can a girl who lives in america tell me how much the contraceptive pill is????
is it actually super expensive because i see no reason for it to be like $100 for one month when its only like $5 for 4 months in australia (with medicare, but at most it’s like $20 for 4 months)
i don’t know if i can believe people when they say that it’s like over $100 because it makes no sense, and if that is actually the price then i think it would be really really unfair to make that come out of insurance or whatever and make taxpayers pay for it.
if the contraceptive pill is THAT expensive then i think the issue isn’t about “insurance companies need to cover this!!!” i think it should be about finding a better and cheaper way of producing the pill???
People are upset with Rush Limbaugh because he was rude to that woman, but ultimately he was right. Why should the taxpayer (or insurance companies) be levied with women’s birth control.
Insurance is a way to hedge against uncertain cost. Once it starts being used for routine expenses, like birth control, it entirely loses its purpose. I question whether most people fundamentally misunderstand the existence of insurance.
If birth control pills are under the PBS in Australia, the cost to the state is much higher than what you’re paying for them.
Producing medicine is usually not very expensive, the reason why they charge so much is because capitalism means that the cost of goods to the consumer isn’t necessarily at all related to the cost of manufacture. Pharmaceutical companies have a notorious amount of power in the USA over drug costs leading to high prices. They also have to make money back for the very expensive R&D process before their patent on the drug expires (at which point generics can be produced, introducing competition).
People should stop bitching about the ‘war on women’. If you want to have sex, pay for your own goddamn contraception.
HMM okay, i’ll be honest i don’t really understand how insurance works. but i CAN understand that covering the contraceptive pill would be a really bad idea. and i agree that if you want to have sex you should pay for your own contraception
but people always argue that “the contraceptive pill helps fight against other things as well”. but those are just weak excuses that women are trying to hide behind in order to have it covered so they can have sex with less consequences.
if you changed your diet and exercised more and took vitamins you wouldn’t pms so badly, it doesn’t really help prevent anything other than pregnancy that wouldn’t also be less of a risk with a better diet and regular exercise! i think women are just too lazy to change their lives for the better.
Whoa whoa whoa now. The “contraception helps with other things as well” isn’t some ‘weak excuse’ for women. Contraception really does have quite a few positive medical benefits for women other than pregnancy control.
Not only that, but if a medical professional is prescribing medication to help improve with someone’s life, why shouldn’t their insurance cover it? We’re not talking about things like condoms or objects just primarily for sex: we’re talking about legitimate medication to help women.
And I mean, fuck. If insurance covers Viagra, why not contraception?
The problem with this is that they aren’t arguing that insurance providers should cover contraception for people who need it for other medical reasons (which to my knowledge most do, and if they don’t it’s likely because of widespread abuse of the system), they’re arguing that birth control should be free for any woman who wants it. Arguments about “consequences of sex” aside, it simply doesn’t fit into the business model of insurance as I explain here. At best nobody wins, and at worst everybody loses.
If these people were arguing that women who needed it for medical issues should be able to get it paid for by insurance with a prescription and note from their doctor, this whole thing simply wouldn’t be happening. One of the most problematic and annoying aspects of the situation is that they’re using one situation which should be covered to justify something entirely different.
Indeed, we do cover Viagra for men with ED. Does that mean we have to cover it for men who just want it so they can get piss drunk, snort some cocaine and then get an erection anyways? Of course not. We cover it as it relates to a medical condition, but if you want it for recreational purposes (and while sex may be in many ways a basic human need we do still need to qualify it as that) you have to pay your own way. Similarly, medical marijuana is covered for people whose doctors feel they need it for glaucoma or certain types of pain control, but does that mean it should be covered for anyone who just wants to get high? I mean, hell, to my knowledge some doctors recommend moderate alcohol consumption to mitigate the effects of hypertension, does that mean I should be getting my Riesling for free? I could go on a long list of every drug with both medical and recreational uses, but I’d start boring you.
In a way bloodharp is right: many of the women who want the pill for free just so they can have sex without having to worry about adult responsibilities like how to pay for contraception are hiding behind the women who really do need it for medical reasons. That said, the current system is indeed broken, and Obamacare is far from a solution. (See here.) Obamacare is just generally fucked because it attempts to provide socialized health care through capitalist industry and will inevitably end up giving the worst of both and the best of neither….I’ll avoid digressing.
(Source: telae)
To deny male dominance in cultures all over the world is insanity. Surely from the beginning of civilization, males have played a dominant role in society in nearly all aspects. Men were held in high regard and considered more valuable in society, while women were second class citizens and property, and were looked at as those to birth children and tend to those children. Luckily, in the 19th century, women began to rise up and call for equality. To create the idea that women are not subordinate to men and to create a cultural change for the betterment of women.
And yet for the entirety of this time men have, as a rule been obligated to protect and even die for women. In fact, a simple look at history will very rapidly tell us that those “more valuable” men have been considered expendable in virtually every historical society, while women have been entitled to protection regardless of merit. That “high regard” was why men played along: a man only got that high regard if he conformed to the rigid and dangerous protector/provider archetype. It was the cookie, not the cause.
Girlwriteswhat discusses the idea of women as subordinate to men here.
The modern feminist movement continues to strive to achieve this equality where it is absent, such as in unequal payment in job positions, discrimination of sorts, and even misogyny. A worthy cause indeed, much like the NAACP. Now, I may not agree with everything the movement strives for, but the idea as a whole I can get behind. Of course, as this movement continues, there are always “side effects,” and in this case, quite harmful.
The problem is that the leader there, “unequal pay,” is something that isn’t actually true and hasn’t been for a very long time. While women as a group within employees do indeed earn less money, when we control for factors such as age, years employed, years with the specific employer, job description, education, overtime, stated hours per week, industry, etc….the gap suddenly narrows drastically or disappears entirely.
Sure, we can get behind the idea of “equality for all,” but I can also get behind the idea of peace. Just because I like peace, doesn’t mean I support blowing up mostly innocent Iraqis to get there. The theoretical premise of feminism is fine but the execution is not just lacking, it’s actively counterproductive to the goal of equality.
The problem is that feminism believes it’s striving for equality in areas where it is absent, but it forgets to bother with little details like, you know, figuring out where exactly it is or isn’t absent.
In some cases, the feminist movement has bread this hatred of men (no, I don’t think all feminists hate men, just it has been a side effect of the movement for some women). Some feminists call for the complete swap of gender roles and for women to be the superior sex, rather than equality. This hasn’t been the only harmful side effect of the movement, but the loss of rights for men in the realm of law.
In some stances, the courts heavily favors women (undeniably, the courts can also heavily favor men sometimes). This is evident in divorce courts, trials for child custody, and even the laws pertaining to men and children. Divorce settlements typically favor the woman so much that there are no ads for divorce attorneys appealing to women, only men. For child custody, though a branch of the divorce, nearly 83% of all custody cases go to the mother. For those men that are “lucky” enough to receive custody in the clearly biased system, only 40% receive alimony for the child. Of course on top of that, men typically receive less than woman for alimony, on average of course. The gap of amount of money due to either sex has been closing since 2001 to 2007, but the gap still remains. Unfortunately, the only subject that isn’t biased is the amount of alimony received (source). The abortion laws are also extremely biased towards women. Though the child grows and develops inside the woman, without the man there would be no child. 50% of the child is the father’s child. He should have a say as to whether the child lives or dies rather than the woman being the only voice ( do not be mistaken, I am vehemently against abortion, however, I’m using the current laws of the legality of abortion to illustrate a point). This biased system does not stop at our laws, but is apparent in our culture too of the “strong, independent woman.” Domestic abuse ideology is strongly in favor of women.
This actually misses the biggest issues, as we should be starting off with outright and clear disparities in conviction rates and the length of sentences. The abortion issues fall under the blanket label of “reproductive rights,” which are indeed something women have and men don’t.
When one thinks of domestic abuse, one generally thinks of a man beating his girlfriend, wife, etc. But what about the other way around? When people see a man physically or verbally abusing a woman in public, people tend to step into action, call the police, etc. However, when a woman is physically or verbally abusing a man in public, the mentality is quite different. People tend to think, “you go girl” or some variation. It looks like the woman is “rising up against the oppression of men.” That’s not at all what it is. The reality is a woman is physically/verbally abusing a man. This is a very unfortunate side effect of the feminist movement. The focus has been to much on “girl power.” As much as people don’t want to recognize, abuse against men and rape against men is a real problem (yes, men can get raped.) There has been so much advocacy and push for women to rise up and report domestic violence and rape cases. This is a wonderful thing, don’t get me wrong, but the problem is, there has been absolutely nothing for the men that have been raped or abused.
The bigger issue, though, is the active concealment of a massive body of evidence showing that in fact, domestic violence is roughly 50/50. (Women are actually slightly more likely to abuse.) Despite this, of course, there is virtually no support for male victims, and as you mentioned no push for reporting.
My message is not that Feminism or feminists are evil, or we should take our focus off of women, but that we need to include men in this scope of equality, even if it seems men have the advantage. Men, in certain issues, are actually at a disadvantage to women and culture and the law are biased against men. This is not to advocate more laws biased toward men, but take our laws and our culture and take away the biased aspect of them. Men should have an equal chance at child custody as women. Men should have an equal chance during a divorce settlement. There should be ads and advocacy of men coming out and reporting abuse and rape against them. Along with tearing down misogyny, we should be tearing down misandry.
Good point, but this misses the elephant in the room: what biased laws is feminism fighting against? The closest we’ll get to an answer is various comments about abortion and reproductive rights, and it’s hard to justify complaint about laws restricting for women rights men simply don’t have at all. Most feminists can’t come up with a single example of legal discrimination against women in the U.S. today, and we have a laundry list of legal discrimination against men, yet people still persist in pushing the notion that women are the ones “really” being discriminated against, and we need to help men too, on certain issues, because sometimes it’s men being discriminated against.
The problem with modern feminism is its simultaneously exaggerating (and sometimes outright fabricating) issues faced by women, while dismissing and outright ignoring the issues faced by men. An honest assessment of the legal discrimination faced by the genders doesn’t lie. Feminism can, will and has done anything to avoid that.
I get where you’re coming from, I really do….but most of what you’re saying hinges on a couple things that simply aren’t true.
Rants, quotes and truth.: I never said misandry wasn’t a thing.
I said that it exists as a concept, primarily.
Misandry is a word, with a meaning. Misogyny is a word with a meaning, a reality, and major consequences.
Misandry is a word with a reality too. Denying misandry is what i believe various Tumblr douches would call…
No, actually. There’s not much privilege to deny over here.
‘Privilege’ as Tumblr uses say it is bollocks anyway. I barely know what people mean by it.
By Tumblr logic, a white man who lives on the streets of some war-torn country with nothing to his name and not long to live is more privileged than say, Oprah, simply based on his race and gender.
He’s got classism working against him. If he had the money, he would get by reasonably well in most of the world.
Remember: examples have to be concrete in order to get the point across. I like to think of it as a kind of physics. Most physics examples take place in a vacuum, because they are displayed most purely there. And yet, space is the only vacuum-like system, and the laws of physics are totally different there. Same thing with privilege examples. You aren’t meant to analyze them, because there is no such thing as a universal situation.
Exactly!
It’s futile to argue about who’s ‘privileged’ and who’s ‘oppressed’ because everyone’s both!
YES!
But sexism is not classism is not racism is not homophobia. Each form of privilege has its own advantages; it’s important to distinguish between them. Same with forms of discrimination.
I think it’s best to address all of them in equal measures, sidelining one form of discrimination only adds to it.
The problem with all of this is that it makes an original presumption that there isn’t institutional discrimination within law and culture that backs up a wide variety of misandry (and thus does indeed have a reality and major consequences). In fact, we have plenty of evidence to support the conclusion of relatively widespread misandry along with the misogyny in our culture, and one of the key aspects of it is that we’re so very unaware of it and unwilling to acknowledge its existence.
We are right now with misandry where we were fifty, sixty, seventy years ago with misogyny: at best, we just accept misandric assumptions, behaviors and institutions as “just the way things are,” and worse, we’ll explain them away, rationalize them, or outright ignore them. At the very worst we’ll “reframe the issue” by claiming that they’re “really just misogyny, so we should get back to the ‘real’ victims” even when men are clearly the ones suffering the brunt of the problem.
(Source: laughingintothefire)
Sorry, gotta go. I’m not ignoring any of you, I’ll try to be back tomorrow.
Reblogging this ‘cause I can’t reblog asks right now. Blah.
I am talking about that, yes. I kind of counted on you knowing what I was talking about haha. Sorry, it’s not something I argue as much as I do about gender issues. I’m not suggesting they caused WWII, but non-interventionism would have prevented that from happening at all and would have more than likely kept the U.S. out of the whole thing. Countries don’t just attack countries for no reason for the most part, especially not the U.S. when you’re already on the brink of/in the middle of war with other countries. It just isn’t smart. Not that the U.S. shouldn’t have defended itself afterwards, but it could have been prevented. I’m also not a huge fan of “you killed our people, now we’ll nuke yours while all the scumbags that started it have no real consequence.”
The problem is that none of these really work with that. The U.S. stepping out of Wilson’s 14 and the Treaty of Versailles was non-interventionist: they stepped out and said “you guys all deal with it yourselves, we’re on another continent.” The mess France proceeded to make of it after that is pretty much the biggest factor that lead to WWII, as the harsh penalties pushed by France did a lot of nasty things politically in Germany which set up the grudge which eventually helped bring the Nazis into power.
The latter two (supplying arms and embargo threats to Japan)….well, it’s hard to really back those two either. Supplying arms might be valid, but even then a substantial portion was just standard-issue arms sale. The embargo threats, though….well, for starters, those didn’t start until Japan was actively invading China. The U.S. didn’t sent troops, they didn’t to my knowledge supply China, all they basically did was say “look, we’re not okay with you running around trying to conquer other countries, and if that’s what you’re going to do we’re not going to help you do it.” This wasn’t a case of the U.S. dropping troops into an internal issue (terrorists/freedom fighters/what have you) or even throwing guns at a minor border skirmish, it was them making a formal statement that “hey, dudes, invading countries is not okay.”
It could actually be argued that the U.S. doing so was a non-interventionist policy: their message was, to wit, “if you’re going to go off conquering people we’re going to walk away, it’s not our fight and not our problem.” They refused to continue supplying Japan with resources they’d proceed to use to attack others, and I don’t think you’d support them continuing to provide Japan with those resources given Japan’s actions. More importantly, if they hadn’t done that the only difference would have been that Japan would have conquered China sooner and then moved outwards. One way or another Japan wasn’t going to stop, and nor was Germany by that point. In fact, it probably would have made things bloodier than they were because it would have allowed Japan much greater resources and the U.S. would have stepped into the war even later than they did. Finally, we have to remember that this didn’t happen until war was under way in both Europe and Asia.
I don’t really know a lot about the U.S. supplying arms, but the one truly notable example was lend-lease. This, however, didn’t begin until over a year after the war in Europe and years after the Sino-Japanese war had started, so we definitely can’t describe it as “starting” anything. To my knowledge anything the U.S. supplied before the start of those wars was purely standard marketing, and was thus neutral and non-interventionist.
I’ll note that I’m no historian, and I make no definitive claim to accuracy. However, I couldn’t in good conscience call WWII in any way an example of backlash against the U.S. for interventionist actions, as two of the three examples happened after war had begun in both Europe and Asia, and the third would be best described as being non-interventionist. The closest we could get is that Japan might well have not attacked the U.S. if it hadn’t threatened embargoes, which would have left the U.S. complicit in the Japanese occupation of China and the horrors thereof. Even then….the war would have eventually made its way to the U.S. and it really wasn’t so much “if” as “when.”
That’s it for tonight folks, I need some bloody sleep. If I haven’t been clear enough on anything I’ll deal with it later.
permutationofninjas replied to your post:
Very interesting because I follow one person who strongly supports the military, and you who are entirely opposed to it. I personally wouldn’t bail on a blog because of one fuckup (though I’d definitely comment), but I guess I can understand it.
I don’t really see it as a fuck-up. I don’t regret mentioning it and I don’t regret losing any followers over it. It is consistent to point out that feminism shouldn’t support women in the military oppressing the very women they claim need feminism.
My opinions center around anti-bias and voluntarism. It would be fucked up if I did support the troops and to expect that an entire philosophy won’t come through occasionally on this blog is very naive.
I’m against injustice. I don’t care who’s doing it and patriotism only blinds people to right and wrong.
Ah, good point….it was more that I was running out of letters, I had to cut some stuff out because it kept cutting me off.
I do personally think that you worded it much more strongly than you needed to, but that’s a matter of personal choice. Calling the entire military “murderers and accomplices to murder” is a great way to freak people out, even though it’s not necessarily an inaccurate way to put it.
Either way, what I really meant was that I wouldn’t unfollow someone just because I really disagreed with them on one particular thing, even if I really strongly disagreed with them on it. Even if I thought it was the start of a trend (and I highly doubt your anti-feminist/egalitarian blog will become an anti-war polemic) I would at least wait long enough to make sure one way or the other. That was the idea, anyways, but you can only fit so much into the equivalent of a twitter message.
‘i’m a men’s rights activist’
that’s like being a member of a charity that donates money to billionaires
…. Hold on… *leaves to beat my head against a wall over how horribly ignorant the statement is*
Do ANY of you even understand what men’s rights activists (MRAs) even fight for? After all… they fight to not be erased as victims of domestic abuse, rape and many other instances. They fight against gender biases in the CJ system. They fight to not have to be tied down by societal expectations. They fight for people to take them seriously. A good majority of them are also not misogynists and many of them are also not male. You CLEARLY have no understanding of the movement and wish to use your own ignorance and stereotypes in order to humiliate and degrade them rather than listen and understand them. This shows that despite the fact that you believe that you stand for equality full stop… you don’t really believe in that.
I would do the same….but it’s drywall, and it would lose.
Andy Warhol… more like Andy Shithol. Hi, I’m nachobragers, and i’m here today to tell you the reasons why andy warhol is the biggest hack artist of the 21st century. Exhibit A!
This is one of Warhol’s well nown works. notice anything… familiar about it? Well, if you haven’t noticed by now, let me spell it out fore you..
That’s right. Andy Warhol stole the design from his painting from an innocent soup can. I’m surprised he didn’t get his assed sued to the moon! And if that’s not reason enough to call him a fraud, take a look at this:
Okay wow. My first question is, how dumb does Andy Warhol think we are? I saw the painting the first time, no need to repeat it four times like I’m some kind of moron! And another thing, why is the lady in the painting different colors? Well, I did a little research and found out that according to ancient mythology, girls are from the planet Venus, while boys are from Mars. Could the woman be some sort of Extraterrestrial? Who knows. All I know is that you need to stay far, far away from Andy Warhol’s art because it’s nothing but stolen material and horrible color schemes.
…. I do hope that you realize that you’re saying this about a person who was SHOT by the same feminist who wrote the SCUM Manifesto, Valarie Solonas.
4:15: PM
Warhol arrives at the Factory in a cab, wearing a brown leather jacket over a black t-shirt , black jeans and black Beatle (Chelsea) boots.(L&D296)Previously, he had picked up a prescription for Obetrol, then browsed at Bloomingdales, and had also rung the bell of Miles White, the costume designer, who lived on East 55th Street, but he wasn’t home.(POP270/DD71)When Andy arrives outside the Factory, his boyfriend Jed Johnson approaches from 17th and Broadway carrying some fluorescent lights. Valerie Solanas joins them and all three enter the building. While waiting for the elevator, Warhol notices that Valerie is wearing a thick turtleneck sweater underneath a trenchcoat on a hot summer day. Even stranger, she has on mascara and lipstick even though as a die-hard feminist she never wears make-up. Warhol also notices that she is “bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, twisting a brown paper bag in her hands.”
Upstairs, Fred Hughes is sitting at his desk writing a memo, Paul Morrissey is talking to Viva on the phone who is ringing him from Kenneth’s Hair Salon where she is having her hair dyed in preparation for her role in John Schlesinger’s film Midnight Cowboy. Art critic and curator, Mario Amaya, is waiting for Andy in order to discuss an upcoming retrospective in London.
When Warhol, Jed and Valerie arrive, Paul leaves the office to go to the bathroom, leaving Andy to talk to Viva.(L&D)Jed goes into Warhol’s private office in the rear corner of the room. Andy signals to Fred Hughes to take over the conversation with Viva.Valerie Solanas takes a .32 automatic from the paper bag and fires a shot. Viva hears the shot over the phone but thinks it is somebody cracking a whip left over from theVelvet Underground days. Andy screams “No! No! Valerie! Don’t do it!” She fires a second time. He falls to the floor and tries to crawl under a desk. She fires a third time. The bullet enters Andy’s right side and goes straight through him, coming out the left side of his back. Warhol later tells friends”It hurt so much, I wished I was dead.”
Thinking that she has killed Warhol, Solanas turns to Mario Amaya who is crouching on the floor and fires a fourth shot at him. She misses so she shoots again, hitting him slightly above the hip. The bullet goes through him without damaging any organs, exiting from his back. He gets up and runs into the back room, using the weight of his bleeding body to hold the doors shut.
Valerie Solanas points the gun at Fred Hughes who begs her not to shoot him. “I’m innocent,” he protests. “Please, just leave.” She walks over to the elevator and presses the button then returns to him, aiming at his forehead with the gun. She pulls the trigger, but it jams. She grabs a back up gun, a .22 caliber from the paper bag but the elevator arrives and she leaves.
As soon as she leaves, Fred Hughes calls for an ambulance and the police. The phone rings. It is Viva, still at the hairdresser’s, wondering what is going on. Fred tells her that Valerie just shot Andy and that there is blood everywhere, then hangs up the phone. Viva, thinking it is a joke, decides to have her hair trimmed before having it dyed. She tells the hairdresser to charge it to United Artists.
She received 3 years of jail time. On June 28, Solanas was indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a gun. She was declared “incompetent” in August and sent to Wards Island to be hospitalized. That same month, Olympia Press published the SCUM Manifesto with essays by Girodias and Krassner.
According to Robert Marmorstein in 1968, “[s]he has dedicated the remainder of her life to the avowed purpose of eliminating every single male from the face of the earth.” Feminist Robin Morgan (later editor of Ms. magazine) demonstrated for Solanas’s release from prison. Ti-Grace Atkinson, the New York chapter president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), described Solanas as “the first outstanding champion of women’s rights” and as “a ‘heroine’ of the feminist movement”, and “smuggled [her manifesto] … out of the mental hospital where Solanas was confined.” Another NOW member, Florynce Kennedy, called her “one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement.” Norman Mailer called her the “Robespierre of feminism.”
English professor Dana Heller argued that Solanas was “very much aware of feminist organizations and activism”, but that she “had no interest in participating in what she often described as ‘a civil disobedience luncheon club.’” Heller also stated that Solanas could “reject mainstream liberal feminism for its blind adherence to cultural codes of feminine politeness and decorum which the SCUM Manifesto identifies as the source of women’s debased social status.”
In 2009, Margo Feiden, a former Broadway producer and playwright, said she was visited by Solanas on the morning of the shooting. Solanas gave Feiden a copy of Up Your Ass and tried to persuade Feiden to produce the play, but Feiden refused. According to Feiden, Solanas warned that if Feiden would not agree to produce the play, she would shoot Andy Warhol to become famous, so that Feiden would produce her play anyway. Solanas threatened: “I’m going right now to shoot him. I want you to keep the play—that’s what’s in here (handing Feiden a worn green folder).” Feiden said that she desperately tried to avert the shooting. She first called her cousin, Bob Feiden, who was a close friend of Warhol’s; Feiden’s secretary at Columbia Records said that he was out. Then Feiden frantically called the authorities: her local police station in Brooklyn, the police precinct that covered Warhol’s address in Union Square, police headquarters (in SoHo), and Mayor Lindsay’s office—but nobody took her calls seriously.
So um… let’s see…. she attempts to kill three men simply because her script was denied… by a woman no less in order to gain fame. Even after then the SCUM Manifesto and is taken as satire. Something is wrong with that picture. The script that she wanted to have go forth? It was about a “man-hating hustler and a panhandler. In one version, the woman kills the man. In another, a mother strangles her son.”
Want to know the greatest part?
The night before Christmas, 1968: Warhol answered the phone at the factory; it was Solanas calling. She demanded that Warhol pay $20,000 for her manuscripts that she would use for her legal defense.She wanted him to drop all criminal charges against her, put her in more of his movies and get her on the Johnny Carson Show. Solanas said if Warhol didn’t do this, she “could always do it again.”
When asked about her shooting people her reply was:
“I consider that a moral act. And I consider it immoral that I missed. I should have done target practice.”
This is not to say that Andy Warhol was perfect… but he certainly did not deserve to be attacked the way that he was. (Want to know where the man-hating stereotype came from… well… there you go. Hell… can I also point out that the woman who wrote that piece about her claims that Valarie will always be her “personal hero” and that she’s against violence against women… not men, not children, not people in general? Just women.)
Also… I think you’re looking too far into it and drawing straws out of thin air. Oh no, he painted a photo of a soup can! The fucking horrors! It’s not like he was claiming that he designed the can himself. Plenty of artists paint random objects around their house or the areas around them. Does that make them a “rip off artist”. He was a pop artist. By claiming that he was a rip off with his work you’re also claiming that an artist who takes a photo of a historic landmark or of a coke bottle is scamming people. That would be saying that fanartists are “stealing material”. It’s also not really “stolen” he wasn’t claiming the original to be his work.
Also… last I checked… he never LIVED in the 21st century. He lived in the 20th century. (He died in 1987.)
Yeah, the original post is definitely a joke. Yay Poe’s Law. However, it’s worth reblogging for your greater fleshing-out of the Solanas story, I wasn’t aware of much of that stuff. This is definitely getting a bookmark, as it puts paid to anyone who’s of the opinion that the SCUM manifesto was satire or that Solanas’ mental illness means we can ignore her (and even if we ignore her, that doesn’t deal with the at least theoretically of sound mind women who supported her).
Misandry certainly exists. People DO hate men, it happens.
What causes fights and anger is often people use misandry to lessen the feminist movement. Such as saying so many women are misandrists, they are the true victims.
To me, it is very insulting. It is like me, as a white female, saying that I deal with the same racism that PoC deal with every day. Certainly, there are likely people who hate me because I’m white. But am I dealing with institutionalized racism? Racism that decides my education, jobs, well-being? Have I gone through a long struggle with slavery?
There are likely people who are racist toward white people, but calling myself a victim of racism lessens the struggles that PoC often endure. When people on Tumblr mock the feminist movement, claim misandry, it is understandable why many feminists will be offended. Don’t lessen the feminist movement by claiming that the struggles of white men are equal or the same to women and PoC. There are struggles, of course, and we should work to fix them. However, this does not make the feminist movement bad for focusing on women’s issues.
And apparently, because people on the misandry tag seem to think any claims about society or men are aimed at ALL men, I will clarify. Not all men are misogynistic. Not all men are mocking feminists. Many men ARE feminists. Men and women both contribute to misogyny, institutionalized sexism and racism.
You seem pretty reasonable, so I’ll ask you a couple of blunt questions.
First, you acknowledge that misandry and sexism exists against men. Clearly, you believe that feminism not only seeks equal treatment for men and women, but that it overall succeeds in this regard. By extension, you must acknowledge that there are issues men face that are disparate from women’s issues.
As such, if men have at least some unique issues and feminism fights (successfully) for genuine equality between men and women….name for me one single example of a lobby effort on behalf of feminism that elevates men in an area where they are disadvantaged which not only does not simultaneously elevate women, but arguably reduces their privilege in an area where they are advantaged.
Can you?
Second, name for me a single legal right that men in the United States or Canada possess that women do not, excepting the right to walk around topless.
Can you?
If you accept that men do indeed have unique issues, then is it not true that a movement that simultaneously states that it seeks equality for everyone, including men, yet not only completely fails to address the issues faced by half the population and actively attacks virtually any person or movement attempting to give voice to or address those issues is indeed by definition misandrist?
I can give you a laundry list of discrimination against men that’s literally enshrined in law. I can list for you a huge number of very obvious metrics that demonstrate how the challenges faced by men as a group are not only on par with those faced by women, but arguably exceed them. Not only that, but I can likewise list debunkings of a huge number of the most common metrics used to demonstrate the challenges faced by women. (The most common is the “wage gap,” but domestic violence figures, rape statistics and a litany of others also qualify.) Men do indeed face institutional sexism, and a huge aspect of feminist misandry is the denial of that even in the face of irrevocable evidence.
Unlike you, I’m not out to ignore or erase the issues an entire gender faces (and don’t pretend that’s not what you’re doing behind all of the polite rhetoric). You express anger and dismay at someone dismissing your issues, yet that’s literally exactly what you’re doing to men. In fact, you’re doing worse, because you’re expressing anger and dismay not at someone not dismissing your issues, but merely placing theirs on the same level with a great deal of evidence to back it up. I believe that both genders face a lot of issues, but that we should probably be focusing on the gender that right now faces the greatest inequity in law. That’s not women. Once we’ve dealt with the legal inequity, we can move on to other issues. Each of these links addresses something in greater detail:
Women and black are not the same thing. (Especially important given your comparison of the two.)
You don’t get to comment on the severity or validity of men’s suffering or men’s issues.
And yes, I know, Not All Feminists Are Like That.
You seem to be an intelligent, rational person, so hopefully most or all of this will make some sense. I’m not here to attack, I’m here to educate. Hopefully you’ll take it as intended, take a look at things from another perspective and learn something from it.
I should never be hired just to “fill a company’s quota”.
I should be hired on the basis that I’m better than the other applicants.
But are you actually better than the other applicants is the question?
Your resume can be fantastic and you may interview like shit. The opposite holds true as well.
Have you ever actually been told you were hired to fill a gender quota, OP?
So, you need feminism to get rid of the quotas that….feminism worked to create in the first place.
You also have this funny idea that the “real” victim of these quotas is you, who has a chance of getting hired despite being unqualified. Never mind the man who has a chance of losing a job opportunity to an unqualified applicant like you despite actually being qualified, simply because he’s the wrong gender.
This is the narrative of feminism. The solution to the problems feminism has caused is more feminism. The victims of these problems are “oppressors”, while those who benefit overall are simply helpless victims in need of a bit more feminism to save them from their predicament.
If you were born with a penis and continue to identify with it, you have male privilege, and you do not face gender-based oppression.
Just so we’re clear, if you’re born with a vagina and continue to identify with it, you have female privilege, and you do not face…
Because clearly if I feel just comfortable enough with my genitals to not necessarily want them changed, then obviously that’s got to mean that nobody’s ever made me uncomfortable about said-genitals or used the fact of my genital-comfort ability to harass me or treat me poorly.
Also, wouldn’t I have male privilege regardless of whether or not I “identified with my penis?”1. Uncomfortable =/= oppressed
2. Oppression and privilege when it comes to trans* people is extremely complicated, and I, as a cisfemale, cannot fully understand that experience well enough to claim that a MAAB trans* person would still have male privilege. I don’t think they would, though.
1. Uncomfortable =/= oppressed
1. Uncomfortable =/= oppressed
1. Uncomfortable =/= oppressed
In case you missed it.
It really isn’t a difficult concept. Even if you have had bad experiences. Even if you have faced people with prejudices about you because of the face that you’re white, you’re male, you’re cis-gendered, you’re anything that comes with privilege, you have NOT BEEN OPPRESSED. Oppression is done by people with privilege. Oppression is an “unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power,” the kind that can only come with privilege. So next time you try to get sympathy and call yourself oppressed when you are NOT, the waaaaah-bulance will have to be called in. Save us all the trouble and STFU. And after you do that, get fucking educated and stop whining about your imagined problems.
So what are we defining “oppression” as, eh? Would we agree that widespread legal inequity in the courts, health care spending, reproductive rights, government issue representation, support for victims of domestic violence and rape (among other things) counts as “oppression”? Imagined. Right. That’s the sound of me not laughing.
Would we consider a culture in which special laws are being and have been passed to “prevent violence against” a demographic which already makes up less than a third of the victims of violence despite being half the population to be “oppressing” the other group? I would say yes.
What about a culture which continues affirmative action measures for a group that makes up well over half of all university students, provides over twice the funding for a cancer one group suffers than the other despite almost identical numbers of deaths, and provides a greater variety of shelter resources to a group that makes up only ten percent of the homeless? Once again, that’s the sound of me not laughing.
This has fuck-all to do with “experiences”….this is about statistics. Your claim that men do not experience oppression flies in the face of literally blatant evidence that they do, and your attempt to claim it as “bad experiences” of an individual rather than more widespread oppression is derailing for dummies (which apparently died a couple days back, so we’ll see if it’s back) 101.
It doesn’t matter how this oppression is happening, the evidence shows that it is. As someone who doesn’t suffer it, you need to shut your fucking mouth about oppression you have no understanding of, and stop trying to speak over the people who do suffer it, do understand it, do have the accurate statistics, and actually know what the fuck they’re talking about. I’ve even provided some resources to get you started.
