Misandry from GWW?

the_raptor · 2012-02-18T12:59:32+00:00

I can't speak for GWW, but it seems to me that:

She's talking about a man, not men in general and from what I've seen of GWW's writing and videos I very much doubt that any murderous fantasies are the result of him being a man. I don't know if GWW has actual murderous fantasies or was just using a slightly hyperbolic example, but in any case murderous fantasies are common.
This is different to making light of a real murder case, or assuming justification in a real murder case, or actually advocating murder, or claiming that certain types of murders are more justified or less serious than others.
The piece wasn't a rant about her ex, she needed an example of a case where for a given result legal culpability could be greatly varied based on the intent of the person involved. I can imagine myself using a similar rhetorical device.

Was it a little insensitive given the very lenient treatment some women murderers of partners/exes receive from the justice system? Perhaps, but I think that's a rather minor offence.

Cookie · 2012-02-18T14:18:51+00:00

Perhaps it was poor strategy to include this joke, given how other people have reacted to it. Personally, I'm not political correctness minded, so I just thought it was funny.

sixofthebest · 2012-02-18T15:12:31+00:00

That was not a joke but a ~~confession of murder fantasy involving her asshole ex-husband~~ coughcough demonstration of anger management.

2012-02-18T16:58:16+00:00

Just because it happens to be a man doesn't make it misandry. It could just be she particularly hates that man. She isn't making the joke because he is a man, she is making the joke because she dislikes him strongly for what he did to her. If you read her "bio" type thing on GMP (I think, I forget what website) you will see that her ex is just a shitty person. Not because he left her, but because he was just all around shitty.

Wordshark · 2012-02-19T22:04:17+00:00

One of my biggest beefs with feminism is over their obsession with language. That is, taking issue with somebody not because of what that person said, but because of the way they said it. Attacking somebody because of what they've said is persecution for thoughtcrime; attacking that person because of the way they said it is persecution for subliminal thoughtcrime.

In situations like this, there are a couple of tools I like to use. First off, (because I think it's the most important), I look at the person's intent. This involves imagining that person's frame of reference, and deciding what intentions were most likely to motivate them to say what they said (in short: empathize). This is largely context-sensitive; for example, if I call Marguirite Perrin a "crazy bitch," my motivation probably isn't sexism. If I call Gloria Steinem a "crazy bitch," my motivation probably is sexism.

Did GWW intend to say that murdering her ex-husband would be justified, or that violence toward men is acceptable? No. Obviously not. In fact, the point of her example was that she would indeed be guilty of murder.

Another tool I like to use is the "same group test." Reframe the situation so that the person talking is a member of the group that they're talking about, then see if it still sounds harmful. For example, Carlos Mencia saying that Mexican people are lazy is racist, whether he calls himself Carlos Mencia or Ned Arnel Holness (as he was known until he was 18).

So, if GWW had written a hypothetical in which she ran a stop sign to ram her ex-wife's car, using it to make the point that it constituted murder, would it come across like she was advocating violence toward women? I don't think so.

I would also like to acknowledge that subliminal thoughtcrimes can be harmful. However, I think we should err on the side of leniency. This is because I am adamant that we shouldn't repeat the mistakes of feminism (although I do think we should learn from their successes); one of their failures has been making their focus the promotion of women's interests, rather than equality, and another one has been focusing far to much on language and too little on physical reality. As feminism sees success, these flaws have them ignoring or outright denying valid MR issues, and obsessing over thoughtcrimes to an absurd degree (see SRS).

Let's not end up like American feminists. Whether we do it under the MRA flag or not, let's make sure we:

•aim for equality, never overshoot equality, and stand up for unfair gender issues, whether or not it benefits us to do so •give a clear priority to real issues (things which can be measured and analyzed, and which have a specific, measurable, negative effect on real people), over thoughtcrimes •always maintain intellectual honesty and integrity (does anybody here want to see an unchallengeable pseudoscience called "maculism" dominate academia, and weigh it down with a quagmire of overwritten, paradoxical decrees?)

TL;DR—There's a huge difference between mentioning violence against a man, and advocating violence against men. If we start persucuting people for off-color jokes while ignoring the point of what they're saying, we'll be on the same path feminism went down.

2012-02-18T13:17:03+00:00

While the "coughcough" part may indicate that she at some level does want to do it, I doubt she wants to do it when it being wrong and the consequences of doing it are taken into consideration. Few are saints so most would be lying if they said they harbored no ill feelings towards anyone. Please, no self-righteous condemnation of someone for being human and harboring even just a speck of hatred.

This is not a men's rights issue. It is at worst hate of one man, not hate of men.

Jomer_Llunior · 2012-02-18T15:37:50+00:00

So she's opposite day Hugo Schwyzer.

2012-02-18T17:12:02+00:00

Uh...what? Trying pretty hard to take offense here, I'd say.

2StandardDeviations · 2012-02-18T21:56:23+00:00

I don't understand what the problem is, Domestic Violence is always, always funny. That's why posting lurid fantasies of savage acts of Domestic Violence is always acceptable behavior.

getthefuckoutofhere · 2012-02-18T16:22:52+00:00

Misandry from GWW?

no

shoreward · 2012-02-18T15:29:47+00:00

making a joke or implying a joke that one may want to kill ones husband does not constitute misandry 'hatred of all men'

Feminism uses such tactics, we need to be careful. We do NOT want women to be judged as harshly as men, we want all people to be judged fairly.

girlwriteswhat · 2012-02-19T20:57:50+00:00

I have similar feelings about my bf's ex, and my last bf's ex.

My ex almost destroyed my children's future out of spite. I have about $30k more worth of debt to pay just because he wanted to make things as difficult as possible (and consider that when my lawyer heard the deal I'd offered, he wanted to slap me, and the best deal we could get a judge to sign off on was $25k WORSE for my ex than the one I'd originally offered him, so he was doing it to be hurtful and destructive, not because I wasn't being "fair"). He behaved as if he would rather see his kids starve than allow me to do what was necessary to provide for them.

I never had fantasies about killing him. I DID have fantasies about him dying, though, when I was really stuck and couldn't see a way out that wouldn't ruine me and my kids.

It's not misandry. It's hating on a specific person who more than earned my animosity. Though I will allow that my ability to make that joke without being attacked by the general public for it, while a similar crack about a woman would be condemned, is evidence of misandry.

Frankly, I think people should be able to joke about things like this--I often "threaten" to stab my bf in the head when he annoys me. He "threatens" to "sort my shit out" when I tease him. I "threaten" to knock my kids heads together, or turn them into a bad smell coming from the attic, or a mound of freshly turned earth in the yard, or to leave their shit on the curb and change the locks on their 18th birthdays, or begin a new discipline regime where I beat them as often as I feed them.

It's all just silliness, and we all know that. And by the time I wrote that article, I was no longer fantasizing about my ex conveniently getting eaten by a bear. We'd reached a more civil place where making a joke like that was actually a joke, and not wishful thinking.

ForMensRights · 2012-02-18T13:14:51+00:00

You should have read this first. That isn't misandry. It's bad history.

EvilPundit · 2012-02-18T18:45:49+00:00

I don't think it's misandry at all. A personal dislike of one particular man does not imply a general hatred of all men.

Let's not fall into the feminist error of confusing individuals with groups.

johnmarkley · 2012-02-18T18:58:42+00:00

I don't see this as misandrist; she's joking about her dislike of a specific person who happens to be a man, which doesn't imply that she thinks violence against men in general, because they're men, is funny or acceptable. It's true that it would almost certainly be treated as considerably less acceptable if a man made a similar remark about his ex-wife, but that double standard is an example of our society's misandry, not girlwriteswhat's.

SpanishGuy · 2012-02-18T19:59:30+00:00

1: Out of context. It's not a joke, it's an example of an hypothetical event that must be analyzed before making an easy judgment.

2: As it's directed towards feminists, the most efficient example is one where a woman kills his ex-husband (we don't know yet if it was a deliberated action or an accident), because this way feminists will consider the possibility of she being innocent of a crime -in the reverse case they will tend to deny the possibility of the man being innocent-.

NiceGuysSTFU · 2012-02-18T15:06:21+00:00

I thought it wasn't cute at all, glad you pointed it out. If it had been a prominent feminist joking about killing her husband, this would not have gone unnoticed here.

ghebert001 · 2012-02-18T14:37:15+00:00

So, is this joke appropriate for an MRM, when so many women walk free when they do things like murder their ex(s) and husbands

I think there may have been an underlying "point" behind this.

We will have to let GWW speak for herself on this one.

MechaSixVII · 2012-02-18T15:16:16+00:00

It's a joke being used as a hypothetical example. She has done nothing wrong.

kanuk876 · 2012-02-18T21:56:58+00:00

naive1000, see if you can spot the difference in the following two hypothetical quotes:

I'm angry at my ex husband. I'd like to kill him. Are you with me, girls?

vs

I'm angry at my ex husband. I'd like to kill him. Were I to do so, however, it would be capital murder.

I'll give you a hint: one fully acknowledges the murder victim's humanity (ie: laws against capital murder apply). The other doesn't. Can you tell the difference?

JeremiahMRA · 2012-02-19T18:06:11+00:00

Well, seeing as I could never get away with saying coughcough like that about a female ex in a mainstream publication like TGMP, yes, that is a misandric statement. It makes light of female-on-male violence, and quite intentionally so. No, there is no excusing it no matter what the history is because it is not just about him and her, it is about the normalization of female-on-male violence.

2012-02-18T13:48:30+00:00

Sounds like she enjoyed the thought to me

Misandry from GWW?

From GirlWritesWhat:

Comments

Title	Misandry from GWW?
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	0
Comments	39
Date	February 18, 2012 12:50 PM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/pv6gc/misandry_from_gww/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/misandry-from-gww.1027447 https://theredarchive.com/post/1027447