Feminist, Unmodified

Vera says: Same caveats as part #1.

Note: The Feminist Glossary I am compiling is far from finished, so I feel it is important to define a term or two now so that no one gets confused.

Boy or Boys: misogynist(s)
Man or Men*: non-women-hating males

Both might sometimes be referred to as “Dangly Bit Holders” during those times when it is necessary to put both groups - adult men and whiney he-boy woman-haters, into the same group.

* - I have, in my (mostly lurky) tours around the feminist blogiverse, come across many self-identified male posters who do genuinely seem to “get it”. I have men in my life that are trying to “get it”. (Which is something to be supported. I don’t want to be in the business of “fixing” men. However, I do not hesitate to correct misogynistic/homophobic/racist language, ideas, etc when I come across them IRL. So, I feel it is also important - if one is so inclined - to support and aid a Dangly Bit Holder should he somehow manage to extricate his head from his rectum and see that all is not kosher with patriarchy.) While I happen to agree with Ms. Greer that women have no idea how much men hate them, and am inclined to agree that most men do in fact hate women without even being fully (or at all) aware of it, I remain hopeful - perhaps naively so - that honest-to-goodness pro-women/pro-feminist men will gain the opportunities and confidence to speak up more often and we will all come to realize that there are more of them then we think. Perhaps one day they will even out number the knuckle-dragging asshats. Call me a hopeless dreamer.

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In part one I set out to prove that misogynist boys are insecure (that they are also misogynists will, from this point on, go without saying). Having done that so perfectly aided by the words of the boys themselves, we can now move on to the next step in our journey: *WHY* are they insecure?

And once again, the misogynists opened their mouths to give me proof. Recently, I was thumbing through the archives of a feminist blog and read an MRA troll claim that “everything women have, they got off the backs of their men.” He went on to explain that because boys invent/make “everything”, fight “all the wars”, and do all the “hard work” - that American women were just ungrateful harpies who don’t do anything for themselves, but instead take everything from boys.

(Vera says: I lost the original link that contained this quotation. However, this is a fairly common MRA assertion. Visit any MRA or Pseudo-Nice Guy forum and you will see this time and time again.)

This is a vital clue in determining why boys are so insecure. I say clue (singular) because you’ll soon see - if you don’t already - that all three of these “proofs” stem from the same source - the exclusion of women from the boys’ sandbox.

Let’s take a closer look:

MRA claim #1: Boys invented everything

We will ignore for the moment that this is categorically un-true, as I suspect most people with an excess of four brain cells know this statement to be false.

I will also avoid getting into an in-depth history of the denial of education to women throughout history. I expect that anyone with a passing knowledge of history knows that anyone who wasn’t a wealthy boy didn’t get much in the way of education. For women, this is doubly true and remained true until fairly recently in industrialized nations. This continues in many other nations. For example, in Afghanistan it is against the law to educate a girl over the age of 12. Given the religious and political climate of the area, is there any confusion as to why this is the case?

Whatever justifying excuses were and are used, the result is the same: an unlevel playing field tipped to the advantage of boys.

I will, however, take a brief look at the plight of the female inventor in the bad old days, to take a look at what might have facilitated this wrong assertion that only men invented anything.

During the 19th century, the idea that “a woman’s place is in the home” prevailed. Society’s view of women’s role limited their opportunities for a technical education or career, while laws in most states prohibited married women from owning property in their own names. Without training or independent funds, women often had to rely on husbands to make it through the expensive business of patenting an invention–a process that included costs for model makers, draftsmen for patent drawings, patent attorneys, and the fees charged by the patent office itself. While thousands of women inventors did successfully jump these hurdles, we can only assume that thousands more, like Sybilla Masters, saw her invention patented under a man’s name, or perhaps under her own, represented only by her initials. Some women saw these options as the best way to market their inventions, knowing that prejudices against women’s intellectual capabilities might thwart their work before it got into production.
Source

Despite the unlevel playing field boys used to attempt to keep women out, in times past, there were women who successfully navigated the obstacle course. However, the attitudes of the time required a bit of rule-bending, so to speak.

And, those women-invented things were big money makers: “Olive Gunby, writing for the Scientific American Supplement in 1901, agreed: “Men acquainted with the field say that fully one hundred of the patents taken out by women within the past five years are yielding unusually large returns to the inventors, and that others not yet put on the market are destined to be equally successful.” Source

We can see from this that despite being kept at a disadvantage, women still managed to do what the boys do. Invent, make money, be successful. The politics of the time required that a woman might have needed to use a boy as a facade to get there, however, all that shows is that boys set up the system to actively discourage/prevent non-boys from participating. A women might have had to rely on her husband’s money to pay the way to a patent, but once again, had the law not specifically denied women the basic autonomy that boys enjoyed, that wouldn’t have been necessary. We’ll call that one more instance of misogyny hurting boys as well as women.

If, even in the face of the elaborate brainwashing that they were inferior, especially intellectually, and if despite all the obstacles that they faced, women were still successful on the unlevel playing field - what does that imply about both women and boys? This is clue #1 as to why boys are so insecure.

MRA Claim #2: Boys fight all the wars

I can’t even pretend to treat this one seriously. The stupidity burns. Burns, I tell you.

Of course boys fight all the wars, and why shouldn’t they? THEY START THEM.

And, once again, until recently women were excluded from participating (and still are in some areas of the armed forces). There are now female soldiers who, as a show of respect for their service, are raped and/or sexually assaulted in astonishingly high numbers by their fellow boy-soldiers. Fabulous! Don’t fight and be lambasted for not helping the poor little boys to clean up the mess they made. Join up and be abused by the same boys for crashing their sausage-only party.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

So, given that boys “rule” the world, and start all the wars AND given that female soldiers aren’t safe form abusive friendly-fire, why on earth should we be strapping on a flak jacket to join the boys in the fight?

War is your mess, boys. YOU clean it up.

And to the women who do/did join up and fight (in any capacity) I say: You have my unending respect and gratitude. Yours is bravery I very much envy.

MRA Claim #3: Boys do all the “Hard Work”
Several months ago we were all treated to the misogynistic stylings of one Mr. Michael Noer of Forbes.com, who wrote a goofy little piece called “Don’t Marry Career Women” (if you can navigate the unending parade of desperate adverts, please feel free to completely ignore Elizabeth Corcoran’s response. It’s an obvious attempt by the management of Forbes.com, suddenly frightened by the mountains of cancellation threats that came in response to Noer’s dreck, to calm the furious female readers - albeit hastily and lazily.)

I’m sure we all remember this article, so I won’t rehash it as other  feminist bloggers/sites have done so fabulously - and thoroughly.

In the comment forum on Forbes.com the boys started a parade supporting Noer, whining that they couldn’t find a proper doormat, or lamenting that they’d married a “career girl” (which means what, exactly, five year olds who work full time?), and proudly proclaiming that they were going to purchase women from less-uppity countries to be *their* wives.

However, upon closer inspection, it’s plain to see what Noer and his fellow Teeny Weeny Club members were actually saying. Educated, successful, financially independent women aren’t behaving like Donna Reed/June Cleaver/Mrs. Cunningham. Educated, successful, financially independent women aren’t babying their hubbies enough. They aren’t doing *as much* cleaning! They aren’t monitoring hubby’s health! They aren’t doing their womanly duty and turning their vaginas into infant clown cars! They are divorcing their hubbies! In fact, they might not be getting married at all!

(To his credit Noer, in a moment of clarity that, frankly, I’m surprised didn’t get him kicked out of the Teeny Weeny Club, did suggest that the house cleaning issue could be fixed by boys picking up a broom. Though, since he neglected to then explain to the boys what to do with the broom, I fear the advice was lost on them.)

What does it say about boys that they need someone to pay attention to their health for them? What does it say about boys that they need to be told that if they want something cleaned, they should do it? What does Noer’s article actually say about boys?

Noer has written an article that says that boys are useless, childish and are incapable of taking care of themselves or their surroundings without women. It suggests that these boys never grew up and have spent their lives looking for a mommy-wife, only to find out that for the most part women aren’t falling all over themselves to look after a fully grown baby. It’s fairly clear Noer has a pretty dim view of his fellow men. And they say *we* are man-haters? No one hates men more then a misogynist.

It is not surprising that the boys who read the article missed this gigantic and obvious fact, and instead followed Noer’s example and blamed women. However, everyone with more then four brain cells saw the writing on the wall - these boys are helpless without women.

This would be clue #2, as to why boys are so insecure.

So, when the MRA claims that boys do all the “hard work”, I think it’s safe to assume that he doesn’t consider “women’s work” to be “hard work”. Whether or not that “woman’s work” is done on top of a full time job or not.

I have to assume then that what an MRA considers “hard work” that women don’t do are the jobs that - you guessed it - women are discouraged, prevented or barred from doing. I’m having a hard time figuring out specifically what those jobs would be. There are female police officers, fire”men”, construction workers. My aunt is a parole officer. I know two female pilots, and one who used to work on an oil rig. So either the MRA is so sheltered that he’s unaware women do “hard work” jobs, or he’s talking about employment that women aren’t allowed to participate in. Like linebacker in the NFL, or something.

The Gist

Lastly, let’s examine the implications of the MRA quote as a whole.

In context, the quote was meant to guilt - and of course silence- female posters who were discussing the oppression of women, and how what women do or contribute is often discounted, disregarded or outright ignored. The MRA wanted to show these women that they should be grateful to men for all that they have, because without men they wouldn’t have it. He actually used the phrase “women should be grateful”. This wasn’t limited to inventions or “hard work”. He claimed that Women’s Suffrage, Women’s Rights, etc were all in existence because men “allowed” them to be. And so, we should be grateful to men for “giving” us the vote, or our autonomy - such as it is. The irony of telling someone they should be grateful to their oppressors for what freedoms they had to fight for was lost on him, of course.

He wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to explain to him that women were/are excluded. He wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to explain that being excluded by practice or indoctrination, was a method of oppression. And he certainly wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to explain that the unlevel playing field gave advantages to boys.

He would have none of it. Men gave women everything they have and no matter what, women are required to be grateful for it.

Grateful. I believe we have discovered clue #3 as to why boys are so insecure.

The Clue Whisperer

Clue #1: Despite all the effort at keeping women out of their sandbox, women still get in, and still succeed. And do so without the advantages the unlevel playing field affords boys.

Clue #2: Women have altered their gender role - with varying degrees of success - since the start of the Women’s Rights movement. Boys, on the other hand, have sat on their asses and done nothing. Therefore, women are becoming increasingly independent, while boys have retained their high level of neediness and dependance on women. Women who, more and more often, don’t need them at all.

Clue #3: Boys feel unappreciated, unworshipped - ignored even!

What does all this point to?

Conclusion: Dangly Bit Holders are not the superior sex. They know it, they fear that we know it too.

Misogynists know, deep down, that they are not the superior sex. To someone (or, more to the point, a group of someones) who has been raised to believe that they are better than women, and are entitled to services from women, the realization that patriarchy raised them with a big bloated lie is scary. The realization that we know they aren’t superior must scare them to the core. In their simplistic, black-and-white, wishing for the “good old days” worldview, not being superior is the same as being inferior. Hence, the anger, the posturing and - of course - the insecurity.

If boys aren’t the superior kings of the world - what are they? If they aren’t the heads of the households, - what is their role? And what happens if the women find out!

Feminists hold the belief that Dangly Bit Holders are (or could be) adult human beings capable of behaving as such. I presume to speak for all of us here when I say that we expect that Dangly Bit Holders are capable of removing the blinders of patriarchy, stepping out of delusion and rejoining the human race as equal partners. Feminists certainly aren’t saying that Dangly Bit Holders are inferior - rather, feminists believe that Dangly Bit Holders are capable of being much better humans then they themselves think they are, or are capable of being.

Basically boys - you’re better than the misogynistic stereotype you present to the world. And feminists are going to keep reminding you of that until you stop trying to control the sandbox, and learn to play nicely with others.

Otherwise, you’re forcing us to leave you behind. Because, in case you haven’t noticed, the world is moving on with or without you.

Even if it takes an eternity.

End part two.

Continued in part 3.