Debating With Arsehole Men: need a how-to guide!

Really good comment Make. Empirical concepts are totally abused in online debate. They have their place, but are often applied in a very spurious way.

The fact of the matter is that whatever your ideological agenda, you will be able to misuse logical concepts to justify it. This usually happens in the former of semantic quibbling as you say. Furthermore, courtesy of the internet, you will be able to find statistical data to support any argument. There are thousands of shoddy studies out there, and good ones with data that can be taken out of context and re-framed to suit ones preconceptions.

Logic and reason are different things. Logic is clinically cerebral, whereas reason is also emotional and intuitive. When it comes to the social sciences logic alone is inadequate.

I think this is germane...

Regarding the arguing/debating..I have stepped away a bit from logic. It seems a lot of times to be misused. For instance, someone will call someone else out on a logical fault...and it will often be a minor fallacy, which while technically sound, doesn't really establish anything.

Too, I've noticed that like with PMQ's, all one has to do is just sidestep the question. No one, outside of a court of law, can make someone answer specifically.

I simply try and make my line of reasoning "follow", for instance I wouldn't use, "All apples are fruit, therefore dogs are mammals."

But it is of interest. I think beneath it all we see a hierarchical ranking of maths over social science. And in a way empiricism can be said to be stronger....who can argue against 2+2=4?

I think there is a deep misunderstanding though about the nature of logic....it is simply a tool....there is no truth to it or any moral good. But I feel that often people like MRAs and Red Pillers think that using what they feel is logic makes their beliefs of higher value. But "truth" is "true" no matter how you get there - dogs are in fact mammals.

This is veering very close to babbling, but it helps explain, perhaps, why debating with some people is so hard.

Feministsareuseless has gotten his ED-Ucation from Dre..

I think the issue here us asshole men. good men who have narrow views will argue and have their opinion changed a bit, or soften tgeir position to accommodate. Asshole men are assholes.

mind you; i am someone who likes the adrenaline of an argument and with secure people taking a different..even narrow perspective can be fun and atimulating for all. Its when insecure people either make it WAY too serious or turn it into a personal attack, or a simple power game that arguing gets frustrating.

i think the main mistake many gender arguments make is assuming that thinks like patriarchy is solely negative for women, is deliberately constructed , and objectively 'wrong' are advanced scientific facts rather than a perspective that needs persuasion for people to examine, and can be used as a different platforn to examine the whole. Hearing someone elses aggressive views can be very good at developing your own. if you treat arguments as helpful engagements rather than bullying or abusive engagements, it helos you to stick to the objective.

Some people cant do any of this, nor argue a perspevtive they dont hold, and this gives the 'i am right 100%' idiocy.

If MRAs argue feminism causes disprivilege..arent they wrong with their dates? I can see that the tribal ideas of protecting the womenfolk does give rise to male expendibility maybe?

mind you i cant help feeling that in many ways equality for women has become a way for companies to get twice as much labour from the same household without more freedom or benefit to either sex overall..as prices have gone up to absorb extra income..and 'space and time' in the household seems to have gone down.. bit i'm just bitter about having to ratger than wanting to work..

scaryclown The problem with MRA types is that they see male "disprivilege" as the fault of feminism rather than something that would be improved by a healthy dose of it.

Even as far back as the ERA feminists have argued that freeing up gender stereotypes would release men from the stress of being the main breadwinner. Yet MRA/ reactionary types are determined to paint feminism as anti-man.

OP, that is the crux of the matter. As a feminist online you are on a losing wicket as so many negative assumptions will be made about you and these people are so determined to believe those things that no amount of reasoning will change their minds. But I like the idea that you are talking to the lurkers.

One thing you might try doing is backing up the opinions of feminists/commenters who you agree with. It will bolster their confidence, you won't be in the firing line so much and there's strength in numbers.

Dervel your post about the unfairness of holding feminism to a saintly criteria is so true. I know one isn't supposed to get gushy about men who say what feminists have been saying all along but thanks for getting it.

This debate has moved on!.. I think that there's as much male dispriviledge as privilege. ..the being tied to being physically strong, the 'ability' or neglect that allows/encourages men to not share emotions, not be encourage or helped to recognise feelings, to 'handle' things alone, to be oressured to deal with health risks, and i even think the 'real men dont wash their hands' is a kind of brutalisation of men. Personally i find it interesting that the idea of a 'real' man seems to be very working class and brutal, but the idea of a 'real' woman is an emotionally imtelligent capable and sort of decorative/creative home manager... but hiw did this hapoen when the 'salt of the earth' narrative of 'realness' should include women working in factor u es or other working class jobs.

Is this an English thing only?

Dervel generally I'd have said it's ok and we definitely seemed to have an acceptable proportion of women in senior roles. Finance, HR and Operations all have female heads. We do seem to have identified a specific issue here though, which I will be pursuing with my own (female) boss.

Anyway, didnt mean to make it about me. I think Vesuvia said it well.

Charlie what's the ratio of men/women like in your office? Working in that environment will be soul destroying for those who stick it out or as with your colleague leave to where their talents would be appreciated.

I'd take this up with your boss as seeing as the woman concerned is leaving you can genuinely raise that women are now directly concerned about their professional development opportunities. Make it less about the individual merits of the equal pay request, but the behaviour of certain people since has absolutely decimated staff morale.

Obviously the original woman has been able to negotiate a better contract elsewhere so her own estimation of her own value WILL be picked up by competitors. At the moment knowing only what you've posted I foresee a skill drain in the next 6-18 months.

If it's not already the company (or department if it's that big a company) will be circling the drain and be in real trouble.

As for arguing online, I love a good political debate but will only do it with someone actually interested in debating. If you're talking to someone who just wants to rant, there's no point. They're not even reading what you're saying.

Dervel I am in a leadership role in my team and this attitude is massively demoralising; this incident has really brought it home to me. I feel I'm fighting a losing battle against a bunch of deluded entitled arseholes. They literally cannot see that they are devaluing her and overvaluing him.

There is nowhere else for the claim to go, she's voted with her feet anyway and leaves next week for a £20k pay rise. It's less easy for me as I live in the arse end of nowhere and I'm considerably older. Old and female!

I think what Vesuvia said covers the male privilege thing nicely. The poor, working class male who hasn't had any breaks certainly wouldn't feel he has any privilege but the point is that he would still be better off than a woman with his background. ie if he had been born female, he'd likely be even poorer because of wage gap, expectation that she rather than he would take on majority childcare etc.

I think what Vesuvia said covers the male privilege thing nicely. The poor, working class male who hasn't had any breaks certainly wouldn't feel he has any privilege but the point is that he would still be better off than a woman with his background. ie if he had been born female, he'd likely be even poorer because of wage gap, expectation that she rather than he would take on majority childcare etc.

I for one haven't said that we should use the term to people. I cautioned against doing so! Just saying that for the purposes of this thread which is examining male behaviour from a feminist perspective it is often a relevant factor in male discussions with women.

...my last to vesuvia/JosefK, not in response to Dervel's post.

Isn't the point here just that "male privilege" has a fairly specific meaning, and if you use the term with someone who isn't familiar with it then it's easy for them to invent their own (mis-)interpretation? The same is true of more or less any technical term. You just need to be aware that a lot of people outside (radical?) feminist circles haven't heard the term, and are likely to hear it for the first time, put their own interpretation on it, and hear something different from what you mean.

"Avoid jargon when talking to laypeople" is always good advice.

Charlie that is fucking awful, is there anywhere else the challenge can go? I suspect if there is the opportunity cost is so high no one can practically use it.

Are you in a leadership role with your team? The sort of response to this must be incredibly demoralizing to all the hardworking women at your company.

Is there anyone up the chain who might be at all sensitive to that fact?

Naff off, phat MRA

JosefK wrote - "an individual man you're conversing with may very well have no privilege"

I think many people believe that male privilege is about being a rich, successful, well-educated, healthy, middle- or upper-class white man. They also believe that if a man is not all or most of these things then he does not have male privilege.

My view is that male privilege may result in things like wealth or good education but male privilege is basically about being male. All men have male privilege, whether they like it or not. The only way a man could give up his male privilege is to stop being male.

Poor education removes a man's education privilege but it does not remove his male privilege. A rich man has higher status than a rich woman. A poor man has higher status than a poor woman.

In a one-to-one comparison of a rich, white woman and a poor, black man, many people conclude that the man does not have as many privileges as the woman (she has financial and racial privileges) and therefore the man has lost his male privilege. Although I agree that the woman does have two privileges, I think this is a false comparison trap and I disagree with their conclusion about the man. The woman having two privileges does not mean that the man has no male privilege. The man has not lost his maleness.

When I compare the man and woman in my example, the process I use is trying to control for various variables.

To find e.g. male privilege, I compare many groups of male people and female people, not just a one-to-one comparison of two people:

compare rich white men and rich white women
compare rich black men and rich black women
compare poor white men and poor white women
compare poor black men and poor black women
etc.

I conclude that the man in my example has male privilege and the woman has financial and racial privilege.

Another example could compare Chinese peasant boys with Chinese peasant girls. The boys are born and raised to work on the farm. Many of the girls are drowned at birth (if the female foetus was even allowed to develop into a baby). Even though the boy may have a life that is much harder than the life of a rich white woman in Europe, the poor Chinese peasant boy has male privilege because girls in his village were murdered for not being male .

It started with a member of my team raising an equal pay query, which was entirely justified and reasonable. The manager of the man she chose as a comparator was clearly outraged at the very idea she would have the utter temerity to compare herself thus. The claim failed for very weak reasons, and the backlash has been ongoing. I have been horrified by the reaction to it, it's really pissed a group of people off and it's very clear that they have a totally disproportionate view of their own skill set and worth. I would describe their view as deluded.

I usually just start irl trolling if they are being obtuse or willfully ignorant. All the while laughing in a jovial way so they can't get "too emotional".

What's the situation Charlie?

I think it's very difficult to get your point across to ignorant people without deconstructing and examining the situation at length, which is rarely going to work in the workplace

I'm sorry you are having a hard time with idiots

I do too Pussy I'm really struggling with a situation right now and the privilege and entitlement is so deeply entrenched they just can't see it.