Radfem 2013 and the MRAs

Hi, as a much loved Aunty to many nieces and nephews I can't believe what I am actually reading here. I'm very upset by all these comments and the comments that I am referring to are those that some of the members of the "Radical Hub" website have made in the past about little boys. I am pleased that the website previously owned by Cathy Brennan is now defunct - thank God - we all have to be grateful for small mercies. I am a female member of "MRA London" and as a men's rights activist, I am appalled that such an organisation as Rad Fem could be entertained on here! However, I am so glad the London Irish Centre declined their booking for this year's Rad Fem's conference. I am aghast that the men I work with can be classed and condemned as misogynist violent women-hating bastards. The guys I work with are passionate about what they believe in and I along with many other females support them all the way and have great respect for them. I strongly disapprove of what these extremists have to say about innocent baby boys; I am reminded of a comment that was fortunately captured from the Radical Hub website before it was made defunct and it was this: "I have honestly have been reassessing the fact that I am giving care to these little future rapists, and what that says about me about me and my separatism. I know it is kinda going against my principle to support and care for these little fuckers." and can I remind you, that this comment came from the mouth of a Childcare worker! All I can say is this, "God Help any child that comes into her care whether it be girl or a boy." I have many nephews and the youngest is only two and I love them all equally and I wouldn't want it any other way but from what I have read here today angers me, I may as well go around saying this: "I love my nephews but I know one day they'll become rapists so any girlfriend they have, I'll just warn them to be careful. Yeah be careful girls my nephew will rape you." Totally sick, I am so angered at having to write that because it doesn't matter who the child is - no male child born into this world as a baby, or as a toddler, or teenager or as a young or fully grown adult should ever be made out to be a rapist but to even contemplate the idea of wanting to kill the child as a baby boy before it has had a chance to live is beyond me? Discrimination from birth. What about Jesus? You going to try and say that he was a rapist too? Born humbly into the world so that we might live....what is the world coming too?

This discussion is very interesting. I can't contribute anything sensible on the theory side. I find it interesting to think about but I'm more with LRD that if you identify the problem, you can think about ways to fix the problem even if you don't know precisely how that problem arose. I also agree with Mini that to the extent that we can identify the history, it is helpful in analysing the problem. I think that can be done somewhat with industrial / economic relations because our current economic structure (capitalism) is fairly recent and somewhat documented. With sexual relations, I think it is too far in the past to be usefully analysed and it's too susceptible to being derailed by evolutionary psychobabble.

I agree with Mini that men are becoming more radicalised as women become more ascendant and this is (to some extent) related to the shift in skills required in the workplace and women's ability to support themselves economically without a man. However, at the risk of agreeing with everyone (weird for me), I also agree with Mooncup that this is not necessarily the case and that men are just as suited to the modern workplace as women (men are certainly still dominant in my workplace).

Where I can't engage with MRAs in their current state however is that I believe they are primarily motivated by seeking to preserve a power they once had. In general, they seem to identify themselves as not "alpha males" and seem quite obsessed with power distribution among men. A lot of them use PUA / game type language. Placing themselves as low status males, their "movement" seems to me about keeping a higher status than women as a class and certainly higher than women of their own class. To achieve this, the internet warriors among them resort to the age old manner in which men as a class exerted power over women as a class - the threat of rape and violence.

I don't believe that appeasing these men will solve anything unless women give them the dominance they seek. I also don't believe that we need to change the entire economic system in order to address this problem (although I wouldn't necessarily be against that). In all likelihood, we won't change the economic power structures in our lifetime (could be wrong) and I agree with Mini that there is likely to be an increase in radicalisation in the future. I believe we need to hear lots of feminist voices and encourage feminist thinking even if we don't agree with everything that is said as a result. I have never considered myself a rad fem but I really do want to hear what they have to say.

This is where I fall down with theory.

I have, I promise, tried to understand why people use terms like 'base' and 'superstructure' and I have read up on it. But it's in one ear and out the other.

I think I agree with you, though.

MRAs, well I happen to agree LRD, most of this is driven by nothing more than fear. They think that rights are finite and can't be shared. They think its like a tug of war. Whilst winning rights sometimes means curtailing those of others, I don't think this is such a situation.

I do think though that as more and more men are less suited to changes within the work place and women are more ascendant that men may become increasingly radicalised. I think the sexism of the "common man" is very much rooted in his position as breadwinner and the social power this gives him over the women of his class. As this breaks down (it is worldwide) then we will see more MRA activity. This is why I think its important to listen and start to address the economic system. We really need a situation where I don't have economic cleavage over DP and other women don't have privilege over other women. Only making fundamental changes to the economic system will end the class system and allow equality btw all peoples.

I would never seek to make someone's ideology illegitimate. No not at all.

I acknowledge patriarchy I think that sexism stems from the complex social conditioning that both men and women are subject to. So if patriarchy is an ideology it is situated within the superstructure, it is a narrative we use to understand that complex social conditioning which in turn is our way of making sense of the base structure. Its a dialectic btw the two. The base structure is not aHistorical and it constantly evolves, as do the narratives we use to understand the complexity of relations that spring from it.

I might not be making any sense ! I know what I mean

Funny that, no, I haven't been. You know what I mean - I am really enjoying this discussion and I think it's fascinating. And I do see where mini is coming from about compromise and ideology and so on, even though I'm not sure I understand it enough.

But it's my impression that a lot of the people opposing radfem 2013 actively (as opposed to those who may be sitting around thinking 'bunch of nutters' or 'I really hate women-only events' or whatever), are not really that interested in compromise.

Maybe I am being unfair. Maybe there are a lot of people who passionately wish the event were only slightly different so they could attend in good conscience. But honestly I reckon that, unfortunately, the people who genuinely think that are the people who're respectfully going through the normal channels of arguing their case, not the ones trying to no-platform it and kicking up a stink.

I do get the feeling we are dignifying the MRAs in this situation quite a bit - is that just me?

We are discussing ideologies - am I unfair to think that, although I can see there is a set of beliefs MRAs put foward, they are to a fairly big extent really just pushing an ideology no more complex than 'WTF we don't like these women'? I could be being mean. I've just never met a sensible man who sees things in such ridiculous terms as that bloke Mike Buchanan, or for that matter most of F4J.

Awww, but they'd be cute little sperm-sized humans.

I can't help seeing them as tadpoles, really. Not a pleasant thought.

I am now imagining little sperm sized humans Aristotle was a twerp.

Fair enough, mini. Is this perhaps just a difference in how we all think?

I wouldn't swallow Labour's party manifesto either. I'd also see their manifesto not so much as a political ideology, but as an application of that ideology that involves plenty of compromises.

I'm trying to think why I don't mind not knowing why the patriarchy happened, and I admit, I'm not sure.

But I don't feel any struggle to understand what radical feminism is a response to, because it is obvious to me that women are oppressed as a class, and that is enough for me. In the same way that, even if I didn't know anything at all about the history of race relations, I like to think I would still feel that discrimination against black people (or whoever) is wrong.

I don't see the issue. I don't see how the patriarchy (which is a structure explaining how the world works) has to 'exist' in the same concrete, historical terms as, say, the Labour party. I don't think the ideals of any political party 'exist' in that concrete, historical sense either, do they?

I can't imagine swallowing whole the party manifesto of the labour party. But I know how the labour party came into being and why. I know what it was a response to. I am more likely to accept the ideology (I don't because its sold out)

I can't follow the ideology of the radfem until I can understand what that ideology is in response to. It came about as a response to something and that something is both historical (non specific in terms of time/place) but not rooted in any material fact what so ever. This is why I struggle with it. It is aHistorical but at the same time exists

Well...... patriarchy came out of somewhere for it to exists. If it didn't come from somewhere then it can't be proved to exist beyond being a narrative we use to explain the social relations as situated within that superstructure (where all thoughts and feelings exist outside of but in relation to the material base structure)

Oh, absolutely, I agree some types of understanding are more distorted than others. And I agree about the dangers of said post-modern heap. Which is why I like political ideology, and why I don't think it is necessary or valuable to compromise that ideology if it's something you truly believe is right.

Compromise all sorts of things - but compromising ideology really means re-writing it. There is no point unless you believe it's right.

Aristotle has a lot to answer for.

Btw, I really appreciate you both being so patient with me!

Tell me to quiet down if I'm doing that thing of wandering around a discussion being incoherent, won't you?

Sorry, my last was to yours of 22:22, mini.

Yes, absolutely about 'passive' eggs. It is bizarre, isn't it?

mooncup - yes, what I describe is progress in scientific knowledge. I was responding to mini saying that by the time states and class systems had developed, we knew how babies were made. I am not sure things coincide so neatly, as I think we keep on learning more.

I am also trying to say that I think what we consider to be 'knowledge' (scientific or historical) is conditioned by our contemporary preconceptions (no pun intended). So, people thought they 'knew' how babies were made for centuries. But we keep making new discoveries that re-frame the old certainties.

It is quite likely more such discoveries will be made and we will again find that we have to reassess.

These discoveries don't all go in the same direction, though. People get the wrong ideas, or forget about a good idea for centuries (is it Lucretius who thought the world was composed of tiny particles or 'atoms'?). We live in a particular moment in time, and we naturally see everything from that point in time. So we arrange the past, conceptually, in terms of progress towards our current ideas. And that is a distortion. Inevitably.

This is why I want to get back to political ideology, rather than seeking root causes in prehistory. The political ideology that patriarchy is a system of oppression, is never going to change. People might give up on it as an ideology, but in itself, it isn't subject to change. Therefore it is qualitatively different from, say, the perception that women are born less intelligent than men, or the idea that the earth moves around the sun.

MooncupGoddess, wow. Taken hat off. I have only read exerts but its on my to do list. I'll have a scout back through my history on PC and look and see if I can find what I was reading.

Yes, that's sort of what I mean ... I think we always reckon we can look back at history and say 'ahh, yes, it was then that the true progress occurred/the shift began'.

I don't say this to be defeatest. I am aware that we currently pretend we're getting around this by being ever so carefully qualified in what we say. And it is very fashionable to talk about how one's analysis of, say, chartism or the Peasants' Revolt is actually teaching us more about our own preconceptions and so on.

But we still do it, we still make pronouncements about those historical events.

I am fine with this so far as it's history. I am less fine with the idea that a political ideology is invalid because we cannot know the root causes of the patriarchy. Even if we could suddenly discount the way history works, and achieve a blinding trans-historical insight into those root causes, I don't believe it would change how we fight the patriarchy. I don't belive it would make the patriarchy more, or less, of a root problem in our modern world.

I guess eggs had to be passive because women were meant to be passive. You, know its all down to the men, the active ones to get the job done.