Not all Romans

[AskBasil]

The Romans built the first roads in Britain.

But not all Romans

The Vikings built ships which sailed as far as America.

Not all Vikings.

Rabbits are known for reproducing really quickly.

Not all Rabbits.

Etc. etc. I think I will add "not all" whenever anyone refers to anything ever, until people stop saying Not All Men as a first response to a class analysis of men's behaviour.

I've just remembered (reading that last post about STEM) that on a thread years ago I said I had a degree in Physcis and Larry said he didn't believe me.

I don't think he'd say that to a male poster.

So with that in mind I think I'll leave this actually.

Whirlpool,

If you said that you had a degree, I never disputed it. Please don't claim things that are not true unless you want to produce the post.

Whirlpool apologises for my crap analogies.

Part of my point is also you can find statistics and evidence to back up most points of views. Not saying the violence one is wrong at all.

Ah. So you don't believe me. Again! It was years ago and I can't even remember who I was then. There was something about molecules (water?) and I said I did a science degree years ago and I think it's something like this but I did Physics not Chemistry and you said Ha you're wrong wrong wrong no-one with a science degree would make a mistake as stupid as that.

I remember because I found it really upsetting and angering and I'd forgotten all about it until just now when I read about your support of females in STEM.

I think Buffy's 'where does the argument get you?' point is spot on.

If the speaker is making the point that the majority of violent crime is carried out by a small proportion of men - and my understanding is that that is the case, especially for sexual violence which tends to be recidivistic - and that therefore violent crime could be considerably reduced by concentrating on that small group - e.g. introducing strategies to pick up minor violations that indicate the probability of later crime - that would be a useful observation.

If the speaker's argument is that because 'not all men are violent' men who do not consider themselves violent have no need to think about gendered violence and the implications of society in which the majority of violence is carried out by men, that would not be useful.

Same grammatical / statistical point, totally different intention.

Whirlpool,

I cannot defend vs something I do not remember and struggle to believe that I would have said. If it was in the heat of some argument, I apologise, although you are not one who pulls their punches in terms of personal attacks.

How about we don't dig up threads from years ago (which is against site policy anyway), and focus on this one?

"you are taking historical facts and trying to make them sound like biased generalisations, but they are not. You are just reading them wrong."

Sorry, how does "the Romans built the roads" differ from "men are more violent than women" in terms of factual information.

Clearly, all the Romans didn't build all the roads, just as not all men are more violent than all women.

So why is one OK but the other not?

Oh look it was easy to find:

Me:

"grendel H30 is "heavy water" and has some intersting properties, if I remember correctly.

I would love to do a job like your aunt's but by brain cells aren't quite up to it I'm afraid! I wanted to work at cern... "

Larry:

"You say you are a physicist and yet think h3o is heavy water? Brilliant advert for female science!"

You see it was a thread where people were having a nice chat, there was no need for that. You made me feel small and stupid, which I assume was the intention. And it made me sad as I took a subject because I really enjoyed it, and I was just having a nice chat with some people about female scientists, and there were some interesting stories about people's female relatives and stuff, and then I got that flung at me, and I thought, why fucking bother.

Anyway it just reminded me of that when you wrote about girls doing science.

I just dug it up because you asked me to FFS.

Now you have decided you don't want me to.

"Women are smaller and lighter than men" is a factual statement. It doesn't apply to all men and all women, but it's broadly true and though it is a generalisation, it is a useful one if you're directly comparing one group with another, without bothering to differentiate the individuals in that group.

Does anyone feel that no-one should ever say that? That there should always be a qualifier? Most women are , some women are?

I suppose my point here is that I'm not sure you always post in good faith Larry it often feels like you are trying to score points and not engaging in the same way as the other posters on threads, and when I see you posting about supporting girls in science I remember a thread where you were posting in a way that was just out of step with the rest of the thread and upsetting.

That thread was quite interesting in terms of women and what they've done in science. Not everyone was onboard with the topic though unfortunately.

I tend to agree with you basil and when people say it depends on context, I would say that here the context is the FWR boards and as such it's obvious that class analysis is what is going on.

I also wonder if people who complain go out to the horrifyingly misogynistic areas of the internet (ie much of the rest of it) and jump in shouting NAWALT all over the place.

Or to put it another way.

The fact that 'Men (as a class) are (on average) much more violent than women (as a class)' has HUGE implications for the way society functions, both now and historically.

If someone replies to that observation that not all men are violent, they're not wrong, but they're either missing or evading the point.

Broadly speaking the correct response to 'Not all men..' is 'So what?'

but the Vikings as an organisational entity did

I am aware this is so not the point of the thread, but, uh, NO!

The Vikings 'as an organisational entity' don't exist. And they certainly didn't organise to do that.

Just like the patriarchy doesn't 'exist' as a sinister secret organisation like the Masons.

There really isn't a distinction between these kinds of statements that makes 'not all men' anything but a whiny exercise in distracting from the arguments at hand.

simonettavespucci- good point.

Buffy- fair enough thanks for answering

The other thing that is interesting with it, is that it's often used in situations where women are talking about experiences they have had as adults or children, and are posting not from a "let's have a serious debate" standpoint but a "this happened to me and lots of my friends and I want to explore it" standpoint.

eg a woman is upset and says "I just had some bloke wanking at me on the train on the way home, why do men do that?" will be met with cries of NAM and his behaviour is aberrant and so on. When that to me seems crass, surely the answer should be, wow that's awful are you OK, yes way too many men do stuff like that, let's talk about why that might be and what could be done.

It's just a silencing technique isn't it?

I've got a horrible feeling that larry has gone away to read that whole thread and will be back to cut and paste at me in a moment.

Sorry for the massive derail, I just read that thing about being involved with girls in science and it set me off.

The vikings were a whole bunch of tribes weren't they, or clans or whatever, who went raiding? Rather than a single organisation? And they probably had lots of different names for themselves, the different groups.

So that sounds likely to me.

Note, I am not a historian, and am actually very shit indeed at history. (Pre-empting any comments about stupidity)

"Forward, Men of the Middle Ages!"

not all motma, obviously

I suppose the next time a woman is in court for killing her husband, I can mock and ridicule anyone who dares say "Not All Women", or does this only work when it's against men?

Yep, we're in 'men of the Middle Ages' territory. 'Viking' is a term that draws together all sorts of different peoples across different times.

Btw, this thread reminds me of my favourite pretentious joke.

Preacher: 'Through Christ, all men are saved.'
Hardline Calvinist: #notallmen.

dis, you're missing the point.

It is true that men, as a class, commit the majority of violent crime.

It is not true that women, as a class, commit the majority of spousal killings.

Statements such as 'men commit violent crime' are useful because the make the gendering of violence easily visible and understandable.

Statements such as 'women kill their husbands' are not very useful, because they are not generally true.

People are much more likely to accept fallacious generalisations when they don't relate to gender, including those that are laughably absurd. There's a reason for that.