Houellebecq:"I don't know whether they're Marxists anti. "

As I said, it's a distortion of Marxism, in which bourgeois women have pretended to the role of oppressed underclass, while blue collar men are portrayed as oppressors. It's grossly intellectually dishonest.

Pelican:"Feminism has never been an issue of the Left or Right even though it has been painted at various times as one or the other. In the early days feminism aligned itself heavily with the Right."

Feminism has always been a movement driven by bourgeois women. Those women have often tried to justify the inherently discriminatory nature of their views by using a perverted Marxist analysis in which any disadvantage suffered by a woman is included as part of the class struggle. Of course, a Marxist approach means that once the class enemy has been identified no further notice need by given to the impact of policies on them. After all, they're "oppressors" and deserve all they get. Nina et all are polemicists for the Revolution, as I'm sure they'd proudly acknowledge.

Pelican:"Most women don't want women to be the dominant gender, they don't think about dominance"

And nor do most men, but the political ones do. In today's world, to be a female politician is to be a feminist - there is no other choice available.

Pericles, wheely!

pelican,

'The difference is Houlley is that I don't see a bevy of women saying "all men are rapists"'
Which is what I said in my first post to James. It's purely the FSCs.

This really is the crux of it. When FSCs dissect rape, it is in the terms of a problem of 'society' or 'culture'. It's never expressed as an individual man's selfish choice or misogyny, it's the culture, ie all men are to blame. One individual hasn't raped, men, as an entity, have raped.

I fear for most FSCs, the discussion of rape is a vehicle for a discussion of how much they hate men. The negative dissection of a singular men is the main game. The talk about 'culture' is a vehicle to express a hatred of what they see as a singular men.

It's like people demonizing religion via paedophile priests. Even if the Vatican was sold and each victim given 20 million bucks and all paedophile priests were publicly disembowelled, some people would never be happy. Why; The hatred of religion precedes the hatred of paedophile priests. One is a vehicle for the other.

Conversely, men who hate feminism somehow seem to read a lot of the work of FSCs and take it all on board, and choose it as their representation of feminism. Just like any religion, my feminism is unique to me. It includes all sorts of things that FSCs would say if they weren't so focussed on women, and were interested in actually achieving something, with men, rather than taking pot shots at men.

'Most women don't want women to be the dominant gender, they don't think about dominance - that is my point - no-one is talking about female dominance except some men. '
Interesting. Most men don't think of dominance, but it features massively in feminist doctrine. Those FSCs would men on board if they started conversations with 'I feel dominated' rather than 'You are domineering'.

PS: Bring out broad church. Come'on! please! You know you want to.

I can't disagree with the essentials of your last post Houlley.

And everything is a broad church Houlley including the Church. And the same applies, a criticism of lack of action on pedophiles is seen as anti-Catholic rather than anti-pedophile and the detriment of lack of accountability vs extraordinary powers to circumvent law.

That is the trouble with these sorts of debates - one's own POV is often enhanced by elaborating on the extreme version of the adversary.

Most women do not believe that 'all men are rapists' but an Ad that targets domestic violence (for example) is not a feminist conspiracy nor does it imply all men are wife beaters.

What I don't understand is why the position of a radical feminist is put up as the paragon of feminism. It is like the red lights come on whenever there is a feminist article posted on OLO - it immediately signals the attack often without really reading what the article was about.

Anti
Feminism did have some detrimental effects unintentionally for some low income workers particularly child care workers who were affected in the drive for 'affordable childcare'. Middle class welfare in the form of affordable childcare comes at a cost to those low income workers - some barely earning a living wage. But that is not just about feminism but about greater economic issues. Unionism probably did more for working class women on the ground in the early days than feminism, but feminism ensured greater opportunities.

pelican,

'an Ad that targets domestic violence (for example) is not a feminist conspiracy nor does it imply all men are wife beaters.'

Well, it's definitely not a conspiracy. I think , like drunken consent, the frustration is the simplification of a more complex social problem. It's part of the patronising of the pikeys. 'Just tell them no means no or Australia says no.'

Personally I regret that such an opportunity of an advertising campaign on domestic violence didn't go anywhere near addressing the problem. There are generally 2 people in a relationship and the majority of violent domestic disputes both partners are violent.

But, women raised the funds and wanted to narrow their appeal to the less frequent (but perhaps more troublesome) cases when a domineering male is terrorising his wife. They come do the lobbying so they can reduce and narrow the message. Pity though. It doesn't imply all men are wife beaters, but it is a very narrow portrayal of violent domestic disputes.

'What I don't understand is why the position of a radical feminist is put up as the paragon of feminism. It is like the red lights come on whenever there is a feminist article posted on OLO - it immediately signals the attack often without really reading what the article was about.'

Oh it's fun! I love a good MTR article! As I said, some authors I have sussed, and the article is invariably about 'I just found some more evidence to support my claim that men are inherently violent predatory abusers'. I can feel the excitement vicariously through them, and can even imagine the excitement they feel when a new advert comes along to reinforce their world view, giving them a segue to continue on about the same theme and disguise it as a new article.

They are the paragon of feminism as they are the public face.

pelican "Most women do not believe that 'all men are rapists' but an Ad that targets domestic violence (for example) is not a feminist conspiracy nor does it imply all men are wife beaters."

What those DV ad's tend to do though is only portray male perpetrator's, female victims. What they imply is that only men are responsible for initiating and perpetuating DV. I've never seen any attempt to clear up that piece of misdirection.

I do thing that there is some traditional gender views mixed up in that approach but feminist voices speaking out against that genderised have been rather sparse.

I spent quite a lot of time a while back reading feminist literature trying to rebut vanna's claims about Australian feminist academics and was very disturbed by the approach which was fairly consistently shown in the material I found.

It was almost entirely negative about men and masculinity other than those who were clearly trying to conform to "feminine" behaviors (acting in what was perceived to be non masculine ways - eg consulting and collaboration and the like). There is a strong pattern of defining certain disliked behaviors and attitudes as masculine and desired ones as feminine, of applying feminist assumptions about power structures to reinterpret data (when a man hit's it's about dominating, when a woman hit's it's fighting back against oppression etc).

Once they have done that they can then claim that almost all DV is committed by men because they defined away instances where the woman might otherwise be seen as the aggressor.

R0bert

People Please.

*

Although I've become more aware of it recently, I think I've always had the sense that men are particularly vulnerable to the judgment of “creep." I wrote a series of blog posts on the problems of masculinity, and in Part 3 I noted that -- unlike men -- "I can be explicit and overt about my sexuality without being viewed as a creep."
http://www.alternet.org/sex/148291/why_do_we_demonize_men_who_are_honest_about_their_sexual_needs/

Interestingly in the Fraser Kirk affair, it would appear that from the release of emails, that somewhere along the line there was flirting between them and Mark McInnes begged her for mercy.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/mark-mcinnes-begged-publicist-kristy-fraser-kirk-for-mercy/story-e6frg6nf-1225932586067

He apologised, and yet she is still going for the jugular.

Human relationships are complicated enough with sometimes very subtle unconscious behaviours and clues.

the idea of No meaning No is good, yet there does not appear to be any support for women taking a much more overt and active role in initiating heterosexual sex.

A big part of the problem I think with things like sexual harrasement, sexual assault and rape, it that the vast majority of the time it has nothing to do with sexism, but to do with the fact that it is left up to men to be the main initiators.

An allegation of sexual harrasement for instance, would depend on the fact as to whether she found the male to be attractive and wanted him to make advances as compared to a male who she wasn't attracted too.

From my reading there are other issues as well, some women both desire and resent male attention, some feel that if a male doesn't approach them for sex, then she feels that he isn't attracted to her.

Psychologist Toby Green and commentator Amy Cooper both wrote about women being "testers" and when I wrote this there were howls of protest. When I read this it was one of those ah Ha moments for me.

So protest to your hearts content, I aint budging on this one. It has nothing to do with hating women, like many would want to believe, it is an aspect of human behaviour.