Not all men

[AskBasil]

Interesting article here

I sometimes think that they dont or wont remaining a minority group though. So that they can keep saying the same old same old.

'Are you saying that you dont know what truth is?'

No, I didn't say that.

BB. All of those should have the word "some" in them.

Buffy. It would go a long way.

Sorry, but what a load of nonsense.

Women can pussyfoot around the issues all we like - and in the process, we can let other women think they're alone, that it's their fault, that they failed. We can change our language until we're tying ourselves in knots and we could preface every statement with 'of course, I am sure the men know better, but ...'.

And you know what?

The debate would still get derailed.

Or do you think that women are murdered and raped every week by men because we're inviting violence, and if we only stopped to mind our grammar, it'd all go away?

buffy - while I take your point, TBH, the number of radical feminist I know or know of who hate men (either all the men in their lives or men as a class) I could count on the fingers of one hand. I think very few rad fems hate men.

i propose replacing 'some' with 'quite a lot'

as in

quite a lot of men are violent to their partners
quite a lot of men are rapists
quite a lot of men benefit from structural oppression of women

it's certainly true, and leaves room for all those blessed innocents who are not like that

You can make a true statement which applies to the majority of a class or group.

Adults are taller than children.

We know there are exceptions - there are tall 12+ year olds and short adults or adults who have dwarfism etc. But still we accept that adults are taller than children. We don't feel the need to preface this with "most" or "some".

You can't make a statement which applies only to a minority of the group in this way. Well you can, obviously, but it's untrue which makes it meaningless.

Men who don't rape are "Blessed innocents"?

gee kim, i am bemused by the idea that the incidence of terrorist activity by muslims occurs on anything even remotely approaching the incidence of men's violence against women

it's almost like you want to minimise women's oppression or something

could you elaborate why you are equating incredibly rare stuff with depressingly common stuff?

do you not like women, muslims, or can you just not do math?

Do you want to be more mainstream or not?

Do you care more about the cause, or about , and here I cannot find the right word ironically!
An agenda, fighting a cause, being somewhat unique? I dont know what exactly.

oh of course not, tiggy, we all know there are like 3 men who are rapists in the whole world.

You know something really depressing?

Imagine trying to argue by this bizarre definitions of 'truth' being set up here? You'd say 'Well, as of 18.02 on 17/05/14, 35400 women have been raped by men ... no, sorry, 35401 women ...'. Then further up the thread you'd have to qualify 'shit, sorry all, this argument is totally untruthful! We're all using the figures for May and it's now June, that means we're onto 42500 ...'.

(Figures from Everyday Sexism, btw, in case you're wondering).

I cannot help feeling that when 'some men' and 'some women' are counted in numbers like this, that keep on increasing because there is an underlying pattern of gendered oppression, it is utterly stupid and pointless to pretend we're all politely ignoring the underlying truth.

kins - who's 'you' here?

You seem to think feminism is a movement that should popularise by ignoring women's oppression and being more fluffy. You've confused us with Cosmopolitan magazine.

Perhaps you care more about debating, than the issue/cause/feminism. Call it what you choose.

Oh, lord.

This is feminist bingo, isn't it?

You need to be more mainstream.

If you want to be taken seriously, you should ...

You're putting people off feminism.

Does someone want to suggest we're all bitter and overreacting, please? Just so I can put the thread down and go outside in the sun (which I might do anyway).