Sorry Anti-Male Bigots, Misandry Exists and You're Proof of It

Via Danny, I was introduced to "factcheckme", a man-hating feminist who ridicules the term used for hatred of men for no other reason than being men. Well not just the term but the concept itself. Her argument seems to be since the word "misandry" was coined without enough intellectual rigor to satisfy her standards, then the concept it represents must not exist. Or if it does exist who cares: "and whether misandry even exists is entirely beside the point, isnt it?" Of course, she never explains why it "is entirely beside the point", we just have to trust the fact that what she, in her superior wisdom, says must be true.

Well, whether or not the term "misandry" can pass the legitimacy test of high brow intellectuals, it is clear that anti-male bigotry is a widespread and dangerous virulent phenomenon. If Andrea Dworkin, Catherine Mackinnon, Mary Daly and their online groupies (including factcheckme) are not enough to convince you consider Valerie Solanas. Naturally, though, we can't expect most of them to act violently themselves since that might alienate the politicians, police, and bureaucrats who currently support them (through laws such as VAWA, under which domestically abused men are arrested for defending themselves, and proposed laws making rape suspects presumed guilty until proven innocent). If the men in government were to see these women as the real threat they are, the alliance that they have with them to subjugate their fellow men would be in jeopardy. So the smart ones will hold off on their wanton random acts of violence toward men until and unless they have consolidated power to the point where their male stooges are disposable.

Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe these are just a bunch of ugly hags who, despite the real or pretend lesbianism that some of them proclaim, are just bitter that they can't use their feminine wiles to seduce men and wrap them around their little fingers the way most women do, and are simply using hyperbole to vent their frustration (of course this does not include Solanas who was a violent criminal and a terrorist by any definition). Be that as it may, I would like to offer this analysis of the garbage from factcheckme's blog both before and after Danny called her on it:

In one comment factcheckme states that she doesn't hate men. However, just a few comments down she agrees with Undercover Punk that "even if Real, [misandry is] an ENTIRELY RATIONAL RESPONSE to the tragic statistics on sexual assault, generalized violence, emotional abuse, abandonment (see single motherhood), and social domination perpetrated BY men AGAINST women?" So bigotry against men doesn't exist, but if it did it would be justified to hate all men based on what a small percentage of men do. Never mind the fact that none of these things are exclusively done by men. Never mind the very likely possibility that she believes in bogus statistics like the lie that "1 in 4 women are raped", or that she ignores the statistics showing domestic abuse to be roughly equal between the sexes, or that women (including those with children) initiate most divorces. Forget all of that and just consider this what would the reaction be to someone who said, "even if real, anti-black racism is an ENTIRELY RATIONAL RESPONSE to the tragic statistics on armed robbery, murder, rioting, arson, and looting"? Or how about "even if real, anti-Semitism is an ENTIRELY RATIONAL RESPONSE to frivolous lawsuits brought by Jewish lawyers, fraudulent financial dealings by Jewish bankers and investment advisers, and Israeli oppression of Palestinians (which, of course, is totally unprovoked and unconditionally supported by Jews worldwide)"? Or try this "even if real, misogyny is an ENTIRELY RATIONAL RESPONSE to false rape claims, divorce settlements where the man loses everything he has despite the woman being at fault, women demanding child support from men whom they know are not the fathers, women demanding child support for children that they don't allow fathers to see, gold digging in general, and abusing men then calling the police when they defend themselves." Draw what conclusions you will. Anyone without ideological blinders can see that these statements are equivalent to the one made by Undercover Punk.

Finally, after discovering Danny's blog, factcheckme and Undercover Punk rate it an "Epic Fail." No surprise there, but I am amused by the fact that factcheckme says "thats after correcting for my obvious bias." I am certain that she's as capable of correcting for her bias as a newspaper editor in North Korea. Undercover Punk also informs us that she is a "lesbian separatist with no interest whatsoever in playing nice with men," and that she "gave up on caring about men after approximately 20 years of being consistently treated as less-than by them." Less-than what? Most likely less than the entitled princess that she thinks she is, though I'm sure some men did try to cater to her but it was never good enough.

There's much more crap spewed by factcheckme, Undercover Punk and other members of factcheckme's echo chamber, though it mostly speaks for itself. The only things of note are Undercover Punk's reaction to the fact that -despite her overblown fear of sexual assault, which is somewhat more likely to happen to women than men- men are much more likely to be murdered and her conclusion that "this is not a joke." In the first case she says, in response to a point on Danny's post "I assume what he means here is that men prefer to murder their equals rather than to sexually assault them..." Yes because sexual assault is so much worse than murder, and men who are murdered, by other men or by women, feel better about it knowing that their murderers consider them equals. I wonder if the family members and close friends left behind by murdered men are also reassured by this respectful attitude the killers have. Finally, there is the one thing UP said that I can at least partially agree with: "If misogyny ain’t a joke, and it’s not–it’s a fucking EPEDEMIC–then this analysis of misandry ain’t a joke neither!" While I disagree that misogyny is an epidemic, it is true, this analysis of misandry is not a joke. And neither is misandry itself.

Debate on Culture continued from Ren's Place

This is the continuation from an ongoing debate at Renegade Evolution's blog.

Anthony Kennerson: Still having that racist moment, are you??

"Racist moment"? This baseless ad hom is no different than the accusations of being sexist radfems hurl at you for your defense of sex work. You can do better than that.

AK: And you didn't even bother to answer my question: how is our "Western culture" -- you know, the one who slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved Black Africans, stole Hispanic and Native American land, and dropped nuclear weapons on Asians -- any more qualified to judge anyone else on who's "superior"??

As VirtueAndVice admitted Anglo-American culture has "its faults" just as every culture throughout history has had. But if no cultures were superior to one another there would be no asylum seekers or refugees. Immigrants, yes, but not people looking to escape from the places where they were born. The greatest tragedy of at least the more extreme forms of multiculturalism is that it encourages people coming from dangerous, oppressive places to re-create the dysfunctional situations from which they came. When my ancestors came from Ireland and Italy, they brought some of their traditions with them but they did not pretend for a minute that things were better back home, or demand the right to continue traditions that would undermine the foundations of American liberty.

AK: First off, like most conservative critics of "multiculturalism', they are so desperate to take an isolated act of cruelty and make it representative of a whole culture or race or "civilization", and therefore declare their favored "Anglo-American" (read that to mean "White Western Christian civilization") to be not only superior to all but to be imposed on all others

These would be isolated acts of cruelty, except that the people engaging in them are using "culture" as an excuse. And some (not all but too many) western leftists are backing up these excuses. As for "be[ing] imposed on all others" V&V said (and I agree), "That's not to say that we should go out and bomb other countries when they don't see things our way."

AK: But I wonder, VaV...would you have gone into such histronics if the perpetrators had been fundamentalist White American Christians?? After all, it's not as if they haven't done such things themselves. Oh, wait...

Who is defending the preacher in that article? Probably not even most of his fellow Evangelicals. Certainly not any groups that have the numbers of the multi-culti defenders of similar behavior by so called victim groups.

AK: Secondly...I'm not much of a fan of the Nation of Islam for many reasons...but to compare them to the KKK is sheer madness. Not even Louis Farrakhan, for all his alleged anti-Semitic smack and belief in numerology, has ever burned a cross in a White neighborhood, or lynched a White man, or intimidated a single White person out of voting.

Farrakhan is too smart to get his own hands dirty by personally participating in acts of violence. Same with most Klan wizards (when was the last time David Duke was arrested). It doesn't mean that Farrakhan's rhetoric is any less responsible for black-on-white violence than the identical rhetoric in reverse by Klan leaders is for white-on-black violence. Similarly, as far as we know, Mary Daly has never directly committed an act of violence against a man (or a boy). It does not mean that her anti-male views are any less hateful than the Nazi's anti-Semitic views, just that she apparently has not yet had a chance to act on them.

SnowdropExplodes: The term "rape culture" has a real meaning in describing Western European cultures - so the culture isn't all that great towards women (whatever the law tries to do about it).

Rape culture is mostly a feminist invention. To the extent that it exists, it refers to a very small subset of western men. Like V&V, "I was 17 once, and 0% of the guys I knew were talking about planning violent sexual assaults."

Cassandra: VirtueandVice - I don't think you understand what multiculturalism is. It can be what you're describing in the hands of a few fools, but that is not in principle what the idea is all about, nor how it's commonly expressed.

Multiculturalism may be all sweetness and light in principle, but not in practice. All to often it is exactly as V&V described. Those fools aren't so few.

Cassandra: OK, reading VirtueandVice again further down...you're not even making a real argument, you're just a zenophobic racist. Never mind, not worth the time.

I see no evidence of racism or xenophobia on the part of V&V. If anyone is acting like a closed-minded bigot it is you. So maybe V&V's opinions (and mine) are not worth your time. Fine if you want to only associate with people who already agree with you 95% of the time. But these opinions are held by a large number of people throughout the western world - close to a majority, if not an outright majority. Furthermore, they are gaining wider acceptance in some places, particularly those - such as The Netherlands - where the damage from extreme multiculturalism has been most obvious. Given that, if you really believe we are wrong you should at least try to make a convincing argument why.

Sign me up for DAMM!

The story of the college presidents supporting lowering the drinking age is old news by now, but when the news first came out I was too angry at some of the arguments around it to write about it calmly and rationally. Anyway, the news has been dominated by the snoozer Democrat convention. Yes, there's the war between Russia and Georgia but I haven't read or heard anything that makes a compelling case for me taking either side. And there's Hurricane Gustav, but there's not much I can write about that, except to say that I hope this time people have learned to take action on their own rather than wait for the government to come to the rescue. Of course. there's John McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin, who I hear is somewhat libertarian leaning. So now instead of being 100% convinced to write in Ron Paul, I'm only 95% convinced with a 5% possibility that I might vote for McCain. Interesting but not significant.

So, back to the topic at hand. We all know that prohibition doesn't stop the activity it's meant to stop, whether it's substance use, a particular sexual practice, or another form of recreation, such as gambling. In the case of alcohol we acknowledged this as a society 76 years ago. So it would seem that the college presidents were just accepting reality by suggesting that a policy that is a proven failure with population at large could ever succeed when it was aimed at a group of people who are legally treated as adults in every other way.

Of course, prohibition has only been a failure in the sense that it fails to eliminate the targeted activity, causes needless suffering, increases crime, and generally costs more lives than it saves. Prohibitions of all kinds have been successful in increasing the power of the state and turning more people into second-class citizens for the self-righteous to scapegoat and look down upon. That is what MADD and similar organizations (such as the Partnership for a Drug Free America) are really all about. At the grassroots level there may be some dupes, with critical thinking deficiencies, who believe that they are really helping "THE CHILDREN™," but the leaders of these organizations know that their real mission is to get on the Big Government gravy train while patting themselves on the back about how superior they are to all of those dirty drunks and druggies.

After all, why would the prohibitionists ignore the fact that most of the rest of the world has drinking ages of 18 or lower (the major exceptions being the barbaric Islamofascist countries that ban alcohol altogether). While drunk driving fatality rates compared to the U.S. are higher in some of the countries with lower drinking ages, they are lower in many of the others. (Note also that South Korea with the highest level of drunk driving fatality rates has a drinking age of 19, lower than in the U.S. but higher than average). Obviously, being allowed to drink before age 21 does not automatically turn every young adult into a booze guzzling motorized murderer. But what about the studies that show drunk driving deaths are down among 18-20 year-olds since the federal government used the federal highway funds to blackmail the states that did not already have a 21 drinking age to enact one? (And by the way shame on the states for being so dependent on federal funding that they could allow themselves to be bullied this way). Well, I don't know the exact year that the last of the states (or the District of Columbia) knuckled under to the federal browbeaters but I know it was sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. Drunk driving among 18-20 year-olds probably came down since then AS IT DID FOR THE POPULATION IN GENERAL! It could be harsher penalties and better enforcement of drunk driving laws (Generally I support these, though random checkpoints are harassment and should be replaced by monitoring drivers showing signs of recklessness; also 0.08 is unnecessarily low as a BAC level cutoff, significant impairment does not result until BAC reaches 0.15. Still, it is true that before the 1980s police, prosecutors, and judges were often too lenient with drunk drivers). Besides the laws there is a much greater awareness of the dangers of drunk driving and much more social disapproval of DUI than there used to be.

Not that all young people will act responsibly, even if they do know the dangers. One of the points the college administrators brought up is the issue of binge drinking; binge drinkers don't show a lot of concern for their own health and safety, nevermind that of others. But as the school officials point out, binge drinking largely takes place in a prohibitionist atmosphere, where alcohol is a forbidden fruit and contempt for rules that deserve contempt often leads to contempt for societal norms and standards that should be respected. There is no doubt that binge drinking and other unsafe drinking practices could be reduced if 18-20 year-old drinking was allowed to come out of the underground and into the light of day. For those still worried about DUI, how about requiring breathalyzer devices that prevent a drunk driver from starting the car on all vehicles driven by an under 21 driver (it goes against my grain to suggest a new law, but I can accept one if it means the repeal of a much worse existing law).

But even if lowering the drinking age (possibly combined with other policies) lowered the total number of alcohol-related deaths (including the drunk driving deaths) to zero I doubt that that would matter to MADD and its allies. As I have said elsewhere, like the debates about medical marijuana, or opiates to relieve the terminally ill and chronic pain sufferers, any amount of horrible suffering is worthwhile if it prevents just one person from experiencing government disapproved pleasure. The anti-pleasure lobbyists will always have an excuse to continue their holier-than-thou quest for constant nanny state expansion. Which is why, though they are a fictional group, and I would never seriously encourage drunk driving, I am tempted to say "Sign me up for Drunks Against Mad Mothers!"

More about "Hate Crimes" and the Hate Crime Industry

In response to my post about the Snickers ad a friend of mine sent me the following link:
http://home.att.net/~r.s.mccain/wilcox.html (McCain here refers to Robert McCain the author's article not John McCain, so please don't prejudge this based on your opinion of John McCain and his candidacy). This article explains how groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti- Defamation League exaggerate threats from groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis to scare their supporters into sending them more money. No surprise there.

However, much worse than parting fools with their money is the way these groups spy on others and use guilt-by (often specious) association. For example according to the article "ADL espionage targets included such liberal groups as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as labor unions and environmental groups." And the rumors and lies they spread about militias are beyond the pale. Do militias have racist and anti-Semitic members? I'm sure they have some but that is no reason to tar the militia movement with those labels. Opposing aid to Israel or criticizing "the banking elite" and the mainstream media are not anti-Semitic positions. They can be legitimately opposed(For my part, I do admire the nation of Israel, and while I would like to see no country be dependent on handouts - aka "Foreign Aid" - I believe we should find a way to form a mutually beneficial with it. I do believe in the gold standard, and would like to abolish the Federal Reserve, letting the market determine interest rates, but I see current banking practices as bad policy not a conspiracy). But, whatever one's position on these issues, it should not be too hard to understand holding the positions the militias do without being anti-Semitic. Israel, after all is not entitled to foreign aid, no country is, and militias are consistent in opposing foreign aid for all nations. Associating banks and the media with Jews may have originated with anti-Semites but now is used far more often by apologists for banks and the media trying to shield them from legitimate criticism. I'm sure militia members would acknowledge that even if Jews are disproportionately represented in banking, journalism, and entertainment, there are plenty of other religious and ethnic groups in these industries, and they are not immune from criticism. As for racism or bigotry against any group besides Jews, I know of nothing in the positions taken by militias that shows any evidence of this, whatsoever.

Last, but far from least, these groups continue to spread the lies about militias being involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI investigation of that affair showed no links between militias and the men convicted of the bombing. But I guess when you're objective is a more powerful authoritarian (or maybe even totalitarian) government, all anti-government groups seem the same.