I've heard some criticism that this is all just a distraction from the shooter and his "real movies" or something-- never mind his manifesto specifically rages against women-- and I think that actually proves the point; when women have a valid, founded concern our treatment in society, even fears about our own physical safety, there's always an immediate backlash to try to derail and silence us. Of course what led to the UC Santa Barbara shooting is more complex than misogyny in society (there's also much to discuss regarding gun laws, identifying and treating mental illness-- even the glorified violence, machismo, and treating lone "misunderstood" figures as celebrities in US culture) and of course "not all men" become murderers when rejected, by the #YesAllWomen campaign brings to light how Rodger's actions are just the extreme version of a toxic attitude of entitlement amongst men pervasive enough to affect all women to some extent, something we need to talk about that is difficult to get people to take seriously as microaggressions but much harder to ignore when it motivates a shooting rampage.
Yep, this; I've seen lots and lots of men brush aside Rodger's misogyny because they say we should look at "the real issue" or "the big picture", as though misogyny isn't part of the big picture, or a real issue. I've seen men spend several pages of discussion talking about what the problem is and how it should be fixed without a single mention of the victims, either of Rodger's attacks or more generally of misogyny; instead, they focus on men's insecurity (which basically boils down to saying that if women were nicer to men, it wouldn't have happened). And when I've pointed out that actually, if we're going to talk about this (as we should) we need to talk about the people who are victimised, and we need to focus on their needs and not just those of the attackers, I've been accused of misandry, of thinking all men are murderers (huh?), and the like. All of which very clearly demonstrates the culture of male entitlement and misogyny which the #yesallwomen hashtag is intended to highlight.
Honestly, I'm finding the whole thing profoundly depressing. And it's also made me realise that I have those stories too, of harassment and groping and "boys will be boys", and I don't think I've ever even bothered to tell them to anyone.
(which basically boils down to saying that if women were nicer to men, it wouldn't have happened) I've seen this point made as well and it really raises my hackles. My entire insecure identity in high school hinged on "being nice to everyone" and if anything, it made them show their asses more. Because of course if I was nice to a young man that most people weren't friendly with, the only possible reason was that I was interested in them romantically or sexually. I was asked out and propositioned many times and of course whenever I turned them down I was accused of being a tease and ruining their life. I didn't realize that being a decent human being was actually volunteering to provide pity sex to anyone who wanted it!
And it's also made me realise that I have those stories too, of harassment and groping and "boys will be boys", and I don't think I've ever even bothered to tell them to anyone. It's actually been quite emotional for me reading some of these Tweets, realizing how much I recognize from my own experience. So much of it I just accepted as normal without thinking about it /:
So...he wasn't influenced enough by misogyny because he didn't kill more people, and the people he did kill were mostly men? Huh. Seems like even more of a dismissal of his obvious and clearly-stated intentions, that were recorded publicly over weeks and weeks.
The way you wrote your thoughts, it makes me think that you're saying that his isolation/loneliness was more important than his hatred against women. So if people were friends with him, it would be ok....and uh...no. Nobody owed him friendship in order to make him not kill people.
I for sure agree with you that we are living in a backlash.
I'm not sure what you mean by fourth/fifth wave needing to focus on men...feminism is inclusive toward men, it just doesn't accept that awful behavior that comes from people entrenched in the patriarchy.
Your relation of him killing men vs women to "I hate dogs so I will knock over bicycles" doesn't work. Pretty sure he killed the men for having the women he wanted, in his perception. I could be wrong. The two are not completely separate.
Again, because he didn't kill enough women, it's not worthy of taking seriously? Are you trolling?
You saying I should feel dirty also makes me think you're trolling. That's ridiculous.
The importance of isolation and loneliness he felt, that you're giving this, over the hatred he had that was fueled by misogyny and racism is of great concern to me.
Feminism as a focus and outlet for women is still necessary. What you're talking about already exists in feminism as it is, and has always been a major factor in feminism. So I still don't get what you're saying.
Again, if his intentions really were to hurt women, then given that he was relatively bright, and said he was going to walk into a sorority and shoot everyone... To draw a parallel, we can agree, I think, that the KKK is a racist organisation, and that they wished (and still wish) to hurt people of colour, yes? And yet they did this one by one; not by bombing places where there were lots of people of colour but by lynching individuals. Not only that, but sometimes they also attacked white people (if they believed those white people to be "n****r-lovers", for example). Does that mean they weren't really racist, or they didn't really want to hurt people of colour? I would say it doesn't.
Similarly, Rodger wanted to terrorise and kill women, and like a lot of men, he chose knives and guns rather than poison or fire to do that. And he killed men too, at least partly because (according to him) he felt it was unfair that they were getting the attention and sex that was owed to him.
But friends are a social contact. They stimulate us, validate us, act as a release, and help us with our problems. Well, yes, but he was clearly a pretty horrible person; he made a habit of making false accusations against his room-mates (whom he then killed), he had attacked women before, and so on. It's all very well to day that if he'd had friends maybe he wouldn't have had problems, but there's obviously a very good reason why he didn't have friends.
I think that the next fruitful field of study is to put the spotlight firmly on the men. And people like the Good Men Project are doing that. But it's really not possible for feminism to do so and still remain feminist, because one of the issues that feminism battles is the fact that the spotlight is always on men, far more than on women. Similarly, the civil rights movement can't really focus on problems white people have, because that would be missing the point.
..and even then, though I havn't seen official figures, I'm willing to bet that the vast, vast, vast majority of people who got injured by the KKK were black. Sure, but you can see, can't you, that it's quite possible for someone who hates group A to kill people from group B (even the group to which they themselves belong) _because_ of their hatred of group A, right?
That said, again, he stated his plan was to walk through the sorority and shoot everyone? Yes? He did not, however, and even with his random attacks, still managed to miss out on majority on his professed target. Yeah; he was disorganised. That doesn't mean he wasn't a misogynist, or that misogyny wasn't his primary motivation.
It's clear that even while he had some radical ideas, nobody checked him. On the contrary, we're now hearing that he was seeing at least one therapist and that the police had been called on him on at least one occasion. People _had_ checked him, but he chose to hang out on MRA forums. We choose our friends, and if someone chooses people who will encourage them in misogyny, their misogyny will be encouraged.
What I have been saying is that if they turned that amazingly calibrated apparatus upon the mainstream, who knows what they might find? When you say "the mainstream", I'm not sure what you're referring to; could you clarify?
Feminism is the study of imbalances of power structures based upon gender dynamics, yes? No. Feminism is the effort to address the inequalities and injustices experienced by women, in the understanding that in the vast majority of cases of gender inequality, it is women who suffer.
Leave it to the MRAs or some magical "masculist" movement to deal with? Who else aside from the group who has identified itself as the movement dedicated to the study of gender? Why would you assume that only extremists of "magical" people would be interested in addressing men's issues? Why not just ordinary men? Feminism isn't made up magical people or extremists (although there are of course extremists in any movement), it's made up of ordinary women who want to address women's issues, after all.
And as a matter of fact, there are men examining men's issues, not as a part of feminism (because people like Jackson Katz share my view, that feminism is about addressing women's issues) but alongside it, as a separate thread. I think that's actually really important, because one of the "women's issues" that feminism tries to tackle is the assumption that while women's issues are minority issues and _only_ of interest to women, men's issues are universal issues which must be addressed, and even prioritised, by everyone. So while I absolutely support men like Katz, who are trying to address the problems faced by men, I don't feel that that's the role of feminism.
Having said that, quite a lot of the problems faced by men will disappear if we can tackle the problems faced my women. Someone elsewhere in this thread mentioned the bias towards mothers in custody battles; well, that bias is due to a whole load of inequalities which disadvantage women; the fact that men get paid more, the fact that "women's jobs" are often part-time, the fact that domestic work and childcare are assumed to be the realm of women, the fact that the vast majority of childcare is done by women, the fact that women are seen as naturally nurturing and men aren't. Feminists are working against all of those assumptions, and if we get rid of those and ensure that we have equality in the workplace and in the home, the pro-mother bias in custody cases will vanish. So feminism does help men, but that isn't and shouldn't be its primary focus.
Right, but the majority of people injured by him were random passerby. Yes; he was disorganised. He was also angry at men _because he felt they were getting the female attention he was owed_. So he hated men, for reasons of misogyny.
there is already a group dedicated to the study of power structures based upon gender No. Feminism is not simply about _all_ power structures based on gender, it is _specifically_ about addressing the inequalities and injustices suffered by women. You wouldn't expect the Civil Rights movement to address white people's problems, simply because they are fighting for racial equality, would you? So why would you expect feminism to tackle men's problems?
To which I wondered 'who then?'. Yes, and it's a weird question to ask; why not just _men_? Like, all of 'em. Why not you? Why are you looking for a pre-existing group to swoop ina dn solve men's problems, rather than suggesting that the very men suffering from those problems can and should address them themselves?
, but the vast, vast, vast majority of medicine applies to a universal neuter. That's an interesting example, because yes, that's the assumptino that has always been made, and it's an assumption that kills women. For example, we all know the symptoms of a heart attack, right? Pain radiating down the left arm and up into the jaw, tightness in the chest, those are the warning signs. Except that when women have heart attacks, they more often have pain in their back than their chest or left arm. That "universal neuter" is not a neuter at all; he's a man, and the advice we've _all_ been given is actually good advice for men, and bad advice for women. Most drugs are tested, not on a "universal neuter" but on men, which means that we're now finding out, years too late in some cases, that some drugs which have been tested and shown to be both effective and safe are great for men, but not so much for women.
What your definition says is that a lung-specialist, who finds a tumor in a patient's lung, should back away and hope a oncologist finds it. No; just that it's going to be the oncologist who treats the cancer, and that the oncologist who finds a tumour doesn't get to pass it back to the lung specialist, because it's his job to treat cancer.
As mens issues such as workplace safety and legal reform Those aren't men's issues, those are workers' issues.
This is why I don't buy into people who say that feminism is about women But it is. It also benefits men, and that's a nice side effect, but that's not what it's for or about.
Were his sole target women, he should have swerved more toward them, no? Right; women weren't his sole target, but nonetheless, the cause of his rampage was misogyny. He wanted to kill women, because he resented them for not giving him the happiness he thought they owed him, and men, because they were getting the happiness, from women, which was owed to him. He made all of this very clear in his "manifesto".
This is like saying... that Darkism is the _specific_ study of the inequalities of the absence of light, therefore a Darkist scholar would never study light. No, it isn't, because feminism isn't the study of gender. It is _activism_, aimed at addressing the injustices and inequalities suffered by women. You're thinking of gender studies (which is the _study_ of gender). Feminism is not gender studies and gender studies is not feminism. Feminism is not about addressing the problems faced by men. It is about addressing the problems faced by women.
I'm wondering why scholars in the field of gender studies are not. Their job is to study; they're not necessarily activists. But if you feel there are problems to be addressed, go ahead and address them.
Why do we have to form a whole new (and redundant) branch of study in order to study? Study is not activism, and activism is not study. They are two separate things. Sure, they an and should work together, but you seem to be conflating them, which is really unhelpful.
Isn't this rather like building a whole new building for a new maths department, and barring all those old mathematics professors from studying, if a brand new field of mathematics opened up? No, it isn't. But you seem to be saying "Hey giuze, there's this new field of maths so stop what you're doing and come over and do this new thing because I say so". They're not going to do it. They're doing their thing. If you want someone to do a new thing, go ahead and get started on that yourself, don't demand that people who already have something to do should stop what they're doing and change tracks because you say so.
And it's totally irrelevant. Maybe it is to you; it bloody isn't to the women who have had heart attacks but didn't know it because they didn't have typically male symptoms. Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to write off other people's experiences, huh?
As for the old "testing on men" canard... that may have been true 50+ years ago (and even then, questionably), but no peer-reviewed study would ever make it to release without trials on as diverse a population as can be gotten. That includes sex, age, and race. That's really not true, y'know; I was just at a talk last week where they were talking about exactly this issue, with regard to children rather than women, but it does still cause problems.
How would the oncologist find it? By doing his job, obviously. Oncologists aren't useless idiots who need to have someone else guide their every move,a nd similarly, if men feel they have a problem that needs to be addressed, they don't need to ask for help from the feminist movement; they can get on and deal with it.
But to those looking for new fields of research to mine, What on earth makes you think that feminists are short of woman-centred material that they would have to look for new fields to mine? (I don't think you mine fields, do you? Or rather, I suppose you do, but only if you want to kill people... but I digress) We have plenty of woman-centred issues to focus on. If you feel that men have problems, start working on them. When we've finished addressing the inequalities and injustices faced by women, we'll be right along to help. OK?
I've heard some criticism that this is all just a distraction from the shooter and his "real movies" or something-- never mind his manifesto specifically rages against women-- and I think that actually proves the point; when women have a valid, founded concern our treatment in society, even fears about our own physical safety, there's always an immediate backlash to try to derail and silence us. Of course what led to the UC Santa Barbara shooting is more complex than misogyny in society (there's also much to discuss regarding gun laws, identifying and treating mental illness-- even the glorified violence, machismo, and treating lone "misunderstood" figures as celebrities in US culture) and of course "not all men" become murderers when rejected, by the #YesAllWomen campaign brings to light how Rodger's actions are just the extreme version of a toxic attitude of entitlement amongst men pervasive enough to affect all women to some extent, something we need to talk about that is difficult to get people to take seriously as microaggressions but much harder to ignore when it motivates a shooting rampage.
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All of which very clearly demonstrates the culture of male entitlement and misogyny which the #yesallwomen hashtag is intended to highlight.
Honestly, I'm finding the whole thing profoundly depressing. And it's also made me realise that I have those stories too, of harassment and groping and "boys will be boys", and I don't think I've ever even bothered to tell them to anyone.
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I've seen this point made as well and it really raises my hackles. My entire insecure identity in high school hinged on "being nice to everyone" and if anything, it made them show their asses more. Because of course if I was nice to a young man that most people weren't friendly with, the only possible reason was that I was interested in them romantically or sexually. I was asked out and propositioned many times and of course whenever I turned them down I was accused of being a tease and ruining their life. I didn't realize that being a decent human being was actually volunteering to provide pity sex to anyone who wanted it!
And it's also made me realise that I have those stories too, of harassment and groping and "boys will be boys", and I don't think I've ever even bothered to tell them to anyone.
It's actually been quite emotional for me reading some of these Tweets, realizing how much I recognize from my own experience. So much of it I just accepted as normal without thinking about it /:
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The way you wrote your thoughts, it makes me think that you're saying that his isolation/loneliness was more important than his hatred against women. So if people were friends with him, it would be ok....and uh...no. Nobody owed him friendship in order to make him not kill people.
I for sure agree with you that we are living in a backlash.
I'm not sure what you mean by fourth/fifth wave needing to focus on men...feminism is inclusive toward men, it just doesn't accept that awful behavior that comes from people entrenched in the patriarchy.
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Again, because he didn't kill enough women, it's not worthy of taking seriously? Are you trolling?
You saying I should feel dirty also makes me think you're trolling. That's ridiculous.
The importance of isolation and loneliness he felt, that you're giving this, over the hatred he had that was fueled by misogyny and racism is of great concern to me.
Feminism as a focus and outlet for women is still necessary. What you're talking about already exists in feminism as it is, and has always been a major factor in feminism. So I still don't get what you're saying.
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To draw a parallel, we can agree, I think, that the KKK is a racist organisation, and that they wished (and still wish) to hurt people of colour, yes? And yet they did this one by one; not by bombing places where there were lots of people of colour but by lynching individuals. Not only that, but sometimes they also attacked white people (if they believed those white people to be "n****r-lovers", for example).
Does that mean they weren't really racist, or they didn't really want to hurt people of colour? I would say it doesn't.
Similarly, Rodger wanted to terrorise and kill women, and like a lot of men, he chose knives and guns rather than poison or fire to do that. And he killed men too, at least partly because (according to him) he felt it was unfair that they were getting the attention and sex that was owed to him.
But friends are a social contact. They stimulate us, validate us, act as a release, and help us with our problems.
Well, yes, but he was clearly a pretty horrible person; he made a habit of making false accusations against his room-mates (whom he then killed), he had attacked women before, and so on. It's all very well to day that if he'd had friends maybe he wouldn't have had problems, but there's obviously a very good reason why he didn't have friends.
I think that the next fruitful field of study is to put the spotlight firmly on the men.
And people like the Good Men Project are doing that. But it's really not possible for feminism to do so and still remain feminist, because one of the issues that feminism battles is the fact that the spotlight is always on men, far more than on women. Similarly, the civil rights movement can't really focus on problems white people have, because that would be missing the point.
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Sure, but you can see, can't you, that it's quite possible for someone who hates group A to kill people from group B (even the group to which they themselves belong) _because_ of their hatred of group A, right?
That said, again, he stated his plan was to walk through the sorority and shoot everyone? Yes? He did not, however, and even with his random attacks, still managed to miss out on majority on his professed target.
Yeah; he was disorganised. That doesn't mean he wasn't a misogynist, or that misogyny wasn't his primary motivation.
It's clear that even while he had some radical ideas, nobody checked him.
On the contrary, we're now hearing that he was seeing at least one therapist and that the police had been called on him on at least one occasion. People _had_ checked him, but he chose to hang out on MRA forums. We choose our friends, and if someone chooses people who will encourage them in misogyny, their misogyny will be encouraged.
What I have been saying is that if they turned that amazingly calibrated apparatus upon the mainstream, who knows what they might find?
When you say "the mainstream", I'm not sure what you're referring to; could you clarify?
Feminism is the study of imbalances of power structures based upon gender dynamics, yes?
No. Feminism is the effort to address the inequalities and injustices experienced by women, in the understanding that in the vast majority of cases of gender inequality, it is women who suffer.
Leave it to the MRAs or some magical "masculist" movement to deal with? Who else aside from the group who has identified itself as the movement dedicated to the study of gender?
Why would you assume that only extremists of "magical" people would be interested in addressing men's issues? Why not just ordinary men? Feminism isn't made up magical people or extremists (although there are of course extremists in any movement), it's made up of ordinary women who want to address women's issues, after all.
And as a matter of fact, there are men examining men's issues, not as a part of feminism (because people like Jackson Katz share my view, that feminism is about addressing women's issues) but alongside it, as a separate thread. I think that's actually really important, because one of the "women's issues" that feminism tries to tackle is the assumption that while women's issues are minority issues and _only_ of interest to women, men's issues are universal issues which must be addressed, and even prioritised, by everyone. So while I absolutely support men like Katz, who are trying to address the problems faced by men, I don't feel that that's the role of feminism.
Having said that, quite a lot of the problems faced by men will disappear if we can tackle the problems faced my women. Someone elsewhere in this thread mentioned the bias towards mothers in custody battles; well, that bias is due to a whole load of inequalities which disadvantage women; the fact that men get paid more, the fact that "women's jobs" are often part-time, the fact that domestic work and childcare are assumed to be the realm of women, the fact that the vast majority of childcare is done by women, the fact that women are seen as naturally nurturing and men aren't. Feminists are working against all of those assumptions, and if we get rid of those and ensure that we have equality in the workplace and in the home, the pro-mother bias in custody cases will vanish. So feminism does help men, but that isn't and shouldn't be its primary focus.
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Yes; he was disorganised. He was also angry at men _because he felt they were getting the female attention he was owed_. So he hated men, for reasons of misogyny.
there is already a group dedicated to the study of power structures based upon gender
No. Feminism is not simply about _all_ power structures based on gender, it is _specifically_ about addressing the inequalities and injustices suffered by women. You wouldn't expect the Civil Rights movement to address white people's problems, simply because they are fighting for racial equality, would you? So why would you expect feminism to tackle men's problems?
To which I wondered 'who then?'.
Yes, and it's a weird question to ask; why not just _men_? Like, all of 'em. Why not you? Why are you looking for a pre-existing group to swoop ina dn solve men's problems, rather than suggesting that the very men suffering from those problems can and should address them themselves?
, but the vast, vast, vast majority of medicine applies to a universal neuter.
That's an interesting example, because yes, that's the assumptino that has always been made, and it's an assumption that kills women. For example, we all know the symptoms of a heart attack, right? Pain radiating down the left arm and up into the jaw, tightness in the chest, those are the warning signs. Except that when women have heart attacks, they more often have pain in their back than their chest or left arm. That "universal neuter" is not a neuter at all; he's a man, and the advice we've _all_ been given is actually good advice for men, and bad advice for women. Most drugs are tested, not on a "universal neuter" but on men, which means that we're now finding out, years too late in some cases, that some drugs which have been tested and shown to be both effective and safe are great for men, but not so much for women.
What your definition says is that a lung-specialist, who finds a tumor in a patient's lung, should back away and hope a oncologist finds it.
No; just that it's going to be the oncologist who treats the cancer, and that the oncologist who finds a tumour doesn't get to pass it back to the lung specialist, because it's his job to treat cancer.
As mens issues such as workplace safety and legal reform
Those aren't men's issues, those are workers' issues.
This is why I don't buy into people who say that feminism is about women
But it is. It also benefits men, and that's a nice side effect, but that's not what it's for or about.
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Right; women weren't his sole target, but nonetheless, the cause of his rampage was misogyny. He wanted to kill women, because he resented them for not giving him the happiness he thought they owed him, and men, because they were getting the happiness, from women, which was owed to him. He made all of this very clear in his "manifesto".
This is like saying... that Darkism is the _specific_ study of the inequalities of the absence of light, therefore a Darkist scholar would never study light.
No, it isn't, because feminism isn't the study of gender. It is _activism_, aimed at addressing the injustices and inequalities suffered by women. You're thinking of gender studies (which is the _study_ of gender). Feminism is not gender studies and gender studies is not feminism. Feminism is not about addressing the problems faced by men. It is about addressing the problems faced by women.
I'm wondering why scholars in the field of gender studies are not.
Their job is to study; they're not necessarily activists. But if you feel there are problems to be addressed, go ahead and address them.
Why do we have to form a whole new (and redundant) branch of study in order to study?
Study is not activism, and activism is not study. They are two separate things. Sure, they an and should work together, but you seem to be conflating them, which is really unhelpful.
Isn't this rather like building a whole new building for a new maths department, and barring all those old mathematics professors from studying, if a brand new field of mathematics opened up?
No, it isn't. But you seem to be saying "Hey giuze, there's this new field of maths so stop what you're doing and come over and do this new thing because I say so". They're not going to do it. They're doing their thing. If you want someone to do a new thing, go ahead and get started on that yourself, don't demand that people who already have something to do should stop what they're doing and change tracks because you say so.
And it's totally irrelevant.
Maybe it is to you; it bloody isn't to the women who have had heart attacks but didn't know it because they didn't have typically male symptoms. Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to write off other people's experiences, huh?
As for the old "testing on men" canard... that may have been true 50+ years ago (and even then, questionably), but no peer-reviewed study would ever make it to release without trials on as diverse a population as can be gotten. That includes sex, age, and race.
That's really not true, y'know; I was just at a talk last week where they were talking about exactly this issue, with regard to children rather than women, but it does still cause problems.
How would the oncologist find it?
By doing his job, obviously. Oncologists aren't useless idiots who need to have someone else guide their every move,a nd similarly, if men feel they have a problem that needs to be addressed, they don't need to ask for help from the feminist movement; they can get on and deal with it.
But to those looking for new fields of research to mine,
What on earth makes you think that feminists are short of woman-centred material that they would have to look for new fields to mine? (I don't think you mine fields, do you? Or rather, I suppose you do, but only if you want to kill people... but I digress)
We have plenty of woman-centred issues to focus on. If you feel that men have problems, start working on them. When we've finished addressing the inequalities and injustices faced by women, we'll be right along to help. OK?
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