I’ve been talking to Richie over MSN a bit lately (or, almost constantly for the last two nights to the point where neither of us get any university work done despite desperately needing to.) The chats have been pretty good. There’s been a lot of lulz regarding things MRA’s have to say. On his blog he posted a link an e-book you can download called “If men have all the power, how come women make the rules.”
Here’s the website so you can check it out for yourself: http://www.rulymob.com/
I’ma write my thoughts about this book staaaaaartiiiiiing…… NOW!
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It opens showing us “The Rules.” This is a fax, and apparently a lady in Washington had it up on her office wall. It’s also been an email since I’ve read it. I’m sure you all have. In case you’ve missed the memo, here are some of the rules:
“• The female always makes The Rules.
• The Rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification.
• No male can possibly know all The Rules.
• If the female suspects the male knows all The Rules, she must immediately change some or
all of The Rules.
• The female is NEVER wrong.”
Now this is funny, because I always took it to mean “women are irrational, change their minds at the drop of a hat, vindictive and deluded creatures.” In short I’ve always thought these “rules” promote sexist attitudes towards women. I’ve also had them thrown in my face. I was arguing with an old workmate once about how stalking is still just as bad if the guy “loves” the girl he’s stalking, and “love” does not validate or make the stalking in any way okay. I felt that this was a pretty rational stance, the feelings of a stalker don’t invalidate his actions, but he strongly disagreed. Halfway through the argument he shouts “Well you’re right, of course you’re right, you’re a woman and women are always right aren’t they?”
He used these fabricated rules to silence me in an argument implying that my stance must be irrational, and the only reason I thought I might be right was that I was a woman, and not my logic, or arguments.
These “rules” are a way of getting women to shut up, and to mock women but for some reason this e-book opens with them as if trying to show that a woman having them on their office wall makes them true.
(Hint: It doesn’t)
Then we get a little section talking about “The Rulers” (read: women) we get this quote:
“The Sisterhood… dictates that in the battle between the sexes, women friends stick by each
other. Men know that when the Sisterhood unites, there will be no peace until they’ve given up,
given in or apologized and promised never to do it again.”
Which I find all very interesting considering I’m sure that it isn’t “the sisterhood” which made up “bros before hoes” dictating that in a battle of the sexes men should stick together.
Also on the Mensactivism.org Wiki Site on their aims they say their goals are for men to support other men, and to use any rights to benefit other men as well as themselves.
Implying that groups who band together and support each other must be in the ruling class is just plain silly, but it’s even more silly in this case because men do it too.
Then we get told that women invent the rules an manipulate men to follow them. All I can say to that is “saying it don’t make it true, honey.”
Then in the foreword it says that this book will not discuss mens foibles, since popular media already does that, some of the foibles listed relate to an inability to commit, or an unwillingness to read maps. Given that books which talk about gender such as men are from mars and women are from venus and why men don’t listen and women can’t read maps seem to promote sexist attitudes that harm women. Colour me skeptical.
In the introduction we learn that women only call men misogynist and women hating because they like to pretend they have no power and need to silence men when they challenge that idea. As proof of this they ask why an equivalent word for misogynist to talk about women hating men doesn’t exist.
Let me attempt to answer that one: Languages evolve and new words are developed as they are needed. According to these guys to process of adding a word to the dictionary is based on need, as we can see from the following quote:
“In the world of today’s lexicography, usage is king. We are, in the language of the business, descriptive dictionary makers: we record, we collate, we analyse, and we describe what people actually say and write. If enough English speakers decide that some word or phrase has value, to the extent that those who encounter it are likely to need to consult the dictionary in search of its meaning, then it is put into new editions.”
To me it’s quite telling that there was no word for misandry before antifeminists decided to make it up to further their political agenda because it tells me that before they made up the word it was never needed. There was no counter to misogynist not because women secretly control the world and language use, but because no-one needed to express the information in that word.
There are some silly opening thoughts. I’m not going to list each one down and make an argument against them, because I have a whole book to go through here (but if people want to go through them and do so in the comments, that’d be cool!) The basic thing I note with these opening thoughts is this guy sure is showing that a key aspect of male privilege is not to be able to be able to see said privilege. The most blatant example of this is here: “How come men never say, “It’s a man’s world”?”
Because men don’t see their privilege. Duh.
Next we have a bunch of quotes used to debunk the idea that men control the world. I’m not going to tackle all of them, but here are some thoughts:
“If it’s wrong to say women are airheads because not all women are airheads,
and if it’s wrong to say Blacks are criminals because not all Blacks commit
crime, why is it correct to say men rule the world? Most men don’t.”
Well. The majority of people who rule the world are men. ‘ccording to this paper in 1998 the world average of women in parliaments (both houses combined) was only %12.7 which is interesting because those are the figures after the percentage of women MP’s increased four-fold from 1945 to 1995.
I don’t think that women make up %87.3 of the worlds airheads or that black people make up %87.3 of criminals. (I’d like to say a preemptive FUCK YOU to anyone who tries to prove that black people make up large percentages of criminals using racist statistics by the way.* To prove that, you’d need to make up for the fact that people of colour are a global majority, and if even then you came up with the “right” numbers, you’d need to take into account the overwhelming poverty people of colour have been systematically forced into by white supremacy. So. FUCK YOU.)
It’s time for cellycel to quote someone else! This time it’s these peeps!
"Although smaller and younger, the percentage of women-owned firms withemployees increased from 12 percent of all employer businesses establishedbefore 1980, to 18.5 percent of firms established between 1991 and 1994"
Whee~ seems the majority of Employer Businesses are owned by men too, but somehow apparently women make aaaaaaaaaall the rules.
And alright, I get it. Not every man is a business owner or a politician. Not even most men. Everyday ordinary men have power too though. Every man regardless of his job, his level of wealth or his standing in the community has the power to make women uncomfortable by staring that them in public. Every man has the power to intimidate and to harass women. If a man is the breadwinner while a woman gives up her career for family, that man often has the power over money and spending.
Everyday men, and ordinary men have power over women.
But, but, but. I want to play with the wording of that sentence a little.
“If it is wrong to say that men have power, because not all men have power, why is it correct to say that women make the rules when not all women make the rules?”
Oh? You accused women of doing something wrong, while doing it yourself? Why, that seems silly of you.
It may be true that powerful men take care of their buddies, but powerful
men are far more likely to devote their power to help and protect women
they don’t know than men they don’t know, and most men are complete
strangers to the men in power.
So it’s just powerful men that take care of their buddies is it? Somehow I don’t think that’s true. Also: I really wonder where he got the “fact” that men in power spend more time and energy helping women, then men. (Or people, since y’know… men are the default people…)
They go on to prove that men look out for women by showing some dude who wanted some lady pilot to get an honourable discharge, and then show that women only look out for women by quoting some lady who also wanted the pilot to get an honourable discharge.
Funny ’cause then it says:
“Flinn was allowed to resign from the Air Force with an uncharacterized discharge rather than face
court martial. An uncharacterized discharge is officially neither honorable nor dishonorable.”
So both the man and woman wanted this lady to have an honorable discharge. Somehow she got a discharge that was neither honorable, no dishonorable. Somehow, even though the matriarchal society holds GREAT POWER neither the chivalrous man who cares more about women then men, and the uppity woman supporting lady got what they wanted. OMGz.
“And of course the media are famous for insinuating that men are unworthy of concern”
I’m fairly sure I saw an advertisement on television recently talking about the high number of male suicides actually….
Alright: Now we have a section on female power and how the basis of this powere lies with females superiority complex! See, after successfully proving that men _don’t_ have power, they can now say that women do!
We know female power exists because women are not our slaves. They must
be using something quite potent to counteract all the terrible powers and
tendencies women themselves say we have.
Because women not having the place of slave = women having some large amount of societal power. Here’s a tip you guys: There are levels to things. You don’t need to become another persons physical property to have less power then them.
What is the power that gives a 115-pound woman the audacity to jump in the
face and give endless grief to a 220-pound man, when no 115-pound man
would dare to do the same?
I’ve seen small men give grief to large men…
The rest of the chapter seems to be filled with talk about women thinking that they’re superior to men, while quoting women who’ve said as much. Seems odd that so many women think they’re superior to men when successful women routinely internally deny their own successes abilities and achievements.
- For more information read some of these links about the impostor syndrome. Women experience the impostor syndrome more often then men, and are more likely to take it seriously:
http://www.counseling.caltech.edu/articles/The%20Imposter%20Syndrome.htm
http://talentdevelop.com/articles/Page1.html
http://www.impostersyndrome.com/
http://www.flashesofpanic.com/panic/001178.php
Women seem to be internalizing that they’re naturally bad at things, and that when they succeed they’re just lucky. They’re more likely to doubt their abilities and see themselves as “faking” at being clever.
But… women think they’re smarter then men?
Why… do I not believe it?
“American culture for thirty years has been one unrelenting pep rally for girls. Boys have
been told to sit quietly and stop causing trouble because we rooted for their team long enough.”
Now, I’m not American so maybe I’m wrong here, but when there was only one girl at a time in the tech group at school and she was nicknamed “the cheerleader” (whoever she was, once she was me for reference.) I did not feel like there was an unrelenting pep rally for girls. I quit the IT course in high school because I literally believed that as a girl I was naturally less logical then the boys. Sometimes I still feel that way actually, but I tell myself to stop it. When people make comments that women have worse spatial recognition and are naturally worse at driving I don’t feel like there’s a giant pep rally for my benefit.
I’m skipping to the next chapter: Adjusting our eyes to see female power.
This is funny, because I described my journey into feminism as my eyes being open to seeing male power. Before becoming a feminist, I didn’t think patriarchy existed.
“There are two possible reasons why we keep hearing that we live in a
patriarchy. The first is that we do indeed live in a society dominated by men.
The other possibility is that we live under a different kind of rule that is so
strong and so pervasive that it keeps us from seeing it for what it is.”
My boyfriend would answer this by calling out “occam’s razor!**” with no more explanation then that, but I was never sure if occam’s razor should be applied to conspiracy theories. At any rate, it does seem unlikely that we use the word patriarchy because the matriarchy is really, really good at pulling the wool over everybodies eyes…
“Women’s power is
the opposite of
monumental. It’s like
wall-to-wall
carpeting, or a
snowfall, everywhere
and unavoidable,
not concentrated
into a few narrow,
vertical monuments,
like men’s.”
They say this, but I’m not exactly sure that they prove it. He says that girl children and boy children are both equally disruptive in class, because while boy children might disrupt the class in a bigger way like throwing erasers, girl children disrupt the class in smaller ways like giggling, but it’s equal because girls take longer then boys when disrupting classes. He then has another quote saying that girls are just as aggressive as boys, but that female social aggression is covert and hard to detect. (Now, I sort of think that’s bullshit seeing as I’ve seen many an emotionally manipulative man.)
Wait… I’d read that to say men and women are equal but different, not that women have wall-to-wall, unavoidable hard to detect power.
Then he’s got a quote saying that women are better at being bullies then men. Well, maybe girls are better bullies then boys, though I don’t think I buy it. I’m pretty sure men don’t have much to complain about in regards to women bullies anyway. This report shows that in a school setting significantly more boys are involved in bullying then girls. There’s a conflicting report here saying that in the workplace there are more female bullies then male bullies BUT that woman-on-man bullying only constitutes %8 of workplace bullying, and that male victims of bullying make up only %20 of bullying victims in the workplace. So who are the other %80 of bullying victims? Women. Funnily enough.
N’yeah, women are doing most of that bullying. I’ve read that it’s because they feel that other women should have to work as hard as they did to get in top positions. What would have made those women have to work so hard? Patriarchy.
I define patriarchy as systems which benefit men at the expense of women, which means I think women can uphold patriarchy. I blame ‘em less for it since they’re also the main victims of patriarchy themselves.
We’ve got a quote saying that women should be biologically more competitive then men, which is the first time I’ve heard anti-feminists/MRAs say that. Haha. We also learn that when women do damage it’s indirect, like, if she bats an eyelid and gets a dude to beat up another dude she’s done damage. And these guys say WOMEN don’t take responsibility for their actions? Jesus Christ. A woman batting an eyelid cannot MAKE a man act out in a violent manner. Only a man can do that. That they would take away a mans personal responsibility for violent acts kinda scares me.
In fact, that’s what their next paragraph is about. They say that women pretend to be powerless, and act only in reaction to what men do. They say that men need to stop women from pretending to be powerless and insist women talk about effects as well as causes. “and about causes other than the ones they want us to accept.”
Considering in the previous quote the dude who wrote this implied that a man has no power not to hit some other dude if a woman bats her eyelids the right way I’m inclined to think that this man is pretending to be powerless, and only acting in reaction to what women do.
I’m inclined to say this man should stop, and look at the causes and and the effects of a man hitting another man. I’d urge him to look at causes other then the bullshit he expects me to swallow about women having invisible power to make men hit other men.
That’s all I have time for today. (I am _supposed_ to be writing an essay about learning theories…) but I might read more of this, and give you all more thoughts later.
*Well, I’d say fuck you to people trying to prove that women make that large an amount of airheads too, but far as I know it’s not possible to measure something like that….
**Occam’s Razor is a principle that states the explanation of any phenominon should make as few assumptions as possible, elimination those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the theory being explained.
It’s often simplified to “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one”
