Last week I did an email interview with Dr. Paul Nathanson, co-author of Spreading Misandry, Legalizing Misandry, Sanctifying Misandry. He and Katherine Young are currently working on a new project called Transcending Misandry to read the interview (warning! its long :P) go here...
It has recently been brought to my attention that my final draft of a book review for "Spreading Misandry" was not put up and instead only the little gripes/first draft/nonformal information was placed online instead. I formally apologize to my readers and to both Dr. Paul Nathanson and Dr. Catherine Young for this mistake the actual review has been put up in full where the old one was prior
Welcome to Part 2 of ____ of my Struggle for Fairness series, today we are going to look at the world of business and work, things that we have done to change the world and how they have pushed one groups back and forward. Discrimination in the work place, after finishing the “Why Men Earn More” its fresh in my head and I would like to take care of it now. Lets start by looking male and female in-groups. In-groups are tight social groups, which feminists often describe as a “boy’s club” that keeps the “glass ceiling” in place. It is and isn’t there, we do tend to socialize more with our own gender because we find it easier based on habitual practices. However women do the same thing, and in my opinion what women feel comfortable talking about is more alienating, maybe that’s due to the break down of gender roles for women and not for men, but it exists nonetheless. This boys club is not the entire reason there are not women higher up in the workforce (once again-look at why men earn more) but it is a tiny tiny tiny part. Quite frankly as more women enter the work world, get some knowledge and fight there way to the top (only 15 of the fortune 500 companies are run by women) we will see this happen in future generation, basically we are waiting for part of sexism to literally die out. The backlash is the “boys club” view will still be there and the “girls club” will take its place. Because of the “boy’s club” illusion we push women forward even when they are not qualified or less qualified. More here...
One big MRA issue is suicide, and for a good reason. Men are more likely to commit suicide than women and have been for ages. Emile Durkheim, French sociologist wrote an excellent book called Suicide you can probably guess what its about. Essentially suicide is related to social bonds and generally speaking a lack of them. This is why closer communities and religions institutions often have lower suicide rates. However, there are also excessive social bonds that can cause suicide. Looking at the basic ideas from any intro to sociology class I can see theres a huge difference in the types of social bonds-essentially there are those of personal identity and bonds regarding social duties. It also explains why men have such a high suicide rate. Looking at the conservative theory of masculinity and what it means to be a man, we see a theory of labor and providing, valuing men for what they did and for who they did it, not how they felt about it. So what happens when men lose the value in what they did? Heres what we get when we have a lack of social bonds regarding identity: When wartime ended suicide went up (both because the people committing suicide were getting shot during war and the loss of the value of soldiers leading to a lack of social placement) this also explains why suicide rates are higher among soldiers than civilians The higher the education level the more likely you are to commit suicide, so when men were expected to pursue higher learning to provide…you can do the math (think of the episode of the simpsons where lisa draws a chart relating intelligence to happiness) The rest of the reasons men commit suicide are here...
We all know fifty percent of DV cases are either deal with both parties abusing and/or men being abused. One of the biggest complaints is the zero tolerance instant jail policies that VAWA has created. There are a lot of problems with tossing people in jail based on blank accusations. But more importantly you should know a few things,starting with which states have instant jail policies Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin And thes are the ones that encourage tossing people in jail: more here....
One of the motives of feminism attacked by the MRM is degenderization of society. Half of feminism is for this, half is of the “there is nothing good about men” and the half that is for this generally feels removing gender should gravitate men’s actions towards them. Or, they have degendered only male activities keeping women’s to themselves. But suppose there is no bias in degenderizing (not saying everyone should assimilate to acting male or female, therefore making them vanish without diversity) and that things are no longer considered “male” or “female” jobs/traditions/activities is this a good or a bad thing? First lets look at the benefits Well it has its perks; it will help to depolarize society that creates gender barriers which prevent both men and women from doing things. This will make stay at home dads more acceptable just as women in the workforce, and it will minimize how much we identify with gender-which should not be the sole or even primary source of how we identify ourselves. It will remove a lot of conflict. Keep in mind whats left of being “male” is abuse, rape, murder etc-getting rid of those or making them gender neutral would be a great thing. And best of all, the obligations associated with chivalry would be tossed out the window for the cons, and sharing of your opinions come here....
(alternative titles are: The post i promised after paul's assistance in my publicity; a rational approach to equality; shit ive been working on when i should have been sleeping) When does helping turn into hurting? This is a topic I seem to be circling around quite a bit. When does helping one group turn into hurting another? Or possibly that same group? You could say it starts right away, or you could say it starts with a snowball effect. This alone is such a deep topic that I have decided that I am going to try to dedicate an entire series of posts to the concept. I am going to call it my Struggle for Fairness series. You will find that many ideas overlap and may not be entirely clear because of that, if you have trouble making sense of things, let me know and I will tweak things a bit. For part one of my ___ part series I am going to talk about the core idea of filling the gap. There is a gap of opportunity between many many groups on whatever category you wish to sort them. Obviously we are going to look at rights for men and women. Essentially the group that is behind wants to advocate themselves and work towards equality. Sounds great right? Well heres where it gets more complicated. You can push one group forward, or you can push one group backwards, or you can do both. There are benefits to each. By pushing one group forward you can get things that one group has but the other does not. The right to vote, own property etc were things that women would push for in first wave feminism and they were correct to do so-I would have been marching with them (until I discovered the uglier side of it all) That pushed women forward. Then they complained about the dominance of men in the workplace and pushed for more women and to give them more opportunities, which pushed men back, in this manner it is almost a reflex due fact that there are so many people that will be employed. This makes sense as its not as much targeting men as men but rather men as people as they are trying to break social barriers. That is, until they talk about preferential treatment and things like affirmative action (in reality not in theory), in which case it is not because that doesn’t nudge men back a little on the grounds of practicality, that pushes men way way back This when the pushing forward becomes a problem, as we push one group forward so far it leaves the other one behind instead of trying to get them to a level playing field. The main goal should always be to push one group forward without pushing the other group back, however there are times it is unavoidable and justifiable. The rest is Here...
Paul Elam has been a huge deal of inspiration for me in regards to the MRM, as stated in my first post it is where i took the concept of the Zeta Male from (after i got his near instantly permission to use the term) so why am i talking about this now? Because Paul advertised for my blog in one of his videos!!!! you can even see my blog at 4:33 there is a huge post on a big concept coming tomorrow-something i have been working on since i have started this blog so stay tuned folks!
I talked the other day about how there are negative reviews on Amazon Books, (which are great for a boost in motivation). But the biggest claim made are “its men who make and enforce the stereotypes in the media as the men run everything” You also hear "its not jews who oppress jews or blacks who oppress blacks so its not the same" Apparently theyve never heard of the self hating jew or the uncle tom. Lets look at that. The first answer is yes-it is men and men are sell outs for the name of profit, that’s definitely a problem. The second part is-Who is it aimed at? If these people are working in the name of profit then their goal is to reinforce the stereotypes in the minds of the target audience If the target audience is women then they are feeding the women what they want. What the women want is misandric. This means that men sold out, may or may not be misandrists but cannot be forgiven. More (including an episode of politically incorrect with christina hoff sommers) here...
Spreading Misandry: The teaching of Contempt for men in popular culture. By Paul Nathanson and Latherine Young is a good read and I advise everyone take a look at it if you are interested in misandry in the media or media literacy. I should first mention how I came across Nathanson. Once again we go back to the Male Studies Symposium-he talked about the institutionalization of misandry and got quite a bit of attention from me, so naturally more research was in order. A few things other things should be mentioned about this book before we go into it as well. First, it is not strictly a sociological text, it even states so. However it does rely on qualitative data and is very much qualified to be a reading for a social science class The entire book is about misandry in the media, it’s a great topic as there is plenty to dive into, and it divides the book up into different categories of misandry, bypassing men, degrading, demonizing, dehumanizing, etc. It also gives in depth analysis into several incredibly successful movies, the blatantly misandric and those that it takes a bit more analysis to find the misandry. He picks examples that you would never expect and makes you see them in a different light. I understand the book is about gender but there are times that you want to put the book down for a few days after screaming “Okay enough already! We get it!” in that sense it can be quite frustrating. Obviously it’s a book about gender so its to be expected, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. That being said, there are times it feels like he is making a mountain out of a mole hill. I feel he misses the point of South Park, attacks All in the Family, and the Simpsons all of which I can defend to death, Some of his examples remind me of “The way of ignorance” by Wendell Barry and how people cannot be blamed for unintentional ignorance read the rest of the review here....
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