Maya’s response to Radical Notion’s GC divisions

I have lost track of this one and so apologise if already posted. Not sure it's worthy of its own thread but here's KJK on the Radical Notion that...(!!)

twitter.com/theposieparker/status/1623951872213090304?s=46&t=2DaXX6tZd08GhIvdVOaAVQ

"The Radical Notion that I’m right. SHORT - Happy Anniversary to me #letwomenspeak #freespeech #TERFTok youtube.com/shorts/v_sLZGM… via @YouTube"

All three were really clear that a lot of men were dangerous and couldn't be trusted around women.

This is so true. I’ve also chatted with men who are a bit weirded out by their own instincts and impulses, so they understand why sexually deviant men do what they do. This one chap was so insistent that I never ever hitchhike. Even though he would never act on the impulse, he was aware of the fleeting thought, upon passing a female hitchhiker, that ‘it would be so easy’ in his mind- I suppose it was his sexual instincts talking to him.
I think it is in the Symposium, someone looks into the eyes of Socrates and tells him he is utterly corrupt, the other men jump to his defence, but Socrates admits it’s true, but he uses his own reason and willpower to control himself.

Lots of men are aware of this internal battle to control their own impulses.

Yes @pattihews !

I don’t mean to rile you @JoodyBlue . I’m just expressing my opinion.

My DH is fine with words like patriarchy and recognises rape culture, and as a result our relationship is very strong. I don’t have to censor a single one of my feminist opinions!

Not sure what you mean by “equivalently sexist” either - that’s not a thing…

Something anecdotal from my life, to support the idea of women upholding patriarchy.

I have two close relatives who did jury service. Both oversaw cases of violence against women. One is a man, the other is a woman.

The man relative, believed the defendant was guilty, but noticed that they jury went against the victim when she said something they construed as racist - ‘just because they do that sort of thing in his country’. The jury was a majority of women. He fought and fought for a guilty verdict, but the women insisted not guilty (the extremely unlikely possibility she was motivated by racial prejudice was considered ‘reasonable doubt’) and he finally relented.

In the other case, the woman relative, fought hard that the defendant was not guilty. She said she didn’t budge, and outlasted everyone on the jury, so they conceded and gave the not guilty verdict. She was overjoyed to see him collapse with relief. I asked her how she was so sure. She said “I saw that beautiful young man, with everything ahead of him, I just knew in my heart, straight away that he couldn’t be guilty”. Basically, for her, young good looks + male + looking sad and frightened at the possibility of prison = innocent.

I fucking despair. Really I do.

You also don’t need to claim that ‘patriarchy hurts men as much too’. Men aren’t stupid. They know their own sex and what they are like.

Yes. I have a number of men who work for me on a sub-contractual basis. They go into peoples' homes and I've chosen them not just for their skills but for their woman-friendliness. I was up some scaffolding checking a roof recently with my roofer and electrician and they spontaneously started talking about men going into women's loos with the site foreman who was with us. All three were really clear that a lot of men were dangerous and couldn't be trusted around women. There was disapproval of porn, too. They have wives, they have daughters, they know.

@pattihews I don't feel it is self censorship. For example my household has had many discussions around the protection of women's rights and safeguarding recently. I don't not talk, as if probably obvious from this thread 😂But I don't think it is a helpful term in the west because most people read Patriarchy as "men". I am trying to say that in our current culture we need decent people, men and women, to work together in support of women's rights.

So by asserting that men are outside the women framework we are shooting ourselves in the foot. I suspect I will not convince you. Moreover I am bringing personal experience onto a public web forum more than I want to. So this is the last post I will contribute on the use of the term patriarchy. Like KJK, I don't think it is useful. But I do not self censor any more than she does.

On the topic of the word ‘patriarchy’ did anyone see KJK’s latest where she was saying that she doesn’t see it as a helpful term?

I agree that it pisses men off, but I have happily pissed off pretty much every man I know using it. To me it is really important that they learn to not get defensive about it, so they can see that women’s lower worth and social status is a global pattern, and the fact that women are needing to fight for something as basic as to keep our own name, is symptomatic of that lower worth and status. The pattern, is that in or species, males dominate, females submit to that domination, and if we resist we are punished.

People often need to have it explained that it doesn’t mean a conspiracy of men going for regular plotting meetings at the ‘patriarchal oppressors strategy club’. Also, that many women are heavily invested in patriarchy too - they may favour their sons over their daughters, fight hard to stop women in the clergy, smear a victim of male violence and lionise the perpetrator, etc, etc.

You also don’t need to claim that ‘patriarchy hurts men as much too’. Men aren’t stupid. They know their own sex and what they are like. Many men trust women more that they trust their own sex, especially when it comes to showing any vulnerability or weakness. Also, an awful lot of men have a clear soft spot for women, in the way women (and they) have for children. They can see that we are smaller, weaker and more vulnerable than them, they feel it instinctively on an animal level, and it makes them feel protective of us.

I think there's a difference between porn culture and rape culture although they are closely linked. And we should absolutely call it rape culture because otherwise how will men understand the gravity of their pushing boundaries – as that study shows. I don’t think our culture understands rape well at all and I wonder if it is poorly defined. I think “bad sex” can be extremely close to rape and sometimes the boundary is blurry. And the cases at the boundary are violating and distressing but different to a violent stranger rape. So I don’t know whether there should be a different category or not but I don’t think there’s enough public discourse around it yet. The concept of “bad sex” means different things to men and women so is an unhelpful term in public discourse. And there's a lot of talk about communication and consent when it comes to sex, but you can't communicate your way out of a situation where your partner is ultimately acting in their own interest and not yours. It comes back to the idea of sex having a deeper connective meaning and how love (that again @JoodyBlue !) is actually quite central to sex being an emotionally and spiritually fulfilling experience. The sex industry and porn culture strips love and depth of meaning out of sex in and sells it as a physical transaction.

But most men know that porn is bad for men as well as for women, they know it destroys erectile function and that porn use makes relationships with sexual and romantic partners strained, that porn is a direct contributor to relationship breakdown.

I don’t know if this is due to my age (29) but I disagree with this; I think these men are a small minority. Admittedly my anecdotal sample size is small, but I do discuss porn with men I come across. A lot of men defend it, minimise its harms, tell me I’m unrealistic for not wanting porn in a relationship/not wanting porn to exist/wanting regulation. When they refuse to engage I know there is some cognitive dissonance going on but they want their vice. Porn is considered as normal as netflix. I met one man who avoided it because of its effects on the brain, similar to a drug, and he was quite into natural lifestyle health and fitness etc. There are religious men who don't use porn. I'm yet to meet a man who recognises how it hurts women, and the relationship between men and women.

Good on you. What's so derogatory about the word patriarchy that you can't mention it to your partner for fear of offending him? Do you think your self-censorship is a key element to keeping it a happy relationship.

I am a feminist within a happy marriage. There are many many of us who stand for women in all sorts of circumstances that are different, who donate, who write emails, who care, many of us came from working class backgrounds. Many of us do not choose to trash our relationships through derogatory language towards the people we also care about. I get the anger, I really do get it. But I'm not walking out on the men in my life in order to be a "feminist" One of the saddest things I witnessed was a boy of around 10 years old listening to his mother talking generally about him "like all men". He said "mum, please don't keep telling everyone I'm a bad person". That broke me. How does that help? Honestly?

*choose - typed too fast and missed that word! @EndlessTea thank you

@pattihews no 100% no. I do not to be careful. I choose to relate, there is a difference. As I have said above if you choose to adopt a paradigm of all men are like this, you are on a losing streak from the beginning. If you only adopt an us and them attitude where is the coming together? Most women and men want to come together.

Yes. It was beautifully put.

@EndlessTea that was me 😁

I know the thread has moved on a bit, but I wanted to second what @teawamutu said about this:

For me it is the word that is never used in academic discussion which is love. Caring for somebody else more than yourself. A hugely powerful thing that can only work to the benefit of societies.

My guess is that you don't have any strong relationships with men to be quite that shirty. But if my OH spoke to me in an equivalently sexist fashion about Women who can't cope with words like xxxx (take your pick) our relationship wouldn't last 2 minutes.

I think perhaps you miss what that post says about you and all the other women who have to be careful what they say around men in order to maintain relationships. To have a strong relationship with men women can't express their shirty side, eh?

@ShireWifeofNigelFarage I think those points are well made and yes I think it works better "porn culture" . Although I take the point made upthread that patriarchy still describes many societies globally and I see that too. I am arguing that it is less useful as a term now in the west because of the successes of 2nd wave feminism. If feminists don't stop and take stock success can be overidden. I think this is happening/has happened.

My guess is that you don't have any strong relationships with men to be quite that shirty. But if my OH spoke to me in an equivalently sexist fashion about Women who can't cope with words like xxxx (take your pick) our relationship wouldn't last 2 minutes.

I am talking about effective communication. I am flippin riled by your post. It doesn't make the point the way you think it does.

I wonder if calling it ‘porn culture’ is more efficient?

Rape is a very serious crime and most humans would shy away from accusations that we were implicit in a very serious crime we didn’t directly commit*

But most men know that porn is bad for men as well as for women, they know it destroys erectile function and that porn use makes relationships with sexual and romantic partners strained, that porn is a direct contributor to relationship breakdown.

Plus men are increasingly developing a male-specific type of body dysmorphic disorder (sometimes called ‘bigorexia’) and the idealised male body types in mainstream porn feed that insecurity (it is no coincidence that the repugnant (in all ways) Ron Jeremy was such a big name in financial heyday of porn).

Plus the influence of porn on mainstream celebrity culture is undeniably visible,
so much so that ‘pornified’ and ‘pornification’ are words now.

*I’m thinking of that survey where a horrific amount of young men admitted pressuring a woman into sex they knew full well she didn’t want to have but still adamantly denied being rapists (despite non consensual penetration with a penis being the very definition of rape).

I don’t buy that some men don’t see rape culture. I’m sure they could if they bothered to look. E.g. they’ll watch porn or have friends who do, right? It’s everywhere in mainstream culture anyway.

The whole point of this sex/gender conversation is keeping words like female and patriarchy meaningful so that we can accurately describe power dynamics and name our oppressors.

We are the majority. Men who can’t cope with words like patriarchy aren’t going to be helpful, so pandering to them is a waste of time.

Yes I think maybe so. Annoyed I've lost the article

I thought it was increased oxytocin in men.

Notes scribbled this morning:

Love Gina Rippon and have read her book.

It does strike me that the left is as infected with men's rights activists as the right. So are the greens.

Green / eco strategies or politics are generally agreed on by both left and right in the U.K, as sensible and obvious necessities, based on science (routes may differ). Women's rights should be seen in a similar fashion based on biology.

So upset I've lost a couple of articles which would be relevant to the thread 😭.
Re pregnancy and brains - apparently womens brains change structurally during pregnancy and this lasts for up to two years. Male brains can also change as a result of their care giving / bonding with baby but not on such a grand scale.

The more time a male spends with baby the more this occurs (iirc testosterone also reduced?) so can be seen also in male gay couples adopting (our friends are next week!)

I wonder if she was reported

I wonder who reported it.

The segregation nonsense would only work if it was against sex separation in any context.

It isn't. The argument is that it's fine to exclude MOST men, but not THOSE men because Reasons. (And we identify as this not harming or excluding women from any space so men can have all the spaces).

No, it's really not like <stuff appropriated, wholly not properly researched or understood historical simile here with total disregard for the offensiveness to the people it actually happened to and inappropriacy of weaponising their trauma. To borrow a bit of the burble>