Men who parade how "feminist" they are but who can fuck right off...

i keep reading the AF for ally fogg as anyfucker and getting confused. she won't thank me for that!

x-post again :)

Yeah I updated it to say that I've never knowingly done something racist. I have absolutely and definitely allowed racist views to cloud my judgement though.

x post Cailin/Apocalypse, sorry.

It's very easy to be racist without noticing. I can think of a couple of times when I've done things which were, in retrospect and I wonder how many similar things I've done without ever picking up on it. An example: I was living in an area with a large Asian population and was going through the Yellow Pages making a list of electricians to call. I thought I was picking them at random but then when I looked at my list I'd somehow managed to not pick any Asian names

I therefore wouldn't ever say confidently 'I've never done anything racist'. 'I've never knowingly done anything racist' or 'never deliberately' perhaps, but it's so ingrained that I suspect most of the time we're never even going to realise it.

fogg is a class act for sure: pbs.twimg.com/media/B4XwT5fIQAAkKUp.jpg:large

Rider - apparently because "Can women have it all?" is not at all a loaded question against a hidden background assumption of "women, make a straight choice - be hated for being a careerist ball breaker with shrivelled up ovaries, or be despised for being nothing more than a brood mare." Apparently in AF world, it is a gender neutral question which can be expressed as "People of earth, can you have the moon on a stick?" and thus the answer is equally "no" for both men and women. Nothing gendered to see here, move along folks, move along.

I absolutely accept that I have unexamined racist attitudes though and that these do affect my behaviour towards non-white people.

Sorry that should have said I have not and never will deliberately or consciously commit a racist act.

I have not and will never commit a racist act.

I don't believe I have either. But I am aware that I grew up in a racist society and that I've absorbed attitudes and behaviours that I perhaps don't even notice. So I'm keen to always challenge myself and make sure that I lose behaviours and attitudes that can hurt, stigmatize and discriminate.

In terms of men providing insight, I think they can and do when they are honest about their own thoughts and feelings about women - it sheds a lot of light on the hidden misogyny that most "decent" men deny. Both my DH and a male friend of mine have been very honest about how they've been brought up to see women and are very candid about the sexist attitudes they used to hold and sometimes find they still do hold. It is very enlightening from a feminist point of view because it shows just what you're up against.

I got myself into a Guardian article (hadn't realised the journo would put people in without checking whether they were happy to be put in with full name attached) saying something feminist (basically it was a "Can women have it all?" article, and I said "Funny, no one ever asks this about men") and got pasted below the line. AF was one of the first to pitch in with the pasting (predictably a "What about the menz" whinge). I figured I must have said something right if I'd annoyed him.

I'm not even that keen on the whole "decent men need to stand against VAWG" blackrider, though I admit there is a good intention behind it. I find that "decent" men tend to post these things on the assumption that they have not benefited from sexism and that they would never have a sexist thought - it's all about violence and extreme examples of oppression. They (and this is very general, though I have come across it multiple times) seem to think they're somehow immune to the whole thing, that it's about other men, evil men. They simply will not admit to any part in it, and that infuriates me.

I have not and will never commit a racist act. But I fully accept that I have benefited from white privilege at the cost of non-white people and that I am hopelessly naive about it. Parading how "good" you are by going on FB and saying "we should stand up against [something that is obviously wrong]" is pointless.

Men's issues do not stem from the oppression of men as a class, do they

No, no they don't, that's true.

TheBlackRider haha, he should put that on his twitter bio.

He says he just wants to promote men's issues (mental health etc). I'm not sure what to make of it tbh

I find that ok - I think it right for men to be active and engage with the issues that men surely have. It's when they try to blame feminism for these issues that I get irritated.

But I've never yet come across a man who had a useful message for feminists or any particularly interesting insight.

Ally Fogg is hard to beat but Owen Jones is clearly likes a challenge. Am beyond fucked off today.

I feel exactly the same about racism. My input is to shut up, listen carefully, examine my behaviour and assumptions and try to correct how I behave in real life situations. I have no speaking role whatsoever.

Ally Fogg is like a super Owen Jones. He's possibly the worst ever - everything he writes is like a dog whistle for violent, misogyny.