Answers I Want to Give to Privileged Feminists

One of the problems feminist faces as a group is winning over men. They face this issue with women as well, but the feminist movement as a whole is far more antagonistic towards men than it is towards non-feminist women. This antagonism often results in men avoiding feminists altogether or severely limiting their interactions with them. Among men, feminist concepts and theories garner more eye-rolling and laughing than sympathy. It is due in large part to the latent, sometimes blatant, misandry that is an integral part of feminist ideology.

The misandry plays itself out in a myriad of ways, although it is most often open criticism of anything remotely related to males or masculinity. This can range from feminists criticizing complaints from men about women working in certain places to feminists attacking efforts to raise awareness for male victims of rape and domestic violence. This feminist hostility leaves many men with the perception that have nothing positive to say about men, which in turns leads men to avoid feminists and feminism at all costs.

However, few movements can gain the level of social control feminists hope to eventually have by winning over small pockets of people. Despite all the policy changes (many of which negatively affect males) feminist have achieved, despite the Women’s Studies departments at most colleges and despite the slow seeping of their rhetoric into pop culture, feminists remain a relatively small, largely unpopular social movement. Simply put: they need to win men over to continue to grow as a movement. This is not to say that feminists are particularly concerned with men’s issues or that they would or do support them. The reality is far to the contrary, and one would be hard-pressed to find feminists supporting shared parenting, opening men’s shelters for abused men, granting male rape victims access to rape centers or supporting organizations like Male Survivor or The Domestic Abuse Hotline for Men and Women. Rather, it is simply a matter of practicality. They cannot have the level of impact they want if men do not support them.

One feminist, Clarisse, tries to address the issue of the lack of male involvement in the feminist movement:

Male Survivor needs your help

From the site:

I know you all are aware that 2009 has been a very hard year to all non-profit organizations. Here at Male Survivor it has not been any different. Our donations have decreased and some of our members have not been able to renew their memberships. We have tightened our financial belts and continued to look for other sources of support.

Part of that focus has been to put together a team that is working on finding funding for the website, the conference and the Weekend of Recovery program. If you have any experience in successful grant writing and are willing to donate your time to us, please contact me at president@malesurvivor.org and I will put you in touch with the development team to work on that project.

Even with the belt tightening, we also need to ask you for your financial help now. Please consider making a donation to Male Survivor. Currently you may do so through the Supporters/Donor tab on the home page or at https://www.malesurvivor.org/register/register. Or there is now a donate button available to make it easier to donate when you first arrive at the site. Gifts of any size are needed.

Tilting the Scales of Justice

The guiding principle to the Western justice system is the presumption of innocence. The idea is simply that a person should not have to prove he did not commit an act he is accused of.  The principle is this:

1. With respect to the critical facts of the case—whether the crime charged was committed and whether the defendant was the person who committed the crime—the state has the entire burden of proof.
2. With respect to the critical facts of the case, the defendant does not have any burden of proof whatsoever. The defendant does not have to testify, call witnesses or present any other evidence, and if the defendant elects not to testify or present evidence, this decision cannot be used against him.
3. The jury or judge is not to draw any inferences against the defendant from the fact that she has been charged with a crime and is present in court and represented by an attorney. They must decide the case solely on the evidence presented during the trial.

Along this principle is the notion of reasonable doubt, which essentially means that a person cannot be found guilty unless, based on the presented evidence, there is no doubt or no unreasonable doubt the person committed the crime. The concept is that gravity of the potential consequences of a conviction are so significant — ranging from probation to execution — that unless the jurors or bench judge is absolutely certain, based on the presented evidence, the person is guilty, the person should be acquitted. While it is possible for guilty people to go free, morality and ethics would suggest that it would more wrong to send an innocent person to prison or to death.

It is the latter issue that tends to be a problem for some people concerned about female rape victims. The major complaint is that there are not enough convictions. Of the cases that get reported, only some result in charges. Of those that result in charges, only some result in plea agreements or trials. Of those that go to trial, only some result in convictions. Certain groups of people feel that the conviction rate is disproportionately low and in New Zealand one group has proposed a set of changes to the legal system which would apply only in (presumably female) rape cases:

False Allegation With a Twist

Here is an interesting case of a false allegation:

A high school girl who falsely reported she had been sexually assaulted by a classmate was put on 10 months probation Thursday in Sarnia court.

The 16-year-old pleaded guilty to making the false report to Sarnia police in the spring.

The girl and a male student went to a park near their school for consensual sexual activity before returning to school.

She later told police she had been assaulted by the boy.

A police investigation determined it was a false allegation but not before the boy was interviewed by police and the girl underwent a sexual assault examination at the hospital.

The girl admitted the allegation was false.

The girl’s mental health issues played a large part in the false report, said defence lawyer Noelle Wright.

This sounds like the typical false allegation. A girl/woman has consensual sex with a boy/man. It  occurs at an inopportune moment and in an effort to present an explanation the girl/woman claims she was raped. Later it is stated that the girl/woman has “mental health issues” and she is given a slap on the wrist and allowed to walk away.  Here is the twist:

Bulletin Board v59

42 percent of abuse deaths from CPS-probed homes — Nearly half of all Texas children killed by abuse belonged to families previously investigated by Texas Child Protective Services — a statistic that has shown no improvement since 2004, despite efforts to save more children, records show. Each year, about 200 children die of abuse or neglect in Texas — at least 1,227 since 2004, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle. That’s 516 children who died who came from families with CPS histories.

Abuse of men is on the rise — NEWHAM is among the worst boroughs in London for domestic abuse of men, according to figures revealed this week. Metropolitan Police statistics show there were 1,970 reports of domestic offences against men living in Newham in 2008-09. Notifiable offences include threatening behaviour, violence or abuse – psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional – between adults who are or who have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender.

Barbara Kay: Boy-hating is in — Since up to now “gender disappointment” (GD) has been a phenomenon universally associated with female inferiority in patriarchal cultures, I was intrigued by the title of an article in ELLE magazine’s online site by Ruth Shalit Barrett, “Girl Crazy: Women Who Suffer from Gender Disappointment.” The article takes the measure of a new phenomenon, a mirror image of the gender pathology we see in honour/shame societies: women so desperate for a female child they will do anything and spend any amount of money to ensure it.

Durand Teacher Faces Sexual Abuse Charges — Just days after learning of the allegations, authorities arrested a Durand high school Spanish teacher, 23 year old Jennifer Bland. Bland is accused of sexually abusing several male students and at least two of them on more then one occasion. “We have four victims ages 14-17 all students in the Durand school system” says Winnebago county states attorney Joe Bruscato. Some of the allegations date all the way back to April, others are as recent as this month.

Domestic Violence Isn’t Necessarily What You Thought — When you hear the words “Domestic Violence” what victim comes to mind? When you do a Google Search for “what is domestic violence,” the very first link is titled “Web Definitions for domestic violence.” Its definition states: “violence or physical abuse directed toward your spouse or domestic partner; usually violence by men against women.” This definition clearly shows a “bias” against men… There is a large segment of academia that believes the number of men who are victims of domestic violence is far greater than the numbers being reported.

Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution

The UK recently conducted an investigation to determine the rate in which foreign women are brought into the UK for forced prostitution and sex slavery. As the title states, the investigation found not one case of forced prostitution:

The UK’s biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country.

The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media.

Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all.

While some prosecutions have been made, the Guardian investigation suggests the number of people who have been brought into the UK and forced against their will into prostitution is much smaller than claimed; and that the problem of trafficking is one of a cluster of factors which expose sex workers to coercion and exploitation.

What does appear to be the case, based on the investigation, is that the women (and presumably the boys and men) who are brought into the UK are typically willing sex workers. Granted, it is difficult to believe they did not encounter at least one instance of a person being forced into prostitution. There were only 528 arrests made, so it is entirely possible that the men and women who are sex slaves went unnoticed. However, when the numbers are looked at, it becomes a little more credible:

A Dose of Stupid v27

It happens every day. In fact, it is pretty hard to avoid it. There are some things that can only be understood with a slap on the forehead. Things so mind-boggling that one wonders how humans managed to evolve thumbs while being this mentally inept. Case in point:

Virginity and Whiny Males

From the post:

When males use the term self-referentially (as in, “that woman took my virginity when I was a boy”), it has the effect of shoring up male supremacy. It erases the physical differences between females and males and casts as unimportant the actual invasion of female bodies, the tearing of female flesh, the physiological colonization of femaleness by males, in order to create the illusion of similarity where there is none. The erasure of this distinction allows males to divert attention away from systematic male violation of the integrity of the female body, especially the very young, physically immature female body (the rape act itself, as well as any resultant pregnancy or disease) toward the rare and corporeally noninvasive exploitation of boys by adult women. These two occurrences are not the same, neither in effect nor in frequency, which should go without saying.

One of the most tragic truths about female abusers is that they have people like the blogger above who go out of their way to mitigate the effects of female sexual violence against boys. The blogger’s claims have no basis in fact or in experience. It is simply something she posits because it is her perception that females are incapable of causing physical harm.