The Reasons why Reverse Sexism is the new Sexism

So, I read this article and came upon this section, which I will transcribe below:

I love this article by Melissa A. Fabello, Co-Managing Editor of Everyday Feminism, on Everyday Feminism, which breaks down why sexism against men (aka, reverse sexism) is just not possible. Sure, women stereotype men, just as men stereotype women. Sure, there’s prejudice and discrimination against both genders, which totally sucks. However, reverse sexism isn’t possible because these four main tenets would have to be true:

1. It Is Pervasive: It is woven throughout social institutions, as well as embedded within individual consciousness.

2. It Is Restrictive: That is, structural limits significantly shape a person’s life chances and sense of possibility in ways beyond the individual’s control.

3. It Is Hierarchical: That is, oppression positions one group as “better” than another. Dominant or privileged groups benefit, often in unconscious ways, from the disempowerment of subordinated or targeted groups.

4. The Dominant Group Has the Power to Define Reality: That is, they determine the status quo: what is “normal,” “real,” or “correct.”

 

CRITERION THE FIRST: IT PERVADETH

So let's start with the first qualifier, Pervasiveness. Throughout the last fifteen years, we have consistently seen government bodies, media outlets, and major institutions, as well as the corporate and commercial arms of life, all shift to a radically pro-feminist perspective. Businesses bow to pressure to raise wages for women over a misrepresented myth of The Gender Wage Gap (including a university campus in my hometown that gave a blanket raise of $3000/yr to all female staff). News organizations cover rape trials as if they are each the next Boston Strangler or Ted Bundy... unless the attacker is female, in which case even the most disgusting cases where the assailant chose young boys for her deeds, are relegated to a local news report made after the fact, featuring a sentence of community service or probation. Universities now engage in an oppressive "Yes Means Yes" policy which is basically a veiled instruction to male students to keep beyond arms' reach of female students for their own protection. To avoid getting charged with a sexual assault on campus, for which the accused will have to prove his own guilt without the need for the university itself to ascertain the validity of the accuser's claims. Just as in the case of Mattress Girl, where the institutionalized feminism scared a young man into quietly obeying the school's request to remain silent about the case and investigation, while his accuser went on to speak publicly about the assault, named the accused in violation of school policy, and proceeded to intentionally violate his rights by publicizing his name across the globe, without an ounce of evidence to back up her claim. She was not penalized for breaking the school's rules, she was supported by the feminist agenda, and even introduced to the President of the United States. A President, need I remind, who has routinely regurgitated the popular propaganda. The Wage Gap (which he would know is a myth if he checked the laws that his own predecessors wrote in the 60s) and the 1-in-4 college girls myth (shown to be closer to 1-in-54. If we are going to address a serious problem, let's address it with facts, not assertions!).

I'm seeing some evidence that misandrist feminism is firmly planted in the structure of 21st century politics, media, education and law.

 

CRITERION THE SECOND: IT RESTRICTETH

But what about the second qualifier, Restrictiveness. We all have heard about the Yes Means Yes policy, but for anyone just tuning in, Yes Means Yes is an affirmative consent policy adopted across the United States at university campuses. It dictates that partners on campus who decide to engage in sexual activity need to adhere to a strict practice of asking and accepting permission at every step of the encounter. If you aren't sure how that is restrictive, it may be difficult to explain. But imagine yourself as a college fella who has made it all the way to her dorm room, on the bed, kissing with her and such. All of a sudden, you realize that if you take one step that she doesn't explicitly agree to with a verbal expression, that you could be accused of rape, lose your education and potentially be charged by the police. So you stop everything, trying to figure out how to grovel properly without losing your sex drive. If you're lucky, you'll be able to fire through enough questions for her to get bored, pull off her own clothing and tell you "you're going to hear enough yeses once you get FUCKING STARTED". Otherwise, you're going to get tired of asking for every touch and tingle. You find you are demonstrating that two people simply cannot trust one another enough that a simple "Wanna mess around?" can't be answered with a Yes and let that be it. You are in a room with someone who literally doesn't trust you either. There is no reason for two people who don't trust each other to be taking off one another's clothing. The policy is a firm warning to men that women can and will lie and that it's entirely on men to avoid getting caught in a trap. It has no effect of protecting women. In fact, its effect of forcing the accused of bearing the burden of proof allows women to arbitrarily accuse men out of convenience. If the Affirmative Consent thing is your sorta bag though, why not consider the age-old Affirmative Action issue! Many first-world countries mandate a specific amount of required female employees in a company with a workforce of a certain size. This can severely limit heavily qualified male applicants from acquiring work in their profession - even facing the possibility of being passed over in order to hire a less qualified individual simply to satisfy the gender balance. This is also a corporate restriction, which is inherently antiprogressive. A worker should be chosen on their individual merits, not their gender. Plus all the myriad examples of gendered phrases which are now taboo, despite the lack of inherent gender discrimination within the phrases - only harmless apparent gender bias (such as "Mankind" being used instead of "Humankind").

I would say there is evidence that modern feminism is restrictive on public freedoms, legal proceedings, and our own language.

 

CRITERION THE THIRD: IT HIERARCHETH

What about the third condition, Hierarchy? Well, I suppose we need to determine who is on top.

Well, we all know that more than 90% of the political leaders are male. But in most countries, a political representative is nominated by the body of the political party and then selected by a voting process among the public. As a resident of North America, I can only say that in America, the voting public is 70% female. So who is really in charge? Yes, it's mainly men sitting in the Senate, but it's mainly women who put them there, meaning they mainly serve the interests of women. It leaves questions about what really is going on. Where the real power sits.

But do we, men, profit or benefit from subjugating women? I suppose we would have to break down each way men can stand to actually get away with it at all, since benefits need to be good for us (and being shamed on social media or arrested hardly qualifies there). Nothing banned under law would work, and slut-shaming usually ends with an enraged feminist reposting every remark onto a huge social media site to be dissected by other enraged feminists, who turn one incident into "an example of the norm", the way conservative media in 2002 made everyone from the Middle-East into some kind of extremist fundamentalist terrorist bent on world domination, and using images of insane, wild-eyed guerilla warriors as the typical, average desert inhabitant, when nothing could be further than the truth. (Baghdad was a rare beauty of Middle-Eastern architecture and it'll take some time for those wounds to heal).

But surely "rape culture" proves that men have all the control, right? Well, what is rape culture? According to some reddit users, confirmed just generally with a Google search, is that rape culture is the perceived acceptance of rape within society, either by discouraging discussion about it, providing convicted felons with easier sentences, no sentences, or no conviction altogether, or by shaming the victim after the accusation to discredit them or force a withdrawal of the claim. All of these are scary. But are they really happening all to women? Well, I can't deny that historically, rape was a topic that wasn't discussed. But then, the world has gotten progressive and liberal pretty quick. Only fifty years ago, tee shirts were considered underwear. You didn't wear tee shirts around outside. Women didn't even really do pants until sometime in the last century. The fact that we currently discuss rape with enough of a serious tone that most people are afraid of expressing their views for the risk of being mislabelled as a "rape apologist" simply for not agreeing every detail with another mad feminists... you know that rape is talked about unquestionably. So there is no hiding from it.

What culture have we bred from it? It's looking from my perspective, watching the news, following stories online, and perusing reddit for supplementary stuff, that today's culture nurtures the idea of coming forward, with social programs designed specifically to help women who have been assaulted sexually. Strict, harsh laws and punishments for the crime (as well as any satellite crime that the police can nab the accused for) may not be an effective deterrent to some critics, and frankly I wouldn't cry much over a life sentence on a convicted rape (unless I think the accused is innocent, but that's another story altogether). Beyond that, the very idea of questioning an accuser's story has become so taboo that we are now expected to accept the accuser's story at face value, which is especially dangerous to civil rights. And may I now note that this goes in one direction; a female accuser and a male accused. When the situation reverses, an entirely new playing field reveals itself.

Young men sexually assaulted by women are told that they weren't raped. They'd just had sex. That if they weren't having sex with their rapist, they must be gay. That they should be ashamed of themselves for accusing a woman of rape. And if it does make it as far as arrest and trial, the defendant's past experiences are factored in to justify her actions, and her marriage, employment, and social life are given consideration before sentencing. Often, women convicted of sexual assault are sentenced to probation or service, while their underaged victims spend the next ten years unravelling the damage done to them.

But just to see if the Internet has a different view on who wears the pants, I decided to run a super fast experiment. I went to Google, and entered two search terms: "Women are better than men" and "Men are better than women", to find out what the top results would be.

"Women are better than men" yielded a variety of articles from a variety of sources, including women's rags Cosmo and Glo, an Open Forum editorial, a growing Facebook group, and no shortage of things women undoubtedly find cute and funny. It shows to me that many large sites with heavy traffic are discussing ways either they feel that women are superior - or just want to drag in the easy clickbait for feminists who need an extra stroke to the ego in exchange for ad revenue.

"Men are better than women" yielded some of the funny results. Three of the links all lead to a book written by famous misogynist Dick Masterson and his ugly walrus moustache (the last link being a review website describing his book under the category "Comedy"). A fourth link goes to a YouTube video of a Dr. Phil segment featuring -- you guessed it -- Dick Masterson! There is also a Debate.org link labelled "Are men better than women?" (which at the time of this writing shows that 54% say no, and by reading some of the responses, almost all of the responses are polar) and an article from Time Magazine about a chess player who got into trouble for saying that men are better chess players.

It's definitely not looking like there is a defined hierarchy in today's society that dictates one set demographic controls the other based on physical attributes. Men just don't seem to have the advantage. If we did, no one under the age of 30 has ever encountered it.

 

CRITERION THE LAST: IT DOMINATETH

But that leaves one last criteria, Power. Specifically, the ability to define normalcy and correctness. Let's have a quick look at the feminist movement itself and see how shaky this male privilege really is.

At the dawn of the 20th century, voting rights had only just been extended to include more people. Before the American Civil War, voting rights belonged only to the most wealthy 5% had a chance to elect their leader. You had to be a land owner of a certain prestige to gain the privilege, but over time, the requirements for eligibility fell away. Even in the pre-war days, there were women who had the status needed to vote - and their ballot was valued like any other. As of 1915 (one century ago), only half of the men who would have had the right to vote under our laws, had an opportunity to do so. The women's suffrage movement actually turns out to be, not a movement to give women the right to vote, but a movement to give everyone the right to vote, organized by proactive women! Probably due to the men at the time all being at war at the time (America sent boys to war in 1917, and the voting laws were amended in 1918).

Since that time, feminist philosophy has twisted history to teach generations of young girls that women have been selectively kept from voting, and that men all had the voting rights. To this day, many do not realize the real story. They just believe what the feminist propaganda tells them.

But moving on, out of the 20s, skip over war-time, and move into the 1950s. The civil rights movement was the perfect environment for the expansion of women's rights, thanks to the stir caused by the bubbling pot of racial tension. Taking advantage of a government already against a wall allowed the feminist movement to peacefully establish to lobby for women's rights, leading to various bills and laws to help protect a woman's domestic rights - everything from pay equality, violence and rape shelters, and changes to family law. The establishment of Title IX (an act banning gender discrimination from teaching environments) occurred during this second wave of feminism.

Enter the third wave, midway through the 1980s. It wasn't pretty. Feminists were turning on one another, having run out of important things to bring attention to. Voting was solved, equal pay was solved. Rape and violence might never be solved. I don't have a lot of faith in human beings in that regard. But I'll drift a half step away from that opinion so that I can continue. The 1980s brought around two polar groups of feminists, pertaining to the so-called "important" issue of the day; sex. On the one side, you have the "anti-porn feminists", who felt that erotic media, prostitution and lesbianism were all affronts to the elevation of women's rights - and demonstrated an objectification of the female body. Meanwhile, "sex-positive" feminists believed simply in a liberal lack of control over the sexual behaviours between consenting adults. It didn't help matters that so many of the front line activists favour sex-positivity were porn stars at the time. We can nonetheless still see echoes of the arguments running back and forth in the background, while the rest of us deal with the most popular taglines of Feminism's 21st century "Fourth Wave".

Among all of these revolutions, very little resistance was mounted (with a notable exception to the Equal Rights Amendment). In swifter actions than any other civil rights group in history, women have effortlessly changed vital segments of law that failed to benefit them by virtue of their wording. And for the last one hundred years, women have demonstrated repeatedly that nothing is static, nothing is held as "normal" or "correct" in the purest, irreversible sense of the words (after all, even scientists say they're correct, until someone proves them wrong. You don't accomplish much by being indecisive).

It seems to me that women have been flexing power to define reality for decades. In fact, sometimes it feels as though that power is being flaunted and just used for the sake of being used.

Under the Pervasive criterion, men are not Sexist, women are. Under the Restrictive criterion, men are not Sexist, women are. Under the Hierarchical criterion, men are no more sexist than women. Under the Power criterion, men are not Sexist, feminists (gender-independent) are.

There's really nowhere else for me to go with this thought. I couldn't keep it off of my mind unless I wrote it down, considering how annoyed it makes me to see them spreading this crap to other people.