When Emma said what she said, I seriously doubt she thought about male issues. Not that I blame her completely, since society in general is so blind when it comes to issues that primarily or uniquely affect men. Sometimes they are even reframed to become ‘Benevolent Sexism’ against women.
But yes, I agree with the premise of this post.
This is it (all credit to Karen Straughan aka u/girlwriteswhat on reddit):
So what you’re saying is that you, a commenter using a username on an internet forum are the true feminist, and the feminists actually responsible for changing the laws, writing the academic theory, teaching the courses, influencing the public policies, and the massive, well-funded feminist organizations with thousands and thousands of members all of whom call themselves feminists… they are not “real feminists”.
That’s not just “no true Scotsman”. That’s delusional self deception.
Listen, if you want to call yourself a feminist, I don’t care. I’ve been investigating feminism for more than 9 years now, and people like you used to piss me off, because to my mind all you were doing was providing cover and ballast for the powerful political and academic feminists you claim are just jerks. And believe me, they ARE jerks. If you knew half of what I know about the things they’ve done under the banner of feminism, maybe you’d stop calling yourself one.
But I want you to know. You don’t matter. You’re not the director of the Feminist Majority Foundation and editor of Ms. Magazine, Katherine Spillar, who said of domestic violence: “Well, that’s just a clean-up word for wife-beating,” and went on to add that regarding male victims of dating violence, “we know it’s not girls beating up boys, it’s boys beating up girls.”
You’re not Jan Reimer, former mayor of Edmonton and long-time head of Alberta’s Network of Women’s Shelters, who just a few years ago refused to appear on a TV program discussing male victims of domestic violence, because for her to even show up and discuss it would lend legitimacy to the idea that they exist.
You’re not Mary P Koss, who describes male victims of female rapists in her academic papers as being not rape victims because they were “ambivalent about their sexual desires” (if you don’t know what that means, it’s that they actually wanted it), and then went on to define them out of the definition of rape in the CDC’s research because it’s inappropriate to consider what happened to them rape.
You’re not the National Organization for Women, and its associated legal foundations, who lobbied to replace the gender neutral federal Family Violence Prevention and Services Act of 1984 with the obscenely gendered Violence Against Women Act of 1994. The passing of that law cut male victims out of support services and legal assistance in more than 60 passages, just because they were male.
You’re not the Florida chapter of the NOW, who successfully lobbied to have Governor Rick Scott veto not one, but two alimony reform bills in the last ten years, bills that had passed both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support, and were supported by more than 70% of the electorate.
You’re not the feminist group in Maryland who convinced every female member of the House on both sides of the aisle to walk off the floor when a shared parenting bill came up for a vote, meaning the quorum could not be met and the bill died then and there.
You’re not the feminists in Canada agitating to remove sexual assault from the normal criminal courts, into quasi-criminal courts of equity where the burden of proof would be lowered, the defendant could be compelled to testify, discovery would go both ways, and defendants would not be entitled to a public defender.
You’re not Professor Elizabeth Sheehy, who wrote a book advocating that women not only have the right to murder their husbands without fear of prosecution if they make a claim of abuse, but that they have the moral responsibility to murder their husbands.
You’re not the feminist legal scholars and advocates who successfully changed rape laws such that a woman’s history of making multiple false allegations of rape can be excluded from evidence at trial because it’s “part of her sexual history.”
You’re not the feminists who splattered the media with the false claim that putting your penis in a passed-out woman’s mouth is “not a crime” in Oklahoma, because the prosecutor was incompetent and charged the defendant under an inappropriate statute (forcible sodomy) and the higher court refused to expand the definition of that statute beyond its intended scope when there was already a perfectly good one (sexual battery) already there. You’re not the idiot feminists lying to the public and potentially putting women in Oklahoma at risk by telling potential offenders there’s a “legal” way to rape them.
And you’re none of the hundreds or thousands of feminist scholars, writers, thinkers, researchers, teachers and philosophers who constructed and propagate the body of bunkum theories upon which all of these atrocities are based.
You’re the true feminist. Some random person on the internet.
The difference between feminism (or even feminists) and men is that the former is a movement or a chosen label, while the latter is not something one can choose to be. So when you generalize the latter (“men are pigs”, “men are responsible for the world’s problems”, or even “Kill All Men”), it really comes across as outright hateful. At least more so than criticizing a movement (feminism) or generalizing feminists (although I don’t believe in doing that too). Seriously, if you were to replace “men” with “blacks”, or even “women” in feminist drivel, you’d be (rightfully) called out for spreading hate. For how much feminism pushes inclusivity and careful, considerate use in language (think: using ‘police officer’ instead of ‘policeman’), when it comes to men, they just give fuck all.
And for the ‘wage gap’, it should really be renamed the ‘earnings gap’ as for the same amount and type of work, men and women are generally paid the same. The main reason there’s a gap is that men generally work more and in higher paying fields. Now why they choose to do so is certainly worth discussion, but to frame it as men being paid more with the insinuation that they both do the same amount of work, is disingenuous.
Men taking on less domestic responsibilities is part of gender roles, no? In exchange they are expected to earn more by working more. Not to mention when you say domestic responsibilities, I doubt you include male dominated tasks like mowing the lawn, or fixing the car. Again, framing it as one-sided privilege (‘men have the privilege of doing less house work”) is disingenuous. I don’t think housekeeping or child-rearing, which is female-dominated, is a walk in the park either, for reference.
If you believe the system allows specifically men to vote away women’s rights (abortions I believe?), and that men shouldn’t have a say in that. Do you also believe women shouldn’t have a say in voting on issues like Selective Service or even conscription, in some countries, that primarily or uniquely affect men? Furthermore, in many countries, women are outright born with the right to vote, whereas men have to sign up for Selective Service or Conscription (what happened to ‘My Body, My Choice’?)
E: grammar