At the end of the day, it's a message board.

Even though it sometimes gets mistaken for other stuff, like the all-important springboard upon which stage history will write that the giant overthrow of The Dread Space Phallus Patriarchy™, here, once began.



"First, we take Manhattan!"

I am DEFINITELY on some of those lists.

This type of exchange is my favorite, known in the parlance as "Showing one's ass"

Often the people who farm out a whole bunch of socks at the same time get tripped up when they get flustered, and forget which "one" they're supposed to be. I think some of em eventually wise up and try to keep it down to one or two at a given time, so this doesn't happen.

You know what was fun about that poster? She would, like, piss off the entire board

and then post some essentially meaningless, feel-good thread full of pictures of MLK and quotes that no sane person would ever disagree with, so she could get 200 or so responses going "yeah! Nice thread!" and then somewhere hidden in there would be like, one line trying to tie it back to the shit she had used to piss everyone off. I think she did this with the moon bombing.

It would go something like This:

[center]
[font size=4]Ghandi advocated tolerance



King advocated tolerance.



The world needs love--- and tolerance.


[/font]
[font size=1]so why cant we be more tolerant of people who express well meaning concern about the sinister plot to disrupt our menstrual cycles by savagely attacking our lunar space sister[/font]
[/center]

Okay, let's break it down a little.

First off, I do believe that Western Civilization, and particularly Western Monotheistic religion, has historically had a patriarchal orientation. I believe that men are certainly coming from a place of privilege, historically. I've said as much, in the Men's Group as well as elsewhere. One would, to my mind, have to be blind or deliberately obtuse not to acknowledge those facts.

HOWEVER, that is not the same thing as agreeing that there is an entity or condition known as "the Patriarchy", which, depending on the strain of Feminism, is imagined either as a universal planetary condition, the original source of ALL oppression, everywhere, and even, yes, a deliberate conspiracy along the lines of the Bildeburgers or the Illuminati. (It is, remember, this "Patriarchy" that is allegedly creating MtF trans "stealth units" to "surveil womynspace".. I'm not making this up.)

Different cultures are, to varying degrees, more or less open, more or less free, more or less equal in terms of allowing individuals the freedom to self-actualize in whatever way those individuals see fit. Ours is better than most (certainly better than most Fundamentalist religious countries of varying stripes) and of course there are varying degrees of free vs. stifling communities in this country as well. I will always err on the side of freedom, of choice, etc.

Is there a history of male privilege and a history of patriarchal organization in Western Civilization? Absolutely. Does that mean "The Patriarchy" is real? I don't think so.


***

Now, to your questions:

If another man called you a woman, how would you feel/react in your mind?

I don't really give a shit what other people think or say about me. That's an honest answer. I think most people don't like being insulted, the criteria for an insult often being whether the target or the insulter feels that what is being said is an insult. We've seen plenty of examples here in meta of women who consider it an insult to be called "a man", so I'm not sure if there's a fundamental societal point that can be made. With regards to me, meh. I know who I am, and I'm too old and have survived too much actual shit to spend much time worrying about what other people think. This feeds into, again, much of the culture hand-wringing I see around these topics. I don't pretend to somehow be completely above the fray, and I acknowledge that I've fortunately spent most of my adult life in tolerant, progressive areas, but I do believe that the fundamental struggle should be making sure everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, everyone is treated fairly, etc. When people say "the culture makes me feel like I need to be attractive" or "the culture makes me feel like I'm fat".. well, okay- I don't want to minimize your feelings, but you can always tell the culture to fuck off. The culture can't MAKE you feel anything, IMHO.

Do you sincerely desire women to be equal to men in every possible, plausible, applicable way?

Yes.

If you were to discover that you are actually in a position of male privilege that you previously did not understand and recognize, would you be willing to abdicate this privilege in favor of becoming completely equal in status to women, out of a personal sincere desire for equality?

That's an open ended question, especially since some people define male privilege as living in a society that insufficiently censors sexy ads or films of consenting adults fucking. I'd have to know the specifics, but beyond that I would refer you to my previous answer.


Hope this helps.

Translation: It would be "helpful" if all of DU would agree with a very vocal, small minority here

on their entire ideological laundry list, starting with but not limited to the dubious axiom that ALL oppression that has ever existed, everywhere, is fallout from "The Patriarchy", the spooky pervasive subject of a conspiracy theory rivaling the ones involving the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion or the Space Lizards from Zeta Reticuli.

Except, the vast majority of DU does NOT agree.




..."Which is crumbling, by the way"

Mmmm Hmmmm.

The message of the Star-Bellied Sneetches was "don't confuse individuals with whatever group or

label you put them in."

You know, groups and labels like "Men".


See, I can sum up the subtextual message of the Star Bellied Sneetches in one sentence. I can sum up the satirical subtext of "A Modest Proposal.." in one sentence. Can you do the same with "The SCUM Manifesto"?




And, again... so you think whatever "crimes" men have committed as a class, warrant legitimate advocacy (even if it couldn't actually be carried out, due to inconvenient logistical hurdles) for the killing of all of them... and, let's be clear, you're also equating men with Nazis.

You're trying to change the subject, which is fine, except you responded to me first.

And my question was, would this be acceptable if it was a screed advocating mass murder of Jews? Muslims? Short people? Redheads? Women?


I'm betting, no. Certainly not to me, it wouldn't. So why is it okay, why is this hateful rant written by a violent sociopath, "brilliant" and "important" and why was it "necessary"?

Blow it off? By all means. But it's being praised on DU by people whose entitlement mentality causes them to think it's okay to laud violence-promoting gibberish penned by insane people-

...and that, you see, is as they say, problematic.

Understand?

I am expressing an opinion that you don't agree with.

By your logic, shouldn't you be hitting the alert button about now?

At least, here, you admit that it's "a feminist POV" and not "all Feminists".

I'd say that 90% of the self-described Feminists on DU have no problem with me, and vice-versa. In fact, I consider myself one, which is why I was posting in your group in the first place. There are wide areas of agreement, and despite your consistent and obvious attempts to revise history on my contributions to that group, everything I posted there was within the SOP. Everything.

Part of the problem, as I and many others have seen it, has been the demands by a small group to have total ownership of the word "Feminist", and to exclude or disrespect contrary views. Fine, again, your group, and we're all aware of the circumstances pertaining to its forming.

But, revising history. The warning you speak of had to do with one thread in which iverglas escalated a reasonable discussion into a full-blown meltdown, which was one of many incidences where several members -or is it voting members, or "real" members- of your group had just about had enough of her. In terms of having an escalated disagreement with iverglas, that probably puts me in with 99% of the rest of DU. It's worth noting- did I mention your attempts to revise history around this?- that the disagreement came from iverglas posting a long-winded authoritative post saying that stay at home parents were lazy, dropping out of the workforce, that babies in the old days just somehow took care of themselves, blah blah blah. To which I responded that I didn't think she could possibly have any idea what raising an actual child entails.

It's also worth noting that several "real" members of your group, from seabeyond to violet crumble, were in complete agreement with me.

That was what precipitated your "warning", as well as your ridiculous -revisionism, again- statement that somehow I was "judging a woman for her reproductive choices", which is sort of like saying that asking a movie critic who calls Citizen Kane a "piece of crap because the aliens don't even look real" if he actually saw the movie is "judging a man for not having a subscription to Turner Classic Movies".




Then, in a further piece of revisionism, you tried to assert that I had self-deleted posts, when I didn't. No wonder you're not willing to try to back up your claims with links, anymore.

If I had actually written something in your group that was contrary to the SOP, the ban would make sense. But I understand we disagree on some things, so obviously I'm not going to come into your space and argue with you over them. We do have areas of agreement, but it would seem that it's more important to you to maintain a tightly controlled echo chamber where the ever-present 'threat' from the rest of DU is kept at bay, than to welcome a diverse set of voices on areas of agreement as per your SOP.

Go figure.