You’re on the Internet, reading a politically-themed religious blog. You’ve heard about the shooting in Santa Barbara. I almost feel as if I’d be wasting my time and insulting your intelligence by providing a link. Long story short: a rich kid went nuts because no girls would sleep with him and killed a whole bunch of people. Then everyone immediately projected their ideological loves, fears, and hatreds onto the situation and into the Interwebs in a massive deluge. Only three things get people this worked up in the Twitterverse: race, gender, and sexual preferences. This time the wheel stopped at gender.
I haven’t had much time to blog this year because I’ve been really, really busy. But what I’ve seen unfold this time around is worth a few words, I suppose. I’ll start with the obligatory speech about not blaming the 2nd amendment, and it is obligatory. I’m a cynical man of statistics these days. Since 2006, according to this data, there have been 238 victims of mass shootings in the United States. These are mostly victims of failed policies regarding the mentally-ill, and not my right or yours to own an “assault rifle” (several hundred more people are killed with knives, blunt objects and fists than rifles on an annual basis). Obligatorily, I will say that considerations such as these ought to count for more than a collective reaction to a traumatic event, and that the left’s beloved Obama has droned more innocent people to death than have ever been shot up by lunatics in this country. Leave my damn guns alone.
I don’t think guns will be the primary issue this time around, however, because there are more pressing political issues involved, namely the reasons that Elliot Rodger gave us, on camera, for his actions. It reminds one of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, who also made a video and also gave reasons – though they weren’t quite as specific. Cho had a general beef with “rich kids”; Rodger was a rich kid. No, Rodger happened to manifest a narrative of personal rejection, inadequacy, humiliation, and failure with women that is central to the ongoing Internet war between the sexes.
I’m talking about all this. Rodger’s horrific acts have now become a springboard for a massive public therapy session in which thousands of women are taking the opportunity to discuss all the times men made them feel uncomfortable, threatened them, or actually hurt them. The underlying and sometimes explicit message is that men identifying as men, with their own unique problems and issues, is an illegitimate enterprise that can only breed violence and resentment. If only Elliot Rodger had been instilled with a proper sense of shame, guilt and self-hatred for the right reasons, i.e., the existence of his penis, which includes him in the collective guilt of mankind for every act perpetrated by every man that has caused any woman, anywhere, at any time even the tiniest smidgen of unease.
Rodger’s actions aren’t just individual atrocities but rather the inevitable products of patriarchal oppression, the Twitterverse tells us. Modern feminism, like all of today’s smelly little orthodoxies vying for our souls, must describe the problem in terms of oppression. In no other way can one justify reorganizing society on a vast scale to one’s own liking, to engage in megalomanical social engineering of the sort we have actually seen practiced on young boys in the educational system. Anything you do to an oppressor is justified, all ethical dilemmas are resolved, and all of the humanity of your opponents blown out the airlocks. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about proletarians and capitalists, blacks and whites, gays and straights, women and men. What matters are the labels that people use. To be labeled an “oppressor” by the mob is to instantly lose your right to speak, to be heard, to make an argument, to be empathized with or treated with decency and respect – all of the things we typically expect that one rational adult human being ought to recognize in another. So it has been since the Jacobins swept across the Vendee. Whatever the shortcomings of oppressors prior to the French Revolution, at least they felt a sense of responsibility towards “the oppressed.” Only “the oppressed” grant themselves unlimited authority to dispose with their “oppressors.”
You want to know who perfectly embodies all of this? Elliot Rodger. All he had to do to justify his own madness was create his own narrative of oppression and oppressors, his own drama in which a cruel system unjustly denied him what was rightfully his. It was only a little more insane than the nonsense that endlessly spews forth from university campuses, MSNBC, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has inspired plenty of its own acts of violence and hatred. They say Rodger “felt entitled” to a woman, and clearly he did; I wonder who else feels entitled to have everything they demand, when they demand it, and who threatens violence if they don’t get it? Ah, but they’re oppressed and they’re demanding “justice” – well, Rodgers wasn’t just demanding sex, you know, but love and affection too, some pretty basic human things he appears to have been denied.
Have we finally found something the radical egalitarian left doesn’t believe people are entitled to? Maybe we need to get Obama to create a government program for the lonely-hearted. How is this not an oppressed class? How can a crippling lack of self-confidence with the opposite sex (let’s make it PC – the sex to which you are attracted) not be considered a fundamental lack of privilege; how can such confidence be considered anything but an unearned privilege, the product of a sound upbringing that one does not choose to have?
My apologies if it seems I am making light of the situation. People are dead. But the transformation of this tragedy and all of modern American life for that matter into an absurd political spectacle began long before I started typing.
“People are dead.”
Agreed. Death of conscience. Death of soul.
The families that lost loved ones due to this senseless act need our prayers. At this point it’s the only help we can offer.
The only act that makes sense.
Abraham Lincoln said that one person cannot own another person. Susan B. Anthony was handcuffed to the bars in her jail cell, starved and beaten for days because she had the temerity to believe that man and woman were equal in personhood. Some men beat their wives because Eve ate an apple. (not that Adam, who had the power, stopped her.)
Why would Elliot Rodger believe that any woman would want to share friendship with a selfish monster? Women can think, too. Somebody never told Rodger to never underestimate his opponent.
Somebody never told Rodger that there are Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not kill.” is one of them. There is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where there is always a person with whom to speak and share and befriend. Someone never told Rodger about God, the Supreme Sovereign Being who created man in Justice and love. That someone, the atheist, is responsible for Rodger not knowing and hoping and loving. Atheism is unconstitutional, while the atheist must be tolerated. Murder is beyond toleration. Whoever removed God and the knowing, loving and serving of God from the public domain is responsible, nay guilty. Will the real murderer of body and soul please stand up.
Regarding the accusations of overreacting, do you deny….
-That we (as in the world, whether in the West or elsewhere) don’t simply preach that one (whether male or female) wait for sex till marriage, but in many cases turn virginity for women into an idol, where if something violent happens to a woman, or she makes a mistake, or simply doesn’t believe as we do, she is treated like her virginity was the only/most important part of her and now she is damaged?
-We may theologically preach waiting till marriage for all, but in all our history as a church, we failed to stamp out the cultural norms that tie manhood to sexual prowess, so that a man must “conquer” lots of women with sex to be a real man?
-That in addition to basic, call it “jock type disregard and mistreatment of women”, there is the phenomenon of “nice guy-ism”, where nerds think that they deserve women just for not being like there oppressors, and can themselves turn into jerks or creeps (like Steve Urkel) in how they treat women?
-That while teaching people survival skills is important, we don’t put enough effort into things like trying to make our streets so safe so that a woman wouldn’t have to fear walking alone at night (as much as that is possible)?
-That we can get so wrapped up in telling women what they should have done differently, we let men off the hook in various ways, rather than justly saying “YOU HURT HER? WE ARE THROWING THE BOOK AT YOU!!!!!!”?
-That if in many cases, when a woman exercises the kind of kind but firm assertiveness we consider a good quality in men, she is considered “pushy”?
-That we may theologically not find it problematic if a woman works as a CEO while the man takes care of the kids, we STILL kinda look down on people like the ones I described?
-That in our efforts to defend the notion of differences between men and women (I’ll grant that, aside from physical differences, my understanding is that studies have shown that on average tendencies are a real thing), we forget the importance of equality of opportunity, and letting each man or woman succeed on their own merits, regardless of whether they are like the group or not?
-That the things we consider good qualities in men….being kind, hard-working, assertive, able to discern whether a given situation is the best time to express ones feelings, or whether said situations requires stoic resolve….are ALSO good qualities in women? And that what we are in fact describing….are simply the qualities of a good person?
-That in our rush to condemn single moms, we forget that a MASSIVE amount of the time, the reason they single is because the men either left or that the women HAD to remove themselves from said men because they were a danger to the women and/or children?
-That when it comes to things like “provocative clothing”, men should stop using it as an excuse and turn their eyes away?
-And finally, that as YesAllWomen has pointed out, they know not all men or bad, BUT all women have had to learn to fear men?
I should point out I DONT mean all nerds….I myself consider myself a nerd. BUT as a cultural problem…I don’t deny that among my fellow nerds there can be a strong element of self-entitlement…..
A couple of observations.
(obligatory) Re: the Second Amendment and concealed carry laws. The man could not have done that in Clarksville, TN where everybody (including my soldier son) is carrying a weapon. The places in KY he could have done it are Fort Campbell and Fort Knox where only the mass murderer is allowed to go about armed.
Re: ideology and mass shootings. Why is it always that the foul felons are either Democrats or their constituents/dependents?
Finally, “Why do we live like this, the violence and the hatred, Bernardo?” From “West Side Story.”
Do I deny….
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“That we (as in the world, whether in the West or elsewhere)”…
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I deny that you can, as you tried to do here, lump the West in with “elsewhere.” Yes, I deny that women are treated the same in the United States as they are in Saudi Arabia. I deny that Western cultures still perpetuate a cult of virginity as many Eastern cultures still do, even there are some residuals.
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“We may theologically preach waiting till marriage for all, but in all our history as a church, we failed to stamp out the cultural norms that tie manhood to sexual prowess, so that a man must “conquer” lots of women with sex to be a real man?”
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What you call a “cultural norm” is something I see as an expression of biology. Cultures don’t just float down from the sky into blank slates (I love Locke but I hate the tabla rasa). They emerge at least in part from our natures. You cannot stamp out human nature without stamping out humanity. The Church, and for that matter, the ancient pagans, did the best they could; they cultivated a moral and ethical ideal of self-restraint, an intellectual ideal of objectivity and reason, and sought to inculcate as many people with it as they could. To go beyond this would be totalitarian and a violation of human dignity far worse than whatever evils would supposedly be stopped (and they wouldn’t be stopped even then).
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“That in addition to basic, call it “jock type disregard and mistreatment of women”, there is the phenomenon of “nice guy-ism”, where nerds think that they deserve women just for not being like there oppressors, and can themselves turn into jerks or creeps (like Steve Urkel) in how they treat women?”
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I don’t deny it, but Elliot Rodger wasn’t a Steve Urkel (and to be fair, poor old Urkel only wanted to be with ONE woman and always went home when she ordered him to). Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. He didn’t even speak to women. Everything he believed about himself and women was a psychotic mental fabrication. There’s no political cure for this. A lifetime of indoctrination at a feminist reeducation camp couldn’t cure this. He would have just ended up mass murdering for a different reason. But that’s generally ok. I mean, the left worships Che Guevara because he waged a war against people the left doesn’t like.
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“That while teaching people survival skills is important, we don’t put enough effort into things like trying to make our streets so safe so that a woman wouldn’t have to fear walking alone at night”
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How much effort is enough? North Korean levels of control? Soviet levels? Until I know what you think is the minimum, I can’t say what I think of your idea.
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“That we can get so wrapped up in telling women what they should have done differently, we let men off the hook in various ways”
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There are thousands of men in jail for rape and assault. Some people let men off the hook for bad behavior, sure. And feminism is a collective enterprise devoted to letting women off the hook for theirs. Both sides of the debate are very childish. MRAs think men can do no wrong; feminists think women can do no wrong. The reality is that violence against women – or anyone – should be punished and that women – and everyone – ought to be prepared to defend themselves. To argue anything else is to deny basic elements of reality and to place yourself in the camp of ideological fanatics.
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“That if in many cases, when a woman exercises the kind of kind but firm assertiveness we consider a good quality in men, she is considered “pushy”?”
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That might be true, but again, I don’t know what the hell it has to do with Rodgers, whose problem wasn’t even remotely related to women being “pushy.”
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“That we may theologically not find it problematic if a woman works as a CEO while the man takes care of the kids, we STILL kinda look down on people like the ones I described?”
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I don’t deny that. I do think it is another expression of human nature, and not the result of a patriarchal conspiracy to brainwash everyone.
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“we forget the importance of equality of opportunity, and letting each man or woman succeed on their own merits, regardless of whether they are like the group or not?”
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Yes, this happens, and it sucks, and it can’t be changed. We are not infinitely malleable creatures. The society of individual liberty that we’ve tried to build, very imperfectly, is as close as we can get to a just one. A collectivist society that tries to force hiring quotas upon every business and government institution in existence is not the answer.
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“That the things we consider good qualities in men….being kind, hard-working, assertive, able to discern whether a given situation is the best time to express ones feelings, or whether said situations requires stoic resolve….are ALSO good qualities in women? And that what we are in fact describing….are simply the qualities of a good person?”
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I don’t deny that, but I don’t think many people think of women, as a group, as unkind or lazy.
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“That in our rush to condemn single moms, we forget that a MASSIVE amount of the time, the reason they single is because the men either left or that the women HAD to remove themselves from said men because they were a danger to the women and/or children?”
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I can’t fathom what this would have to do with the delusions of a psychopath. He didn’t have a problem with single moms that I could tell. In any case, I don’t condemn people for things they can’t control. But I do condemn the idea that single motherhood is “just as good” as having a mother and a father. That is simply a lie, and a damaging lie at that.
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“That when it comes to things like “provocative clothing”, men should stop using it as an excuse and turn their eyes away?”
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Thanks for summing up the #1 problem with feminism. No moral standards for women, impossible moral standards for men. It’s childish, spiteful, irrational and utopian. It is almost as insane as the thoughts in Rodger’s head to expect that women ought to be able to sexualize themselves without being thought of as sex objects by men. It is really the most insane thing believed by human beings in modern Western societies today. Elliot Rodgers was not driven to madness by scantly clad women, though; he was driven to madness by envy of other men.
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“And finally, that as YesAllWomen has pointed out, they know not all men or bad, BUT all women have had to learn to fear men?”
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Yes, I deny this. These people do not speak for all women. A woman who is confident, intellectually honest, and well-armed is not afraid of men. There were Soviet female snipers and soldiers who I am fairly certain never feared any man. All of this fear is a product of a culture of dependence and narcissism. The dependence teaches them to fear life, and the narcissism teaches them to hate anyone or anything perceived to stand in their way. The psychosis affecting radical feminists and their man-boobed allies isn’t that different than the psychosis Elliot Rodger suffered. The pathological narcissism and crippling dependence are present in both cases.
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“I should point out I DONT mean all nerds….I myself consider myself a nerd. BUT as a cultural problem…I don’t deny that among my fellow nerds there can be a strong element of self-entitlement…”
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I don’t deny it either. A lot of weak men do feel entitled. And it is a problem. But it isn’t the product of a patriarchal conspiracy against women. It isn’t a result of “rape culture.” And it rarely culminates in anything harmful. For every Rodger there are a thousand weak nerds who never commit any violence and whose worst offense is to occasionally make a woman feel uncomfortable. This is not some massive, evil, horrible tyranny that needs to be smashed out. It’s something that our spoiled, whiny, cry-baby culture needs to get over.
-That we can get so wrapped up in telling women what they should have done differently, we let men off the hook in various ways, rather than justly saying “YOU HURT HER? WE ARE THROWING THE BOOK AT YOU!!!!!!”?
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Don’t know where you came by this fancy. See Glenn Sacks on the operations of the modern DV industry and the role of the police in making the machine go.
MRAs think men can do no wrong;
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When did Helen Smith or Stephen Baskerville or Glenn Sacks ever state or imply this?
Bonchamps:
Regarding your various points, I say:
1. In the United States, I have seen and experienced those residuals of the cult of virginity….well, not being a lady, I suppose experienced is not the right word. But I have witnessed in various forms the leftovers of the idea that unmarried women without virginity are regarded as dirty. Is it as bad as in other parts of the world? Of course not! But it is still there. Will we literally eradicate it completely? No. But addressing it consciously and verbally can be used to reduce it. We do that with racism, and American attitudes about that have changed at lot in the past 60 years, even if racism does remain.
2. Take “its biology/human nature and there is nothing you can do” to the extreme, and all forms of trying to educate people to be good are pointless. Perfection may be impossible, but you have to try and do as best as you can. And given while our Church did many wonderful things for women back in the day, one cannot deny the MASSIVE amount of sexism displayed by many of our great Church Fathers and others….We could have done better, could have been more forceful in our homilies, and should do better now.
3. The other points I brought up were not all related to Rodger per se, but were also a response to what you and others have said about feminism overreacting in general.
4. Even so, Steve was still an unbelievable jerk. He should have taken no as a no and respected it. The idea that “no means yes” or can be turned into a yes…that is a justification used by rapists. Plus, his harassment was repeated….If he and Laura worked for me, and I found out Steve kept going after Laura even when she said no, I would fire him and call the cops.
5. Yes, Rodger was a lunatic. But there is a continuum of lunacy. One can still be deluded, and/or need medication, and know the difference between right and wrong.
6. Obviously no thought police. But each year in the US, over 237,000 women are victims of various forms of sexual assault. Whatever we can to keep getting that number lowered, we should do. If that requires me to pay more money in taxes to have more cops on the street, so be it. Doing our best is never-ending.
7. Patriarchal conspiracy? No one believes there literally are a group of old men sitting in a back room plotting to keep men down. BUT the idea that women who are not in the kitchen, or nurses, or teachers, are “pushy” IS a widespread one, in various forms. Again, we may not be able to eliminate it, but what a society generally considerers acceptable does change with time. In terms of general cultural attitudes, the US is very different today from 1787.
8. A man can choose NOT to rape. If he is in a club and sees a group of women dancing together in provocative clothes, he does not have to slip up behind her and start dancing. He can ask her and respect her no if she says no. Its not an impossible standard to say that even if men get aroused, they can control their actions.
9. The point is not that LITERALLY every single woman fears every single man in her life. But various forms of sexual harassment and condescension are so widespread, just as racist depictions of African Americans were so widespread back in the day, that they have to be on guard in our society in a way that men do not. We many not be as bad as other places, but that is no excuse to not try and do better.
10. Finally, man-bobbed allies? You accuse the left of demonizing and dismissing Catholic points out of hand, and yet you brazenly dismiss those men who have the audacity to not dismiss feminism? I am a man. I consider myself a feminist. Do you think that gives you license to make assumptions about my character without knowing me, or those other men who dare to call out men who say “get back in the kitchen”? How do you like it when people on the left do that to Catholics?
I see I made a typo in point 7. I meant women.
“But I have witnessed in various forms the leftovers of the idea that unmarried women without virginity are regarded as dirty.”
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They are, in a sense, but so are unmarried men who have lost theirs. Really it is the women who advertise themselves as sexually available who are considered dirty, and why wouldn’t they be? Is it not an appropriate way to describe someone who makes herself into a receptacle for the sexual fluids of dozens of men? It’s not without some rationality, deeply embedded in humanity’s sexual animal nature, that these considerations are made. But we also have a culture of individualism and merit, and a person does not have to be judged by his or her past choices.
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“Take “its biology/human nature and there is nothing you can do” to the extreme, and all forms of trying to educate people to be good are pointless.”
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Ok, and taken as it was intended, it simply means that education can only do so much. As for the idea of the Church Fathers being sexist, well, of course they were. And Catholicism as it is now is also “sexist” according to the feminist left. I don’t bemoan the toning down of the rhetoric from the days of the early Church, which was pretty outrageous at times, but the basic idea is still there; men and women are fundamentally different, they have different roles in the relationship, the family, the Church and society – and ultimately, the women are subordinate. That said, we can’t deny that modern society changes the dynamics between men and women and makes equality between them a more rational arrangement in many contexts. So I’m a supporter of first-wave feminism and the equality of men and women before the law. But that is ALL I support; second and third-wave feminism are about forcing people to think differently, they are totalitarian movements.
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“Steve was still an unbelievable jerk. He should have taken no as a no and respected it. The idea that “no means yes” or can be turned into a yes…that is a justification used by rapists. Plus, his harassment was repeated….If he and Laura worked for me, and I found out Steve kept going after Laura even when she said no, I would fire him and call the cops.”
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Oh please. In the real world, if a woman is continually harassed by a man she doesn’t want around, she can file a restraining order. In the show her father is a police officer. It would have been easy to bar him from their lives, but they didn’t, because they knew Urkel was harmless and sincere. And it just speaks to your own totalitarian mindset that you would take action without even SPEAKING to the parties involved, to see if the alleged victim even felt that such measures were necessary. This again is what feminism always does – strips the moral and intellectual agency away from actual women in the name of ideological enforcement and purity.
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“Whatever we can to keep getting that number lowered, we should do.”
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Really? Because you said “no thought police”, but that might lower the number too. We could have a 100% tax rate and have every street corner reinforced with a squadron of heavily armed soldiers and drones flying overhead at all times.
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We should take whatever measures are reasonable to preserve public safety and order, without explicitly declaring that women’s safety in particular is more important than safety in general. But ultimately the price of freedom is risk, and even totalitarianism cannot eliminate risk altogether. In a free society, moreover, its not “what can “we” do”, but rather “what can I do.” I can learn to defend myself and learn basic situational awareness.
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“A man can choose NOT to rape. If he is in a club and sees a group of women dancing together in provocative clothes, he does not have to slip up behind her and start dancing. He can ask her and respect her no if she says no. Its not an impossible standard to say that even if men get aroused, they can control their actions.”
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This cuts both ways. A woman can choose NOT to dress like a whore and dance provocatively in front of groups of drunken strangers. Again, its men you want to make all the choices, and women whom you want to absolve of all personal responsibility. Men are expected to and demanded to become angels, while women have no expectations placed on them whatsoever. And this infantile treatment of women is what passes for “feminism”, while men who try to help women learn self-defense and situational awareness are accused of reinforcing patriarchy. It’s intellectual and moral vomit.
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“We many not be as bad as other places, but that is no excuse to not try and do better.”
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Fine. When its a personal choice to behave differently, I’m all for it. But I am against any political attempt to control people’s thoughts and behavior and bring them into alignment with this ideology. I’m against public smear and shame campaigns against anyone who dares deviate from the party line on these issues. According to the radical left, moreover, if you oppose abortion, you are a sexist. If you challenge the massive lie about the “wage gap”, you are a sexist. If you oppose hiring quotas for women, you are a sexist. If you think being a homemaker is a perfectly acceptable life choice, you are a sexist. It is all about accepting a narrow political agenda and shaming everyone else who doesn’t, exactly what they accuse the omnipresent and omnipotent patriarchy of doing to them.
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“I am a man. I consider myself a feminist. Do you think that gives you license to make assumptions about my character without knowing me”
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I didn’t say anything about you. It was a general comment, and a joke.
1. In my experience, from everything to tv shows, to conversation, etc….men aren’t punished for losing their virginity before marriage nearly as much as women. I am not talking about Church doctrine, nor do I imagine you have a lot of priests giving high fives to guys who tell them that in the confessional. But in our culture…the Casanova is still kinda regarded as something of a lovable rouge.
2. Is it wrong if, in a particular relationship, the woman makes more money than the guy? No. Is it wrong for her to be a CEO in a typically male dominated business? No. And in terms of how a couple arrives at a decision in a relationship, I have no views on who should do what….who makes the calls on what, how those calls are made, how much compromise etc….that is all up to the couple. I agree with you on equality in dignity, equality before the law, and equality of individual opportunity as individuals….while adding supremacy of each couple to decide how the dynamics of their relationship will work.
3. Obviously I would follow typical sexual harassment investigation procedures, which include the kind of talking you described. Also, lets not be glib in saying “well she should just filing a restraining order”, as if dealing with sexual harassment was easy.
4. Like I said above, no article of clothing (or lack thereof) is an excuse to rape. I have nothing against a man asking a woman at a club to dance.
5. I have never seen a man who ran a marital arts/defense class that included/was for women accused of sexism. I am all for self defense and awareness. But that is not an excuse to not be proactive about making our streets safer. Its not as simple as saying “if all our women were enrolled in self-defense classes/armed the rape figures would collapse”. Help? Maybe. But we shouldn’t overstate the good it might do.
To follow up with point 4, Im not in favor of including discussing clothing in the context of protecting oneself from rape. Women who are not scantily clad suffer from that nightmare as well. Even if unintended, I worry it implies “you wear x, you deserve y”. Tie that discussion into a general appropriate clothing talk, one that includes what men should wear (NO PANTS ROUND THE KNEES FOR INSTANCE! :)). BUT….rape is rape and best not to imply a woman advertised for it.
Finally, regarding what you say about modern feminism…I have heard people trash-talking it a lot. When I look on the Third Wave feminism Wikipedia page, and see the issues they fight for (its not my first time learning about it, I am trying to make a point)….they all make sense to me. Granted I think one could be a third wave feminist who also agrees with the Church on sexual reproduction issues….but none of the other issues on that page seem illogical to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism