Note on Comments

This morning a comment in moderation awaited my approval. It turned out to be a long-winded, pathetic MRA screed in which the writer urged men not to marry, to fuck prostitutes, and work on creating artificial wombs and sex robots so they'll never have to have contact with a real flesh-and-blood woman again.

Well, whatever, dude. I can assure you I would never miss coming in contact with such a complete jackass as you either.

I cannot fathom why this idiot wasted his time with this mess. It's certainly never going to see the light of day, at least on this blog. If he bounces from place to place posting stupidities like these and then crows "censorship" when they understandably never appear, all I can say is: Tough shit. This is my virtual living room and I control who gets invited in. If the only reason you're commenting is to take a pixellated dump on my carpet, you can take your nastiness elsewhere, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

MRA's and various other stripes of misogynist are not welcome here. Period. You can certainly occupy yourself by writing spittle-flecked rants like the one above, but since all comments are moderated, it will take one click for me to retire them to the ether.

Please keep this in mind, kids. It does say "feminism" right in my header, after all.

The Truth About Domestic Violence

This is a great article and link via Richie at Crimitism. Richie's comments are insightful as usual, but the scholarly work done by Michael Flood re: "husband battering" impressed me. Some quotes:

There are four problems with the claims about 'husband battering' made by men's rights advocates. Firstly, they only use these authors' work selectively, as the authors themselves disagree that women and men are equally the victims of domestic violence. Secondly, they ignore the serious methodological flaws in the Conflict Tactics Scale. Thirdly, they ignore or dismiss a mountain of other evidence which conflicts with their claims. Finally, their strategies in fact are harmful to men themselves, including to male victims of violence. To make the fifty/fifty claim about husband battering, men's rights and fathers' rights advocates must also ignore or dismiss a mountain of conflicting evidence, from crime victimisation surveys of the population, numerous studies using methodologies other than the Conflict Tactics Scale, calls made to domestic violence centres and services, hospital statistics on how people were injured, and applications for intervention orders.

This massive body of evidence continues to show that men are more often the perpetrators of domestic violence than are women, that women are more often the victims of domestic violence than are men, and that when boys and men are the victims of violence this is usually violence by other boys and men.

However, surveys such as the one by Headey et.al are likely to miss a second important form of domestic violence, what Johnson calls "patriarchal terrorism". This represents some husbands' practice of a terroristic control of their wives. It involves the systematic use of not only violence, but economic subordination, threats, isolation and other control tactics [Johnson, 1995: 284]. This violence is patriarchal because it is based in patriarchal ideas of male ownership and control of their female partners. This second form of domestic violence involves much more frequent violence (although the men using this can also control their wives using other tactics), the violence is more severe, and it is very likely to escalate over time.

Patriarchal terrorism. How scary--and how apt.

Read the whole thing.

Note: I know as soon as I post this with any sort of MRA tags, some idiot will write comments that are supposed to scare me. This happened a couple of posts back. Evidently the Mens' Rights Gods must assign their toadies to troll Google or other search engines, hone in on anything with the letters MRA, and make threats.

Yawn.

Seen it before, not impressed. This is the great thing about Blogger comment moderation: anything I don't like will be consigned to the Cybernetic Wasteland, and there's not a frakking thing you can do about it!!

So if you want to waste your time and vent your spleen into nothingness, go right ahead. I'll even get you started:

Or we might try this:










See how that works? So if you still want to add your pointless blathering, have at it.

----------------
Now playing: Roddy Woomble - As Still As I Watch Your Grave
via FoxyTunes

Unpacking the MRA "Argument"

THE definitive bitch-slap, from Pandagon. And written by a man, no less. (At least the username is male.)

So in some universe where a man exercising the “choice” not to be a father meant that — POOF — there suddenly wouldn’t be any more fetus, any more risks to the pregnant woman, any offspring to raise for 18 years, “male choice” might almost (depending on lots of devilish details) make some small amount of sense. But in this world, it’s just another way of saying, “I’m out of here, woman, you clean up the mess.”

Oh my.