[RD] Feminism

[Ryika]

That would propositioning at most by the sound of it.

But I mean, think about the opposite. Nagging a woman until she gives in, and if she doesn't, shame her, that's okay? If not, what's the difference?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That would be propositioning at most by the sound of it.

It isn't clear from the statement, but I was assuming that miss "but I'm so horny" did not make her complaints without some amount of continued physical contact. While making assumptions isn't good policy, if that assumption happens to be true my conclusion that Civver had a case is accurate.

 

[Lexicus]

But I mean, think about the opposite. Nagging a woman until she gives in, and if she doesn't, shame her, that's okay? If not, what's the difference?

Indeed, emotionally blackmailing your SO into sex is Bad

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Indeed, emotionally blackmailing your SO into sex is Bad

If you have to use emotional blackmail are they actually significant?

 

[JollyRoger]

Now that that's cleared, you will surely point out that this is abuse too, right?

Attempting to secure an agreement is different than physically groping someone. Also, Akka's hypo didn't seem to suggest a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship between the parties which would alter the context a bit.

 

[Akka]

TBH, I'm rather freaked out at how quickly people would label something which is inappropriate into "sexual assault you can press charges about". I know USA are all about throwing lawsuits, but still, yeesh.

Accurate. I had no idea that anyone was waiting for an answer to what I had taken as a rhetorical question. It should be noted that Civver had a valid case for pressing charges against his ex-gf in most jurisdictions.

I admit it's half rhetorical in that I simply have big (like "BIG") doubts that it would really be considered "the same" in both cases. It feels a bit like when Civver says "I'm not misogynist"

 

[Bugfatty300]

It isn't clear from the statement, but I was assuming that miss "but I'm so horny" did not make her complaints without some amount of continued physical contact. While making assumptions isn't good policy, if that assumption happens to be true my conclusion that Civver had a case is accurate.

I assumed the sexual contact with his girlfriend was consensual throughout. She was propositioning for the 3rd party for which consent was refused -before- any unwanted acts occurred. We need more steamy details to solve this case.

 

[JollyRoger]

TBH, I'm rather freaked out at how quickly people would label something which is inappropriate into "sexual assault you can press charges about".

I think fondling without consent clearly falls over the line into sexual assault.

 

[Lexicus]

TBH, I'm rather freaked out at how quickly people would label something which is inappropriate into "sexual assault you can press charges about". I know USA are all about throwing lawsuits, but still, yeesh.

There is certainly a point to be made about carceral solutions to the problems faced by women. This is, in my view, a major criticism of liberal feminism - that it has largely chosen to deal with issues like domestic violence and rape through longer jail sentences and harsher punishments.

 

[Akka]

I think fondling without consent clearly falls over the line into sexual assault.

I think if someone is your SO and is not in the mood, fondling to try to get the other one in the mood and then being told to effe off falls a long way short of sexual assault.
Also, it seems that there is this weird dichotomy about being drunk, which allow you to claim "I wasn't aware about what I was doing" if you press a rape charge, but doesn't allow you to say "I wasn't aware of what I was doing" if you end up on the receiving end of a sexual assault charge. I'm still in the dark about how it works.

 

[Bugfatty300]

TBH, I'm rather freaked out at how quickly people would label something which is inappropriate into "sexual assault you can press charges about". I know USA are all about throwing lawsuits, but still, yeesh.

Inappropriate and unlawful often intersect. For personal body rights, It's better to have a line drawn and know exactly where it is than to have a gray area where one can invade at leisure.

 

[Traitorfish]

Uhm yes they do? Why is it "complaining" when MRAs do it but "criticism" when feminists do it? This sounds like yet another double standard.
...
So what would the "criticism" version of this be?

Criticism, in this sense, is to subject something to an sceptical examination, to dissect it, to explain how and why it works. Social criticism, in particular, is about exposing the mechanisms behind that which we take to be "natural", explaining what it is not commonly or traditionally assumed needs explaining. While feminists has been at least attempting social criticism of this nature since the fifteenth century, men's rights movement hasn't produced anything like this, only a list of specific grievances, statements that this-or-that phenomenon is unjust or unfair. The closest they come is a few rough sketches that don't amount to more than pop-psychology, like the rightfully-abused "friendzone", and begin to fade quickly into borderline-conspiracy theories about feminist-infiltration of political and educational institutions.

I think you're just prejudiced against them. When they are angry about stuff they're "attacking" but when it is feminists they are engaging in "criticism".

I don't actually recall using the word "attack", but, yes, some intra-feminist "criticism" is little more than angry pejoratives. If you've ever read about the "Sex Wars", you'll find that it developed very quickly into people calling each other sluts and prudes and achieving nothing. But overall, intra-feminist criticism

I'm not rejecting the possibility that non-feminist or anti-feminist perspectives can produce substantial and even valid criticism of feminist thought or practice. What I'm saying is, I've yet to see any such criticism emerging from the "men's rights movement".

This is an incredibly hurtful thing to say, especially considering many of these people are dealing with having their children ripped from their lives and being falsely accused of abuse.

I'm intensely sceptical of this claim, but even if I wasn't: isn't that an affirmation of my claim?

Uhm, you said it yourself:

Privilege theory is a specific sociological theory, or set of theories. Saying that societies have broadly favoured men is not privlege theory, any more than saying that rich people have exploited poor people is Marxism.

They absolutely do analyze historical issues. I strongly encourage you to look into the MRM more. I think, at a minimum, you would find it interesting.

I have done, and I did, in the same way that I find Ulster Loyalists or neo-Maoists interesting. Regular posters will know that bird-watching weirdo fringe politics is a of a hobby of mine (I find it helps me keep my own weirdo fringe politics in perspective), and I've taken a fly-over or two of the various anti-feminist sects. But, mostly, they're boring groups filled with boring people, all reaction and bitterness, no imagination. Even their conspiracy theories are knock-offs, vintage thirties with the word "Jews" crossed out and "women" written above in sharpie. They're interesting as a phenomenon, not as a world-view.

I had to register for the draft. If there is a WW3 or some other major war I could be sent to die. Only men are in this predicament.

A giant monster crab could come out of the sea and snip you in half with it's radioactive claws. There's a sliding scale of probability, here.

There are plenty of other issues for young men, as well. The ones that have affected me the most are the lack of emotional support and the idea that men need to put their female partners first. This led me to being sucked into an abusive relationship and having no one to turn to for help, or even more insidiously, people believing that I was actually the abusive one.

Those are real issues, I agree. But what does the so-called "men's rights movement" offer as a solution? As far as I can tell, it offers nothing more than a vague sense of validation.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

TBH, I'm rather freaked out at how quickly people would label something which is inappropriate into "sexual assault you can press charges about". I know USA are all about throwing lawsuits, but still, yeesh.

I admit it's half rhetorical in that I simply have big (like "BIG") doubts that it would really be considered "the same" in both cases. It feels a bit like when Civver says "I'm not misogynist"

Thing is that it isn't the same so isn't going to be considered the same.

One person does something that could be considered a criminal act should the victim opt to press charges. Another person does the same thing. This could be addressed as two similar situations.

But when you add onto the two comparable foundations the situations are no longer similar. In one the victim feels, for whatever reason, that the invasion was egregious enough to merit pursuing the charges. In the other the victim just puts it in their back pocket for future use in an argument on an internet forum. Okay, now the situations are different, even if they only differ in how serious the victim considers the affront to be.

On a personal note I encounter this sort of variable regularly. If some little punk starts spouting off it's just hyperbole from a harmless idiot. I can say the exact same things and be looking down the gun barrel of a terrorist threat charge, or even a literal gun barrel in the hands of some scared gun nut that thinks they might finally get away with the killing in self defense that has given them wet dreams for however long. In itself this isn't fair, but in the bigger picture I get more than enough benefits from my size and appearance to believe that I benefit, on balance, so I take the unfairness of some details that cut against me as just part of the package.

 

[JollyRoger]

I think if someone is your SO and is not in the mood, fondling to try to get the other one in the mood and then being told to effe off falls a long way short of sexual assault.
Also, it seems that there is this weird dichotomy about being drunk, which allow you to claim "I wasn't aware about what I was doing" if you press a rape charge, but doesn't allow you to say "I wasn't aware of what I was doing" if you end up on the receiving end of a sexual assault charge. I'm still in the dark about how it works.

You didn't have the significant other disclaimer in your hypothetical. That does change the context. So far as intoxication goes, it is generally not a defense to criminal liability. I see no good reason to put criminals and victims of crime on the same level when it comes to alcohol. They are still a criminal and a victim of crime..

 

[Lexicus]

While feminists has been at least attempting social criticism of this nature since the fifteenth century, men's rights movement hasn't produced anything like this, only a list of specific grievances, statements that this-or-that phenomenon is unjust or unfair

[...]

and begin to fade quickly into borderline-conspiracy theories about feminist-infiltration of political and educational institutions.

This last sentence about sums it up. MRA social criticism is essentially on the level of the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. It's just hateful ranting. That's why, if they're smart, MRAs typically stick to pointing out individual grievances, because when they actually lay out their "theory" of how women are advantaged over men the majority of people can see they're patently full of crap.

EDIT: heh, I'm glad you made the same parallel.

Saying that societies have broadly favoured men is not privlege theory,

I don't see how not.

 

[Akka]

There is certainly a point to be made about carceral solutions to the problems faced by women. This is, in my view, a major criticism of liberal feminism - that it has largely chosen to deal with issues like domestic violence and rape through longer jail sentences and harsher punishments.

I'm don't really see a problem with rape and domestic violence getting real punishment - they ARE evil acts which deserve it.
I'm more freaked out at how quickly things can be considered to enter the realm of molestation when you listen to some people - like "I was drunk so when I was asking to get banged, it didn't count as consent, so I was raped", which is absolutely insane (disclaimer : again, banging someone who is unconscious without having received consent before IS rape, and even with consent it's creepy as hell).

As said, if we start to have absurd definitions of rape, the results will be both a number of ridiculous charges, followed by a counter-productive perception of rape - for now, feminism has won the battle of making people realize that it IS a terrible crime with long-lasting consequence (to the point of exageration actually, like when people manage to claim it's worse than death), but if it becomes devalued by being overused for comparatively trivial matters, it will just reverse the gains made.

Inappropriate and unlawful often intersect. For personal body rights, It's better to have a line drawn and know exactly where it is than to have a gray area where one can invade at leisure.

Yeah, well, it's not that clear-cut. Technically, of course, it's easier. In reality, human interactions don't work that way, we're not machine and we work with understanding the nuance of context and subtle cues.
Obviously it's what's used in bad faith defense ("she didn't technically said 'no' !"), but it doesn't mean we stop being humans and will start to use signed receipts when we are in the mood and wish to attempt to kiss someone.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Also, it seems that there is this weird dichotomy about being drunk, which allow you to claim "I wasn't aware about what I was doing" if you press a rape charge, but doesn't allow you to say "I wasn't aware of what I was doing" if you end up on the receiving end of a sexual assault charge. I'm still in the dark about how it works.

It does seem odd, but follows from established precedents. "I was drunk" has never been a really useful mitigation factor for criminal acts of any sort. On the other hand "they knew I was impaired" has been a valid escape hatch from contracts and agreements of just about every variety. I can't say that I can make sense out of that contradiction, but it has been in existence for at least as long as I have so I can't really fight it...I just live with it.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm don't really see a problem with rape and domestic violence getting real punishment - they ARE evil acts which deserve it.

I think it's an issue of incremental progress. There are better, or at least more thorough, ways of dealing with social ills than throwing people in jail, but they take a long time and in the meantime I've no problem with the Brock Turners of the world doing hard time.

(to the point of exageration actually, like when people manage to claim it's worse than death)

I don't think you're very well-positioned to make that judgment.

 

[Ryika]

I don't think you're very well-positioned to make that judgment.

Nobody is.

 

[Lexicus]

Nobody is.

I don't think you're very well-positioned to declare the feelings of people who have been raped and feel they would rather have been killed invalid