“Even when men are all locked in cages, they’ll complain that it’s so much work for women to feed them,” and other insights on feminism courtesy of Reddit.
So this weekend I attended an interesting conference on the future of feminism. I’d like to present some of the most insightful papers from it.
Clarification: When I said I “attended a conference” I meant I “took a look at the Men’s Rights subreddit.” By “interesting” I meant “tedious” and by “insightful” I meant “ridiculous.” And by “papers” of course I meant “comments.”
So here, without further ado, are some of the pearls of wisdom I found in a thread asking the twin questions “What, in your opinion, is Feminism’s ultimate goal? When do you think they’ll consider their job ‘done?’” (Each yellow comment is a direct answer to one or both of the questions.)
Boy, these “feminists” sound like terrible people!
Like this:
Posted on October 7, 2012, in $MONEY$, antifeminism, crackpottery, matriarchy, misogyny, MRA, oppressed men, paranoia, pig ignorance, playing the victim, radfems oh my, reddit, straw feminists and tagged anti-feminism, antifeminism, feminism, men's rights, misogyny, mras, reddit, straw feminists. Bookmark the permalink. 146 Comments.
I always love that one, too, Melody. Most of the time because it seems to come from guys who sooner or later will start bitching about how women take all the good jobs from men and warehouse their kids in daycare. Were we less moochy back in the day, when we stayed home and only produced childcare and delicious baked goods? Or when our paid labor was of the laundress/wet nurse/maidservant/low-wage factory girl variety? It’s a mystery.
I’m actually less bothered by the angry ones than I am by the “poor little lamb, we’re so concerned about you!” types. The worried guys believe that wanting autonomy is some kind of whim I’ll overcome once a kind, rational man points out the errors of my way. This if probably a prejudice on my part, though. I’ve only had three serious boyfriends in my life (including the hubs) and one of them was an Evangelical type who was about knee-deep in the Christian patriarchy movement. He started explaining my role as a woman once we’d been together a few months. Men were spiritual leaders of the family, he told me, and as such he’d guide me through God’s will for us both once we got married. My own sinful womanly nature led me to want leadership and independence, but God demands submission. Oh, he knew I’d had an upbringing that had encouraged feminine vanities, that my church was less clear on the role of the husband/father, and that we lived in a culture that encouraged women to try to be men. But he’d help me! He’d be the man I needed to help walk in Christ! And since I loved him, I’d allow myself to be guided; after all, as spiritual head of the family, he’d have to answer for my sins as well as his at the final judgement!
Just thinking about it all now still makes me gag. I didn’t give up on organized religion until a few years ago, but I think those lectures about how equality was hurting me planted the seeds of “WTF?”. Wanting a fair shake in life is not a vice.
Ooo, I’m glad there are gamers here! Thanks for the FATE recommendation, Falconer. I’m pretty sure my daughter will really like gaming in a few years, but as I don’t play (and my husband travels too much to get a chance anymore) I don’t know what’s good. I’ll have to look into that when she gets older. Or have my brother tell her about it; what’s lame from Mom will probably be awesome from Cool Uncle.
Also, I meant to say it further up the thread but forgot - thanks for the Borderlands 2 review, Shade. My husband loved the first one, and I was wondering if he might like the second as a welcome home present. I’ll have to hit GameStop on payday.
Falconer: I think it depends who you have as a DM, and how flexible they are to adapting rules for things that aren’t specifically spelled out in the books. Then again, if I thought D&D was perfectly fine and the only problem was bad DMs, I wouldn’t have started a total redesign like I did, so there’s that.
I’ve done D&D stuff where i’ve had characters that prefer non-violent solutions, or non-kill solutions (one of my favourite characters eventually “evolved” to the point where she only really killed fiends, anything mortal she tried to take down non-lethally or talk down with diplomacy, which she was also really good at). It’s certainly possible, it just requires a bit more work to fix the issues in the system (which if you’re looking for a system you can just pick up and play, it isn’t ideal).
Like my character above would never work in base D&D because she was a fighter with like a million diplomacy (exaggerationz
).. And the designers thought fighters didn’t need diplomacy for some reason. D: Maybe i’m biased because i’ve always played with people who didn’t mind just changing stuff we didn’t like, but i’ve never seen D&D as that bad when it comes to stifling creativity.
Violence and kids is a really complex thing too. I think I tend to take it for granted that as an adult, i’ve had lots of time to work on compartmentalising non/anti-violence in real life and enjoying violent entertainment in separate little mental boxes.
Fitzy: No problem.
Hope he enjoys it, I certainly did (at least as much, if not more than the first one, in fact).
I’m glad my princess game is getting so much interest. So far it’s been more of a creative exercise than anything else, but this is prompting to think harder about it and put more work into it. Should I go start a thread over in the forums to track my progress and get advice? I’ve never actually designed a tabletop game before and even this one isn’t going to include much original design.
@Karalora: Sure, go ahead! I’m not around the fora much but I’ll look in. I’ve been meaning to hang out there more.
Started a thread in the Whatever forum. Be prepared-the first post is long!