James posted this on another thread. He didn't write it - it's a quote - but as I understand it this is what you believe true of women, James? Is that correct?

"The picture is emerging of a woman who must get what she desires at all costs and must always be right. Sometimes she will deliberately claim to misunderstand something to justify doing what she wants, even though she knows it is against your wishes. She may cause problems just to attract attention to herself, because she likes to feel important.

"Creating self-doubt in her victims' minds is an integral part of her approach. She plays on their reasonableness to give her the benefit of any doubts they may have. She knows that reasonable people don't like to think badly of others and will often beat themselves up for thinking uncharitable thoughts. She always sounds so convincing. Her approach is intended to make you question whether you were correct in your thoughts about her. It slows you down. It's meant to."

Vanilla,

that quote was from Glenn Sacks in regards to his review of a book titled "Venus; the dark side" which I think would be an interesting book to read. here;

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2008/01/24/venus-the-dark-side-female-sociopaths-part-iii/

The quote says "a woman" single, but you expanded that to "women" pural.

"but as I understand it this is what you believe true of women, James? Is that correct?"

Not exactly reflective listening,

"The picture is emerging of a woman(single) who must get what she desires at all costs and must always be right. Sometimes she will deliberately claim to misunderstand something to justify doing what she wants,"

This type of behaviour, I have experienced personally.

Is this what I believe to be true of all women? The answer is NO!

Do, I extrapolate my own unique personal experiences and then apply them to all women. Again the answer is NO!

I do however apply extreme caution.

Vanilla if you wrote about male sociopaths, I would not then extrapolate that you then thought all men were sociopaths.

Once upon a time I thought that if I could just learn to somehow divine what womens expectations were, so that I could try to meet them. Does that sound like a misogynist?

James, I know you're not a misogynist. I believe you have the best intentions. Nevertheless I found that piece incredibly sad.

And please - it's disingenuous to suggest it's referring to "one woman" (surely then it would be a novel!). The author is using the term "a woman" not to mean one particular woman, but one generic women - womenkind. "If a man does his best, what else is there?" A man in this sense means mankind.

I just wish you guys would see sometimes that you're just like the feminists whose thinking you keep saying you dislike. I could think of nothing more dull than a book that tried to explain that the essential nature of "a man" was one that made victims of women, that manipulated them and delighted in slowing them down.

Of course, read what you like, it's nowt to do with me. But as I said in a post to Whitty on another thread, I'm just tired of being told what I'm like and what I think of men and what feminists think of men. I think life and culture and men and women are so much more complex than these tired, outdated caricatures.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I just needed to get that off my chest.

Well said Vanilla.

Don't take the comments here to heart Darlene. Certain posters here start metaphorically foaming at the mouth at anything that even remotely resembles feminism.
They quickly resort to disparaging comments and pretend to be victims by whatever means possible and if someone identifies with any element of feminism, they're tarred as an ideological extremist.

Heck, in once case one of these extremist anti-feminists took a satirical banner on a website that said "boys are made of snips and snails" and has blown it up to a slur on mankind.

In another case, somebody said "he and his ilk" and he tried to pretend ilk was a swearword, acting aggrieved and insulted.
So basically, anything that isn't complimentary of men is fair game.

He's still relentlessly campaigning to have the banner taken down - this is the kind of childish mindset you're dealing with, so like I said - don't take it personally.

It's very ironic that they're adopting the extremist tactics of radical feminists in their campaign, but they don't see that.

Perhaps they'll have the courage to post articles of their own someday, but that would mean the holes in their own logic would be up for criticism so I find that unlikely.

And let’s not miss the irony of Darlene’s diatribe made within an easy earshot of the elephant in the room – the global “pathological tribalism” of modern feminism.

“Bra Boys tells us a lot about how bad parenting inspired the creation of a substitute family…”, but Darlene of course conspires with her own tribe to deny it oxygen. Darlene makes no moral judgement of mothers here, nor does she even acknowledge bad mothers exist. If anything, she distances us from such thoughts by criticising the lack of females in the movie. If you accept her construct, there can be no link between bad mothers and the need for “substitute families”.

While logic tells us there are more broken families and single mothers now, than in the formative years of a budding Bra Boy, Darlene’s social commentary within her so-called movie review, is no more insightful, than her leaving a stable door wide open, then reporting her observations of a bolting horse and leaving us with just a hint of possible hidden agenda (on the part of the horse, of course).

TurnLeftThenRight, I took a look at the comments attached to Audrey Apple's article about Zoo magazine and realised that I saw quite a few familiar names and quite a few familiar arguments.

Quite incessant at commenting some of them were too, which is perfectly their right. The On Line Opinion community wasn't something that I was associated with or privy to (sometimes read the articles on the site, hardly read the comments). It's been interesting.

Your point about adopting the tactics of radical feminists is a good one. Extremists of any hue rarely do their cause any good.

Seeker, there are bad mothers, of course there are. And the impact they have on kids can be anything from neglectful to downright murderous. There are also couples who are completely destructive together. There are also fathers who are shocking (e.g. the role of the absent father is another one that can be discussed further in relation to this matter).

HRS, you are more than welcome to pop over to Larvatus Prodeo. The site has a moderation policy and doesn't allow for abusive comments. Doesn't meant that it doesn't get colourful. Feel free to have a look at LP and read the posts there (including mine) and see if the word "oppressor" and whatever are used. Not sure I've ever resorted to such use of the language, but if you can find examples let me know.

Cheers : )