'Man-hating feminism'

[MisterDarsey]

There's an article about this in the Times today by Libby Purves, provoked by Lionel Shriver's portrayal of the boy in 'We need to talk about Kevin'

Just thought you'd like to know

i get called a man hater sometimes but im not.
im very passionate in my views on abuse ect.
a woman isnt allowed to have loud/passionate views.
a middle class woman that does will get called a "man hating feminist"!
a working class/underclass woman with very strong views will just be called"mad"!
both "shut up"words!

Conservative sans capital 'C', as in people resistant to change, whether political or not i.e. most anti-feminists.

I will have to stay being straw then, because I was referring to two particular people and they are on another discussion board, they don't go on there much anymore, and I'd have to dig through months of threads to find all that stuff. Plus a lot of it is things said verbally too, so not tangible, but I have good enough faith in my hearing to store it away as an opinion. I realise this sounds an awful cop-out and you can call me a liar etc if you want, but I don't have much incentive to lie. :)
Here's one example Google throws up:
rageagainstthemanchine.com/2009/07/05/why-i-hate-men-part-1-and-then-it-hit-me/

Maybe citing just one example isn't very convincing, but I don't know very many feminists and they make up a rather larger proportion of the number I know than most people. Plus they were the first Real Live ones who knew their stuff, not including authors of books I'd read, I'd come across/could interact with.

I think TBM is still relevant today. Now there's a lot of stigma about feminists being stereotyped as a lot of man haters, people get v. angry when that sort of accusation comes up, but just because it's not out there in the open doesn't mean it doesn't exist. As with many other things.

Past grievances- what kind of grievances have women had to face in the past? I'm talking generally. Instead of talking about the men who've kept women down in the past, talk about men who are keeping women down now.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so vehement and maybe it isn't such a big thing afterall. I'm quite willing to climb down and have you tell me that there is no such thing as a group of 'man hating' feminists. So there aren't any? I don't want there to be, you know.

damn straight they're "shut up!" words. Time to remember Rebecca West's fabulous line: "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

People call you a man-hater when you don't namby-pamby, 'Oh of course I don't mean YOU, not all men are like that, well it's not so bad really as it was, oh dear let's not upset the precious little menz' around the place and say what's really wrong with men oppressing women. Which is everything.

If I'm a man hater than the baby currently trying to crawl up my shirt and feed is clearly in trouble the moment he hits puberty. And DH had better watch out I don't poison his meatballs tonight. Oh no, wait, DH is a feminist. Is he a man-hater too? Some kind of self-hatred? How does that work?

it's all such fucking nonsense. People think calling me is a man-hater is going to shut me up when I talk about feminism. As if it's the worst thing in the world! Gosh, they'll say I'm ugly next, and then I'll have to cry into my pink teacup!

No examples then quirrel, of websites where man-hating feminists gather to discuss their stance. No examples of these grievances that feminists spend their time nursing when they should instead be getting over it, whatever it may be. No examples of where feminists are being strident and unpleasant and uncontrollable to shake conservative people up (which must therefore be a space shared by "man hating feminists" and also by people of a conservative outlook, so must be a pretty mainstream place).

Righty-ho.

Instead you invite us to categorically state that there is no such thing as a group of man-hating feminists in the world anywhere? Well we can't do that, obviously. There may be a group of 3 women who self-identify as feminists in Latvia who hate men for all I know. The fact that I have never come across a group of "man hating feminists" in RL, or on here, and nor has anyone else apart from SGB, surely goes to show that if there is such a "branch" they are pretty well hidden and not very vocal. Certainly not prominent enough to have articles written about them as if everyone knows who they are and where they live and what they stand for.

oh i love dittany-its thanks to her that im finnally proud to be a woman!

No websites specifically for that purpose, no.

I don't "invite" you. I'm asking you. So you categorically can't tell me whether there are any groups of this type around? That's all you've been saying so far afterall. Read the post.
I hereby admit that two people and examples in TBM doesn't constitute a group (at least not in your eyes). All right? By 'vehemence', I meant calling it a 'branch' of feminism. Why not be a bit gracious about it?

Who has been called a man hater in this thread? No one.

I agree completely that the term 'man hater' was partly coined to take the wind out of feminist sails and undermine them. I just also think that it was coined to describe something real (that I have some, if negligable, experience of).

So because I don't know what is in the mind of every single person in the whole world, or know what people talk about when they get together, you "win"?

Your statement was this:

"I detest this 'branch' of feminism (man-hating). And it is a branch and it should be stamped out. What are people going to think- that we're struggling against something so inherent we're constantly using up energy fighting them rather than nameless, genderless sexism, so there's no point in even trying? I am well aware that it's only a very small branch, but my gosh, it has enough hate for the rest."

But you have not been able to give any evidence whatsoever that this "branch" actually exists. Instead you say that feminists must prove categorically that they don't. That's silly, it's back to front. You have set an impossible task, to detract from the fact that you can't actually show any evidence that what you stated in your first post is actually the case.

quirrelquarrel wrote "Here's one example Google throws up:
rageagainstthemanchine.com/2009/07/05/why-i-hate-men-part-1-and-then-it-hit-me/
Maybe citing just one example isn't very convincing."

Indeed it isn't very convincing, because here is a quote from the web page you have linked to:

"I don?t hate all men".

Why are you refusing to ignore my backtracking on this?

What's silly is when people brush aside things like apologies/backtracks and carry on arguing about the original thing.

Well yeah- most people who hate an entire block of people like that don't usually keep to the rules that often, they like their exceptions.

Ah well, at least I've contributed one good thing- even if it was written by someone else! :o
Should probably read some up to date feminist theory and get some more life experience before posting on this board again, message well learnt.

quirrel apols if you were genuinely backtracking, and do stick around

There are a lot of people who post on this board about how feminists hate men, and they do everyone a disservice, and how if feminists were less strident/shrieky/argumentative/uncompromising and would just stop for a minute and arrange some flowers then they'd get a lot more done then more people would listen etc etc. I thought that you were one of these, who pretend to be interested in a conversation but actually just have an axe to grind. If you aren't one of those then sorry, and do stick around and join in.

Is now the wrong time to admit that I found bridget jones (the original column and the first book) proper laugh out loud funny? I haven't read them for a few years, mind.

I always thought the point about Bridget was that she was a caricature comprising all the little insecurities women have blown up huge. So when people said they identified, they meant that they had done things a bit like Bridget in their time - get a bit obsessed with a bloke, worry about their weight, make a tit out of themselves at work. Rather than that they literally thought they were exactly like her in all respects IYSWIM.

excellent points from StayFrosty.

I liked early Bridget Jones too but there was a magazine article 'I am Bridget Jones!' in which a bunch of women competed as to how like Bridget Jones they were. Which was a bit tragic.

Thanks and accepted :)
Ha- "refuse to ignore".

I was talking about Bridget Jones to my mum the other day and she was quite upset to have her Bridget derailed.
There are worse icons to have- Bridget doesn't have trouble finding a job, she stands up to Mark- the "strong" man, as opposed to Daniel, who's weak and gets his shots cheaply...well, I can't find much.

It could be redeemable perhaps if the film showed that all these insecurities are grounded, not silly (even if we'd be much better off without them, obviously) but show why they are there, why they've emerged and that they don't weaken a women so much that they have to be made fun of for them.
Since they're being made to look purposeless and born out of a woman, that's what makes women seem weak to the core. And some things, like when Bridget feels she has to look up where Germany is so she can square up to Daniel, the "weak" one, you can't really defend that.

I thought she was pretty pathetic over the men TBH.

I identified more with the getting pissed and making an arse out of yourself side of things

I suppose on the grounding thing, the (mostly female) audience understands where these insecurities come from, as they have grown up with it IYSWIM.

<a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=www.wartgames.com/crafts/occupations_scarecrow.gif&imgrefurl=www.wartgames.com/crafts/scarecrows.html&usg=__B8Z26Ou9PvHdQnj4qrDTRPakIfg=&h=648&w=491&sz=42&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=fGnvNmx6sZZPsM:&tbnh=148&tbnw=113&ei=NdDSTYr_MpGhOs7HqOYK&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dscarecrow%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DP3Q%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D619%26tbm%3Disch1%2C0&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=1044&vpy=233&dur=3827&hovh=258&hovw=195&tx=121&ty=178&page=1&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0&biw=1280&bih=619" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I'm going to use this picture of a Straw Feminist like the biscuit emoticon is used

Fab dungarees ayerobot!!!

although a 'Bridget Jones turns serial killer' rewrite, in manner of Pride and Prejudice With Zombies, might be good.

except she is so hapless she would probably kill Mark Darcy by accident.

I think it's thoroughly unfair to Lionel Shriver to take her book as an example of This Is What Nasty Feminists Are Like. . When you write a novel, it's generally a series of 'What Ifs?' that you start from, and kind of see what happens. A novel is not a mission statement - well, some people write novels as propaganda and these are usually not very good novels...
I also wouldn't label Andrea Dworkin a man-hater. I had a run-in with her creepy fuck of a boyfriend some 20 years ago, now there was a man-hater...

Disappointed in Libby Purves. I've always had a lot of time for her and her column in one of the sailing mags is robustly non-pink and fluffy when it comes to women and boats. She is of course, entirely misguided both in her view of feminists and the point of the book.

I wonder if she has an understandably skewed view of a difficult book about a mother and a son given that her own son committed suicide a few years a ago.

Perhaps women think of themselves as being like Bridget because the book was written in a generation when many women did not get married/pregnant until their thirties, and the book was one of the first to address living through such an experience. If lots and lots of media was created that was mainly about what happens to women, women would have a wider range of characters to identify with, and so not cluster around the few well known characters available. Men don't need to identify with particular characters because their experiences are seen as the norm and constantly presented in a huge number of ways in films etc.

As for the article and this thread, I don't get it. We Need to Talk about Kevin a fictional book about a fictional woman who emotionally abuses a fictional boy who kills fictional people. Are we meant to use this book as a way of discussing why real women abuse real boys? Or why real boys become real killers? Wouldn't it be better to look at that by using real cases?

If we are talking about whether or not most women, or even most feminists, are bringing boys up in an inappropriate way, there is a world of difference between inappropriate and child abuse. So what has this book got to do with anything at all?

It just seems like same old, same old. Male kills people. Male blames woman for inciting his criminal behaviour. The author has created a fictional book to pedal the same old explanation of why some men kill or maim.