underestimating the effort and work that feminists have put into grabbing the mic the past five decades. The reason we're even talking about domestic abuse in the first place goes back to this. Though this is really an exceptional example of what I'm talking about re: this issue being used to frame an anti-feminist agenda. "See? Feminists don't even talk about this!" and so on. Well, it's just not true.

The perception of males not suffering domestic abuse is as much anathema to the ideals of feminism as the notion that women must suffer abuse. They are inextricably linked and I don't know how you can think otherwise.

I refer you, again, to the CDC report on the matter. Table 4.1 and 4.2

http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf

If anything the 40% figure would be too low for the US.
The "Mankind Initiative" is a UK based non-profit.

Oh, OK. That's a useful resource.

@Crezth
I am not arguing that culturally constructed gender roles play no role in inter-gender-violence. Nor am I arguing that it wasn't fruitful to focus on violence against women as a distinct phenomena.
All I am arguing is that if gender roles didn't exist we shouldn't have a ratio of 1:1 of inter-gender violence, because constructed social roles simply are not the only relevant factor in inter-gender-violence. But only then would it make sense to say that our aim should be that the ratio is 1:1.
As it is, IMO our aim should simply be that there is less violence. Whereas one fruitful measure can be to focus on violence fueled by gender roles. But not to get a ratio of 1:1, but to decrease absolute violence.

Yes, yes, yes, that's a noble goal and all, but also not a particularly meaningful one. It's taken for granted that we want to reduce violence across the board, and you are very humble to call it a "simple" goal for all that. But that's obfuscation: the problem we've identified is that more of this violence happens to women than men. This is a question of gender relations, even if this is an imbalance born of natural differences between men and women, well, really that only enhances my point.

You insist that even in a post-gender society it wouldn't be 50-50 because women are inherently different from men in, oddly, the exact ways that also make them good targets for domestic abuse. I think you're assuming a lot about why and how domestic abuse happens (specifically that it's strong vs. weak, which is a very unchivalrous way of defining abuse victims I might add).

Even so, you may be right that the hard physical attributes of both genders lead to a barely unneutral spread; but it's also kind of irrelevant. There's honestly no way for us to tell at this juncture. It's like when people ask "Why aren't more women becoming doctors? Are women stupider than men?" I think it's unlikely, but ultimately it's irrelevant because the most important part of human-human interaction has to do with perception, and you better believe endemic cultural sexism is going to tamper with that perception like no tomorrow.

 

[Borachio]

any movement towards equality begins from the experience of inequality

Is this true?

Often enough the reverse seems to be true.

Those who experience prejudice are more likely to be prejudiced against others.

People who were abused as children very often abuse children themselves.

The injustice experienced by Jewish people is only too easily inflicted on Palestians.

I exaggerate, I expect, but I certainly suspect the truth of your statement.

 

[Narz]

They shouldn't, and it's unfortunate that they do. But when so many of the people talking about male abuse victims are people like Narz, who have no actual interest in the well-being male abuse victims but merely wish to use the issue as an anti-feminist cudgel, it's easy to see how they become numb to it.

#1 : There are no "people like Narz" (though many may wish to be in that catagory).

#2 : You don't know what my interest or intentions are.

#3 : Please refrain from personal attacks per CFC code of conduct.

instead saying that I thought that was a probably unfair characterization of Narz

Thank you.

 

[Gori the Grey]

...Yes? Care to provide evidence of where I "haven't listened?"

1) Your OP didn't ask us a question. Do you even realize that? You simply offered us from the outset what was to be the proper explanatory paradigm for the event.

2) You asked your first respondent why he bothered posting.

3) In post 39, I proposed that part of the problem (already developing) might be differing definitions of "men's rights" (This is at the root of a lot of these fruitless threads, and I'm going to spell it out more later). You give no evidence of having entertained that possibility. I also pointed out that the killer seems as resentful of men who get women as he is of women.

4) Post 56 points out that the shooter's sense of entitlement long predates an age where gender issues would have been any concern for him.

5) In post 80, Oruc pointed out that the shooter resented someone else (a man) for winning the lottery. The killer's entitlement is certainly not limited to gender issues.

6) No response to any of these other possible explanations for the shooting. See point 1. You pride yourself on having been a good listener to feminists. But you're not a good listener here, Cheezy.

7) As late as post 105, you claimed that the killer killed "a bunch of women." Without wanting to be disrespectful to the two women who were killed and their families and friends, two is not generally a "bunch." Four men were killed; five if we include the killer himself. I don't think you were even bothering to listen to the news report about the incident itself!

I think this:

I still listen to what these people say here, but I already know what they're thinking

is a big part of the problem. If you think that, you may not really be listening as well as you believe you are.

Do you know what bothers me about the crappy discussions we've been having lately. This site is my best source for interesting thinking projects. In post #41 of this thread, Traitorfish observed "We don't, as a society, have the conceptual tool-kit to deal with male victims of abuse." That is a great observation that gets me thinking. I want to roll up my intellectual sleeves and ask "What would need to be in that conceptual tool kit?" But then the discussions on this site don't prove to be great for actually productively following up on the great thoughts it prompts. If we tried to take that up it would be all MRA this, feminist that. Maddening.

See:

there is little about being a white person that would be alien to a black person, because white people are the cultural default.

Dang, that's one I want to crack into too. Why wouldn't the experience of being the cultural default be as alien to a black person as the experience of being a black person is to a white person?

 

[Narz]

In which a white man lectures feminists and POC on how to liberate themselves correctly.

The irony is, you don't realize what a farce you are. There's a very good reason advocates of the above movements distance themselves from you: because you lecture them from a position of privilege. Do you not see the irony, as a man, of telling women that they're doing feminism wrong? Do you not see the irony, as a White (I'm pretty sure you're White), of telling POC that they're doing liberation wrong? The point of these movements is to escape the domination of men and of whites, respectively. So you lecturing them on how to liberate themselves correctly is really an extension of what they're trying to escape.

Before you swoop in and go "oh yeah, well what are you doing then?" I don't lecture those people about those things. I talk to them to find out what they want from us, as white men, and I listen. The answer is almost invariably "clear the way for us." So I talk to other whites and to other men about what women and POC say they want for their liberation.

Do you see anything ironic about you, as a white male telling other white males their opinions don't matter because they are white males? Just curious.

is a big part of the problem. If you think that, you may not really be listening as well as you believe you are.

Indeed. It's hard to have an intelligent discussion when someone is treating you as a sterotype rather than responding to what you are actually saying.

Dang, that's one I want to crack into too. Why wouldn't the experience of being the cultural default be as alien to a black person as the experience of being a black person is to a white person?

The idea that there is a singular "black" or "white" or "male" or "female" experience is ridiculous. If I know a woman for 10 years I'm going to understand her mind/experience better than a random female who doesn't know her at all. The idea that a certain color skin or type of genitalia is a prerequisite for understand another person's experience is... well, unreal. What helps you understand a person's experience is listening & trying to visualize what its like in their shoes.

 

[Oruc]

In kaiserguards thread about cfc supposedly moving to the right certain posters said they realised they were on the political extremes. But now when confronted with centrists disagreeing with them they seem to have forgotten that.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Do you see anything ironic about you, as a white male telling other white males their opinions don't matter because they are white males? Just curious.

He hasn't done so far so I doubt he's about to start now.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Do you see anything ironic about you, as a white male telling other white males their opinions don't matter because they are white males? Just curious.

Yeah, this is the most maddening thing. Being of the male gender disqualifies all the rest of us from posting, but not him!

 

[timtofly]

It's a point of feminism that white men aren't allowed to argue without first considering what it might be like to be somebody who is not a white man. That people of colour are best acquainted with the experiences of people of colour and that women are best acquainted with the experiences of women, and that if white people or men want to get involved in these discussions, they have to begin with those experiences.

It's not about "respect". It's nothing so moralistic. The reasoning is, oppression exists, and the oppressed understand their experiences better than those who merely witness their oppression. Women understand the experience of being women in a sexist society better than men do. Black people understand the experience of being black in a racist society better than white people do. The same doesn't work in reverse: there is little about being a white person that would be alien to a black person, because white people are the cultural default. With gender it's a little trickier, I think, because masculinity carries certain ideals in a way that whiteness doesn't (it's been noted that gender simultaneous functions as a bipolar and a unipolar system, depending on context), but the difference in experience is still in favour of women.

None of this means that women or people of colour are always right. They disagree amongst themselves, so at least some of them must be wrong some of them time. And it's not to say that experience is everything, because arguments for the existence of racism and sexism are strongest when they can call upon empirical evidence. But it's a recognition that experience is central, and that any movement towards equality begins from the experience of inequality. That lends women, people of colour, and other marginalised people are certain epistemic privilege over us cultural defaults, and that places a duty on us to shut up and listen.

I agree with your reasoning, but. The whole construct is the building of a wall, which puts both sides at odds and creates an atmosphere of tension whether it is desired or not. Even if one were to listen and even agree, it does not solve the issue if the only point was to convince one party they were right and the other party was wrong. As long as there are two opposing views, humans are going to gravitate to one or the other. It would seem to me that if humans take away the wall and stop making an issue of it, perhaps mutual understanding will emerge and prevail.

So, using the word "but" above was intentional to show that building a wall is easy. Avoiding them is hard to do.

 

[Traitorfish]

Dang, that's one I want to crack into too. Why wouldn't the experience of being the cultural default be as alien to a black person as the experience of being a black person is to a white person?

Because experience isn't limited to direct physical experience. Black people still inhabit the same cultural universe as black people, submersed as much as white people are in a cultural framework which takes the generic human to be white, and presents the generic human experience as such. They wouldn't have the experience of individual white people and how they relate to their whiteness- although that is also true of other white people- but they certainly have access to a generic white experience in a which way white people really don't have access to a n equivalent generic black experience.

There is little that I could tell a black person about being white, but a very great deal he could tell me about being black.

Yeah, this is the most maddening thing. Being of the male gender disqualifies all the rest of us from posting, but not him!

That is explicitly not what Cheezy has argued. Disagree with him if you must, be at least try to disagree with the position he is actually presenting.

Is this true?

Often enough the reverse seems to be true.

Those who experience prejudice are more likely to be prejudiced against others.

People who were abused as children very often abuse children themselves.

The injustice experienced by Jewish people is only too easily inflicted on Palestians.

I exaggerate, I expect, but I certainly suspect the truth of your statement.

You're muddling my claim a bit, here. What I'm suggesting is that the experience of inequality is a necessary condition for a movement towards equality, but not that it's a sufficient one. As you say, inequality just as often breeds inequality.

 

[Angst]

Edit: Screw it.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Do you see anything ironic about you, as a white male telling other white males their opinions don't matter because they are white males? Just curious.

Not at all. I happily betray my class in the interests of the oppressed.

 

[Borachio]

You're missing the point, I think.

If your central position is that white males' views count for nothing, then your own view, as a white male, counts for nothing.

This is self-defeating. You cannot escape having a view as a white male. Or do you think you can?