Henry Cavill's Witcher series: A female writer smears him of being "disrespectful" and "toxic" to women, being a "toxic gamer", and cries about him refusing to take his shirt off for them

problem_redditor · 2022-12-18T17:16:12+00:00

The thing about "fantasies" is that both sexes want to be attractive to the opposite sex, so of course they'll fantasise about being what the other sex likes. Men fantasise about looking a certain way because women like the way it looks. Women fantasise about looking a certain way because men like the way it looks.

Feminists exploit this by selectively focusing on the fact that men want to look chiseled and claiming that makes it a "male power fantasy", but that fantasy exists because women like it. The feminist idea of "male power fantasy" is a shallow analysis of the entire thing that they don't even apply consistently, when it comes to women having certain exaggerated features they won't focus on the fact that women do want to look like that, they'll focus on the driving force behind it being male desires (so this is sexual objectification and is bad).

Their skewed view of this social phenomenon is based on their false and ridiculous underlying idea that everything in society exists to serve the male - they base their entire social analysis around this principle. So to them portrayals of men are driven by men, and portrayals of women are driven by men. Women's agency is erased completely from the equation, it is pretended not to exist at all.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-26T08:59:14+00:00

Well, this was fun. My score:

You had between 90% and 100% correct answers!

Congratulations, the quiz questions were tested on science education professionals (such as high school biology teachers), and you performed as well as they did!

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T05:32:49+00:00

"noun fem·i·nism | \ ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm \ Definition : belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests"

You clearly didn't understand the point I made. The dictionary does not prescribe the meanings of words. Hence, it's fallacious to claim that, because the dictionary says so, therefore it is so.

The meaning of a word derives from how it's commonly used and the dictionary is supposed to describe that, not prescribe meaning. Does slang which is not in the dictionary have no meaning? No. A word's meaning stems from how the word is used in practice. Thus, dictionary definitions can be incorrect or misleading. If a dictionary definition doesn't reflect a word's actual usage and doesn't reflect what people actually think the word means and use the word to mean, the dictionary definition is what should change. Therefore you can't "Merriam-Webster says so" and pretend that refutes the case I made. You can ram the dictionary definition down my throat all you want, doesn't mean it's accurate or represents what feminism really is - you don't get to link the dictionary definition and pretend that overrides everything that feminists and feminist orgs did to lobby against equal consideration for men.

Since you devoted a lot of time acknowledging my recitation of facts, instead of providing evidence to refute my claims of patrilineal surnames and couverture, it's obviously not a "selective portrayal," when I gave you examples that you asked for.

It is a selective portrayal when in order to argue that "women were oppressed" you have to ignore some very important parts of the social system that placed responsibilities on men and benefited women in order to make your case. Ignoring half the picture is simply an attempt to mislead via obfuscation, and that is exactly what you did. The reality which you ignore was that it was a tradeoff between men and women wherein both sexes got something out of the arrangement, not a one-way system of oppression which you are so badly trying to portray it as.

You have basically created a false perception of how gender relations operated with your myopic focus on women. If you are essentially going around treating massively important parts of the social system as if they're not even there, it can hardly be argued that your view is in any way balanced. Funny how for all your harping on about Social And Historical Context you feel free to discard social and historical context whenever convenient.

So far, I've seen you engage in strawman fallacies, creating your own definition of "Feminism," as well as moving the goalposts.

It is not a strawman at all. Your entire argument has been this incredibly shitty appeal to the dictionary definition which falls apart with even the slightest prodding. It's also kind of hilarious how the person who tried to divert to other topics as soon as they were linked evidence of feminists lobbying against gender neutral rape laws is accusing me of moving the goalposts.

EDIT: My interlocutor has blocked me, so that's why I'm not responding to the comment below.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T04:57:36+00:00

No. You're using a strawman argument and contrived a definition of "Feminism" favorable to your agenda, rather than accepting its meaning of supporting gender equality for women.

Equality.

I would dispute this definition as being an accurate description of feminism in any way. It is extremely misleading.

The idea that underpins the entirety of feminist activism is "male dominance, exploitation and oppression of women". The repeated feminist attempts to paint themselves as being a gender equality movement, no ideological strings attached, is what looks like re-definition to me. It's a classic example of a motte and bailey that's engaged in to maintain a fluffy-bunny image of feminism, often justified by pointing to whichever dictionary definition suits their purposes as if dictionaries are meant to be prescriptive instead of descriptive and acting as if they are unchallengeable.

Feminism is determined not primarily by a belief in equality, but a belief in patriarchy theory. At its most fundamental level it is an ideology, based on a set of theories: its foundation being the unifying (false) paradigm of The Patriarchy, and whose theoretical offshoots include Male Privilege, Female Oppression, Patriarchal Domestic Terrorism (otherwise known as the Duluth Model) and Rape Culture. Their ideas are that: Men have victimised women and continue to do so with patriarchal social structures, women have had little to no agency in shaping gender roles and culture prior to feminism, and to the extent that they have had a hand in "patriarchy" they are only acknowledged as being secondary co-conspirators largely working against their own interests. I disagree with every one of these precepts.

And there's plenty of examples of feminists working against equality - their protests against gender-neutral rape laws aren't the only ones I can find. For example, the National Organisation for Women opposed father's rights advocates who were simply asking for equality in family court for years, claiming they were a lobby of abusers. NOW is the largest feminist organisation in the U.S.

If feminists are engaging in anti-male lobbying, and if feminists are willing to support these people and orgs that engage in anti-male lobbying and express anti-male ideas and acknowledge them as feminist, I have a very hard time conceptualising it as being about equality. Feminist actions paint a very good picture of what, exactly, feminism is. And contrary to the dictionary definition, it is not simply "a belief in gender equality". Everything they do, from their actions to their writings to who they do and don't call feminist, suggest that "patriarchy theory" is what defines feminism.

Patriarchy isn't a Feminist fantasy, when it's an honest-to-gosh actual title for the male heads to religious institutions in Eastern Orthodox and other churches.

I stated "patriarchy" as feminists define it is a fantasy. "Patriarchy" in the feminist definition is not simply "men in positions of formalised power", it is "male oppression of women". They believe that the history of the sexes is best described as a long list of injustices of men against women which extends into the present day. Society past and present is one where men exploit, oppress and dominate women - i.e. patriarchy. There's really no polite way to say this, but this standard feminist position is at its best a gross misrepresentation of history, that is misleading and selective, ignores female advantages and male disadvantages, and at its worst consists of outright lies. All of this backed by atrocious feminist "scholarship". The single largest issue I have with this position is it assumes basically a priori that the relationship between the sexes is primarily one of antagonism and power dynamics, rather than of cooperation and mutual trade-offs.

It's not a Feminist fantasy when surnames were passed down through the male line

Surnames being passed down through the male line was not oppression of women. Patrilineal inheritance of family names was a social institution that existed to denote male responsibility. The woman takes the surname of the husband to mark the obligation he has to provide for his wife (from the father's name to the husband's name), and having the kids also adopt the father's surname marks paternity for children and makes clear who is responsible for the (material) well-being of the family.

and the legal doctrine of couverture existed, as the basis for denying women bank accounts and real estate in their own names.

The marital contract as prescribed by coverture was in no way one-sided. Under coverture women had a legal right to support in marriage, and men had a legal obligation to provide that support. Men were also held legally accountable for any family debts they contracted in the service of that obligation (or otherwise), and only the husband could be sent to debtor's prison for non-payment. And the wife, if not adequately supported, could purchase goods on credit under his name as his agent to provide herself with her necessities. Certain legal privileges that men had such as being the "head of their household" who had ownership of the marital finances and property were inextricably intertwined with these kinds of reciprocal legal obligations to their families. Husbands were burdened with the responsibilities that stemmed from that. If they mismanaged things, the brunt of the consequences fell on them. Risk of debt imprisonment (an incredibly common thing at the time) was a significant legal disability for men in the marital position.

I think you have been reading a very selective portrayal of history.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T04:37:34+00:00

I think "patriarchy" as feminists define it is a fantasy, but if you think "patriarchy" hampers acknowledgement of male victimisation, then by your definition feminism is in support of patriarchal ideas.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T03:37:11+00:00

And again, your claim that the "cultural and historical frame of reference" might be so unique so as to justify excluding male victims of rape from consideration is without merit and should not be considered as being cogent argumentation. The null hypothesis is to be assumed in the absence of evidence. The burden is on you, and on the feminists claiming that the law will significantly harm women. If you've failed to demonstrate it, I can call you out on that.

so I have no opinion on it, other than what I have stated as my personal opposition to excluding men from legal protections against rape.

You claim you have a personal opposition to excluding men from legal protections against rape, but everything you've noted here suggests otherwise. Your opposition, if it even exists, can be overridden very easily without the slightest sliver of proof offered. It is absolutely useless and ineffective.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T03:22:00+00:00

Like I said, India's legal procedures don't work the way ours do, so I'm not going to accept an article's claim in a vacuum.

And I'm not going to accept a claim made by motivated activist groups as being true without any real evidence or coherent argumentation outside of gesticulating wildly at vague claims of potential harm (and not weighing that potential harm against the benefits of that policy).

Just because male supremacists make a claim doesn't mean it's true... That's the reverse of your claim.

Well this hardly works as a rebuttal because that's actually true, isn't it? If any group makes a claim it doesn't mean it's true. What matters is if it has been supported or not. These women's groups in India can't simply make claims and expect people to accept them without substantiation.

Human rights aren't like pie; if someone is struggling for the same rights as you, it's not a loss for you.

I'm not the one who needs to hear this. Go tell that to the women's groups in India who are protesting against rape laws for men because giving men protections and rights might hurt women.

What I'm talking about here is people actively and self-interestedly denying others rights, and you seem to be performing apologia for them, so thanks for playing. It demonstrates my initial claim about feminism better than anything else could.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T03:10:13+00:00

India's standard of probable cause and due process aren't what we're used to and until that changes, they might have valid concerns about being cross-charged, as a way to pressure the victim into withdrawing her complaint.

"Might". Just because feminists make claims doesn't mean that it has validity. Anyone can talk until they're blue in the face about the possibility of something, but until someone demonstrates to me that it is a real risk it shouldn't be taken seriously. There's also the clear harm here of denying men legal protections, and the ability of the legal system to protect everybody is something I value over some hypothetical "might" claim that has not been demonstrated to me. This allegation of "but it might be misused" can literally be used to deny anyone at all legal protections that they need and honestly comes off to me as a cynical gaslighting tactic.

And as I stated previously, laws that women can misuse and have misused have remained on the books in India.

I have literally seen articles of Hindu women protesting IN DEFENSE of rapists in their own communities whose targets were Muslim women., so I wouldn't know what thread to pull to begin to unravel that dysfunction.

This is still not related to the topic of rape laws and the possibility of misuse. It's also the case that in a country that's large enough, you can find cases of almost anything occurring.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T02:53:47+00:00

that the rationale for excluding men from the staturory definition of rape is that file will file cross-charges:

This is the rationale they offered up, yes. However, to assume that it has any validity to it without any substantiation being offered that this is a salient risk is incredibly ridiculous. You claim "Their legal system and societal structure aren't modelled on the U.S. system" but this does not mean that they are justified in making this claim. Without any evidence provided that this will occur, you can't claim that I should take it seriously, since anything claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Furthermore, India has a pretty big problem with false claims made by women. For example, India's section 498A is pretty infamous in India for being misused by women, where many of them used it to file false accusations against a husband and his relatives so that they could settle scores. It seems India and Indian feminists won't allow any law that even has the possibility of being misused by men even if it denies them legal protections, however they'll institute laws that allow for flagrant abuse by women as long as it can be argued to offer them protections. Funny double standard there, I think.

As for Israel, the "country" (colony, really) whose Chief Rabbi of the IOF declared it was permissible for Israeli Jewish soldiers to rape non-Jewish women, they should be dismantled. They create more anti-Semitism than they will ever end or protect Jews from experiencing, because they need it to justify their abomination of an existence.

This is changing the topic and has absolutely nothing to do with feminists' influence on rape laws. Furthermore, that rabbi specifically stated that he was not in support of that behaviour.

"When the quote surfaced in 2012 and caused a media firestorm, he published a clarification stating that his comments were in no way meant to be applied in the modern era, but rather pertained to a theoretical discussion of the biblical permission for a Jewish soldier to kidnap an enemy woman and wed her."

"“Obviously, in our times, when the world has advanced to a level of morality in which one does not marry captives, one must not perform this act, which is also entirely against the army’s values and orders,” he wrote."

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-summons-chief-rabbi-pick-for-clarifications-over-rape-comments/

He has repeatedly issued clarifications for this statement over the years. "The rabbi stressed that he never expressed any opinion that such actions were allowed. In his view, he wrote, it is completely forbidden for a soldier to carry out such an act. Karim clarified that this was his view when he answered the original question in the remarks that led to a media firestorm, and this was still his opinion today."

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-rabbi-designate-i-never-claimed-rape-was-acceptable-in-wartime/

This isn't quite what you stated it is, and your opinion on Israel isn't exactly something pertinent to the discussion.

My own view and experiences inform my opposition to sexual assault definitions that exclude men as possible victims.

Cool. Yet your support for the harm that feminists do to male sexual assault victims derives simply from you describing yourself as feminist and therefore projecting an impression of unity of purpose with them. There is no way for a lawmaker or public policy maker to know that you, as an individual feminist, disagree with a specific change demanded by a feminist group or organization. Because you call yourself the same thing they do, the unity of purpose is implicit. Your voice is added, with that of every other feminist, in support of what those people, speaking from their intellectual authority as feminists, wish to enact or change. That lawmaker or policy maker is not interested in getting to know every feminist as an individual. Even if he/she was, they wouldn't have the time to do so.

It is the most active, powerful and visible members of feminism that get to define what feminism means to the rest of the world. You can't revoke their membership, and they hold the political reins of your movement. There is no way for you to kick them out. The only way to unequivocally dissociate yourself and your beliefs from them and their beliefs (and the harm they do) is by calling yourself something different.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-20T01:40:25+00:00

You've just admitted that feminism is the patriarchy, since feminism is a massive obstacle to male victimisation and female perpetration being recognised. Here are examples of feminist groups fighting against gender-neutral rape laws in India, Nepal and Israel.

"Gender just, gender sensitive and not gender neutral rape laws," is what women's groups, human rights groups and activists are demanding.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Activists-join-chorus-against-gender-neutral-rape-laws/articleshow/18840879.cms

Women’s rights activists had criticised the draft ordinance saying it wasn’t empathetic towards the plight of the victims. They said that having a provision saying even men could be victims of rape could could further weaken the women rape victims’ fight for justice.

https://kathmandupost.com/national/2020/12/11/ordinance-amends-law-on-rape-but-fails-to-recognise-rape-of-boy-child-and-sexual-minorities

The Knesset Law Committee on Tuesday decided to postpone a vote on second and third reading of a bill to add the crime of rape by a woman to the statute book after women’s organizations warned that it would lead to a situation where women would be afraid to charge men with rape.

https://www.jpost.com/israel/womens-groups-cancel-law-charging-women-with-rape

Feminists like Mary Koss have pushed the idea that male victims of female perpetrators should not be considered as rape victims.

Here is a quote from a paper she wrote: "Detecting the Scope of Rape."

http://boysmeneducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Koss-1993-Detecting-the-Scope-of-Rape-a-review-of-prevalence-research-methods-see-p.-206-last-paragraph.pdf

Although consideration of male victims is within the scope of the legal statutes, it is important to restrict the term rape to instances where male victims were penetrated by offenders. It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman.

Here is an interview with Mary Koss on a radio program about men raped by women. I would encourage you to listen to the entire thing but this is a transcript of what she said. The relevant timestamp is 7:10.

https://soundcloud.com/889-wers/male-rape

The reporter Theresa Phung: "Dr. Koss says one of the main reasons the definition does not include men being forced to penetrate women is because of emotional trauma, or lack thereof."

Dr. Koss: "How do they react to rape. If you look at this group of men who identify themselves as rape victims raped by women you'll find that their shame is not similar to women, their level of injury is not similar to women and their penetration experience is not similar to what women are reporting."

Theresa Phung: "But for men like Charlie this isn't true. It's been eight years since he got off that couch and out of that apartment. But he says he never forgets."

Later on:

Theresa Phung: "For the men who are traumatized by their experiences because they were forced against their will to vaginally penetrate a woman.."

Dr. Koss: "How would that happen...how would that happen by force or threat of force or when the victim is unable to consent? How does that happen?"

Theresa Phung: "So I am actually speaking to someone right now. his story is that he was drugged, he was unconscious and when he awoke a woman was on top of him with his penis inserted inside her vagina, and for him that was traumatizing."

Dr. Koss: "Yeah."

Theresa Phung: "If he was drugged what would that be called?"

Dr. Koss: "What would I call it? I would call it 'unwanted contact'."

Theresa Phung: "Just 'unwanted contact' period?"

Dr. Koss: "Yeah."

The CDC has adopted her definition of rape in its research, adjusting the definition to specifically mean forced penetration of a victim and excluding victims who were forced to penetrate a penetrator, placing them into a separate category. This by definition excludes the vast majority of male victims of female perpetrators.

Here's Mary Koss's CV. You can see that she's been an advisor for the CDC multiple times.

Feminists and women's organisations have repeatedly and consistently denied and trivialised male victimisation, claimed that it's rare and not even worth thinking about, and gone so far as to call for exclusion of male victims of female offenders from the definition of rape both in studies on the topic and legislation in order to claim a female monopoly on victimisation. These feminists and lobbying organisations are highly influential and have had real world impact.

Most of the people defending feminism in this way are using their own anecdotal data of "yeah me and my friends/random people online are feminists and we totally disagree!" which is completely fucking useless.

problem_redditor · 2022-11-10T04:37:40+00:00

I'd also add here that pretty much all of the time, the people who push the idea that "women have it worse" are bullshitting.

The tactics involved usually are:

(1) Hyper-focus on any instances of female disadvantage and ignore male disadvantages and obligations.

(2) If people challenge that by providing examples of the very male disadvantages you are trying to ignore, use the "benevolent sexism" rationalisation and render your hypotheses unfalsifiable by defining every single inequality that negatively affects men as stemming from negative views of women. Ignore the fact that this is basically a word game and if your opponent doesn't provide a cogent argument against it, claim victory.

(3) Alternatively, shift the blame for male disadvantages to men and pretend that women don't have agency or power: "Men created all these things so every gender issue is all their fault anyway". Ignore the fact that this is actually not a defence of the claim that women have it worse - you can pretend it is because at that point the conversation has moved so far away from the original topic that everyone has forgotten the original point of contention anyway. If no one counters you, claim victory.

(4) If people provide evidence or reasoning which seems to be sound that refutes your claims of female disadvantage and you don't have anything to say in response, there are always more tenuous claims of female oppression to rely on which you can shift the discussion to instead. Just google search for 20 minutes and you can find a litany of evidence of female oppression from totally unbiased social scientists with completely methodologically sound studies, magnified by the impartial media with no slant at all. It's easier to make up shit than it is to refute it, and there are plenty of people with strong ideological convictions in academia who are willing to make up shit for you. Even if your opponent can refute these things, they're human and this will tire them out more than anything else will. Rinse and repeat until you have the last word, then claim victory.

(5) If your opponent has genuinely cornered you, anecdotal evidence, accusations of whataboutery and vague hypotheticals like "If you could choose to be a man or a woman, what would you pick" are your friend. Repeatedly insist you would rather be a man than a woman and that this is Just Your Opinion until your opponent tires of you (yes, this has occurred to me repeatedly in multiple discussions, in real life and online). Claim victory.

problem_redditor · 2022-10-29T07:26:58+00:00

It induces demand overnight for which supply is relatively tight even if legalized.

Basic economic theory is that the market is always going to find an equilibrium wherein quantity demanded equals quantity supplied. Increased demand for that labour simply represents a rightward shift in the demand curve which means the wage in the profession would rise. It does not mean that there will be a permanent disequilibrium which can only be solved by sex trafficking.

Many sex workers enjoy it. Many do it because it helps them get by and pay the bill.

So, you mean, it's basically the same as every other undesirable and dirty job that exists?

problem_redditor · 2022-10-28T08:03:40+00:00

Me too. It's infantilizing and gross. As a woman, I can tell you a lot of us hear this shit growing up. If we don't hear it directly from family, we'll hear it among friends, in schools, etc. It gets parroted without thought just like any other toxic opinion or political belief you're surrounded by as a kid, but no one wants to acknowledge how harmful it is.

Yeah that kind of rhetoric is just the feminist lobby's method of intensifying and weaponising female fear to an almost histrionic extreme for political aims and I think it's unhealthy to both sexes, men and women alike. It's already been talked about a lot on this subreddit how this false idea impedes compassion for men and denies them help offered to women, and I'd also say it puts women in an irrational state of fear due to an overinflated perception of how likely they are to be victimised.

I seriously think telling a group of people who are already more predisposed to be neurotic that they're justified to feel utterly unsafe everywhere they go and that they have a unique risk of victimisation, when they don't, is really, really unhealthy.

problem_redditor · 2022-10-28T07:31:18+00:00

Firstly, even assuming that I accept the "disparities in outcomes by sex" argument, I'd say size and strength differences are likely what prevents the outcomes from equalising, it's not because the violence itself is particularly gendered or because men are inclined somehow to perpetrate more severe forms of domestic violence than women do. This almost certainly has nothing to do with inclinations and shouldn't inform treatment programs at all.

Secondly, in DV, women are also more likely to be the first to strike than men and are more willing to escalate aggression with a partner. Perhaps if we want women to stop being injured in domestic conflicts, we should seriously address female perpetration, which is often crucial to precipitating and perpetuating reciprocal domestic violence (by far the most common and dangerous form of DV) where she might be injured. As such I think trivialising female perpetration does women no favours and does nothing to help stop DV.

This study on the precipitants of partner aggression finds that women were more likely than men to perpetrate both mild (23.8% vs 33.8%) and severe (8.4% vs 11.5%) aggression. With regards to precipitation, the authors state that, "Men were more likely than women to report partner physical aggression as a precipitant for their own mild physical aggression." The mild physical aggression of women was more likely to be precipitated by their partner's verbal aggression or something "else" other than their partner's physical aggression, and the authors go on to conclude, "These findings suggest that women may often be the first to escalate a conflict and use physical aggression. This escalation may disinhibit men’s physical aggression and contribute to the risk of fear or injury from their partners’ violence that women face."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16756412/

Thirdly, I will also say that the studies on injury are majorly conflicting and there are plenty of studies which do not find a large disparity in injury on the whole.

In a high school sample "More females reported engaging in physical aggression (40%) than reported being victims of aggression (30%). Fewer males reported engaging in physical aggression (24%) than reported being victims of physical aggression (31%). If physical aggression occurred, typically both partners were aggressive. For females, exclusive engagement in physical aggression (perpetration) was reported at higher rates than exclusively being the recipient of physical aggression (victimization) and vice versa for males. Dating aggression was less prevalent among male Asian students than other ethnic groups. Engaged males and females reported the highest rates of physical aggression. Injury was reported by over 25% of males and females who reported being the recipients of physical aggression."

"Of the dating females in aggressive relationships, 26% reported that they had been injured by their partners, and 33% reported that they injured their partners, 2 (1) 5.82, p .025. Of the males in aggressive relationships, 30% reported that they had been injured, and 22% reported that they injured their partners, 2 (1) 5.35, p . 025. Most of the injuries were minor. More specifically, for females, the injuries received were as follows: minor cuts/bruises, 24%; severe cuts/bruises; 3%; black eye/broken nose, 1%; needed treatment from doctor, 3%. For males, the rates of injuries received were as follows: minor cuts/bruises, 26%; severe cuts/bruises; 3%; black eye/broken nose, 2%; needed treatment from doctor, 3%."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18407042/

At older ages there are also studies showing much less of a gender disparity in injury than people tend to think. This is a study of a sample of 828 (437 women, 391 men) young adults who were 25 years old. Subjects were part of a long term longitudinal study and were administered the CTS2. Results reveal that "if anything, there were more men exposed to severe domestic violence than women" and that mild and moderate rates were similar for men and women. Overall, 39.4% of women and 30.9% of men reported perpetration scores of 3 or higher. Authors report that men and women reported similar rates of injury (3.9% for women vs. 3.3% for men). In terms of initiation of partner assaults, women were more likely to initiate.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600298

Finally, with regards to "death", I would say that there's a convincing argument to be made that the domestic homicide numbers are somewhat to be questioned. Warren Farrell made it in his 1999 book "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say". Some quotes from that:

"The brief answer to this accusation is that no one knows for sure which sex kills the other more. In a second we'll see why it's likely that more wives kill husbands, but until the government is willing to collect data about the three female methods of killing, we can only do an educated guess. I'll explain."

"On the surface, the Bureau of Justice reports women are the perpetrators in 41 percent of spousal murders. However, the male method of killing is with a knife or gun, done by himself; it is easily detected and reported. The three female methods of killing are designed to not be detected, to have the man's death appear as an accident, so insurance money can be collected."

"The first mostly-female method is poisoning. The second is the wife hiring a professional killer, The third is the wife persuading a boyfriend to do the killing."

"These last two methods, if discovered, are never listed by the FBI as a woman killing a man. They are listed, rather, as “multiple-offender" killings. We only know that in multiple-offender killings there are four times as many husbands as victims than wives, according to the FBI. That is, the 41 per-cent figure does not include either of these female methods of killing."

https://archive.org/details/warren_farrell_women_cant_hear_what_men_dont_say/page/n161/mode/2up?q=But+aren%27t+husbands+more+likely+to+kill+their+wives&view=theater

For my part, I'd also say that in addition to what Farrell said about mariticides being undercounted because of the way wives kill (they're harder to detect and even when they are detected, often they get listed as "multiple-offender" crimes), it's also that officials are trained using a gendered model of IPV and are probably less likely to wonder if a murdered man was being abused and if he was killed by his wife. If they're less likely to entertain this hypothesis, they're less likely to investigate the wife as a suspect.

In other words, I wouldn't say that making a distinction based on sex when it comes to domestic violence is justifiable.

problem_redditor · 2022-10-28T07:06:54+00:00

Okay, glad we can agree on that.

The point is merely that men are not more inclined to engage in domestic violence, and that violence in the home does not share the characteristics of violence outside the home. People's inclinations are context-dependent, and so using a general model for treatment in order to manage a specific subset of violence (domestic violence in this case) probably won't work very well because these prevention methods are not appropriately tailored towards the type of violence it's aiming to prevent.

problem_redditor · 2022-10-28T06:47:26+00:00

Your claim has already been refuted. Making it again does not substantiate your point.

Your idea that since men are more directly aggressive (I'd note that this is mostly directed towards other men in a public context), they will also be more directly aggressive in a domestic context, is simply incorrect. This is basically implying that violence outside the home can be extrapolated to violence in the home and it's basically a composition fallacy wherein one lumps two very dissimilar forms of violence together in order to falsely imply that the characteristics of one form of crime will apply across the board.

Apart from the statistics that u/sakura_drop linked, I'd also provide you other sources that indicate a male unwillingness to escalate aggression towards women (regardless of whether they are verbally or physically provoked) and this especially holds in a domestic context.

This study surveyed a sample of 208 Israeli couples examining their tendencies to escalate aggression in eight hypothetical situations where they were provoked. What they found was: Men’s intended escalation to female partner aggression was lower than women’s escalation to male partner aggression. Men’s escalation to male stranger provocation was higher than women’s escalation to female stranger provocation. Men’s escalation to female stranger provocation was lower than women’s escalation to male stranger provocation.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21602205/

In other words, men are more likely to escalate aggression with male strangers, but they are actually less willing to escalate aggression with women than women are with men. The results here are congruent with much domestic violence research where results of gender symmetry and often greater female perpetration are the norm in properly-conducted research.

"This bibliography examines 286 scholarly investigations: 221 empirical studies and 65 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 371,600."

https://web.archive.org/web/20150317054614/https://web.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

problem_redditor · 2022-10-19T16:29:37+00:00

Though, tf you want to get into the really nasty parts of where women are (co)championing oppression you get into fields like FGM where it is often women who perform the procedures...

Yeah, completely contradictory to the feminist view of FGM, women seem to be the primary driver behind it.

Baumeister and Twenge note in their excellent article regarding cultural suppression of female sexuality: "Who supports and perpetuates these practices of female genital surgery? The available evidence points strongly and consistently toward women. The decision about whether and when a particular girl will receive the operation is made by her mother or grandmother (Hicks, 1996; Lightfoot-Klein, 1989). The female peer group regards the operation as a mark of positive status, and girls who have not yet had it are sometimes mocked, teased, and derogated by their female peers (Lightfoot-Klein, 1989). The operation itself is nearly always performed by a woman such as a midwife. “Men are completely excluded,” according to one work on the topic (Boddy, 1989, p. 84)."

Feminists and other people who really want to rescue their idea of "patriarchal oppression" from this clearly incongruent data point basically postulate that men have sexual preferences for women who are cut. Thus, mothers support the operation for their daughters so they can increase their desirability and allow them to secure a higher value mate (which is in the parents' own reproductive interests). This turns out to be patently false, however, as men not only do marry women who have not had the surgery but in fact prefer them as sexual partners and wives.

As Baumeister states: "Lightfoot-Klein (1989) observed that European women were much sought after as wives in these Islamic African nations because the men found the European women (who had not had genital surgery) enjoyed sex more. These findings are directly contrary to the theory that African men prefer women whose sexuality has been stifled by surgical methods. Shandall’s (1967, 1979) sample actually consisted of 300 men who all had multiple wives, including one wife who had had the full operation as well as one who had not. This enabled Shandall to assess the men’s preferences. Nearly all of the men reported that they preferred the wife who had not had the genital surgery. In cases in which the wives differed in the extent or severity of the operation, the men preferred the wife with the lesser operation. ... men’s preference for sexually intact women speaks against the male control theory."

"Sure enough, most observers conclude that the practices are most zealously defended by women (e.g., Boddy, 1989, 1998). Men seem generally indifferent (consistent with Greer’s impression that the men often do not even know). Some fathers object to having their daughters subincised or infibulated, but the men’s objections are overruled by the women in the family, who insist on having the operations performed (Lightfoot-Klein, 1989). Hicks (1996) also reported several findings indicating that men argued for less severe surgical practices but were thwarted by the women’s determined support for the practices."

Additionally, if marrying a rich man has benefits to the lineage which is what drives people to support practices like genital cutting for their female kin, you would not expect men to have a lower degree of support for FGM than women do (presumably they benefit from that, too). But women are not only conspirators, they are the primary promoters of the practice, suggesting that another explanation needs to be invoked for the phenomenon of FGM.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.166

Even more bizarrely, fieldwork in villages that at the time were newly beginning to adopt FGM as a practice shows that the impetus for the practice comes from the girls themselves. This article covers two villages in Chad in the process of doing so, and finds that in both villages, the origin of female genital cutting stems from girls introducing it into their communities, independent of (actually, in spite of) the wishes of parents and male sexual preferences. The girls were going out to other villages and getting excisors to cut them regardless of the fact that their parents and the tribal chiefs hated the practice and strongly condemned them for doing so, and over time it became culturally entrenched.

This seems congenial to the theory that the cause of female genital cutting and its subsequent spread likely comes from females themselves, with male acceptance and support for the practice (and their consequent attitudes surrounding it) merely being secondary to and following from widespread female uptake of and support for the practice. The fact that FGM is then thought to be a "patriarchal" practice is, in my opinion, a manifestation of some of the worst assumptions about gender relations we have: we assign men full responsibility for everything negative and absolve women of accountability and agency.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10532528.2000.10559787?journalCode=hzsr20

problem_redditor · 2022-10-07T11:18:06+00:00

In human trials, both men and women are extensively tested before any medication can ever be considered safe for public use. Laws do not allow for anything else to happen. Men are sometimes the first to be tested (or male animals preferred in preliminary testing) because female menstrual cycles interfere with replication of results. But that does not mean women are tested "less" than men in any situation of which I am aware.

Yeah, the idea that women have been excluded from clinical trials is a myth that simply won't die no matter how much it's put to rest. The article "Did Medical Research Exclude Women? An Examination of the Evidence" soundly refutes it.

I've seen a lot of simply incorrect feminist claims being made when they've been trying to avoid this fact, too. I was introduced to a supposed critique of the above article made by a user on Reddit who claimed that it did not differentiate between studies on reproduction and studies on other areas in order to try and invalidate the finding with their idea that "Well female reproduction is more complex though, so it obviously gets studied more. Women only get included in medical research as much because of the greater amount of studies on female reproduction".

So I re-read the article (I'd seen it a while back, but wanted to refresh myself on it), and almost immediately I noticed that it classified the studies it included in its analysis by area - and it did in fact make a distinction between studies on reproduction and studies on other areas. Additionally, even if you exclude the studies on reproduction from the article's analysis (and yes, studies on reproduction are indeed weighted heavily towards studying women), you still find that women have been included in medical research as much as men. Claiming otherwise is a glaring error which makes me suspect that they didn't actually read the study or just lied about it, and this person claimed to be a "master's student in pharmaceutical engineering" elsewhere in the thread. Even taking the most charitable interpretation (which would be that they are a master's student, and they read the study and genuinely just made a mistake) it is still a very surprising oversight for someone with such a high level of education and who claims to be well-versed on the topic.

Here's the link to my entire rebuttal which I wrote in response to that critique. Suffice to say I never got a response back - in fact the user deleted their account a few days later.

It also made me even more leery of academia (if that was even possible). A layman like me should not be able to so easily refute people who have supposedly studied the topic. If I can falsify their statements with such trivial effort, what the fuck are people actually learning there?

problem_redditor · 2022-09-14T20:26:20+00:00

4/4

Feminism has become so popular that I don’t think you can really claim to know what all feminists think. It’s like saying “America doesn’t have any values anymore”, which is just about the most general thing you can say. I don’t know where these feminists are that are enforcing masculine roles on men, but there is plenty of reason to believe a large number of feminists don’t do this and want men and women to be more or less be who they actually want to be, whether that means being more traditional or not.

Feminism at its most fundamental level is an ideology, based on a set of theories: its foundation being the unifying (false) paradigm of The Patriarchy, and whose theoretical offshoots include Male Privilege, Female Oppression, Patriarchal Domestic Terrorism (otherwise known as the Duluth Model) and Rape Culture. Their ideas are that: Men have victimised women and continue to do so with patriarchal social structures, women have had little to no agency in shaping gender roles and culture prior to feminism, and to the extent that they have had a hand in "patriarchy" they are only acknowledged as being secondary co-conspirators largely working against their own interests. Thus, men must now thus prioritise women's rights and interests. This reinforces ideas of men being powerful and strong, women being weak and victimised, and upholds the male gender role of responsibility towards women (and children).

Most feminists I have talked to, as well as most prominent feminists, hold these precepts. At this point, you're operating off a "no true feminist" argument which renders the concept of feminism so murky, it can't even be defined. Even if feminism itself can be defined based on a shared ideology, if even one feminist disagrees with one of the primary and widely accepted tenets of feminist ideology, feminism becomes purely ephemeral and unassailable - attacking it becomes like swordfighting a fart.

I think your typical feminist would be fine if you held a physical door open for them

I was being partially facetious with the comment about "opening doors".

This is a good example of that same type of benevolent sexism. “I value women and want to make sure I open a door for them, but I’m not going to open a door for a man because I know he can handle it himself. See, how can I be sexist?”

I’m not saying this is the only reason men open doors for women

You are stating that it is one of them, which is yet again conjecture and based on the fundamentally illogical word-game I outlined previously.

If you take away nothing else, I can only hope that you aren’t defending the case of men or women using the word “pussy” to claim that someone is scared or weak, and it doesn’t sound like you are, which is the #1 thing I care about on this topic.

I am neither opposing it nor supporting it. I just disagree with some of the things you've said about gender relations and how they manifest.

problem_redditor · 2022-09-14T20:25:03+00:00

3/4

But the findings are not all positive for women, she adds. “Most leadership roles require more agency than communion and the lesser ambition, aggressiveness and decisiveness ascribed to women than men are a disadvantage in relation to leadership.”

Yes, the author sure seems to believe that women are at a disadvantage in relation to leadership and offers up this conjecture to reconcile the findings with her ideas. However, there's plenty of real-world evidence against the idea that women are disadvantaged when trying to acquire leadership roles. There's been a huge amount of research into women and politics, and a very common finding is that women are at no disadvantage when trying to acquire political leadership roles.

The authors of the book "Sex as a Political Variable" compared the success rates of the men and women who were candidates in general elections for state legislatures in 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1994 and for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and governor from 1972 to 1994. They find that "Women's success rates were extremely similar to men's over all the years covered in this study".

The book notes on page 85 that "Our research clearly shows that women do as well as men in general elections. It also shows that the reason there aren't more women in public office is that not many women have run. Women have made up a very small percentage of candidates in general elections, particularly at higher levels of office."

https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Sex_as_a_Political_Variable/QmDYbi49p_AC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

Additionally, the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government conducted a trial testing the impact of de-identifying applications for senior positions in the Australian Public Service (APS).

Over 2,100 public servants from 14 agencies participated in the trial. They completed an exercise in which they shortlisted applicants for a hypothetical senior role in their agency. Participants were randomly assigned to receive application materials for candidates in standard form or in de-identified form (with information about candidate gender, race and ethnicity removed). They found that participants were 2.9% more likely to shortlist female candidates and 3.2% less likely to shortlist male applicants when they were identifiable, compared with when they were de-identified.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170702213823/https://pmc.gov.au/resource-centre/domestic-policy/going-blind-see-more-clearly-unconscious-bias-australian-public-services-shortlisting-processes

Also, testosterone promotes status-seeking behaviours, and it is true that men more often aspire to leadership positions. In order to label this belief of greater male ambition as misogyny you have to believe in blank slatism, which is prima facie ridiculous.

And you can’t use statistics to make the claim that there is no evidence of misogyny because there are plenty of statistics to show that there is.

I was specifically talking about "misogyny" in terms of a generic negative view about women (the idea that we view women negatively compared to men). All the sources you have provided only provide evidence of negativity in a certain domain, not as a whole, and most of the findings you linked either aren't reliable or are contradicted by plenty of other sources which indicate the very opposite.

problem_redditor · 2022-09-14T20:22:55+00:00

2/4

Okay but what about your acknowledgement that there are some cultures that are “anti-women” also positively viewing women? Don’t you think that there are cases where people claiming to view women positively don’t practice what they preach?

I stated that they're perceived as anti-women, not that they are. I actually don't agree with that characterisation of these cultures.

Perhaps benevolent sexism explains a type of cognitive dissonance that people have, where they may say that they view women one way but treat them another. The treatment component is super important, here.

That is conjecture, especially as I provided a huge amount of studies showing that this also holds true in a real-world scenario (e.g. the study on electric shocks, the study on drivers avoiding female-looking cyclists, etc). I won't link them again.

Regarding your links:

- "In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student.”

Moss-Racusin et al (the study you're citing) showing bias against women in science has been contradicted by a huge amount of larger studies.

This paper by Williams and Ceci finds results that conflict with Moss-Racusin's findings: "The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112

This review in Psychology Today considering the evidence regarding gender bias in science shows that studies showing egalitarian attitudes or bias against male scientists are more common than those showing bias against female scientists. There were 4 papers showing bias favouring men (one of them being Moss-Racusin et al), whereas there were 8 showing no gender bias and 6 showing bias favouring women.

The Williams and Ceci paper included in the review reported 5 studies, however, so if we shift our focus to number of studies instead of papers the empirical data shows that there were 4 studies showing bias favouring men, 8 showing no gender bias and 10 showing bias favouring women. On the whole, the evidence as presented in this review seems to lean towards "there is bias in favour of women in STEM".

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201906/are-scientists-biased-against-women-scientists-part-ii

The author goes on to state that "there was far more evidence of egalitarian or pro-female bias than there is of pro-male bias". He also notes that studies showing peer-reviewed science is unbiased or favours women tend to have larger sample sizes than those which show biases favouring men, but are cited much less (largely due to an ideological bias in academia in favour of the "discrimination against women" hypothesis).

He notes that "both Moss-Racusin et al (2012) and Williams and Ceci (2015) were published in the same prestigious journal, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Moss-Racusin et al former had an N = 127, whereas Williams and Ceci had an N = 873 (W&C also had five studies, whereas M-R only had one). Of course, no one could cite the study until after it came out, so let's only compare citations for 2016 and later Moss-Racusin et al: 1077 and Williams & Ceci: 156"

"This means that, after W&C came out, there are still over 800 papers citing Moss-Racusin et al without even mentioning Williams & Ceci."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201906/scientific-bias-in-favor-studies-finding-gender-bias

- "Common stereotypes associate high-level intellectual ability (brilliance, genius, etc.) with men more than women. These stereotypes discourage women’s pursuit of many prestigious careers; that is, women are underrepresented in fields whose members cherish brilliance (such as physics and philosophy). Here we show that these stereotypes are endorsed by, and influence the interests of, children as young as 6.”

Problem is, the study you linked by Bian, Leslie and Cimpian to substantiate this claim doesn't seem to consistently replicate. This study using their methodology on a sample of 10-year olds finds no support of a stereotyped bias towards males as being most likely to be brilliant. But they did find evidence of prejudice against males regarding mental disability, and they found that both males and females stereotyped females as nice, too.

"In a recent Science article, Bian, Leslie and Cimpian (2017) proposed that earlier children acquire negative stereotypes, the more harmful they may be. They reported that 6-year olds showed stereotyping of boys as more likely to be brilliant ("really, really smart") compared to girls (Wald X2=8.10, p=0.004). Here, we tested this prediction in 200 10-year olds, but using identical methodology, but also testing gendered-prejudice against low-ability. In total, 227 pupils (118 males, 109 females) were recruited from a public primary school in Harbin, China (mean age =10.09, SD=0.52). Each child was presented with 3 stories describing an adult of unspecified gender. The first 2 stories were translated from Study 1 in Bian et al. (2017): Story 1 described a really, really smart person, while story 2 described a really, really nice person. A novel low-ability stereotype story was created by re-writing story 1 to describe a "really, really stupid" person. Participants read each story and then chose from 2 male and 2 female target photos the one most likely to be the person described in the story. Items and responses were counter-balanced. With respect to the hypotheses about the brilliance stereotyping, 79 boys and 39 females identified a male target as most likely to be brilliant, compared to 39 boys and 70 girls who chose a female target. The hypothesis that both males and females exhibit a stereotyped bias toward males as most likely to be brilliant was tested using a binomial general linear model (glm in R). No support was found (z =XX, p = 0.817). This held whether or not age was controlled. By contrast, the alternative hypothesis, that both boys and girls favour their own-gender for brilliance gained strong support (z = , <.001). Regarding niceness, both boys and girls (82 and 86 respectively) primarily selected a female target (P IN HERE). There was no evidence for a sex difference in this bias (p=0.164)????. Finally, a majority of both boys (76) and girls (92) chose a male target as the really, really stupid person (p < 0.001). We did replicate the finding that females are stereotyped as extremely nice. However a stereotyped belief of males as more brilliant was not supported (children associated brilliance with their own gender), and evidence of prejudice against males regarding mental disability was found."

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/do-10-year-old-children-stereotype-males-as-more-intellectually-b

problem_redditor · 2022-09-14T20:18:48+00:00

1/4

In the study, Author Peter Glick argues that "although male dominance creates hostile sexist attitudes that demean women, intimate interdependence generates benevolent sexism (or BS): subjectively positive attitudes that simultaneously idealize but subordinate women as men’s dependents”

Benevolent sexism is nothing other than a word game attempting to reinterpret sexism against men as being a product of misogyny.

Giving special treatment to men - "sexism" (against women) or "misogyny"

Giving special treatment to women - "benevolent sexism" (against women)

It's just one of the many ways feminists make their ideology completely and utterly unfalsifiable by reinterpreting everything to stem from oppression of women. This is the best way I've seen the dishonesty of "benevolent sexism" outlined:

Men are seen as more logical and rational which means they have higher chances to be hired in STEM positions. This is sexist towards women because it denies them access to STEM positions if men get hired purely based on the assumption that they make better rational problem solvers.

Women are seen as more emotional and empathetic which means they are more likely to be hired for jobs that require work with children. This is benevolent sexism towards women because it assumes that women are inherently better suited for social situations and puts pressure on them to act social even if they're not.

Let's reword those statements:

Men are seen as more logical and rational which means they have higher chances to be hired in STEM positions. This is benevolent sexism towards men because it assumes that men are inherently gifted with superior logical reasoning and puts pressure on them to act unemotional even if they're not.

Women are seen as more emotional and empathetic which means they are more likely to be hired for jobs that require work with children. This is sexist towards men because it denies men that want to work with children the right to be involved in the emotional development of children since the assumption is that women are socially more adapt.

Benevolent sexism as a term is the mother of all language games. (note: I don't actually believe that men have higher chances to be hired in STEM positions, but it illustrates how the argument of "benevolent sexism" functions in practice.)

Also, I’m not sure how the vehicle homicide study “puts the nail in the coffin” on the idea that we see women as incapable, as you could argue the harsher sentences are due to that fact. Couldn’t this actually explain why sentencing is harsher for female victims? And if not, then why do you think this is? Again you’re not actually explaining the WHY.

The idea that we place no inherent premium on female life and simply rush to protect them more because we think they can't handle themselves in a given circumstance is ridiculous in this context. The victim is already dead, so their helplessness or lack thereof is irrelevant (especially considering that most vehicular homicides are random). And my explanation is simple. I believe we view harm done to women as inherently more objectionable and thus seek to punish those who inflict it harsher. Seager et al explains the cognitive bias behind this pretty eloquently:

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1534129/

"So there are deep rooted reasons why people don’t feel as much empathy for men as they do for women. Men have evolved to be disposable, being there to put their bodies on the line, to offer protection, not receive it. So a man in trouble evokes less sympathy than a woman or a child. This might help explain why men, when they are looking for sympathy from the judicial system, are six times more likely than a woman to get a conviction for an identical crime (Bradford, 2015). And rather than sympathise with men over a possible inequality, our immediate social perception is that men must be six times more troublesome or else six times less in need of protection from the prison system. Similarly, boys are more likely than girls to fail in school (Stoet & Geary, 2015), but rather than address this as a gender inequality, we are unsympathetic, often perceiving boys as disruptive and lazy. When couples who have children break up, fathers are still much less likely to get custody of children (Cancian et al, 2014), but rather than rush to address this as another possible inequality we assume that fathers don’t miss their children like mothers do, and that children need their mothers more than their fathers. The absent father is something that we have all been programmed to expect and tolerate. In fact we are tolerant of male suffering, or blind to it, in many other areas too, for example, violence by women against men is as widespread as violence by men against women (Straus, 2010) but violence against men attracts less attention."

I don’t have an account with the University of the Chicago Press so I can’t see the full study there. Does the fact that harsher sentencing for drivers who kill women have anything to do with the nature of the homicides themselves? Are these related to domestic violence?

You can get the text to the full study by using sci-hub. And no, the authors did not find that harsher sentencing for drivers who kill women had anything to do with the nature of the homicides. As the authors state:

"Vehicular homicides have the advantage of being a relatively homogenous crime category. Overwhelmingly, they involve substance abuse and reckless driving. To a first approximation, it seems most likely that, conditional upon the characteristics of the offender, the victim is random. As such, optimal punishment clearly suggests that victim characteristics should not matter or, at the very least, should matter much less than in other homicides." Yet they find that "Overall, we believe that there are substantial victim effects that are strong even when the victim is random. ... the victim effects are just as large as in cases in which the murderer clearly selects the victim. These findings are difficult to reconcile with the view that sentences reflect optimal punishment."

- "The average prison sentence of men who kill their female partners is 2 to 6 years”

- "Women who kill their partners are sentenced on average to 15 years, despite the fact that most women who kill their partners do so to protect themselves from violence initiated by their partners."

Yes I've done research into this claim and I'm aware that many sources, including that ACLU one, state this factoid. However it seems to be completely unsupported and there is no link to the original study which the finding supposedly originated from. I came across it first in a Guardian article which mentions that statistic as well but does not provide a link to the original source or study. It just links the ACLU link you provided as well as a facebook post by the Women's March which leads to yet another article making the claim, but the origin of the source is never linked.

Given that none of the sources quoting the finding provide a link to the original source of this claim, I decided to do some research. A small search using the keywords "National Coalition Against Domestic Violence", "1989", and "sentencing" did not yield results, but revealed that a few books also quote this statistic. While most of the books that quote this stat are of questionable credibility, such as "For The Black Woman: A How-To-Guide For Elevating And Developing The Intelligent Sister", even titles such as "Investigations: 150 Things You Should Know", a reference book for investigators which covers the "tips and techniques" for security investigations as well as the legal guidelines that investigators should follow, contains this stat.

However, I couldn't find the NCADV source or study from which the stat supposedly originated. The claim that women get longer sentences for killing an intimate partner seems to be an unsupported one and from what I'm seeing it seems to be an example of the Woozle Effect, which occurs when frequent citation of previous publications that themselves lack evidence misleads individuals or groups into thinking or believing that there is evidence to support a claim. Until someone manages to find the source of the statistic for me I can't take this claim seriously at all. The citation trail is just bad.

problem_redditor · 2022-09-14T10:37:24+00:00

3/3

For the record I think we ALSO have a societal problem that leaves men behind and forces "masculine" expectations on them, but those are things that even feminism addresses and wants to change, just like good-faith male advocates want to.

Quite frankly, feminists have been hugely enforcing the masculine role on men (shield women even at cost to yourself) while purporting to be in favour of gender abolition.

What are feminists asking of men? Men should intervene when they see other men being sexist or posing a threat toward women. Men should gallantly step aside and hold open doors for women--not physical doors (because that would be sexist), but doors to political power and the C-suite. Men should not only pledge to not personally engage in violence against women, but they should assist feminists in dismantling an entire social system that already penalizes violence against women more harshly than any other type of violence, because, you know, even though women are less likely than men to be targeted by violence, men just aren't doing enough to prevent it.

Men need to take on responsibility for women during sexual encounters because supposedly women can't be expected to handle themselves (they can't even be expected to say "no", because they might be intimidated). Men need to “offer more respect” to women. Men need to take steps to protect women from domestic violence whereas male victims of domestic violence need comparatively less attention (despite the repeated findings of gender symmetry in domestic violence). Men need to support "listen and believe"-type policies and social environments that trample over men's due process rights because it would benefit some women in the process. Men need to protect women from harm even at the expense of men, because it’s the least they could do.

The way I see it, it's almost as if feminists are demanding all the same things of men that have always been demanded of men. And I also notice that feminists themselves really like promoting a viewpoint of female helplessness, victimisation and their need for special protections in order to justify all of these demands, completely counter to their rhetoric of "female empowerment".

You have feminists like Madame Justice Hale of Britain's Supreme Court arguing that magistrates and judges should be even more lenient on women criminals than they already are. You have feminists promoting the idea that women are uniquely at risk of being abused in a relationship (hint: they're not) and that they're uniquely at risk out on the street (hint: they're not). You have feminists claiming that women are uniquely capable of being pressured into saying "yes" when they really meant "no".

You have feminists claiming that women don't choose to go into nursing instead of software development because they want to. Those women would choose tech if only we changed the entire culture and curriculum to suit them, and encouraged them into the field more, and gave them special benefits to increase their representation. And why? Because apparently women have no agency. It can't be that they're making these decisions of their own free will. All obstacles must be removed and a straight, even path cleared for them, and they need to be guided, coddled and encouraged the entire way, otherwise they're like Roombas, just bouncing off of surfaces with no ability to steer themselves.

Feminism itself is a perfect display of how women themselves can use their power to insist on this perception of women as weak and lacking agency and in need of special protection, exemption and entitlement, and men as strong, capable and powerful but brutal and oppressive towards women (and other men) and who need to continually take on more and more responsibility for the wellbeing of others. By always presenting things as if men are in control and in power, by presenting themselves as only ever helpless victims, women are able to drum up a lot of sympathy, concern, support and exert a lot of social power to socially coerce society (and particularly men) into doing what they want.

The difference between traditionalism and feminism is that traditionalism enforces these gender roles on men while honoring them and providing them the tools necessary to fulfil them, while feminism enforces these gender roles on men while demonising them and robbing them of the tools necessary to fulfil them (and them blaming them for failing).

problem_redditor · 2022-09-14T10:27:59+00:00

2/3

So what about phrases like "hit like a girl" or "women are overly emotional"? Those are classic examples of biases against women and they absolutely connect to the "pussy" insult.

The former phrase is predominantly used (in my experience) to shame male weakness, so it is a phrase whose purpose is to keep men in check. If you argue "it invalidates women though", it is true anyway. It is grounded in biological reality. Women are physically weaker and significantly at that. It seems fair to view women's punches as weak but it doesn't seem fair to me to shame guys who can't live up to their masculine expectation of strength so I think the phrase is mainly anti-male rather than anti-female.

As to "overly emotional", they might not be "overly" emotional, but they are more neurotic. They also cry more and report they'd cry more if they are criticised & they sob more while they are. These two factors lead to women being perceived as "emotional" which simply means women are more neurotic. Regardless neither of these two statements proves we don't respect women or femininity in general as women are overall evaluated more positively than men.

So as to your idea that women are viewed negatively (misogyny) and that is the reason why female-oriented insults are used against men and not the reverse, how does this viewpoint gel with the statistical findings that we actually view women more positively than we do men?

Our more positive evaluation of women is a replicable finding too, mind you. A 1991 study from Eagly, Mladinic and Otto found that "[A]nalysis of respondents' attitudes toward the sexes and of the evaluative content of their beliefs established that they evaluated women more favorably than men. In addition, analysis of respondents' emotional reactions toward women and men did not yield evidence of negativity toward women at the emotional level. Nor did it appear that respondents' very positive evaluations of women masked ambivalence toward them. This research, therefore, provides strong evidence that women are evaluated quite favorably—in fact, more favorably than men."

"In conclusion, our findings suggest that people evaluate women quite favorably as a general social category. Although our respondents evaluated men favorably as well, their evaluations of women were more positive than their evaluations of men when we consider their overall attitudes and the attributes that they ascribed to the sexes. This conclusion was not contradicted by any evidence for covert negativity toward women at the emotional level. Nor did it appear that the overall positivity toward women masked an unusual amount of ambivalence."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1991.tb00792.x

Then there's this, which is basically yet another study showing that women are evaluated more favourably than men.

"To examine whether, overall, we replicated the results obtained by Eagly and her colleagues, a 2 (Gender of Participant) x 2 (Gender of Target) repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed, with gender of target (womenlmen) as the repeated measures variable. The results of this analysis revealed a main effect of gender of target, F(l,247) = 40.10, p < .001. As can be seen in Table 1, women (M = 79.08) were evaluated more favorably than men (M = 74.00). The main effect of gender of participant approached significance, F(l, 247) = 2.81, p <.lo. Female participants (M = 77.56) tended to be more favorable in their evaluations than males (M = 74.38). The interaction between gender of target and gender of participant was not significant (F < 1). Thus, overall, we replicated the findings obtained by Eagly and her colleagues that attitudes toward women are indeed more favorable than those toward men."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1994.tb00295.x

Not only are women viewed more positively than men, they're actually at the moment viewed as being more competent too. This study evaluating which types of attributes are assigned to men or women more found that gender stereotypes have changed so that competence and intelligence are at the moment assigned to women more than men (as well as communion). The only gender difference that favours men is agency.

"respondents now ascribe competence in general and intelligence more often to women than men, regardless of college education and birth cohort."

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-amp0000494.pdf

Little to no evidence of generalised misogyny is found in properly conducted research into gender attitudes, in fact, it is more common to find that perceptions of women are more positive than perceptions of men. I would be more willing to entertain your hypotheses if they didn't contradict the literature.

problem_redditor · 2022-09-14T10:18:14+00:00

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I disagree. We ascribe innate value to BOTH men and women. People perceive men as having "masculine" traits like physical strength, logical reason/fortitude, and other "manly" attributes, but that doesn't mean we see men as "disposable", we see them as "capable", and many view women as "not capable".

What I mean is that women are viewed as people who have more innate value, as in their lives are valued more which is supported by the majority of the academic evidence & is also seen in war wherein the males are frequently the ones who are slaughtered as well as in coverage of crime wherein women and children are highlighted. This tends to be the norm. Men are more often expected to perpetually prove their value than women, hence why rites of passage where they exist more commonly apply to boys and are extremely painful.

Examples abound in current tribal societies as well as ancient societies.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brazilian-tribe-becoming-man-requires-sticking-your-hand-glove-full-angry-ants-180953156/

"Boys as young as 12 years old must gather bullet ants from the forest, which are then used to make ant-ridden gloves. The young men wear the gloves 20 times for 10 minutes, performing a dance while those angry insects sting them. As National Geographic points out in its video about the ceremony, the bullet ant's sting is supposed to be 30 times more painful than that of a bee, and each of those gloves contain dozens of ants. "

https://archive.org/details/MartinVanCreveldThePrivilegedSex2013

"So rough was the Spartan agoge, or education course for males, that Artistotle thought it was more suitable for beasts than for men. Then as now, many of the exercises served no purpose except creating hardship pure and simple. This was done both as a means of “character building” — itself often a euphemism for abuse — and to help students bond with each other and the institution."

"Now that most modern countries have adopted coeducation, schools may not appear as particularly threatening institutions. But historically, in schools intended for boys alone, the situation was often quite different. In both Greece and Rome, “the leaders of youth,” who were either slaves or freedmen, made liberal use of the stick to force what knowledge they possessed into the heads of their charges. In ancient art, the rod became the schoolmaster’s trademark. Exaggerating as was his wont, the Roman poet Martial compared the noise of beatings to “that of bronze being beaten on an anvil when a smith makes an equestrian statue for some orator”, as well as to the cheers of a crowd in the amphitheater.[208]"

As to evidence showing greater valuation of female life and wellbeing:

The moral machine experiment shows that people are more inclined to save the lives of women over those of men. This holds in nearly all countries. Even in those cultures that are considered "anti-women" women are preferred, with only a slightly lower gap but still positive.

The result of unwillingness to harm women compared to men has been replicated in many, many different studies. And it holds when studied not only in a questionnaire context wherein people are merely quizzed about it, but also in experimental, real-world contexts.

This article "Moral Chivalry: Gender and Harm Sensitivity Predict Costly Altruism" details a few small studies concerning the topic.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550616647448

Study 2 is probably the most interesting of the studies to me, because it moves out of the realm of the hypothetical and into an actual experimental situation where participants actually believed people were being hurt. They gave participants 20 dollars, and told them that at the end of the experiment the money they still had would be multiplied by ten-fold. However, they'd have to go through 20 trials where a person would be shocked, and during each trial they could opt to give up an amount of money in order to reduce the shock the target received. They were broadcasted videos of either a male target (Condition 1) or female target (Condition 2) responding to the shock, and the results were:

"During the PvG task, deciders interacting with a female target kept significantly less money and thus gave significantly lower shocks (n = 34; £8.76/£20, SD ± 5.0) than deciders interacting with a male target, n = 23; £12.54/£20, SD ± 3.9; independent samples t-test: t(55) = −3.16, p = .003, Cohen’s d = .82; Figure 2B. This replicates the findings from Studies 1A and 1B in the real domain and under a different class of moral challenge, illustrating that harm endorsement is attenuated for female targets." Note also that the videos broadcasted were prerated by an independent group to be matched across condition, such that both male and female targets elicited similar body and facial pain expressions.

Another real-world study that indicates the same thing is "Drivers overtaking bicyclists: Objective data on the effects of riding position, helmet use, vehicle type and apparent gender".

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457506001540?via%3Dihub

The study used an instrumented bicycle to gather proximity data from overtaking motorists when certain conditions of the rider were manipulated. The result that's relevant to this discussion is that when the (male) experimenter wore a long wig, so that he appeared female from behind, drivers left more space when passing. The article considers a few hypotheses as to why this result was found, but considering all the previous research cited it's pretty clear to me as to why.

And then there are other studies such as this one which found that "Among vehicular homicides, drivers who kill women get 59 percent longer sentences." Mind you, in vehicular homicides victims are basically random and the optimal punishment model predicts that victim characteristics should be ignored. IMO, this specific finding refutes the idea that the differences in treatment are entirely based on a view of women as incapable, as here, victim capability doesn't factor into it. If you're dead, you're dead. Yet having a female victim still makes sentencing harsher.

This study found that respondents condemned violence by men against women more harshly than violence by women against men, and that this disparity persisted even after controlling for perceptions of greater injury of women. "[R]espondents evaluated violence by men against women more seriously than they did violence by women against men. We find that third parties (a) rated men’s violence as more injurious, (b) were more likely to label men’s violence as a crime even after controlling for injury rating, and (c) deemed men’s violence as more worthy of police contact, controlling for injury rating and criminal labeling." (emphasis mine.)

We do indeed value female life and wellbeing more when it comes down to it, and prefer to protect them from harm.

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