Testing Chat Episode VI: Return of the Chat

[evilsoup]

no, I got that, you're fine crazedwraith

(god, but that was a shitty episode of futurama)

[magic princess]

It isn't like I haven't talked this one over with a women's studies professor or anything before... It's probably one of the more legitimate beliefs I hold. Patriarchy, gentlemen, is an entity which has existed for thousands of years, resulting in the de facto slavery of women for thousands of years. During that people of time, women put in forced marriages were raped and used as chattel labour. They still are in a lot of the world. That is just a fact, which cannot be so easily denied by anyone. Sex selective abortion, murdering of women who give birth to too many female children, and honour killing are all examples of this. Women therefore essentially developed the strategy of Resistance to oppression based on "hectoring", "badgering", and other stereotypical "angry bitch" responses of married men to their husbands -- they used what maneouvring room they could to lash out at the man who had been raised by the system to oppress them directly, but ultimately they were resisting the system. And yes, that includes hitting, to make other men laugh and mock and reduce the status of the individual who personalizes the oppressive system for them.

It does NOT enforce stereotypes to say men can't be victims... Because that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that male victimization is not automatically criminal becaust resistance to a system of oppression is legitimate. And women had it WORSE for THOUSANDS OF YEARS in patriarchal societies than black Africans did under Apartheid. That's also a fact, and just like with African-American slavery and modern African-Americans, just because some laws got changed in the 1860s doesn't mean women aren't the mass victims of the deeply entrenched remains of the system in our society.

So what I'm saying is that, sorry, female domestic violence against men, in the context of patriarchy, is not something which should be punished as hard as male domestic violence against women. It needs to be first referred to committees which make a determination on whether or not charges will be filed, with the power to forgive and promote reconciliation, even when crimes were blatantly committed by the standards of the law that was written by and for the patriarchal power structure.

I'm challenging you now to actually think outside of the box created by society to contain your minds, which I believed a lot of you could do. This isn't hyperbole or me being a lunatic. Neither is Resistance as a broad concept among those strains of Women's Studies interested in it something that can be equated to warfare. Rather it is the inevitable and natural response to oppression, and will always happen where oppression exists. If you accept the idea that systems of power oppression women, you've got to understand that Resistance will be shaped by those systems of power, because you can't escape them. So a certain degree of domestic violence on men by women will actually be an expression of Resistance and in the effort to create a society not shaped by patriarchy, that needs to be addressed through an avenue other than law courts.

[evilsoup]

I didn't write anything about punishment; you're bringing that up right now.

A woman hurting a man is also not automatically an act of resistance. It can be, for sure, but I'm talking about actual domestic abuse here. Please stop conflating that with 'bitchiness' or 'nagging'.

It needs to be first referred to committees which make a determination on whether or not charges will be filed, with the power to forgive and promote reconciliation

'You should forgive your abuser'.

even when crimes were blatantly committed by the standards of the law that was written by and for the patriarchal power structure.

Those would be the laws championed and fought for by feminists over the years, yeah?

[magic princess]

I didn't write anything about punishment; you're bringing that up right now.

A woman hurting a man is also not automatically an act of resistance. It can be, for sure, but I'm talking about actual domestic abuse here. Please stop conflating that with 'bitchiness' or 'nagging'.

But that's exactly what is included as the bulk of "domestic violence" under modern definitions, and usually included in the definition thereof by people who have a vested interest in padding female-on-male DV.

It needs to be first referred to committees which make a determination on whether or not charges will be filed, with the power to forgive and promote reconciliation

'You should forgive your abuser'.

Unless women and men are supposed to be unable to live together, that needs to happen ultimately.

even when crimes were blatantly committed by the standards of the law that was written by and for the patriarchal power structure.

Those would be the laws championed and fought for by feminists over the years, yeah?

Laws inadequate because they were put through the mechanism of a patriarchal society which necessarily enforces a deafness to how past experiences inform power structures in the modern era. African-Americans are now equal under the law to white people and that sure helps make the incarceration rate better, now, doesn't it? Oh right...

[evilsoup]

so this is what people mean when they talk about the oppression olympics

It needs to be first referred to committees which make a determination on whether or not charges will be filed, with the power to forgive and promote reconciliation

'You should forgive your abuser'.

Unless women and men are supposed to be unable to live together, that needs to happen ultimately.

A woman who has been abused by a man has no obligation to forgive or reconcile with her abuser. A man who has been abused by a woman has no obligation to forgive or reconcile with his abuser. Likewise with men who have been abused by men (actually, unsurprisingly, way more common than woman-on-man abuse) and women who have been abused by women, and whatever other combinations & variations you want to talk about.

African-americans are still discriminated against, and that's terrible and needs to be changed, but that doesn't make it OK for a black person to beat up a white person. That his wounds are ultimately largely caused by the inequality of society doesn't make his bones any less broken, it doesn't make his lacerations heal any faster, it doesn't make his bruises any less sore. It is a demonstration that all forms of inequality can hurt everyone, even those who are generally on the privileged side of the equation.

[magic princess]

It is not an obligation but rather it should be an objective, and historical influences MUST be a part of the process of resolving it. I'd say an emphasis on female-male DV is a good example of the oppression Olympics, and by treating broad systems of power and oppression equally, I'm intentionally rejecting that terrible game.

[Ralin]

I'm reminded of how pissed off a friend of mine (who is a big feminist herself) was when she had to read stuff by some black nationalist dude who advocated political rape of white women for class when she was finishing up her master's in history.

I'm taking this sexist tripe about as seriously.

[magic princess]

And yes, it works both ways... A lot of male-on-female DV would, when we have really committed to dismantling patriarchy, be handled by some equivalent to the gacaca courts in Rwanda than by the regular criminal justice system. Simply because otherwise we'd end up imprisoning at least 15% of the male population.

[magic princess]

I mean look, I'm not going crazy on men. My dad had an affair with my mother after meeting her with as a psychotherapy patient. That was wrong, and immoral; it created me. My dad deserved some kind of punishment for that, but in the context of being raised in the 1910s, his psychology education with no code of ethics in the 1940s? In the modern day he'd go to jail; perhaps a gacaca court would find another solution for a good man who had decency in his heart but was misled by the mores he'd been raised in. Likewise, women who abuse men need options in the context of patriarchy. The oppressors will have a higher rate of prison than the oppressed, but the reconciliation commissions will find some guilty... And will find, hopefully, civil methods of reconciling a lot of the offenders on both sides of the court. That would be a true end to patriarchy. Anything else, I think, will just perpetuate it.

Something like this is now being done in indigenous villages in Alaska where there is a high degree of violence against women, and I think that could be a model for the transition of our entire society away from patriarchal power structures.

[Ralin]

Yeah, I'd rather not set the precedent that beating one's spouse gets you less punishment than beating the crap out of a random stranger, much less that "reconciling" will be treated as a higher priority than justice.

If fifteen percent of the male population turns out to be incorrigible woman-beaters I'd be pretty okay with them passing through the penal system.

Hehe. Penal.

[magic princess]

Mass incarceration has already failed as a method to end patriarchy; all we got out of it was MRA shitheads bitching about how the world is unfair. That's not the sole cause for them, but, you cannot simply imprison your way to a solution to something all-pervasive in society.

[Jung]

Women therefore essentially developed the strategy of Resistance to oppression based on "hectoring", "badgering", and other stereotypical "angry bitch" responses of married men to their husbands -- they used what maneouvring room they could to lash out at the man who had been raised by the system to oppress them directly, but ultimately they were resisting the system. And yes, that includes hitting, to make other men laugh and mock and reduce the status of the individual who personalizes the oppressive system for them.

I'm skeptical how often it actually works like this vs. women who abuse their spouses being more-or-less the same kind of people as men who abuse their spouses.

[Ralin]

Mass incarceration has already failed as a method to end patriarchy; all we got out of it was MRA shitheads bitching about how the world is unfair. That's not the sole cause for them, but, you cannot simply imprison your way to a solution to something all-pervasive in society.

The failure of existing domestic violence laws comes from lack of enforcement, not too much of it. Once spousal abuse becomes something abusers can expect to be consistently punished for you'll see that shit drop off, or at least the physical side of it. In much the same way that racism is still a thing in the US but black people being lynched in the streets generally is not.

[magic princess]

Domestic violence laws will NEVER be effectively enforced in a society still dominated by patriarchy and male privilege. Statistical analysis of crimes against women indicate that 15 - 18% of men commit all of those crimes.... And those crimes are all imprisonment offences. So, 15 - 18% of the US population must be in prison on charges of rape, sexual assault, or domestic violence for us to have imprisoned our way out of patriarchal aggression, and that is simply a fact. Do you see that happening? If not, then your plan isn't working. I can prove these figures if anyone doubts them.

The positive thing is that they mean that 80% of men don't commit imprisonable offences toward women. The negative thing of course is that it does mean there are somewhere around 36 million American males walking free right now who should be in jail for them according to the arrest everyone standard. You can perhaps see why even I pale at the prospect of this, and I'm a separatist at heart.

In short the logistics of what you propose are not plausible without society radically changing anyway.

[Dooey Jo]

Once upon a time in sweden everyone beat their kids because it was the cool thing to do. But then one day god said "but wait that is not cool at all" and the political humans passed a law that said you can't do that anymore under punishment of prison. Everyone was mighty angry and stomped their feet, but then they put 60% of the population in jail and had a world socialist revolution, and now they don't beat their kids anymore.

[magic princess]

I think we can agree that Sweden has a profoundly different social development than France, let alone the US. Anyway, corporal punishment isn't directly correlated with a large-scale system of oppression whose effect can socially linger. It would only be truly possible to excise patriarchy with either large scale social change or massive incarceration, and the response of women to oppression is to some degree legitimate, which brings us back to the original point at hand, which is that until you either address the 18% of men who should be in prison but aren't or you take real and concrete measures to end male privilege, why should women be punished for acts of resistance?

As for that African-American man who advocated raping white women, he has a legitimate grievance, but it's kind of telling how a man's preferred act of resisting oppression is to rape women, now isn't it? Perhaps showing how women still have a great deal to fear and a great deal of oppression to struggle against in modern society?

[Jung]

why should women be punished for acts of resistance?

What makes you think the stuff evilsoup was talking about is resistance and not the same thing abusive men do?

[adr]

mang i actually almost forgot this site existed for a while. i was somewhat melancholy yesterday and dropped by for a drive by spamming...

(my shields were compromised last week and another pair of impacting mines thursday and saturday caused them to temporarily fail, but engineering patched the damage right up; all systems functioning. we just have to reduce speed from here on out.)

...but tbh i don't really feel like talking about all this other thread stuff, i have so many other things on the brain... so eh i won't actually be posting on it again so consider my little tangent officially dropped

i might actually be kinda done with internet forums. for the last several months i haven't been doing them much at all. i mean sure i'll still drop by from time to time but i think i might be through checking them every couple hours, perhaps won't even check them every day anymore as i did for so many years

[Ralin]

I think we can agree that Sweden has a profoundly different social development than France, let alone the US. Anyway, corporal punishment isn't directly correlated with a large-scale system of oppression whose effect can socially linger. It would only be truly possible to excise patriarchy with either large scale social change or massive incarceration, and the response of women to oppression is to some degree legitimate, which brings us back to the original point at hand, which is that until you either address the 18% of men who should be in prison but aren't or you take real and concrete measures to end male privilege, why should women be punished for acts of resistance?

Because committing violence against another person for reasons other than self-defense is wrong and a violation of their rights. Rights are individual things and are not contingent on other people's welfare or social trends, anymore than a woman's right to abort a pregnancy is contingent on the welfare of the fetus.

As for that African-American man who advocated raping white women, he has a legitimate grievance, but it's kind of telling how a man's preferred act of resisting oppression is to rape women, now isn't it? Perhaps showing how women still have a great deal to fear and a great deal of oppression to struggle against in modern society?

It's almost like being a bigot who thinks it's okay to treat some people shittily because of their skin color or gender leads to fucked up things. Who'd have thought?

[Losonti Tokash]

https://twitter.com/kplo/status/784620823785136128