Men are from Yemen, women are from Sweden?

serpentineeyelash · 2019-08-06T10:36:26+00:00

Why do so many men (including many MRAs) accept the paradigm...

Partly because it's difficult to escape the anti-male feminist propaganda which pervades our society. Partly because backward societies, at first glance and even at second glance, do appear male-dominated, with men holding roles of overt authority in the state, church, and household, and with women often denied certain rights such as participation in public politics. Certainly there is more evidence of male power than in modern societies.

So it's difficult to convince people that women hold significant covert forms of power in traditionalist societies. Even as someone who strongly suspects that to be the case, I have difficulty constructing an iron-clad argument for it. And it's even more difficult to argue in soundbytes like feminists do, because there are so many unquestioned assumptions to deconstruct.

But one point that strikes me is that almost everyone sees their own society as being less misogynistic than other societies. Almost everyone says the truly brutal misogyny is in another subculture, or another religion, or another economic sector, or another country, or back in time. Almost everyone can admit that misogyny is exaggerated in the area of which they have the most knowledge and experience. Well, I think they're all right - female disadvantages are exaggerated everywhere! And male disadvantages are downplayed everywhere.

A while ago on Youtube, I found a debate between a Muslim woman and a Christian woman on “Women & Marriage in the Quran and Bible”. Much of the detail I found dull, as both rattled off a long list of arcane quotes from each book and then debated interpretations. However, on a broader philosophical level the debate proved a point intended by neither participant. Each woman argued passionately that in their own religion marriage is mutually respectful, and in the other’s religion it is horribly misogynistic. A feminist would say both women are brainwashed into a false consciousness, but perhaps both women know from their lived experience that in practice their holy books are interpreted in a way that generally benefits women.

DevilishRogue · 2019-08-06T10:03:20+00:00

Well, no, because there is an essential truth to it, a truth that has nothing to do with gender. The human condition is fundamentally brutish. Civilisation has evolved at different pace according to culture, technological advancement and innate propensity for change.

Places where an individual woman is likely to be targeted for assault or rape have strongly patriarchal cultures in order to prevent this. The culture is such that so long as women are at significant and serious risk measures are taken to mitigate this. Similarly in areas where individual women are largely safe and secure there is no need for such measures.

The latter are seen as more free for women but the only real difference (or rather the cause of differences) is the safety of women. They are all part of the same, non-patriarchal system that prioritises women's safety. But to the uneducated or foolish the cause is ignored and only the effect is considered, making it appear that oppression of women is an actual thing when the reality is it is a cultural response to safety risks that sees women as inherently more valuable and less "disposable" than men.

Strikester101 · 2019-08-06T09:59:03+00:00

I don't recall any country that is praised for egalitarianism being called "matriarchal".

I mean, I know they favor policies that are "pro-female" and love the title.

Tamen_ · 2019-08-08T18:59:21+00:00

You are onto something. The assumption that third world countries or other countries where gender equality is considered low are male friendly because they’re shitty for women is very often contradicted when someone actually bother to look at rates of assaults and rape/sexual violence against men in those countries.

Some examples:

In Iraq more men than women reported having experienced verbal sexual harassment and physical sexual assault:

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48940041

In India boys make up half of the victims of sexual abuse, the same for South Africa: https://tamenwrote.wordpress.com/2013/10/26/but-globally-like-south-africa-or-india/

In Uganda almost half of the students who reported being forced to do something sexual in this study were male: https://tamenwrote.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/uganda/

In Chile just as many college men (10%) as women (9%) report having been forced to have sex. This result from a survey done in 2005 was published in two separate papers three years apart making this comparison difficult to make:

Lehrer, Lehrer and Koss ‘Unwanted Sexual Experiences in Young Men: Evidence from a Survey of University Students in Chile’

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-012-0004-x

Lehrer, Lehrer, Lehrer and Oyarzún have, using the same 2005 dataset, written a paper called : Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Sexual Victimization in College Women in Chile. (2007).

https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/ipsrh/2007/12/prevalence-and-risk-factors-sexual-victimization-college-women-chile

At least as many boys as girls report having been sexually abused by their intimate partner in Bulgaria, Italy and Cyprus in the EU sponsored research project StirItUp:

https://tamenwrote.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/bias-and-unasked-questions/

Tamen_ · 2019-08-08T19:03:29+00:00

If anyone is interested in an very detailed and in-depth discussion on how researchers have influenced the focus on female victims and the exclusion of male victims this old thread at FeministCritics blog may be of interest:

http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2014/02/09/a-thread-for-john-stuart-mill-noh/

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