Avicenna in a blogpost titled "Women aren’t Feminists? Really?" It's long, and gets into MRM (apparently equating AVfM with it, and any actual "men's rights" work with feminism). I did not read the AVfM open letter he seems to be referring to. I won't try to quote or address anywhere near the whole thing, but here are a few clips (all bolding added by me):
I imagine he thinks he's complimenting "[his] pretty lady", being sweet, or possibly it's an in joke? Otherwise, that looks like insight fail on the feminism thing to me. (Sort of like "Trophy Wife": possessed and for show.)Avicenna wrote:Some people have a bizarre idea about what “Feminism†is.
From the people who routinely think Feminism is about ruling all the men to those who claim “I am a no feminist but I support women’s equalityâ€.
I missed out on a lot of stuff over the 3 weeks I was off swanning around with my pretty lady.
After the insult to those knuckle-dragging cave-MRAs, he moves on to an argument based on not necessarily even anecdotal evidence but possibly just his impressions. How does he really know male nurses are "better"? That seems like a difficult determination to make. (I'll add, I work with nurses of both genders too.) What's he basing that on, his interactions with them? Is it possible that he might have a more positive impression of just about any man in a job than a woman in the same job? (I'm not saying he does, but that it wouldn't be inconsistent with the claims of pervasive devaluation of women's input and work.)Avicenna wrote:In the same way that the majority of my readers need not fear the lash of malaria, the women of WAM [Women Action Media] need not fear these things as much. What they do “fear†is the culture of misogyny which makes it harder for women to do the same things as men do.
I know I get readers from MRA movements here. So I will explain this as simple as possible. While women have it easy in some ways compared to men, men have it easier in more ways and in more important ways.
Let’s take a reverse sexism example. Nursing. People say that Male Nurses tend to be excellent. It’s my experience that male nurses tend to be “better†than female ones on average.
Why?
For the same reason that women in medicine in my mother’s generation were excellent. In order to stay in the club you had to be so good that no one could fault you. Men in nursing are playing in hard mode and so have to be good enough. The average and the sub par do not make it.
Wait, I missed the memo, are they deciding what's "acceptable comedy" now? And deciding when other people shouldn't feel differently, and in fact somehow objectively have "Fucking Awesome" lives because the sexism they see/face goes the "right" way?Avicenna wrote:Yes ["Kicking a man in the groin or outright threatening to castrate him" is] acceptable comedy in the same way that laughing at stuff that white people do is acceptable comedy.
Do you know “why�
Because if the most misandric thing about society is laughing at simulated violence against men then your life is “Fucking Awesomeâ€.
Because the majority of violence is perpetrated by men. The biggest kickers of testicles are possessors of testicles.
I have to wonder, might a physician with this attitude think it's okay to treat white male patients differently (less well) than women patients and non-white patients????? (I'm not saying he does. I'm saying I wonder. I imagine that would be widely considered unprofessional.)
Uh, I missed something in the transition to that last sentence. He goes on:Avicenna wrote:Here’s the thing. Rape can be funny, it can be the punchline to a joke. Just like Boris the Soviet Love Hammer can be one too.
Unless you have been raped. Then it’s not funny any more. Your actual complain is “Why Can’t We Laugh About Rape, Why Should We Care What Rape Victims Think or Feel or Sayâ€. Which is how they became rape victims in the first place.
Okay, so maybe there's some group that's defending the posting of rape jokes "solely to spite feminists". I didn't go searching for support for his claims. But his insistence that feminists "believe that men and women are equal" seems to me to have been quite undercut by some of his other comments above, including how jokes about harm to men are fine and if that's all one has to face one's life is Fucking Awesome.Avicenna wrote:It’s not social justice, it’s about taste and image. ...
So you want Facebook to allow rape jokes and mistreatment of rape victims solely to spite feminists?
You are right. “Feminists†are not the only women watching how Facebook runs. There are also women who believe that men and women are equal. There are women who were raped also watching.
Just because you don’t call yourself a feminist doesn’t mean you aren’t one.
Also his insistence that people who don't care to call themselves feminists are indeed feminists. Back off, sir; keep your labels to yourself.
Also his limitation, apparently, of "feminist" to apply only to women; at the end, apparently, a "feminist" is a woman who "believes that men and women are equal" even if she can accept them being treated unequally because women get treated worse than men and men dish it out anyway, and even if she doesn't want to be called a feminist. Got it (I think).
There are currently 3 comments, including this one (bolding added):
Fabulous; a man - and one who has come across as threatening in some of his prior posts at FtB - being proud, it seems, of trying to bully a woman into saying she's a feminist. Again - insight fail on the feminism thing.Francisco Bacopa wrote:June 9, 2013 at 9:49 AM (UTC 5.5)
I had a friend who said she wasn’t a feminist. I totally flipped out on her. “Really? Your entire life was given to you by feminism. You went to graduate school? Feminism! You vote, feminism. You went to graduate school in an MSW program that was set up as an alternative to male-dominated psychology programs to train therapists? Feminism! And weren’t almost all of your professors in your MSW program women? Feminists set that shit up for you in the 60′s and 70′s. I happen to know that the building you worked in at UH wasn’t built until the late 70′s. And you’re pregnant, and you expect to be able to cut back to core clients after you have your baby while not being kicked out of your partnership in your office. You’d pretty damn well be a feminist.â€