& I don't want or need to marry any of you.
Posted by DVD, Thursday, 24 January 2008 12:53:36 PM

LOL, not that I am looking for another partner. But some of my friends reckon I am a real softy.

Verbally I get toungue tied. (yeah I know thats an opening for the vultures,)

DVD,
No one has asked you to marry them. In fact, no one has asked you to do anything. All that has been asked is for Audrey Apple to remove the discriminatory banner from her profane and gossipy blogsite.

Vanilla,
I haven’t been in the Family Court, and I am not Germaine Greer. Next you will be saying that boys are made of slime and snails, which is also incorrect.

If you liked the link I very kindly provided for you, then try this one
http://www.iwf.org/

I would think that there would be much more reliable information in the articles on that website, than in something written by Audrey Apple.

Dear Audrey Apple, someone who thinks that Germaine Greer is sexy, and discriminates against boys.

I gave the male centrefold in Cleo magazine a vote of 1 out of 5 for being a poser, and I give your blogsite a vote of 0 out of 10, for its profanity, discrimination, feminism, gossip and general disregard for science, reliability and accuracy, (while at the same time trying to convince people that you are a journalist).

Also you should remove the banner from your blogsite that discriminates against children. If you want to be a feminist and discriminate against males, then at least discriminate against men, and not boys

Vanilla, damn fine post. Heck, if you kept that up I'd consider that proposal.

Note that HRS still can't address weighing up the significance of a lighthearted banner versus other commentary.

And HRS, you're Germaine Greer. I'm sure if we called Germaine Greer HRS, she'd react just as you just did.

And your response HRS was the best, most succinct summary of your mindset I've seen.

A feminist criticises you, it's automatically a critique of men.

You said:

"Your saying that I'm fog, illogical, self-rightousness and cr@p.
Now that is quite abusive, but I was lead to believe that feminists are not abusive."

Well, it wasn't us leading you to believe that. Feminists can be abusive, just like anyone else.

You're saying feminists on the whole are abusive toward men.

One feminist, being abusive (though I'd say it's pretty tame salvo in a debate, learn to suck it up and stop trying to seize any opportunity to play a victim) to you, isn't all feminists, nor is is being abusive toward men in general.

Again, you twist the point.

As for me following you through threads, nope. There's only been three. Like you, I was following two arguments. In this one, I was becoming steadily more incredulous, bemused and slightly uneasy at how seriously you can take a single satirical banner.

As for the last one, I read a beautiful article, and hit out against the stupid first comment, which tried to insinuate that feminists were bad, simply because none had commented.

Another prime example of shoddy reasoning. In fact, one of the reasons why I respond to your posts, is that they're a litany of poor logic - people come to OLO for a variety of reasons, whether it's pushing a wheelbarrow or making comment. My main interest is looking at critical reasoning.

In terms of debating methods, allow me to list the many fallacies and tactics I've seen in your posts - quite frankly it's strange - unlike the many posters with dodgy arguments who put the same fallacies forth repeatedly, you keep jumping to new ones.

Cont'd.

1) You keep playing victim, demanding apologies. It may be justified in certain instances, but when you can't find a reason you manufacture one.
In an earlier thread, because someone referred to you and your 'ilk' you defined a new meaning for the term 'ilk' and pretended you'd been gravely insulted, demanding an apology.

Your attitude about the banner's the same.

2) When presented with facts that don't fit, you ignore them.

3) When pressed on these, you find various ways to ignore them:

Firstly, when presented with something that refutes your argument, you instead demand a different piece of evidence.

Example: in the domestic violence thread, you tried to pretend that women are just as guilty of domestic violence as men.

To refute this, I gave you recent statistics indicating that "the majority of victims of domestic assault were female (71.1%) and the majority of offenders were male (80.4%)."

You never addressed this at all. My assertion was that this proves you wrong, but instead of actually dealing with this statement, which conclusively demonstrates why you were wrong, you demanded statistics on a %of men that are violent. I explained why I don't think they exist.

- This is a subtle, but fundamentally flawed piece of reasoning - you think that because the direct statistics don't exist, you can therefore ignore other statistics. You were never able to address what IS put in front of you, instead preferring to make unreasonable demands of others.

This is not only heinous, but intellectually dishonest. You won't provide any stats yourself.

You ignore positive comments of men from feminists - it's right here in these threads to see. But you redefine what's acceptable.

I'm outta room and had to delete examples... but I can add plenty more.

My assertion is that not all feminists are man-haters.

Some, even many, are.

It's just I think you shouldn't be a hypocrite and hate all of them, because these are the same reasons why you hate them.

It's justified to criticise some men, HRS. And some feminists. Not all. In either case.

Vanilla,

For an apparently popular and prolific poster, you seem to miss the obvious sometimes. Here’s one example.

Amongst your recent conciliatory comments to Witty, you say: “Looking back at your posts, I see you're mad at you mum for her feminism. I'm sorry. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but if she alienated you, it could have been because she was a bad mother, rather than a feminist. “ Bad mother, rather than a feminist.

But just before this, you say: “BUT it also makes me think of the love and pride I have for the women who fought for me to vote and contribute in public life. Yvonne talked beautifully about this. Like her, I adore the men in my life, but I'm the daughter of a working class woman who became a doctor, and feminism made her life, and mine, immeasurably richer. Maybe you need to realise that some women's loyalty to feminism has *nothing* to do with men. It's to do with the opportunity to life a full life. Neither of my grandmothers could.”

It appears there is a real possibility that you are selling your mother short by attributing her success to feminism rather than her own abilities. Could it be that your mother’s success is due to her dedication and hard work, and not feminism at all? Was the implied unhappiness of your grandmothers directly related to their non-dedication to feminism, and *everything* to do with men, or to other, totally unrelated social and economic factors? I dare not ask about your grandfathers, for they portray as abusers and rapists.

To some feminists, feminism may promise prime ministership, and to others, it can deny everything. Same feminism, different feminists. Situational feminism can be a challenge to most men – even the strong ones you so admire, but especially to those not doctors or CEO’s, or unlikely prime ministers.

TurnRightThenLeft

Whilst I agree with most of the comments posted regarding HRS's posting style he is not an island in ignoring DV material which does not suit.

I've posted material over several years which povides a case worthy of attention to show that the rates of initiation of DV by men and women are quite similar.

A variety of studies over many years have found this. The studies which don't are ones which either deliberately build in the assumption that men are responsible for most DV or which don't remove factors which proviude an artificial bias. When you read the argumenst against the methodologies used which tend to show similar rates of DV the main argument seems to be that those methodologies don't take into account the assumed power differences or other gender assumptions.

I've put up requests for links to studies which show that men are the perpetrators in the overwhelming majority of cases of DV and which also show that reasonable steps have been taken to remove gender bias in the collection process and I don't recall a single response to those requests.

I've posted links to government web sites and groups such as The Abused Child Trust, NSW Govt Child Death Review Team etc which show that women do abuse and neglect children at similar or greater rates than men (probably offset by women having the greater share of care) but still some of these same posters mock claims that women abuse children at similar rates to men.

Few if any feminists have engaged to any real degree in these discussions and where they have the result seems to be that it's just to hard to believe so I won't believe it.

I don't recall any attempt to rebutt the material on substantiated abuse I've referenced on numerous occasions, it just gets ignored.

I appreciate that Vanilla has acknowledged an understanding of the PR aspects of this in an earlier post and have very much valued her posts on this thread.

R0bert