Feminist rhetoric

Tedesche · 2018-02-01T19:20:37+00:00

Great article, and good observations overall. The only other “tactic” I’ve noticed, which you’ve sort of already commented on is when feminists simply refuse to debate with you. I’ve had a number of feminists demand proof of some claims I’ve made, and then simply stopped responding when I’ve gone to the trouble of looking up sources and citing them. Or they check my history, call me some variant of a “misogynist MRA” and then cease responding. Maybe it’s just me, but the “silent treatment” seems deliberate, and I’ve wondered if feminists have privately decided that debating MRAs just gives the movement publicity, and so many have decided the best way to fight us is to deny us a platform by refusing to talk.

Overall, I’ve noticed the same thing I noticed while debating Christians when I was into the Atheist movement—it’s largely a waste of time when your opponent isn’t open-minded enough to acknowledge your points and respond with civility. I eventually stopped doing it, because it usually just resulted in frustration. The only purpose to debating a closed-minded feminist, in my opinion, is to provide a public counterpoint to their views for the benefit of third-party viewers. So, when people make feminist points in subs like r/news, I’ll speak up and argue against them, but I steer clear of subs like TwoX, because they’re so feminist that there’s no real public to influence.

I look forward to the day when universities make sure to include MRAs in their courses and debates on gender issues. The feminist monopoly on the conversation needs to end.

KingRobotPrince · 2018-02-01T20:03:21+00:00

There's little point in debating them. If they even agree to engage with you seriously they aren't one of the problem ones.

DavidByron2 · 2018-02-01T22:46:15+00:00

As far as tactics goes, back in the 90s feminists had to impose censorship on web sites that they couldn't get to censor using moderators. It was a wild west feel as far as feminist boards go. They were pretending to be liberal / left as they do today and of course that meant they had to pretend to be open to new ideas, to debate and to listen to other opinions. In reality no hate movement can stand long under that environment and just as other hate movements on-line had to close their doors so did the feminists.

Apparently I got featured in a book about this, in passing, but there were a few of us that would try to engage (honestly) with feminists.

Censorship tactics were developed. Some of them led off from the "safe space" and man hating dogma by falsely accusing anyone perceived as male of raping one of the women on the group and therefore someone that must be banned. Yes they essentially claimed you could get raped over the internet by reading a comment. Or if not raped then some other vague sexual criminal sounding phrase. He's a stalker so we have to ban him. He's abusive. He's whatever. A false accusation of sexual criminality would be made and then taken up by others to push for a ban by the moderators.

You have to understand that back in those days some feminist moderators existed that really wanted to think of themselves as liberals and therefore anti-censorship. They don't exist any more as a result of our engagement with feminists on their boards.

If a mode would not ban someone for "abuse" then feminist would employ one of several variant primitive hacks of the board. These were simple text based boards and in those days there were few safeguards so the feminists would post comments that were several hundred or thousand lines long (recipies copies and pasted again and again a favourite) to bury the offending non-feminists' comments and indeed every comment on the thread under a barage of this spam posts. The goal was to essentially shit in their own nest and make their own board unreadable to all.

A third technique that wasn't always visible to outsiders was that the moderator would be bombarded with what is today called "flak". Emails complaining that they were failing in their duty by not banning the new commentator. Women can be quite vicious to each other as any woman will tell you. I have seen boards where one woman would try to get the husband of another fired from his work and then the response was to make false complaints to child services about the other mother.

Feminist boards rapidly changed their minds about pretending to be liberal and posted "rules" that openly said non-feminists were not welcome just as they do today. The early NOW board had to go behind a member only wall for a while. This was all to avoid by now not only the honest questioning of the movement by outsiders but also vicious in fighting and sociopathic attacks from self proclaimed guardians of the board who took it upon themselves to police all comments for ideological purity.

I was so well known in those days as a commentator that new comers were often mistakenly identified as me under a false name after I had been banned from some board. It was my habit to read the board after I got banned to see what the inevitable discussion about censorship went like. In rare cases a moderator or owner of a board would stick to their principles in which case the other feminists would shit on it thoroughly and drive people away before leaving it themselves.

I'm sure Wendy recalls all this too; she was around at the time. (you linked to one of her articles)

At any rate these days there's no longer any liberal feminists they are all right wing pro-censorship nuts, but that's an environment that was in effect created out of the war to prevent honest debate on feminist boards.

AxeOfWyndham · 2018-02-02T05:45:45+00:00

If you move over to IRL arguments with feminists, they also like to stack their side/gang up and resort to Gish Gallops. It's uncommon that a feminist will ever confront or argue with you alone one-on-one. They will deliberately try to have a "dialog" by engaging the individual with a collective.

It's first and foremost an intimidation tactic, a bandwagon to try to appeal to popularity. It also serves as a way to amplify each other while shutting down the target by doing basically patting each other on the back whenever they speak. If they stack 5 of them against 1 of you, you'll be lucky to get to talk 1/6 of the time. Finally, it serves as a way to dig for esoteric bunk. The more idiots they have on their team, the more likely they can dig up some stat you've never heard or had a chance to refute before. It also means that while one is firing off an idea, the others can have complete thoughts for the next point while you try to hear the point being presented.

They try to overwhelm people with numbers rather than have any real arguments. The reality is that when confronted as individuals, feminist rhetoric fails on its ownz

iainmf · 2018-02-02T02:17:27+00:00

What I have learnt about posting so far:

1) You control the discussion. Stay on your point and don't let them derail you. If you have to, pull the conversation back on track.

2) Ignore all of the garbage and try to find genuine points in the replies. Pretend they never said the nonsense and personal attacks.

3) Make sure you understand what they are saying. Repeat their point of view back to them so that they agree with it.

4) Find the real point of disagreement and label it as such. EG I think we disagree about X. You think Y and I think Z.

Tymalic · 2018-02-01T21:13:15+00:00

Every time I try to do what you do, I get banned.

Tao_Law · 2018-02-01T20:00:53+00:00

At least there is some overlap / a starting point with this new emergence of "pro-life feminists" (in my opinion).

Title	Feminist rhetoric
Author	Historybuffman
Upvotes	18
Comments	25
Date	February 1, 2018 6:44 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/7ukxvw/feminist_rhetoric/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/feminist-rhetoric.906668 https://theredarchive.com/post/906668

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