Losers or oppressors?
The men who complained about me writing (Stiffed) were privileged, affluent journalists.
- Susan Faludi, Ms. April/May 2000
Either Faludi's utterly out of touch with the men whose stories she purports to tell, or this is wishful thinking. Fact is, most who dismiss her book range from working class to middle class activists who were forced into the men's and fathers' rights movement by laws and policies that grew out of the work of pop feminist writers like her.
Many of the insights in her book are very accurate. The problem, as we have noted many times, is how she attributes responsibility for men's problems to everybody but the pop feminists. She also ignores the hundreds of male authors and activists who, during the past 30 years, have made most of the same observations she does, and pretends they are all original with her.
Beyond this, it's ironic how, a privileged, affluent journalist herself, Faludi dismisses her detractors as privileged, affluent journalists.
More Ms.takes?
I, like most of you reading this, live in a country where men who kill their wives or girlfriends are routinely described as being "distraught," their murderous acts detailed under headlines that say things like "Love Gone Awry" - as if love had anything to do with it.
- Marcia Ann Gillespie, Editor in Chief, Ms. August/September 2000
We should note the absence of examples. Perhaps this is because it is more often the other way around:
- Her Children Got in the Way of Her Love
- Doting Mother/Deadly Mother: The story claims she is innocent.
- Child Murderer or Victim? - How Susan Smith was driven to kill her children by her love for her ex-boyfriend.
- Trial of woman charged with murder to begin Wednesday : The story tells how she accused her husband of domestic violence 3 times...before she finally killed him.
- 'Devil-Possessed' Woman Convicted Of Murder: The devil made me do it? Keep reading, there's more.
- Exorcism Kills Boy: Mother Found Not Guilty; to Undergo Treatment : Death to the child from Hell?
But when men are charged with murder:
- Man convicted of murder in gay student's death: "It spurred calls for hate-crime laws around the nation."
- North Side man accused of murder in death of 13-month-old daughter
- Thomas O'Connor asked a 16-year-old South Lake Tahoe boy if he felt lucky before shooting him in the chest
- Wareham Man Arrested For Wife's Murder: Police Say Suspect Brutally Beat Victim
- A convicted murderer who lives two houses away from where a 20-year-old Pittsburgh State University student was found dead Saturday has confessed to the killing.
- Racists murder black man in Texas
As so often seems to be the case, Ms. Gillespie is lying again.
Men always at fault?
Ask the schoolboys who in poll after poll state that if they spend a certain amount of money on a date, girls are obligated to provide sex.
- Marcia Ann Gillespie, Editor in Chief, Ms. August/September 2000
Back in the bad old days, before Gloria Steinem's name became a household word, any man who said such a thing would have been instantly condemned as a sexual predator. Now, after almost 40 years of pop feminism, the heir to Ms. Steinem's throne laments her legacy by blaming it on...men?
Makes sense: in their paradigm, men are always to blame.
Simply irredeemable?
So often we hear of profeminist men who claim to be recovered sexist men, as if the process of identifying with feminism as a male is one that actually ends at some point.
- Deanna Zandt, Ms. August/September 2000
With religious fervor, pop feminists condemn men as utterly irredeemable and in need of never ending repentance for the original sin of being born male.
Men are at fault until medical science proves otherwise?
Turns out that boys are better than girls at "spatial skills," meaning that boys "have higher mental rotation skills...This helps them interpret maps." So, if you don't know where the hell you are, it's not your fault.
- Kate Rounds, Ms. August/September 2000
So, men were too stupid to ask for directions until medical science proved men generally have more native ability to navigate than women. In response to the new information, pop feminist shrug off the previous evidence of their prejudice by, as always, casting it in the context of blame: "we're not at fault."
Now we know
I cry when I get angry.
- Gloria Steinem, Ms. August/September 2000
Men tend to interpret women's tears as a cry for help, so we offer help and extend the hand of love or friendship when it might be wiser to withdraw to a safe distance and be on guard.
What do you think? Talk about it on the Equalitarian Discussion Forums or join The Backlash! discussion list.
|