Let’s compare two feminists and their hopes for 2015

 

Jessica Valenti is a professional victim, perpetually whining over the most trivial bullshit she can come up with, simultaneously screeching that men should stop everything they are doing and help her confront the horrors of wrapping Christmas presents and buying tampons, while blaming men for all the problems in the world. Help me, you violent, rapey, drunk assholes!

 

Cathy Young is also a feminist, although she can’t be a very dedicated one, as she still embraces patriarchal constructs like facts, logic and reason. Unsurprisingly, she is disliked by a lot of feminists, and even made it onto a list of women attacking women’s rights!!! The catfighting between whiny, harpy, bitchy moaners and rational, evidence-based, factual feminists  has never sent more fur flying!

 

 

Let’s look at these two and their hopes for the New Year.

 

Valenti gets off to a hate-filled bigoted start filled with contradiction right out of the starting gate.

 

Women and men need to do something about feminism in 2015: not just say that they are feminist, nor just share a few articles about feminist issues, but take concrete actions to make the world a better place for women and girls.

[Emphasis mine]

You hear that men??? Get off your asses right now and make the world better for women! And girls! And women, you can get off your asses too and make the world a better place for other women! And girls!

 

Fuck men and boys! Who cares if the world is better for them or not? Lol!

 

Cathy, in an affront to feminists everywhere, recognizes that women in other parts of the world needs some very basic rights, but when it comes to the United States, the struggle is for gender equality. Cathy privileges neither men nor women.

 

Do we still need feminism in 2015 and beyond—and if so, what kind? Advocacy for women’s basic rights clearly remains an urgent issue in many places around the world. Even in the United States and other advanced democracies, a movement for gender equality still has valid issues to address. Here are a few guideposts to keep such a movement from turning irrelevant, toxic, or both.

 

Jessica then goes on to bemoan the horrid, stupid, violent, frightening, monstrous men with guns running amok shooting up women willy-nilly! Ban the guns! From the men! Domestic violence is unidirectional! Women never shoot their husbands, and certainly not to avoid a messy divorce, amirite?

 

The intersection of gun and intimate partner violence also needs to be at the forefront of feminists’ minds in 2015. Last month, a Philadelphia cop Stephen Rozniakowski was arrested for killing his ex-girlfriend, Valerie Morrow, who had a protective order against him. Jason Down of Oregon had protective orders filed against him by three different women – including his ex-girlfriend Cassie Wagner. After Wagner ended her abusive relationship with Down, she was shot and killed in her home. Wagner has been charged with her murder.

 

Most women who are murdered by their partners or exes are killed using guns. The rate of these killings is so high that, according the Violence Policy Center, women are more like to be killed using a gun than “all other means combined”. It’s not enough that men convicted of domestic violence aren’t allowed to have guns. Those who have restraining or protective orders against them should also have to surrender their weapons and be banned from buying guns.

 

Modus operandi for our Jess – ignore all facts and evidence that suggests intimate partner violence is not only mutual, but women are more likely to throw the only punches. But lol! They’re hitting men, so who cares! We’re only making the world better for women and girls, remember?

 

 

Cathy has a disconcerting tendency to see all the humans as inherently valuable, and cannot prevent herself from caring about men and boys in addition to women and girls. If this were Salem, Cathy would be burned at the stake for heresy.

 

 

Equality should not mean that men and women must be identical in everything—it should mean treating people as individuals regardless of their gender. Too often, the debate about biology and gender pits dogmatic denial of any innate behavioral or psychological differences between the sexes against broad Mars-versus-Venus stereotypes and claims that traditional sex roles are nature’s way. It’s entirely possible that even absent any gender-specific social pressures, women would be much more likely to become full-time parents, nurses, or kindergarten teachers, while men would be much more likely to become CEOs, professional athletes, or engineers. But while many differences in personality traits and cognitive patterns may be innate, they are tendencies, not absolutes. Flexibility is part of human nature, too; and, just as many feminists exaggerate the role of socialization, many conservative critics of feminism underestimate the impact of cultural biases. We can work to reduce such biases and ensure that nontraditional choices are not stigmatized or discouraged—without demanding 50-50 parity in everything.

 

The other side of sexism must be recognized. Former Jezebel editor Lindy West has argued that such “men’s rights” problems as unequal treatment of fathers in family courts or bias against male domestic violence victims are rooted in patriarchy and that feminism is already addressing them. Unfortunately, facts say otherwise. On these and other issues, feminist activists and commentators have tended to side with women, oppose measures to help men, and promote women-as-victims, men-as-bad-guys narratives. Such double standards need to be confronted.

 

Jessica turns her attention to the genuine, life-altering and devastating effects of people being mean on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, calling for a HugBox in which women are never challenged, confronted, questioned or otherwise treated like adults. She wants some serious technology to carry out her censorship program, because the tools right now just aren’t working. You report someone for offending you with a different opinion, or someone who has the nerve to tweet you your own words, and sooner or later, Twitter figures out no abuse occurred and the whole cycle starts again.

 

But violence and harassment against women isn’t just a problem in “real life.” We must hold companies like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook accountable for the abuse and harassment that happens on their platforms. GamerGate and a US supreme court case addressing online hate speech put to bed any questions about the ubiquity and awfulness of online harassment. Until social media platforms are forced to take hate speech seriously, we’ll be stuck with a point-and-click band-aid instead of real change. A start? Let’s see these companies put serious dollars behind tech solutions, and work with harassment experts on the best way to implement them.

 

Cathy, on the other hand, is more concerned about problems in the real world, but she still stubbornly refuses to embrace the hate and just blame men for everything.

 

The personal is not always political. Men behaving badly to women in personal relationships—unless such behavior has social and institutional support—is not necessarily a gender issue. Neither gender has a monopoly on insensitivity, rudeness, manipulation, dishonesty, or entitlement. What’s more, policing relationships in the name of ideology—for instance, trying to dictate how people should express consent to sex—is always a bad idea. Let us by all means have a conversation on changing sexual norms; but this can be done without using coercion and penalties to enforce someone’s version of healthy interaction, or focusing almost exclusively on male mistreatment of women.

 

A narrative is only as good as its facts. From “women earn 77 cents to a man’s dollar for the same work” to “one in five college women are sexually assaulted by graduation,” a number of statistics commonly used by women’s advocates have withered under scrutiny. So have some recent tales of alleged misogynist infamy, such as the University of Virginia gang rape and cover-up or the supposedly sexist firing of New York Times editor Jill Abramson. Too often, the feminist response to such debunkings has amounted to declarations that the big picture matters more than specific facts and figures. But the big picture had better be made up of accurate details. Campus rape certainly happens; so does workplace sexism. But addressing real problems requires solid research and reporting. We badly need more of both when it comes to gender issues.

 

For Jess, the issue is simple: men are assholes and the best way to show them what jerks they are is to pay women more and men less because vagina and equality.  And if Hillary loses it will because voters hate women.  Jess recommends the radical step of writing a strongly worded email to someone somewhere who will do nothing, but you can feel smug anyways.

 

These issues are hardly the only ones that require more focused action. Campus rape, domestic violence, street harassment, abortion restrictions, unequal pay and access to childcare are as important as they were last year, and, with Hillary Clinton probably running for President again, sexism in politics will likely rear its ugly head just as it did in 2008. If you tweeted about feminism last year, this year consider sending an email to your elected representative in support of a policy about which you care.

 

Understandably frustrated with trivial feminist bullshit, Cathy has a few more practical and concrete activities in mind. And of course, she keeps asserting that key issues affect all the humans, and the ones with penises matter, too. If Cathy had a penis, she would probably get castrated by the sisterhood for her dogged insistence that men are humans worthy of equal consideration.

 

Trivial pursuit is not the path to equity. Feminism is now battling the alleged scourge of men who take up too much space on public transit by spreading their legs? Not only is this selective male-shaming (social media users quickly noted that female riders are guilty of different-but-equal sins), it is also a comically petty grievance that could suggests the aggrieved have no real issues. Half of successful advocacy is knowing to pick one’s battles.

 

The biggest unfinished business of gender equality in the West is “work-life balance” and caregiving. This point was eloquently made by Judith Shulevitz in a recent New Republic debate on feminism’s future. Whatever role discrimination may play, childbearing has a major effect on gender disparities in career achievement. Even women who are satisfied with these trade-offs often feel the conflict acutely. But this tension is not just a women’s issue. In a Pew poll last year, almost as many working fathers as working mothers (50% versus 56%) said it was it difficult to balance work and parenthood. Overall, twice as many fathers as mothers—46% versus 23%—felt they spent too little time with their children.

 

Like many feminists, Shulevitz sees mainly government solutions. Others would counter that the flexibility and creativity of markets and civil society offer far better answers. But this is the kind of debate people should be having in the big tent of a true equality movement.

 

Cathy’s argument can be summed up with the following quote:

 

The perception of pervasive, one-sided male power and advantage can create a disturbing blindness to injustices toward men—even potentially life-ruining ones such as false accusations of rape. A true equality movement should address all gender-based wrongs, not create new ones.

 

Jessica Valenti? She summed up her own argument quite nicely:

 

 

If all feminists were like Cathy Young, I would have no problem with feminism at all. Unfortunately, the vast majority are like Valenti. They don’t care about anything other than themselves. They can barely make other women a priority, never mind men and boys.

 

Cathy Young might be a feminist according to the dictionary, but judging by her actions, she’s not.

 

She’s a men’s rights activist.

 

Welcome aboard, Cathy. Feel free to man-spread all over the damn place.

 

 

There’s room for everyone!

 

Lots of love,

 

JB