why are feminist obsessed with Nice guys(TM)

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Given that it is impossible to see what happens when the professor has enough of their harassment, it doesn't.

wanted to add something to this: i've been to women's support groups for survivors of childhood abuse and sexual assault--and i have yet to meet a shrieking man-hater at one of them. what does that say? i think it says that shrieking man-haters are a rare commodity, yet some people seem to have difficulty perceiving this for some reason i don't comprehend, and instead see shrieking man-haters everywhere they look.

Er... when was this? Before or after Jon Huntsman was outperformed by two hardcore Tea Party candidates, one Tea Party appeaser, and one so-called libertarian who has argued against abortion and "gay adoption" and in favour of laws banning flag burning and sodomy?

DOH!! ! Forgot about Huntsman!! ! [facepalm]

But still…you've got Boehner who has totally sold out to the establishment. He needs to go. Jan Brewer caved to establishment Republican pressure on the gay marriage issue, as well. TOTALLY caved. The message that I get from all this is "Hey, just STFU!! !! We need the votes!! !" It's like conservative Republicans woke up one day and their party was gone.

Not the point, though…There's no getting around the fact that Republicans are sharply divided and it has hurt their chances of getting candidates elected. My point is that any time you get a group, a political group, an activist group, whatever…public displays of division ultimately work against their effectiveness. Unite behind a single cause you all can agree on to support, debate the nitpicky stuff once you achieve the larger goal. Democrats are divided on issues as well…it's just a more difficult phenomena to detect because it's so much less visible. I suspect feminists aren't THAT terribly much different. Extremists within ANY group want the same things moderates do. They just tend not to be satisfied with middle ground. I would contend that within any group, it's easier to let the extremists fight the big battles FOR the moderates. Everyone knows that Muslims are largely peaceful people and have coexisted with their supposed enemies for centuries. What you DON'T see are Muslim "moderates" actively attacking extremists to get the to stop acts of terror. I'd say that "moderate" Muslims know that if the extremists succeed, all Muslims (even moderates) benefit.

Well that's a load of rubbish.

Three points:
1) Extremist Muslims tend not to care about who they kill in massive attacks.
2) Moderate Muslims know that they suffer if public perception of Islam and Muslims suffers. Far more dangerous to be a Muslim than oppose a Muslim in the West, simply because the weight of numbers mean there are more bigoted non-Muslims than bigoted Muslims. I am talking about small scale, targeted attacks, rather than the large incidents covered in point 1.
3) If Islamic extremists had their way, moderate Muslims would suffer a great deal. The women would be forced to cover their faces, and would not be allowed to leave their homes without a male family member, for starters. Everyone would lose freedoms they hold dear. People who spoke out against these things would need to fear for their lives.

Not only do Muslims have a strong instrumental motivation to speak out against extremism, they do it simply because they believe that it is wrong.

Would suggest you don't talk about something you are clearly totally ignorant of, because it looks a lot worse than ignorance.

Near-civil war in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood took over suggests that you're wrong about Islamization benefiting "all Muslims."
Especially given that half of "all Muslims" are females, and we know what the fundies are like for them.

If the extremist position is the dominant one, "public perception" is going to become irrelevant. I agree with your first point, and the Koran does label those who "peacefully coexist" with the enemy are hypocrites and are no great loss. I doubt extremists are above calling otherwise peaceful Muslims to arms if numbers and willingness favored it. I suppose as it is it's a good thing moderate Muslims don't actually follow the Koran.


Well, you'd still be free to practice Islam, which is all that really matters, anyway. I fail to see how this would be a problem.


Sorry…I don't buy it. Forced universal acceptance of a religion or submission to it (not to mention inherent political control) is often motivation enough.

This isn't about religion, anyway, but rather the tendency for moderates in any position to look the other way when the actions of extremists conveniently help their own cause.

men use religion to force woman into submission, for if woman could choose whom they want to mate with, many of those men would never know what its like to be in a relationship, they would be rejected as non relationship materials, and they fear that. so woman gets brainwashed into wanting those things too, like its what their supposed to do. religion is just a tool of control.

True wrt "all Muslims" in Egypt. And I'm not pretending to know everything about the Muslim Brotherhood, but was it not the MB who took over after winning a number of parliamentary elections and the presidency? And it was the military, not democratic elections, that got rid of him? Forget about it being a corrupt regime using underhanded tactics to solidify Morsi's grip on power…half the country initially supported it.

It was an opportunistic power-grab and failed for overreaching WAY too soon. Perhaps a small number are actually extremists, but where were all the moderates during the elections? I'd suggest most of them were voting for Morsi.

It never takes much once a movement reaches a certain point. Take a certain, unnamed social movement in Deutschland in the decades prior to WWII as just one example.

Back to topic, I've read two replies now that seem to completely ignore or even deny the existence of Feminists™ like, say, Mary Daly or Valerie Solanas. I've never argued that Daly or Solanas form the majority of feminist thought. But neither do I underestimate the potential influence that 2nd wave holdovers might have. Moderate feminists certainly don't seem to be making much of a fuss about it.

In terms of feminists I DO hold in high regard, I have to say Rebecca Walker tops my list.

Me, in this thread, I still haven't finished reacting to comments like this (see below), and now you DEMAND that I talk about certain feminists. Screw you!



How about you help me deal with the crap above ^? This comment still colors my perception of this thread, this bizarre thing this thread has become.

The reason the feminists reject man, is because we can not be what they want us to be, because were not the the same, we have other needs, which takes two pieces of a puzzle to unite. they want that equality yet reject men if they are the same as them, because then were not man enough for them.

If man is equal to woman, then man is not man enough to or for woman.
the more woman struggles for that equality, the less valued mans struggle to become that meaning to woman.
we can not be men, if woman are men too. in their eyes and aspirations, we can only fail in what they expect of man to be or become for them. we can not be what they expect of us for them, when they become us, and then expect better of us then they feel they can become...

Why are you so down on yourself, bro?

And women use institutions to force men to work more than we should. If men could choose who we work for (and weren't just as brainwashed as any girl), most women would never know what it's like to be able to take for granted that things will "just work"; they would be rejected as crabby, inflexible and unreliable.

Men aren't so bad: an uncle of mine took over the family business. He did a good job of preserving the parts of the company culture that worked, while changing it just enough to not be creamed by changes in the market. He was well-liked by the employees. You couldn't run this particular company without understanding the technology, and he did; of the people who could do that, not many could manage employees and still be on good terms with them, but he did exactly that; of the people who could do both of those things, not many could negotiate with big companies, but he squeezed good contracts from some of the most ruthless data storage and semiconductor companies in the world. Just like his dad.

He was an involved father - not just in a decorous way, but a genuine one. He wasn't arrogant, although he could have been. He fixed things around the house after work, and was *good* at it. He could solder pipes, run Cat5 cable, and build almost anything.

Both he and his wife got out of shape after having kids. I was his cycling coach while he was trying to get it back, and I was blown away by how well he rode. I was racing bikes back then, and my VO2 max was just shy of what you'd need to race pro. We'd go out riding for 30-50 miles on Saturday mornings, and I'd kick the pace up to 30 mph on the flats. After a mile or two I'd look back and see him right on my wheel! I was 25. He was over 50. He got in shape, but his wife was still fat - and *crabby* now that he was out riding and not around the house anymore to take orders from her or listen to her vent.

We used to talk about his IT problems also, and he impressed me there too. I'm not a developer. I taught myself to write really simple programs in C++ when I was in high school, but I wasn't that good at it, and I didn't keep at it. How many businessmen know what threading is? How many who are over 50 and not running a web, logic or software company know much of anything about low-level stuff? Really. His wife complained because he couldn't always fix her Windows box. What does she want him to do, fire up the disassembler and juggle around CMOVs and POPs? Should he optimize the whole OS in assembly while he's at it? Heck, why stop there? Why not optimize the whole Goddamn software stack in assembly? Jeez!

Even if you don't think that you're a catch, look at it this way: Even if you were, American girls would still rag on you, so don't feel bad about it.

He's stuck with her because she has half the marital estate. He put so much into a new house to try to appease her that it's hard to leave. She's also mean to their kids. Forget about "kept wives". That's so 1950s. It's the other way around.

If you get married, *read the law*. Check which assets are part of the marital estate. If your wife wants you to take money out of a business, or take out a loan against business assets, make sure that she isn't trying to move all of your wealth into the marital estate. Don't do it.

I just got back from Costa Rica, and I already miss Ticas. I was checking in at the airport for my flight home, and I saw a grade school aged girl lean over and kiss her toddler brother. Gringas would never do that. My sister and I get along now, but back then she'd just pinch me. In front of me on the plane, a girl who was a little older reached over and gave her father the most loving hug I've ever seen, then a big kiss on the cheek. You could tell that she meant it. I thought, "Why am I going back to America? I could build kick-ass stuff anywhere."

Anyway, take care of yourself.

Last edited by NobodyKnows on 14 Mar 2014, 1:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

A pretty huge chunk of the population was in the streets protesting the regime by the time the Military took him out.
Wrt. how much of the population supported him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_p ... tion,_2012
Also, it's worth noting that the Muslim Brotherhood, especially in Egypt, is not as radical as some other fundamentalist groups. The MB promised peace, love, and cheap bread, and downplayed the nastier elements of theocracy; the voters largely believed them.

I'm better-versed in feminism than the average woman, and I don't know who either of those people is.

Don't know who that is, either.

It's not quite so simple.

What would you think of a Muslim that condemned acts of terrorism, yet thought that non-Muslims were decidedly inferior to them and believed that people that left Islam should be killed?

A lot of 'moderates' are not really moderate at all. The Muslim Council of Britain and other Deobandi (you know, that school of Islam that inspired the Taliban) institutions are the masters at this. Their interpretation of Islam is hardline and ultra-conservative, yet they are mostly not actual terrorists.

Literalist/revivalist Islam is quite popular indeed.

Many mosques make the contention that hijab is obligatory, yet there is nothing in the Islamic texts that says this. Do you get my point?



Tell that to Maajid Nawaz, or Deeyah, or the ex-Muslim apostates, or gay Muslims. The serious threat to them comes not from non-Muslims, but from Islamists.



No they don't. The extremists (both actual jihadis and the wider Salafi/Deobandi/extremist Sufi community) are very happy with the way things are. There is no real desire to root out extremism within their communities and the government does not help this. If I was an atheist of Muslim background in that kind of environment, I would be keeping my head down.

The 'extremism' is Quran and Hadith based (and that's where both jihadis and the wider Salafis/Deobandis etc get their legitimacy from). There are very few Muslims in the public eye that I would say are genuinely moderate. Maajid Nawaz is one of them, and look what's happened to him.

So you believe that most women are able to just "take things for granted?"

And how are you seriously contending that a man is "forced" to work more than he should? Is this the same sort of phenomenon as large numbers of working women who have all household responsibilities as well? My youngest sister works a 40 hr a week job, and frequently works overtime. She is the one who has to cook, clean, do dishes and laundry, and take care of the kids. Even after her husband lost his job and spends the vast majority of his time at home. She isn't really forced into to doing it, but he is not willing to do " woman's work," so she has to if she wants it done.

I do not understand the whole, if men could choose who we work for, statement. Who is forcing a man to work where he doesn't want to? I would surmise that it is an economic climate forcing most to work where they don't want to, not an individual woman.

How about an analogy? Let's say Westboro Baptist Church suddenly had an armed militia, and they seized control of your state. They ban abortion and make homosexuality and adultery punishable by death. You're still free to practice Christianity, so what's the problem?

If you don't have a problem with that, then imagine they also took away electricity because it isn't in the Bible. And the internal combustion engine, and gas stoves, on the same logic. Still no problem with it, because you can practice Christianity?

Except they don't help their cause!

The best objection anyone can come up with to feminism as a whole is "there are some extremists". Perceptions of feminists are damaged massively by the actions of extremists.

The same is not quite true of Islam and Christianity, but I bet there would be far fewer anti-theists if there weren't fundamentalists and extremists.

Your point is irrelevant to mine.

You don't understand statistics.

54% of European Muslims think the West is out to destroy Islam, compared to about 20% of non-Muslim Europeans who think Islam is out to destroy the West (source: http://www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/u ... sch_ed.pdf)

About 6% of Europeans are Muslim, so just over 3% of Europeans are "phobic Muslims". The remaining 94% is non-Muslim. This means that 18.8% of Europeans are "Islamophobic".

I tried to find statistics of crimes motivated, one way or the other, by Islam, but I seriously struggled. It doesn't look like anyone's bothering to separate violent and non-violent religious hate crimes.

Yes they do. Rather than reeling off groups, extremist preachers, and talking points from the last blog you read, I suggest actually getting to know Muslims. I know this can be tricky for autistic people, but if you encounter Muslims about your day to day life then you'll probably find they're not the demons you suppose them to be. I know most of the Muslims I know actively spoke out against poppy-burning, let alone terrorism.

This is another example of you failing to understand statistics. There are very few Muslims in the public eye, period. James Caan, Aziz Ibrahim, Mishal Husain, Amir Khan, Mo Farah, Adam Gemili. As always, there are a lot who are famous in their own field - the likes of Owais Shah, Sajid Mahmoud and Ajmal Shazad have flirted with the England cricket team, for example - but they are not people that most people have heard of. Someone like YAB may spring to mind immediately for you or me, but most people don't read the Independent or have a strong interest in semi-famous Muslim thinkers.

You are overestimating "the public eye" because this is something you have a very strong interest in. Most people can't name as many clerics as you can, because they aren't interested in actively seeking them out, and they're actually not very prominent. And then, of course, some of the people who get the most media attention of all are Islamic terrorists, who of course are at the extreme end of the extreme end, so naturally this biases famous Muslims towards extremists. Likewise, blogs with an interest in Islamic extremism don't pick up on the average Muslim in the street, because it isn't in their nature. Partly because non-extremists and non-notable people don't fall under their remit, but also because they have to sensationalise or they'll lose their reason for existence.