I haven't read Frantzen's post yet. I'll get to that. I'm just amused by this idea — which I saw somewhere else recently too — that gay men are presumed to be female-friendly. I remember when gay men were presumed to hate women. When did that flip?
I got to that first link via Instapundit, who observes that "it’s often the gay men who are leading the way." The way... where?
Out of whatever this "feminist fog" is, I guess. I'm going to have to read Frantzen's post....
Frantzen uses the term to refer to "the sour mix of victimization and privilege that makes up modern feminism and that feminists use to intimidate and exploit men." So it's not feminism, per se, but the form it has taken recently and the way it's currently being used. Ironically, Frantzen is assuming the victim position to fight his purported oppressors, the sad new substitute for fighting fire with fire.
Men today live in femfog, a thick mist of anti-male propaganda.Help! I'm trapped in a mist!
The man has visualized the oppressor as a low-hanging cloud.
Many men don’t know how to fight it and some don’t even realize that they are fogged up.You know, I take metaphor seriously. In my mind, fighting a cloud looks very silly.
And you know, it's rather pathetic to be drawing a salary as an academic and not even able to tell you are living inside propaganda.
But, sure, everybody, especially very smart people getting paid to be smart, should know how to detect propaganda and feel highly motivated to work through it and get to the truth.
If you're working with colleagues who actually believe that what you call propaganda is the truth, then you need to interact with real people. The idea that you are fighting their fog is hardly the best approach to collegiality.
And you ought to be wary of creating propaganda of your own:
Femfog keeps men in the dark or at least in the murk, and keeps men on the defensive. Feminists want us to stand back and hold the door so that they can walk in and eat our lunch. That is what’s happening.To be fair: Frantzen is retired. And he's blogging.
He can choose to be on the outside, not a colleague anymore, but a blogger, speaking in new ways, using humor and hyperbole, stirring things up. I get that.
I refer to men who are shrouded in this fog as FUMs, fogged up men; other terms come to mind. They may might [sic] not be feminists but as they wander through the mist of politics and polemic about women, they feel like they should be feminists. They think feminism is good for everybody and they want to be nice to women. Life in femfog is the price a man pays for women’s acceptance and approval....By the way, real feminists don't want this superficial acceptance and niceness. It's cheap and shallow and not about understanding anything true. It's collegiality. Etiquette. Nongay men have a bigger stake in appeasing women, and I appreciate Frantzen's tweaking of heterosexual men whose feminism is something of a second-rate sexual strategy.
ADDED: The "Old Man Yells At Cloud" meme (from "The Simpsons"), was inserted in the text above after it was linked in the comments by TerriW. Thanks, TerriW! That's one of my favorite commenter contributions ever.
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I appreciate Frantzen's tweaking of heterosexual men whose feminism is something of a second-rate sexual strategy.
Sexual strategy is real, feminism is fake.
Old Man Yells At Cloud
"Nongay men have a bigger stake in appeasing women..."
Curious on the reasoning that would support this statement.
Is it just the desire for sex?
If so, would " "Gay men have a bigger stake in appeasing Gay men..." make sense?
I am Laslo.
Ever read "Peer Gynt"?
Gay men hating women is easy to derive from the fact that, well, gay men aren't sexually interested in women and that *must* be because they hate them.
I think Hollywood may have worked its magic with the 'gay man/woman's best friend' scenario. "Will and Grace" and "What Every Woman Wants" are two examples that come to mind.
The article has quotes from people who assume that because he wrote a diatribe against feminism he must be a misogynist and must have discriminated against students. However, there is no evidence presented for that.
It is possible to be against 3rd wave feminism (which seeks to turn womanhood into a political identity group) and still be for equal opportunity.
His thesis is that when arguing with a feminist you should use facts and not engage in judging their values.
Shocking! I know.
Fag hags fresh from college and in the office world ally themselves with gay men.
They learned that in college. That alliance is a potent method of tyrannizing other students in the PC crusade. And fag hags are also driven by the desire to double fuck and gangbang and they think that gay men are suitable for that. (And they are until they approach 30.)
Many, if not most, gay men do not entirely identify as gay until they approach 30 and they will screw around and gangbang with fag hags until they decide they only want to fuck men.
It all falls apart as gay men approach 30. They stop fucking the fag hags and eventually want nothing to do with them, leaving the fag hags high and dry. It's a sad collapse for the fag hags.
And, yes, within this sick shit you can see much of what is driving feminism. Feminism succeeds by setting men against one another by appealing to men's chivalry, and through sexual withholding. Having the gay men in reserve for fucking is an ace in the hole for fag hags when they are young.
Jeb! is one of those "feminist men" Franzten describes. Draw your own political conclusions.
"So it's not feminism, per se, but the form it has taken recently and the way it's currently being used. Ironically, Frantzen is assuming the victim position to fight his purported oppressors, the sad new substitute for fighting fire with fire."
So I am genuinely curious. How can he complain about "the form it has taken recently" without "assuming the victim position" when his argument is that "the form it has taken recently" hurts him?
Fag hags fresh from college and in the office world ally themselves with gay men.
What is the point of moderating comments if you allow this off-topic screed that manages to be both hatefully homophobic and misogynistic?
I remember reading a science fiction novel back in the 80s or early 90s (which I cannot remember the name of or the author, which is really bothering me because I would like to reread it) the premise of is that humans have colonized other worlds, but space travel is still very difficult and there is not much of it.
On one of the colonized worlds the government and industry is dominated by women. Men aren't actually oppressed, but due to the fact that it is a democracy and there are more women than men (due to natural tendency of more women being born than men and excellent health care with next to no infant mortality and everyone living to a ripe old age and women outliving men) womens' viewpoints tend to dominate.
Anyway, in one chapter one of the characters, a man who is involved in politics, goes to a wilderness area where gay men tend to congregate (working as lumber jacks if I recall correctly) in order to try to garner support for some issue that is coming to a vote. The reason given for gay men separating themselves from the society at large is the assumption that women and gay men are not natural allies, that gay men want a more masculine society than is available on a world were women dominate society.
And why would women and gay men be natural allies? That only works if gay men are like women, except for their genitals.
Here's a thought. A lot of gays are not even for gay marriage.
This Thursday, Donald Trump will be meeting Megyn Kelly on air again. Last time around, Kelly right off the bat went after Trump's alleged sexism, positing nasty things he had said about Rosie O'Donnell as proof of what Trump said about all women. Any clear-headed analysis would show that what he said had applied solely to Ms. O'Donnell. Nevermind. An attack on one sister became an attack on the entire sisterhood. The second result of that meeting was that Trump had assuredly referred to Kelly's menstruality because of what? Again conjecture.
Since the time of the first Trump v. Kelly match, some critics have learned to think twice about the difference between what Trump said and what it's reported that Trump said. Let's hope for such a clearheaded analysis next time around.
How do you pronounce "nongay"? Without a hyphen, it looks like an Asian name that might have only one syllable.
""As I used to say to my students in class, as soon as you tell people you’re gay, they’ll tell you what you think. Just from the fact that I’m gay...""
I would take small issue with his logic. People have two data points when you tell them that you are gay: 1. You are gay. 2. You feel the need to tell people that you are gay. Using the term "Just from the fact that I'm gay", explicitly excluded the second fact.
There can no longer be any meaningful reference to 'real feminists,' despite how much feminists of the traditional sort (like Althouse) might wish. The movement has been usurped by leftist social justice warriors for whom gender is simply a tool to accomplish a radical agenda. Traditional feminists would do themselves a service by recognizing that much of the current disdain for feminism has nothing to do with the movement's original objectives.
What's the point of moderating comments if you allow this off-topic screed that manages to be both hatefully homophobic and misogynistic?
In other words, it's excruciatingly on topic and I drew blood because I was so precisely on target.
One thing I've got to say in praise of Althouse... She's a dogged advocate of free speech who refuses to give in to censors like FF.
Althouse wrote: Nongay men have a bigger stake in appeasing women, and I appreciate Frantzen's tweaking of heterosexual men whose feminism is something of a second-rate sexual strategy.
As a corollary, straight men have no evolutionary interest in defending Rosie O'Donnell. There is nothing to gain & nothing to lose by that defense. Politically of course, there is a plausible defense motive. But life is not all politics.
Blogger Freder Frederson said...What is the point of moderating comments if you allow this off-topic screed that manages to be both hatefully homophobic and misogynistic?
Whether or not you agree with Thomas, this request for censorship plays right into the fact that today's left with SJW Feminists what to silence everyone else with their fake righteous indignation act.
"But, sure, everybody, especially very smart people getting paid to be smart, should know how to detect propaganda and feel highly motivated to work through it and get to the truth."
Should, we would think. But rarely do. The trouble with being smart is we're never smart enough. And the smarts we do have are not equally distributed across our experience of the world. Propaganda manipulates by enticing just enough intellectual motivation to spur us towards accepting patterns that satisfy other goals. We want a promotion. We want to be honored. We want a study or book published. We want power or influence. We want to save the world or save our part of it. Idealists and pragmatists and sociopaths all come together in buttressing up a system.
Working through to the truth is a great way to experience alienation and resistance. Rarely actual persecution, but more often just lack of opportunities.
Smart people are still people.
Professor, you write of "real feminists".
Most people think that way: real feminists, real African Americans, real men, real boys, real girls.
Clark discusses the shift from women wanting rights to people wanting power. That's true in every political movement. A movement starts with ideals, like women voting, and eventually moves to realizations, like women in Congress, and then moves to horror, like we don't need men. That's the way of the world.
Yes, FF is masking his demand for censorship as "good intentions" in order to prevent hurt feelings for his constituency group.
A clever form of censorship. The demand to eliminate certain words is, in fact, a demand to limit discussion to the parameters that ensure FF wins.
Soylent red is made of men, by the way.
"So it's not feminism, per se, but the form it has taken recently and the way it's currently being used."
I immediately thought of the this is not Islam claims.
The "old man yells at cloud" may well serve in a future post on Senator Sanders. Tuck it away.
"So I am genuinely curious. How can he complain about "the form it has taken recently" without "assuming the victim position" when his argument is that "the form it has taken recently" hurts him?"
If someone is arguing for a theory you think is wrong using data you think is false or inaccurate, you can engage them on the merits in intellectual discourse. You don't have to be a big baby about it. He's saying men should man up for this fight, so why preface it with whining about your disadvantage. Men have dominated in the past and recently they've lost SOME of their previous advantage as other human beings, also desiring advantage, have flipped some of the old domineering moves. If the question is finding the way out of the fog, how about changing that approach to human relationships?
Instapundit, who observes that "it’s often the gay men who are leading the way." The way... where? Out of whatever this "feminist fog" is, I guess.
Insty is likely talking about Milo. Since gays are one of the Approved Victim Classes (TM), they have more room to maneuver against feminists, as several of the feminist rhetorical tricks won't work on them.
Think back to your post about Valenti posing as a monica-wanna-be for the Clinton photo op. Imagine how hamstrung Marcotte et al would have been if the criticism had come from a gay male instead.
As a guy who edited the leading men's rights newsletter for some time, I have few answers to how to get out of the fog.
Men, even in these groups, tear one another apart over the great "who is more chivalrous" fight. Men just cannot stop themselves.
We men are not in the same league with women when it comes to conspiring. Every man wants to be Napoleon and refuses to listen to or subordinate his interests in any way. And, all it takes is one jackass in the group screeching "We're going to hurt the poor girls' feelings!" and everything goes to hell and every man goes for the throats of his purported allies.
When we really wanted to get something done, we asked a woman associated with the group to be the spokesperson. This defused a lot of the machismo and chivalrty.
Pussy uber allies!
"As I used to say to my students in class, as soon as you tell people you’re gay, they’ll tell you what you think. Just from the fact that I’m gay..."
I don't know if that is fact or just this guy's perception. However, it isn't because he is gay. It's because he's allowed himself to be categorized. It is structuralism. Black, white, gay, tea party, racist, woman, progressive, on and on, it doesn't matter. Each and every one has its own set of imputed attitudes and behaviors, and you have precious little say in what they are as an individual.
Look at the earlier Marc Maron post for a wonderful over the top example of the whole constellation of attributes shared by the category Amy Shumer critic.
That's your argument? Men have lost SOME advantage, and shouldn't be big babies? You're arguing like a big baby.
I thought it was the other way around. As soon as a person comes out as gay, they tell you what you may think about it.
so why preface it with whining about your disadvantage
Some people call it whining about their disadvantage others call it an accurate assessment of the tactical situation that you currently face.
Men have dominated in the past and recently they've lost SOME of their previous advantage
So are you for equality of opportunity or not? Also, some of that previous advantage included dieing for women and children. During the industrial revolution most jobs were dangerous and/or exhausting. Middle class desires to make enough money to enable their wives and daughters to not have to work outside the home was a perfectly reasonable, in fact noble, sentiment given the conditions of the time.
And whats more, the post did address data and and did engage "on the merits" which you ignore as you attempt to disqualify the author due to the post's tone as you perceive it.
What is the point of moderating comments if you allow this off-topic screed that manages to be both hatefully homophobic and misogynistic?
It's so much easier to complain than to counter an argument, isn't it! Ban All Speech That I Dislike should be your tagline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
Gaiety and mirth are provoked by diverse associations with personal bias.
As for transgender/homosexual men and women, there may be a predisposition, even prejudice, caused by special interest efforts to selectively normalize and exploit a politically favorable orientation. The female chauvinists, abortion industry, clinical cannibals, and social industrialists have found a mutual if irreconcilable interest in each others arms.
Althouse wrote:
"He's saying men should man up for this fight, so why preface it with whining about your disadvantage. Men have dominated in the past and recently they've lost SOME of their previous advantage as other human beings, also desiring advantage, have flipped some of the old domineering moves"
Were feminists open about gaining privilege by de-privileging men? If so, why did these men agree to be de-privileged? I don't remember being part of that conversation.
What happened is that feminists convinced some culturally powerful men to privilege women at the expense of less powerful men.
"Men have dominated in the past and recently they've lost SOME of their previous advantage as other human beings, also desiring advantage, have flipped some of the old domineering moves. If the question is finding the way out of the fog, how about changing that approach to human relationships?"
The goal of liberation is freedom, but such freedom is elusive because we don't, ultimately, believe in freedom for all.
The systems pattern according to relative power, not freedom, and are operationally closed to each other. So power in one system, like academia, doesn't translate into power into other systems, like religion or economic.
Liberation, then, tends to operate according to power: freedom is equated with gaining power which then can be applied against others, the former oppressors. We don't really have a problem with the systems we just are protesting our place in their power structure. This is why revolutions often result in an inversion of power rather than resolution of the dysfunction. Was Stalin better than the Tsar? Of course not. But he was different and different people gained power and that gave the illusion of liberation.
Changing the approach to human relationships is difficult because we can't just talk about surface level and systems specific issues like economics, race, religion, etc. We have to address the underlying issues that leads humans to use these systems in egocentric or tribal ways: our egos, our fears, our hopes, our responsibilities, our development. The way to assuage these driving forces is by gaining power over and against others. Add to the trouble that since everyone is doing this, there are times in which we must defend against the imposition of power by others. We're put into a cycle where if we concede we are crushed. How do we maintain our sense of self and real freedom without, in turn, dominating and restricting others?
And it's absolutely not about simply coming to rational agreement with each other, as everyone has a different value and assessment of rationality. We all want to come to agreement, an agreement that people listen and agree with us. The power struggle continues in the guise of rational discourse.
I have a lot to say on this. Writing a book on this exact topic, in fact. It's a great question and answering it means pushing back against a lot of established social and academic assumptions.
The good thing about Shouting Thomas is that he provides a striking icon to allow you to easily skip his comments. I am sure he, like any blind squirrel, finds the occasional nut, but I long since learned that the odds of it are too low to merit exposing oneself to the blast of nastiness sure to come. I am sure that he thinks I am a beta male on account of I don't submit to his worldview, whatever. I do just fine.
It is the blistering clarity and bluntness of what I said that is confusing you guys.
In my experience, it is a long process to work your way through to understanding straightforward clarity when you've grown accustomed to a steady diet of obfuscation and lies.
It looks more like bitterness to me. There are other ways of getting to the truth, sober and honest reflection on ones own thoughts and actions as well as careful listening to the points of views of others, all the while being aware that those others are as prone to self deception as oneself, that seems to work for me.
I assumed the Mist was literal, and that evolved Feminists had developed Mist-Holes from which to emit their Mist.
And that, if the human body evolves another hole, someone somewhere will try to fuck it.
I am Laslo.
.
When did that flip? When they both assumed the mantle of victim.
Paddy is on fire this morning. Good stuff. Reminds me of the themes of Invisible Man.
I do like how Althouse says she didn't read this guy's blog post before taking on the excerpts
You know, I take metaphor seriously. In my mind, fighting a cloud looks very silly.
Talking about clouds is perfect when you're talking about metaphors because our word for cloud began with a metaphor.
cloud (n.)
Old English clud "mass of rock, hill," related to clod. Metaphoric extension to "raincloud, mass of evaporated water in the sky" is attested by c. 1200 based on similarity of cumulus clouds and rock masses. The usual Old English word for "cloud" was weolcan. In Middle English, skie also originally meant "cloud."
Old man fights with flying boulders!
What does it say about English weather if the word "sky" originally meant "cloud"?
Laslo Spatula wrote:
"I assumed the Mist was literal, and that evolved Feminists had developed Mist-Holes from which to emit their Mist."
Yes, that is true. The scientific term for the mist is 'menses menstruum' and it is, indeed, a powerful weapon. No man has seen a feminist's mist-hole and lived.
Honestly, ST, you lost me where the Althouses of the world are desiring to be pounded by a troop of gay men.
ST has been trying his PUA techniques on the proprietress of this blog for as long as I can remember.
Agree with mccullough. Paddy O, I so very much enjoy reading your comments.
ST has been trying his PUA techniques on the proprietress of this blog for as long as I can remember.
My "jerk boy" thing is innate and always running without any particular target.
I was raised in the old fashioned way by a WWII vet father... a real John Wayne macho man.
This, I know, will be very difficult to you to understand. I don't need to turn it on and off. It's who I am.
"Concluded" <> "learned."
My dad killed Nazis too. I am thinking the difference is that he didn't like it.
I wrote a whole blog post about this yesterday. I thought I had been even-handed, but I took it down because it upset a friend who was in the thick of it, and it didn't seem worth going to battle over. But her request, and the way she portrayed the reaction of her colleagues in the field, seemed to suggest that they are insulated and see their world as "special" and completely unlike the world of Business and Corporations. Very irritating.
My dad was the most compassionate, devoted father you'll ever meet. Great father to his daughters, too.
He was among the troops that liberated Dachua. He suffered with the memory of that his entire life.
You can see all the destructive tendencies of men, and how easily women manipulate men with chivalry in the responses to my posts. It's like an encyclopedia of stupid self-destruction.
Read this litany of stupidity and weep, men. It's why the feminists keep beating you.
I gave up on men as a result of my work in men's issues because I decided men were just too stupid to understand why they kept getting outmanuvered. Nothing that has happened here has changed my mind.
I decided to take care of myself and my own and to have a good life. I haven't regretted that decision.
Men had all the advantages and have only recently lost SOME?
Yes, that is why there exists an expression "Happy husband..."
Except the expression is "Happy wife, happy life."
Because men had all the advantages. ALL.
What bull shit!
Thanks McCullough and Karen, I really appreciate your encouragement.
Regarding moderation, since Althouse has said it a lot, it's not about speech or comments. There are very specific people (and this is very small number) who have crossed lines (in real life if I'm not mistaken), so they do not get the privilege of commenting here.
Also, formatting. Specific people and naughty formatting.
The best contemporary example I've found of real liberation for all is in the teachings and work of Jean Vanier. Worth reading his books and watching videos. He won the 2015 Templeton Prize.
I haven't read Frantzen's post yet. I'll get to that. I'm just amused by this idea — which I saw somewhere else recently too — that gay men are presumed to be female-friendly. I remember when gay men were presumed to hate women. When did that flip?
When it became politically convenient.
Homosexuality has never been just about "love" or sexual attraction. For the past hundred years at least it's been seen by the left as a revolutionary act; a means of undermining culture and society. Hence why radical feminism has pushed the idea that lesbianism is central to being a good feminist.
The worst excesses of gay "culture": the hedonism, the self-destruction, the narcissism, are activities that the progressive movement has pushed for decades on the rest of society. The shift to a woman and her gay best friend is supposed to encourage her to engage in the same behavior.
chickelit wrote:
This Thursday, Donald Trump will be meeting Megyn Kelly on air again. Last time around, Kelly right off the bat went after Trump's alleged sexism, positing nasty things he had said about Rosie O'Donnell as proof of what Trump said about all women. Any clear-headed analysis would show that what he said had applied solely to Ms. O'Donnell. Nevermind. An attack on one sister became an attack on the entire sisterhood. The second result of that meeting was that Trump had assuredly referred to Kelly's menstruality because of what? Again conjecture.
Since the time of the first Trump v. Kelly match, some critics have learned to think twice about the difference between what Trump said and what it's reported that Trump said. Let's hope for such a clearheaded analysis next time around.
well he has said nasty things about more women than just Rosie O'Donnell. Personally, I have no problem if he calls her a fat pig. People for looking to find sexism though would say using the epithet "fat pig" to describe a woman is in itself sexist.
I don't necessarily agree with this, but that would be how it becomes sexist language to those pushing the charge.
He also said of Bette Midler. "But whenever she sees me she kisses my ass. She's disgusting"
and said of Gail Collins "She has the face of a dog" https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6329595&postID=1191247218942250298
He tweeted of Arianna Huffington "why is it necessary to comment on .@ariannahuff looks? Because she is a dog who wrongfully comments on me"
He said to Brande Broderick, a contestant on the Apprentice " must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees" etc etc etc.
Now, Meghan Kelly said the following:
"KELLY: Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women.
You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals."
Kelly never characterized his statement as saying that about ALL women. SO you are in fact the one mischaracterizing what Megyn said. But its quite clear that Trump has called women he doesn't like Pigs, dogs and slobs" I cited just a few.
Is that sexist language though? Well, I would call Michael Moore a fat slob and a pig, so if I called Rosie a fat slob and a pig I wouldn't consider it sexist. But Megyn was not wrong to suggest, that when Trump gets mad he insults womens looks and calls them fat slobs and/or pigs.
(cont) clearly Trump seems to have an issue singling out women for their looks and has no problem calling people he doesn't like fat pigs. Rather than saying Meghyn was lying, why not defend his remarks and suggest that its perfect acceptable to comment on Arianna Huffingtons looks when she says something about him that isn't true.
You, chickelit are now denying what actually happened and suggesting THAT (that he only called one woman a fat pig) is the lie as opposed to addressing whether calling women fat pigs is, in fact, necessarily sexist.
Meghyn had every right to answer it. and Trumps response only confirms that that is how he treats women who attack him.
and what conflict of interest is Megyn Kelly guilty of? She has a bias? No, she called Trump on his insults. And asked him to defend them. He could have. He could have said, "Yes I said it, but here's what Arianna said about me". Or, "Rosie IS a fat pig. That's not sexist." Or, 'have you heard what people have said about me and my hair? All's fair on Twitter.' Or, 'that's how I react when people say things about me that are untrue. It may be boorish, but not sexist.' Or "I stand by remarks. They are beasts and fat slobs" Any of those would be acceptable.
Instead, when called on to answer the charge that he did say such things, he acts like a petulant child and demands she not moderate the debate. What a baby.
Your candidate is a boorish ass, who is a coward and tries to stifle the media when they ask him about his boorishness.
In our popular culture the gay man is the mirror image of the "hooker with the heart of gold." Someone who (i) is open and in touch with their own sexuality, (ii) understands the sexual and relationship needs of an opposite gender person, and (iii) is non-threatening (by not needing physical relations in the case of a gay man/woman, or long term commitment in the case of a hooker/man).
"He was among the troops that liberated Dachua. He suffered with the memory of that his entire life."
I hope that's the truth. A couple thousand men liberated the Nazi Death camps. Somehow that number has grown exponentially over the last 70 years.
Even 'Band of Brothers' had to end with the obligatory "Death Camp Liberation".
When it involves women's rights it is not a Cloud, it is a Penumbra.
Hope that helps.
I am Laslo.
You can see all the destructive tendencies of men, and how easily women manipulate men with chivalry in the responses to my posts. It's like an encyclopedia of stupid self-destruction.
Its amazing how many men still think its 1955. The White knights are just the flip side of the Skirt chasers who'll do anything for sex.
Women can't handle true equality. In a lot of respects they're not mentally or physically capable of handling the job.
Every feminist I've ever met is an ardent defender of womens rights until the oil needs changing. In the lawn mower.
" We need a new dishwasher. It's making a funny noise."
Me, " how is it now?"
"What did you do?"
Me, "I fixed it."
What the Hell does the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire have to do with anything here?
Like all other "equal rights" movements, feminism has moved beyond getting equal rights under the law (achieved long ago) to demanding superior outcomes and revenge against anyone that disagrees. So sorry. Equal rights mean women get to try. Well done. Congrats. Good luck with that. What they do with that opportunity is up to them, not society.
Again, im not saying Trump necessarily is sexist. He is certainly boorish though. And he certainly has done what Meghyn said he did. But wasn't that the time to say "No, it wasn't in fact sexist. You can call women fat pigs." An easy rejoinder could have been "have you seen what I called Michael Moore? Its not sexism. That's just how I talk about people I hate or misrepresent me. And who happen to be fat pigs".
I happen to believe that calling Rosie O'Donnell a fat pig is perfectly acceptable. And not because she's a woman, but a fat pig.
BUt having said it, its perfectly reasonable for the media to ask him about it.
The same way it would be reasonable to ask Hillary if she believes all the people who accused her husband of rape/and or harassment. since she had said we must believe the women who cry rape.
Trump doesn't get a pass just because he's Trump.
jr565 -
That sort of response doesn't work. It SHOULD, perhaps, work, if everyone was devoted to rules, as if politics were a civilized sport like boxing, but human beings are too perverse.
It also misses the point that the argument was not really over that particular matter but over the hostility of the press/Fox to Trump, and more strategically over Trumps appeal to the mass of people disgusted with the press. This question was just a McGuffin, and the subject of the response was another.
The correct rhetorical, strategic response is more or less as Trump did.
Boorishness is another point.
It turns off some and attracts others.
And the balance is situational.
Trump seems to be able to turn boorishness on and off as the circumstances dictate.
This is in line with the behavior of many great leaders. Napoleon, Frederick, Julius Caesar could speak to high and low, in calm and stress, as the occasion demanded, with sophisticated courtesy or crude energy.
This can cause problems in the modern world as audiences in any given occasion are not compartmentalized, but on the whole it seems to be working.
And the reaction entirely proved his point.
"I remember when gay men were presumed to hate women."
It wasn't so much hate as a wariness about the competition.
Weird thing is that feminists don't keep beating me. I have a great life.
The fog is not so thick that it obscures destructive "feminist" stupidity.
Trump has a thing about pigs, and doesn't reserve that epithet for women only. A few years ago, he referred to a Scottish farmer who refused to sell him his land for a golf course as a guy who lives in "pig-like conditions".
Ann Althouse said...Men have dominated in the past and recently they've lost SOME of their previous advantage as other human beings, also desiring advantage, have flipped some of the old domineering moves. If the question is finding the way out of the fog, how about changing that approach to human relationships?
But remember, Ta-Nehisi Coates is the smartest guy ever for writing so much about how reparations will be the best idea for our country. Younger guys, now, aren't happy with the gender reparations allies of the Professor are apparently happy to try and extract. The Professor says maybe we shouldn't think of gender relations as a zero sum game wherein one side's gain only comes from the other side's loss. I say good luck with that--you don't have to convince me (my "side" isn't really winning, now!) you have to convince the side that's up, and those ladies don't seem too interested.
The most misogynistic men I've known have been gay, and Hillary supporters. I'm not sure what to make of that.
Most assumptions of this sort come from stereotypes, as when people talk about "conservatives" "blacks" "gays" "women" or any other type of group as if it were a monolith. Monoliths make for easy explanations, but also happen to ignore the individuals within the group. There is likely more diversity in any single such group than there is in any group specifically picked out for diversity's sake.
I suspect the assumption that gays are female-friendly stems from a couple things. One, women don't really have to worry about sexual assault from gay guys, they're just not interested. Second, they do tend to be on the same side of the sexual revolution. There may also be something of that age-old thought that gay is effeminate.
The irony of assuming that all people of a minority group hold the same positions is that it destroys the value of seeking more people from that group for diversity's sake. After all, if all gays, to use the example, hold the same opinions, then only one of them is needed (i.e. the token gay, the token black, etc). And also, if everybody knows what they think, they really aren't needed at all so long as there is some sort of outreach or contact (a role activist groups essentially fill).
To get out of the fog, deal with people as individuals. Speaking with labels may be easy, but it doesn't help mutual understanding. There is no such thing as an average black, gay, conservative, woman, or anything else except when it comes to statistics.
@Ann,
I found this observation a little interesting, but it took me time to figure out why.
as soon as you tell people you’re gay, they’ll tell you what you think. Just from the fact that I’m gay, people assumed I endorsed all their positions about whatever," said Allen J. Frantzen.
I've felt this as a Christian.
People automatically think I'm overly judgemental (or hypocritical, or close-minded). Somehow, the open-minded people who want to shame me never take an open mind towards my beliefs.
Come to think of it, I've heard the testimony of a man who claims that coming to Christ helped him out of a large number of mental and social problems. Alcoholism, eating disorders, mentally-unhealthy relationship patterns, and other self-harming behavior.
In his testimony, the man also claimed to have left behind homosexual behavior, and ended his decade-long quest to find "Mr. Right". He's now married to a woman, and has children...though not totally free of same-sex attraction, he claims to no longer be a slave to that desire.
Somehow, if I say anything about this last part, people think I'm about to go all "cure that gay-ness".
But that's not my attitude. And I have a hard time convincing people that it is, so I'm typically quiet on that subject.
It's hard to hold an opinion, and speak about it, when society isn't open-minded enough to listen to me.
@ShoutingThomas,
I think you're wrong on this one.
Many, if not most, gay men do not entirely identify as gay until they approach 30 and they will screw around and gangbang with fag hags until they decide they only want to fuck men.
At least, the one man I know said that he was repulsed by feminine sexuality for most of his childhood, teen years, and early 20s.
As I said, he claims to have recovered from that repulsion.
Another story I've heard was of a man who never saw anything attractive in any woman until sometime in his mid-20s. After he came to Jesus, and possibly as a result of counseling he was receiving. Or possibly an unexpected, unexplained miracle. (I was very young when I heard this story, so some of this was repeated to me later by other adults present when the tale was told.)
So, I have only two cases. Or maybe one-and-a-half. But neither lines up with your assertion.
How many cases do you know?
From what I've heard and seen, I've learned a few things.
1. Same-sex-attraction and homosexual behavior are different.
(An alcoholic's desire to drown his sorrows is different from the behavior of a man who drinks himself into a stupor every night. Some men join groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, in an attempt to stop that self-destructive behavior.)
2. Some cases of people who exhibit homosexual behavior are people who suffered several psychological trauma--or abuse--during childhood.
I can't say all men who exhibit that behavior have that background. But some do.
3. It is possible, but very hard, for a person who grows up knowing only same-sex-attraction to awaken to opposite-sex-attraction.
The case I'm aware of is a man who attributes the change to the miraculous power of God. Aided by his own desire to stay in the company of like-minded people, recovering from abuse and/or sexual addiction. And encouraging each other regularly to continue to separate themselves from the habits of their old way of life, and to take up better habits as part of a new way of life.
(Actually, this group I'm describing looks suspiciously like AA-for-people-recovering-from-sexual-abuse-or-dealing-with-sexual-addictions. I've had more-than-passing conversations with the men involved in this group.)
4. The Spirit of the Age (...er, the voice of Political Correctness, or whatever you want to call it) does not want to admit either of items (1) or (2) above.
5. The Spirit of the Age also wants to blame the high incidence of psychological problems among homosexual men on the homo-phobia in the broader culture.
Somehow, I wonder if those psychological problems correlate with same-sex-attracted men who suffered abuse as children...
But here I'm theorizing, as I'm neither a psychiatrist nor a social researcher. And as I said, the cluster of forces (genetic, social, environmental) that encourage same-sex-attraction isn't well-known.
6. There is one shred of scientific evidence that I'd like to see explored more thoroughly. Apparently, geneticists have better evidence that alcoholism is inherited than they have that homosexual behavior is inherited.
I actually don't care why some feminists used to be afraid of homosexual men; and why some feminists now consider homosexual men to be their allies.
I suspect that behavior is another example of the behavior mentioned by Professor Frantzen. Third-wave feminists have common cause with some homosexual men in some degree. They thus imagine that all homosexual men support the entirety of the feminist cause.
There isn't much need for a convulated explanation.
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