Poriot,
I think you keep trying to convince yourself that feminists have a conscience.

There was “patriarchy”, and guess why? It was not to oppress women.

It was to stop a woman from wandering off with the next man who came along and had more money.

And it was to stop a woman from killing the baby if she felt like it.

Feminism now tries to legitimise that.

One of the things I find really sad with these pieces is that we have an article that gives a fairly clear demonstration of the nonsense touted by some feminist extremeists which could be a trigger for some useful discussion of what's wrong with that thinking and as usual a small group of presumably male posters seem determined to distract attention from that debate by expressing views about women even more abhorent than the views of men in the original article.

Happens time after time, I sometimes suspect that a couple of posters are working for some feminist PR department posing as stereotypes of "masculine" thinking, when something pop's up that shows the demonstrates how devisive some forms of feminism are they swing into action posting in a way that's sure to focus attention on male attitudes to women rather than on anything constructive. Unfortunately I doubt that's the case, those probably are real attitudes. Just as bad if not worse than the extremes of feminism that they so hate.

In the mean time there is little or no discussion of some of the deep flaws in the original article. The suggestion that women have not had a role in developing our language being one worthy of discussion.

R0bert

Robert,
Of course there are deep flaws with the article. I've never know a feminist to get anything right.

Feminism is like basing arithmetic around the concept that 1 + 1 = 11.

This is not accurate, and subsequently anything else in arithmetic based on that concept will be flawed and inaccurate.

The article is just more male bashing, and based on the belief that anything developed by men is patriarchal and oppressive of women.

The basic principles of feminism are flawed, and subsequently anything else that follows will be flawed.

vanna I'm more of the view that much of the core analysis is flawed rather than all the basic principles.

Eg one of the common principles is equality of opportunity. Sometimes that's a mantra rather than something that's reflected in reality but as a principle and as I understand it I agree with it. I don't agree with all the variation of it (eg hobbling those with ability or interest to make a level playing field) but do think as far as possible institutional restrictions based on gender, race, parents financial situation etc should not stand in peoples way.

Stepping to a parallel of the issue. I believe that the core of thiestic religions is fundamentally flawed, once I believed in a god but I've reached the conclusion that there is no credible evidence for that stance. The flawed foundation of thiestic thinking does not mean that I assume that thiests are unable to reach valid conclusions on any issue where their faith may be a factor.

It does mean that on any issue where the justification is "God said" I can pretty much ignore the argument, it also means on other issues where the thiest is using a range of contrived justifications to support a view that other thiests use the "God said" rational for I'll be looking pretty closely for bias.

Where an author bases their case on historical male oppression of women in western society it starts to look like a "God says" argument. Where they assume that the oppression is so bad that women have played no role in shaping society or even the language they use they don't have a lot to say.

No if the author cared to address the issue on the basis of the difficulties facing those taking part in online discussions when confronted with strongly abusive or intimidation reactions I'd be much more interested in the points being made.

R0bert

They're fruit loops r0bert. I don't think they even comprehend what you're on about.

I can see that it frustrates you that you associate with fruit loops, you seem to be objecting to the same thing as the fruit loops, hey , maybe you are a fruit loop too.

I'm as interested as you are in some of the flawed logic of much feminist social commentary, but in the end you have to accept that if you disagree, you're just the same as those guys.

Misogynist!

That's what you are r0bert.

I get what you are saying, but I am more interested myself in this constant narrative that when any group of males exhibit abusive, annoying or disrespectful behaviour to a woman, it's necessarily some grand conspiracy to 'silence' her, and it's all about gender.

To me, the most offensive thing about all this sort of stuff is the assigning of a motive to men to justify this narrative, to line up all the woe of women throughout history and link it all together in such a simplistic way, and the attempt to extrapolate it to all males.

The actions and motives of a man 100 years ago in a different society DOESN'T have ANYTHING to do with a different clown on an internet blog today.

Its so very immature. It's "I feel x, so that must be the aim of the person that made me feel that way". ie It's all about ME! There's no randomness, there's no individuals, there's just an abusive gender and a victim gender.

Lets face it 'The Patriarchy' is just a short-hand way of saying all men, in conspiracy, together, hating women, and dedicating their lives to it.

People just don't work that way. Patriarchy also includes protecting women. Women, as you say, hold the SAME responsibility for the perpetuation of societies organisational structure as men.

But we hear many feminists on the one hand say men hold all the responsibility for society, but at the same time bemoan the fact that women's contributions have not been recognised. They cant have it both ways.

Houellebecq, you know I'm a sucker for buying into discussions that should be left alone. Never managed to reliably break the habit.

I agree that the narrative in the article and similar ones is much more interesting. Love to see some contribution from the more moderate feminists on the narrative and assumptions of this article.

Is it insulting to women to claim that women have played no significant role in english speaking history including the development of the language?

R0bert