My own Huffington Post “storm”

Here I will deal with a perspective on the perception of women's rights from some recent comments I made to an article on the online newspaper The Huffington Post.

Here is the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/octavia-sheepshanks/feminism-man-hating-myth_b_3292843.html

It's an interesting article and a good perspective on some schisms within the feminist community. Looking back on it now I regret positing some initial comments using the webpage's own commenting facility. The level of pushback I received was quite disconcerting and I've been branded “spineless”, “racist” and “beyond contempt” for voicing my opinions on feminism and by people misinterpreting this as an attack on men's rights issues.

This level of vitriol was unexpected and that is the last time I will be discussing feminism on an open forum I think. I will continue to stand up for women's rights including fighting misogyny, sexism and harassment women receive and advocating for gender equality though because I think they're all important issues.

I've seen and heard some shocking stories from women of how they've been mistreated by feminists after stating that men can have problems too. This has made me think twice about certain aspects of feminism because driving people away for stating what is frankly so obvious as to be a truism, is not what it should be about. This is my bit for men's rights: I've highlighted in bold some statements that men's rights campaigners can hopefully not take too much issue with.

But I have made mistakes (openly admit that, it would be strange if I hadn't) and taken some learnings away from this whole episodes. I now have more awareness of genuine men's issues and also how both the men's and women's rights movements harm their own image by aggressive interactions with the other side in the heat of the moment. If we could calm down and look at our problems rationally, I think we'd realise that it is possible to be an advocate for both men's and women's rights and not come into conflict on these issues.

This is some of what went down. I commented:

“

This is a very interesting perspective Octavia. I can see your point. However I find the idea of a men-only feminist discussion group a little strange so I'm not surprised they were heavily criticised. They could have done with women's oversight. Can a man to call himself a feminist, without having the label properly bestowed? Terms like pro-feminist or Ally are better. With the nasty MRAs around these days it should come as no surprise that some women are distrustful of men's motivations in wanting to help. This is what is being confused with sexism or inequality. But if we really want to help, we shouldn't give in because our ideas are initially ignored. If you think your opinion is important, keep pushing it, ask for reasons why it is not worthy of consideration and fine-tune your idea. Finally, I think you may be slightly mistaken on the point about interruption/debating. Studies have shown that statistically, women are interrupted much more frequently than men. It is important that men make a conscious effort not to do this. It is not refusing to debate but rather letting women have their say on their own terms. Basically, avoid mansplaining which is from the position of privilege. But the part about not explaining to them why they're wrong is more problematic, if they are indeed wrong, so correct to take issue with that. Forgive me if I've misrepresented your position but that's what I read from the article.

“

To which a genius who shall here remain unnamed replied:

“

"They could have done with women's oversight."

Are we talking about a kindergarden here? Are you incapable of seeing the world and coming to correct conclusions about it without proper supervision?

And you disparage mansplaining to a first year Philosophy undergraduate! Is she to read nothing for three years? I think she might risk some exposure in the hope of learning something. She can still make use of her critical faculties and not swallow it all wholesale. For those without a mind of their own or a spine this could not be risked without appropriate oversight, but I think she'll be fine.

“

To which I replied:

“

A lot of questions. Sorry I wasn't making myself clear because that's not what I meant. Firstly, I was just saying personally, I think the group should have consulted more with women. But they can reach valid conclusions themselves. And later I was criticising men who talk over women, not Octavia.

“

And he then said some pretty nasty personal things. The comment was deleted by the moderator eventually. Some other comments, I won't deal with them all since I haven't got time!

Back to that last comment:

“Are we talking about a kindergarden here? Are you incapable of seeing the world and coming to correct conclusions about it without proper supervision?”

In university, yes. And it could be argued this is a bit like that. Due to differences is lived experiences, many men find it difficult to empathise with women and truly know what they go through on a daily basis. I don't know what these men were like or what they discussed so I still think my point was fair.

“And you disparage mansplaining to a first year Philosophy undergraduate! Is she to read nothing for three years? I think she might risk some exposure in the hope of learning something. She can still make use of her critical faculties and not swallow it all wholesale. For those without a mind of their own or a spine this could not be risked without appropriate oversight, but I think she'll be fine.”

Sure she will be, she seems like a great woman. And there are fine professors at Oxford for all this oversight you keep boning on about. Pointing out that something is mansplaining does not preclude study of the issue or why it arose. Exposure to mansplaining is equivalent to raising awareness of it, and of course things can be learned from this. Mansplaining will always occur to some extent and trying to reduce it is not the same thing as spinelessly ignoring problems.

Jeez.

In another strand, the following comment was posted.

“

"but men need to at least acknowledge that for a long time, women got the short end of the stick!"

That depends on your proof. Have you ever heard of confirmation bias?

The overwhelming majority of feminists I have seen engage in quite a lot of it.
What most would call oppression of women I would call the gender binary & it oppressed men in horrific (but different) ways as it also oppressed women.

32,000 men died building the panama canal. 10 million U.S. men were drafted into WWII & lost bodily autonomy FOR THEIR MALENESS with the happy blessings of the majority of men & scolding them to "do their duty".

Lookup the white feather campaign of women shaming men to enlist in UK during WW1.

Things are not so simple as what feminists have been saying. To learn more look to any of the youtube videos of girl writes what.

“

To which I replied:

“

So can we agree the gender binary is a bit out of date and only useful in limited circumstances e.g. modelling body/drug interaction?

The problem with your argument is that men actively participate in the system of their own oppression. If they let more women build the canals or take up more combat roles in the army, the problem would suddenly not be so bad. And also the fact that wars tend to be started by men in the first place.

Instead we have some senior armed forces officers saying combat isn't for women and Stirling Moss saying women can't be racing drivers, to give a couple of examples.

So the gender binary, set gender roles, the "superiority of heteronormativity" and gender shaming are all things we need to recognise and criticise.

“

To which someone gave some nice feedback, but another guy also said:

“

Your argument is false, as it only shows how far men have internalised their "oppression" as you would call it. After all many of the girls sold into marriage in say Afgh have their mothers pressuring them into this - recently a girl in Pakistan looked at a boy twice and was killed by her mother who threw acid in her face.
Men die in their millions in work and in wars and you look for reasons to dismiss/ignore that (PS - I just got through mopping the floor and cleaning the kitchen while my wife who is a professor and has a phd is at work).

To which I had the last word:

“

I'm not trying to dismiss or ignore anything so please don't think that. I realise that sometimes women perpetuate their own oppression as well. It strikes me that the best ways to avoid deaths at work is to have better working conditions which is why I'm supporting the Bangladesh campaign for factory worker's rights. And if you read Steven Pinker you'd know that war is thankfully becoming rarer. Stopping wars happening in first place is the best way to prevent all those deaths.

“

By the way, shaming people into conformance with arbitrary social standards is a awful thing to do, no matter who does it. But trying to blame male deaths in WWI on women rather than radical ideologies, overagressive thirst for revenge, rampant nationalism etc. is also dodging the issue. War is always a terrible thing and we always need to try and avoid it. But could we seriously have expected generals of the time to start enlisting women back then? They should have, as both World Wars left a terrible legacy of a massive shortfall in young men able to help the recovery the county needed.

Oh, and for my critics, this is me “dismissing and ignoring men's problems”:

One last comment: “

The high proportion of male suicides, male death and injury in the work place, male victims of DV. Yeah, great job feminism is doing of addressing those issues...

“

Again, OK dude. A) The high proportion of male suicides. I don't deny this is a problem worth raising awareness of or investing in tackling. Again I've done nothing to stop anyone trying to solve this issue. Let's look at some more details. There are a variety of reasons why people commit suicide. Main causal factors include: Professional / work problems, financial problems, depression, anxiety/stress, lack of social integration and rejection or conflict on a social or intimate basis.

Financial problems: as a rule men earn more money than women, so to me there's no gender based cause to prioritise male suicides over just offering better financial support to ANY people with financial problems. For the other issues the first thing that comes into my head is that there is social pressure for men to hold down stable jobs and be “breadwinners”, more than women. But do people realise that this is exactly the sort of thing that feminism is trying to fight against? Their narrative holds that a patriarchy exists, enforcing gender roles. If more women were “breadwinners” then it follows that there would be less social pressure for men to live up to this role. The rejection/conflict in intimate matters crosses over into DV so I'll discuss below.

B) Male death and injury in the workplace. I don't deny this is a problem worth raising awareness of or investing in tackling. Again I've done nothing to stop anyone trying to solve this issue. I think the theory goes that men are more likely to be employed in jobs with greater risk of injury and death, the “dangerous” professions such as the armed forces, law enforcement, mining, heavy engineering etc. So as I see it there are two main ways of tackling this.

Firstly, make these workplaces safer and campaign for better employee compensation for accidents at work and better representation in disputes. All these are admirable and largely gender-neutral targets. So why they are being shoehorned into the field of men's rights in particular, rather than just an important part of social justice, by the commenter is strange to me.

Secondly, get more women into working in these fields. The best way of doing this is challenging the narrative of the traditional gender role (only men do “heavy work”), which I think women's rights are acting on nicely, thanks.

A valid point the commenter may have (I am just inferring this as it wasn't clearly stated) is the issue of men's jobs in the social care sector and how this may be one of the few places where there is a chance of real misandry in the system being experienced. There is a clear deficit of men being employed in social worker, secretarial and PA roles etc. and this area is more often chiefly staffed by women actually running the recruitment activities. The proportion of men employed in these area needs to be increased So another important men's rights area is campaigning to improve this situation. I support this and this is aligned with equality so if any feminists object to it, I disagree with them.

Finally, countering this whole narrative is the recent dreadful tragedy in Bangladesh where a large textile factory collapsed, resulting in the death of more than 1000 people. By most reports I've seen, the majority of these were women . So it isn't only men that die in accidents at work. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/05/302021/bangladesh-disaster-death-toll-passes-600/

This underlines the argument that workplace safety is an important overall issue and the side-effect that it may help men more than women is not the major issue at hand.

100. Male victims of DV. Aside from the obvious point that there's no reason to distinguish between “male victims” of DV and just “any victims” of DV unless you simultaneously accept the fact that men are the major perpetrators, let's just look at “male victims” of female DV. I feel sorry for these people, I really do. But they shouldn't have to feel that they can't come forward and get help and support. They should be believed by the authorities and offered equal support, access to shelters and criminal justice to what women receive. This is one of the big issues men's rights campaigns can focus on in my opinion. But do people realise that one of the social “memes” reinforcing these problems is that women are soft and gentle and can't inflict physical damage on men. This is a myth that most women want expunged as well! And the myth that men shouldn't open up and discuss their problems. The myth that men need to hold their emotions inside and “just cope” rather than get help. Again, equality helps remove this bias. Also, on the matter of child access and stewardship, many women agree that the current bias towards letting women have the major custodianship of children in family disputes is wrong (as it assumes women should be better caregivers). So there are plenty of areas of common ground and not so much “mutually exclusive” stuff.

So basically I think some of these comments aren't very helpful. What do these people want from me? I've explained here why I think standing up for women's rights is the right thing to do and why this also helps men.