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I'd like to point out, again for the millionth unacknowledged time, that the rhetoric of dismissing some harmful social or cultural phenomenon as something that only men do to men is sexist.
The user of this complacent rhetoric has certain conclusions in mind that he or she wants to draw, namely, that men deserve what they get and, most importantly for the moral conscience of the user, that the moral obligation to end whatever harm that men do to men rests solely - and this is what gives the rhetoric its disengenuousness - not so much with the male gender itself if the person making the claim happens to be male, but with the individuals who were responsible.
An attitude of indifference toward some cultural group that is violating the rights of its members is probably a form of prejudice. This is relevant when the other cultural group is part of some larger, inclusive culture in which the violated rights in question are presumed to hold throughout society.
I'll assume with Harmon and Kipnis that the male and female genders form their own cultural groups within a larger inclusive culture.
The respondent Douglas Hartwell write "Different "degrees" are supposed to be punished accordingly. He suggests that "stereotypes about women being more innocent, more reformable, and less dangerous than men" are behind "men getting screwed." If men are getting screwed, it's because we're doing it to ourselves."
That's no argument. It doesn't explain which of the two genders is promulgating the idea that women are "more innocent, more reformable and less dangerous than men". Could it be that both are involved? Is the only interaction between the genders the one way street of oppressor oppressing the oppressed?
Note the attempt to deflect claims that expressions of contempt for a cultural group cannot be considered prjudice, in this case men, through the use of vague generalizations about "power": "His argument for "gender bias against males" is as indefensible as "racism towards whites." The fact is that as a social problem, neither exists. White males exercise the overwhelming majority of the power in our society and enjoy the accompanying privileges."
Moreover, Hartwell seems to shrug off the terrible moral blame that his gender deserves because of its proclivity to "embrace violence". Indeed, the culpability of his gender serves for him the useful purpose of discrediting claims of the men's movement.
If men deserve what they get because of their more violent nature, then isn't it wrong for our society to benefit from it? How could society benefit from the male capacity for violence? Isn't it totally destructive and inexcusable under every conceivable circumstance? On the contrary, Hartwell is enjoying his freedom to speak out against the greater proclivity of males toward violence on account of that violence.
Trudy Schuett's article on the Decline of Gender Relations illustrates that war has had a direct influence on the women's movement. Some feminists wish to deny that women have benefited in any way whatsoever from war, claiming instead that only men send men to war for the benefit of men only; women aren't responsible and have no say or interest in the outcome of this expression of masculine violence, except perhaps as unwilling victims.
But women benefited in many ways from the second world war. Feminism owes a debt to the men who died in WWII.
Some feminists seem to suggest that warmakers, members of another gender, deserve what they get. This is sexism. It is morally equivalent to racist assertions that if some minority group wants to prey on its own population, then let them.
But then why should we enjoy our gard won freedom?
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Also, whether or not one wants to admit that gender bias against males exists, males should examine what they are doing to themselves with a view to improving their situation.
The comments in reply to Angelluci's article seem to suggest that since men have all the power privilege and prestige, no improvement in their situation is possible and that all attempts to actually do something about the harmful things men do to each other must wait, essentially forever, until "we" (meaning you, or in any case not me) undo the unforgivable damage "we" (meaning you and not me) have done to others. Of couse the use of "we" here is disengenous because males who feel compelled to apologize for their gender have no intension of going bankrupt to pay reparations for the damage which they magnanimously claim to have perpetrated, because they know that they themselves weren't responsible, and most of the men they know weren't powerful enough to enjoy the privileges they claim to enjoy and weren't responsible either.
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday February 27, @05:14PM EST (#3)
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From what I can tell a lot of people buy into the notion that if men are hurting other men, it isn't a gender issue. Consider the sexist, sadly ubiquitous, "Stop Violence Against Women" bumper stickers (which conveniently ignore the fact that males are overwhelmingly the victims of most violence and implies by omission that stopping violence against men is unimportant). Perhaps some of the sentiment behind that idea is that it's OK for men to commit violence against men, but men's commiting violence against women is worse.
If someone raises the "whatever men to do men is OK" argument, confront them with this question. "If women forced other other women to undergo female circumcision, would that be OK? Would it no longer be a gender issue?"
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I didn't want to raise the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) because I had assumed that people were tired of my harping on the subject of circumcision.
I've tried your suggestion, and the response was the most absurd competitive feminist response one could imagine. I did get into a discussion about FGM with a feminist who claimed that routine infant circumcision was something that men do to men, and that FGM was something that women do to women, and so FGM was not a gender issue! Somehow the point that women and girls and not men and boys were having their genitals mutilated could be factored out of the moral equation, because women were doing it to other women.
Of course, gender wasn't eliminated from the moral picture at all - it was crucial to it, but the need for women to be the most oppressed, and for "male oppression" against women to count more than "same gender oppression" leads to this wild moral calculus.
There seems to be the assumption that the two cultures of men and women are completely independent when it comes to "same gender oppression", on the one hand, but the culture of women is pretty much totally dependent on the culture of men as its sole source of gender oppression. This may seem like a faceicious wording, but I mean it exactly that way.
Many of us are trying to find relief from out obligations to be oppressors and have been for some time, and wish that women would not be so dependent on us as a source of oppression. As long as male bashing and everything that goes with it is considered fashionable, women will be dependent on men as a source of oppression. I hope that one day they can be independent without blaming men for not stopping them, or for assuming that men care one way or another how successful they became. The fact is, no one is stopping them.
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday February 27, @08:32PM EST (#6)
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You should send in a reply to the article in the Daily Bruin. People in the UCLA "community" will have preference, but even if you don't get yours printed, it will help get others' printed because they base the number of responses they print on the number of responses they get. Already, Pradeep Ramanathan has responded. And I will too. The more that respond, the more responses will be published. Even a couple of lines helps.
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by Anonymous User on Friday March 02, @12:59AM EST (#8)
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Picture the scene. Hartwell is convicted of a crime and the (honest) male judge says, "if you were a woman, I'd give you a one year sentence, but since you're a man, I'll give you a three year sentence. Fair enough?"
Hartwell replies: "Well your honor, if you were a woman, I'd call it discrimination, but since you're a man, I won't. After all, it's just men screwing men. Fair enough."
And this guy is a UCLA graduate.
Marc Angelucci
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The scenario is precisely to the point. Hartwell would have to agree moreover, that his complicity makes the silver lining of reduced sentences for women possible.
In the moral calculus that holds that the worst evils are those that men perpetrate against women and that same-gender offenses don't count, one could only argue for a reduced sentence for Hartwell on the grounds that a longer sentence would hurt women in some way, i.e., with more women in the workforce, the tax burden on women to keep Hartwell incarcerated would be onerous.
However, with justice no longer blind to gender, a "solution" immediately presents itself: tax men and women differently. Feminists could argue that Hartwell and his gender should assume the tax burden incurred by "men screwing themselves", and that women shouldn't have to subsidize the cost. This would increase the "silver lining" for women as well.
It appears that Hartwell's logic leads inevitably to such a conclusion.
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Didn't someone imply this week that feminists don't hate men?
Well, here is a feminist who hates men or at least thinks that men deserve whatever awful things may happen to them. The only difference is that this feminist is male.
This man evidently despises men and, by extension, himself.
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The feminist male who wrote this trash (Hartwell) is a product of the feminist controlled Sociology Dept. now operating at all major universities in the English-speaking countries.
To even make it through this course, men and women must repeat and re-iterate feminist dogma as it has been taught to them.
Sociology should be a free and adventurous study of humanity which includes exploring all the possibilities that we have for the future. Instead, it has been turned into a propaganda machine for the feminist political party.
The people who are even attracted to this course nowadays are highly suspicious.
Here is an open challenge to all sociology majors.
Why not rebel against your feminist repressors?
They have all but destroyed a subject that could help the human race tremendously.
Challenge the dogma; Question their authority.
It will be difficult, even dangerous to do so, but if you do so now then ten years down the road, you will be a leader in your field and ever thankful that you made the decision.
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