By : BraveTheWorld, Sh0eOnHead, and Julie Borowski have recently been exploring the men’s rights movement with a somewhat objective perspective, (certainly far more objective than most media pundits of any stripe, with some notable exceptions), and finding that men’s rights can deploy tactics that are similar to feminist tactics, to the discredit of the MHRM.
Is this true?
Dr. Randomercam, Men’s Rights Edmonton and Hannah Wallen all responded to the accusation that the MHRM and feminism have some uncomfortable things in common, and personally, I think they did a great job, but……
….if we are being honest with ourselves, there are certain ways that the MHRM and MRAs can resemble the most radical of man-hating feminists, and we need to address those issues, and in particular, the perception that the comparison is valid and legitimate. Both Hannah and Random drill down into the reality of what men’s rights and feminists fight for, and why they can’t be compared, but the fact of the matter is that they are being compared, especially by people whose instinct is to side with the humanist drive of the MHRM, but who know little, if any, of the evidence or the factual basis on which MRA claims are made.
So, for example, Julie Borowski can cite some of the ways that domestic violence between men and women plays out (acknowledging that women can be, and are, violent instigators), but she makes no reference to the data (well over 200 academic studies that show women are more likely to be the perpetrator in non-reciprocal violence), preferring instead to focus on the fact that men tend to be bigger and stronger than women, and using that to justify why men should generally stand down from violence against women.
Borowski is making a traditionalist argument, and it’s fine, IMO, to argue the merits of the philosophical stance that men and women are equal, except when it comes to x,y, and z, at which point men should defer to women. I can swing both ways here: okay, fine. Men defer to women on x,y,z, but women defer to men on a,b and c. I am also sympathetic to the argument that x=x, period. Hit someone, expect to get hit back. Divorce a man with whom you have a baby, and custody is 50-50, period. Have sex with an underage person, you go to jail, period, and for the same length of time. But the reality is that many people do not see the world this way: we have to deal with the world as it is, not the world as we wish it was.
Let’s look at domestic violence in particular.
Should men ever hit women? Borowski agrees that it is always acceptable to hit someone in self-defence, but then argues that men, being bigger and stronger than women, are rarely in situations where hitting back is required, because the woman simply doesn’t present much of a threat, physically.
Slap. Not punch.
Paul Elam’s infamous Bash A Violent Bitch article, in response to a Jezebel article in which senior editors, staff and Jezebel readers gleefully admit to abusing men physically, was warranted at a time when culturally, we simply were not willing to discuss women’s violence at all. An article titled Slap Her Back If She Slaps You First would never have gotten the same traction, because I suspect a lot people agree with that statement! Slapping a person isn’t really meant to hurt them (although it does hurt!). It’s meant to humiliate, to shock, to violate without causing harm, and it makes no damn difference who is doing the slapping. But…..
…..am I alone here in thinking it matters who slaps first? If it’s the more vulnerable partner, does that not make a material difference? I will agree without hesitation that men can easily be the more vulnerable partner. Perhaps I am out of line here, but I immediately think of men who are neural atypical – the gentle, nerdy geeks, more interested in microscopes and anti-matter than weight-lifting and muscle mass. I feel (yes, I know feelings aren’t evidence) that slapping a man like that would not only succeed in hurting him, humiliating him, shocking him and making him feel violated, it would hurt a part of his soul. There are also plenty of men who have been socialized to believe you never hit women, although any woman who hits a man with complete confidence he will never hit her back is taking a big risk.
Here is what I am trying to say: feminism insists that women are always the victim in DV, and never the aggressors. Any MRA who insists men always have the right to hit back are engaging in a strategy that the public can, and does, perceive to be equally radical and unacceptable. I agree that there is a big difference between hitting first and hitting back, but that nuance is not necessarily perceived by the general public, and it does no good to insist on any kind of always scenario.
Here is what I would like to see: we acknowledge that in most cases, DV involves a primary aggressor and a more vulnerable person. The Duluth Model accepts this scenario as the most common. The Duluth Model insists that is it men who are the primary aggressors, and that’s where it goes off the rails. If the Duluth Model could be tooled to train first responders and law enforcement to evaluate DV situations with a gender blind eye, to understand that women can be, and often are, the primary aggressors, I would find it to be useful. By no means am I arguing that a vulnerable person is entitled to hit the stronger person, nor am I arguing that the person who hits first should not be punished: what I am saying is that there is no universal right to hit back.
I’m making a mess of this. I can tell. Let me make it personal. I would never slap my husband, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I don’t hit people I love. That is not how you solve personal differences in intimate relationships. I don’t hit my children, I don’t hit my friends, I don’t hit my brothers, I don’t hit my father, and I would never hit my husband. Now, having said that, aside from philosophy, I’m also not stupid. He’s way bigger than me. Mr. JB is not one of those gentle souls who would be wounded if I slapped him, nor is he a man who cannot control his temper. But if I hauled off and slapped him across the face for something? He would be pissed! He would be incredibly angry, and he is not a man who has been socialized into the ‘you never hit women, ever’ camp.
He would (probably) slap me back.
And I would fully deserve that. Without reservation or compunction, I accept that if I slap him, I deserve to get slapped back. Not punched. And in such a scenario, I am criminally liable. And a lot of people would think a 6’2 man who slaps his much smaller wife back is in the wrong, always. In the unlikely situation that he slapped me first, I would never slap him back. If he is angry enough to slap me, the base differences in our physical stature mean I am crazy to escalate. That is not going to end well for me.
That, I believe, is at the heart of what Borowski, and others, are describing as ‘common sense’. It’s a belief shared by many others, and responding with absolutes to what is clearly a far more nuanced situation is why some people perceive men’s rights and radical feminism to be opposite sides of the same coin.
It’s a tough argument to articulate, never mind defend, but the reality is that when one person is much bigger or stronger than the other (and that will usually, but not always, be men), then who hits first is a material fact that mitigates what happens next. Hope Solo is a professional athlete and cantankerous bitch, by all accounts, and when she punches out her teenage nephew and gets a pass, we can all quite rightly scream bullshit! When Ray Rice punches out his much smaller fiancée, even though, technically, Rice and Hope are engaged in the same thing, it’s not the same thing. Rice is much, much bigger, and it just seems …. wrong. It’s not wrong because he’s a man and she’s a woman, it’s wrong because he is so much bigger and stronger than her, and his response was in no way proportionate.
Solange Knowles is no delicate flower, and when she unloaded on Jay-Z, I was kind of hoping he would give her a nice, 1940’s style man-slap to settle her down, but Jay-Z is smart enough to realize he would be the one in jail. Had he slapped her, it wouldn’t have felt wrong to me, at all. Had he laid her out flat with a punch, then my feeling would change. Jay-Z is a big guy. Slap her? Sure. Punch? No.
Now here’s the million dollar question: let’s say it was a man of small stature who got up in Jay-Z’s face, and started hitting him with shoes, a bag, his fists. If Jay-Z turned around and laid him out cold with a punch, would I be okay with that? Would I feel like the smaller man asked for it?
Dammit.
I would be okay with that. I would probably laugh and feel like the little jerk deserved it. I would feel no sympathy, so clearly I am full of shit.
You know, I really wanted this post to be an articulate defense of the men’s rights movement for their strict adherence to equality. But I can’t deny that, despite my best intentions, and best efforts, I afford women special protection, based on nothing other than the fact they are women. Smaller stature and vulnerability and proportional response are just sophistry. They’re a smokescreen I deploy to delude myself into thinking I treat men and women as equals. I don’t. When push comes to shove, I think women are special.
How depressing.
So now I’m stuck. On the one hand, I am passionately dedicated to the idea that if men and women are equal, then they’re equal. Make the declaration, and you need to back it up with actions that demonstrate you consider them equal! And on the other hand, I don’t think that men and women are equal, and when it comes to people punching each other (I wish they wouldn’t), I want men to afford women special privileges, and not hit them back, at least not disproportionately to the violence women display, and yet I won’t give men the same consideration.
It’s not easy to admit to such hypocrisy publicly, but it’s the truth. It’s honestly how I feel. And apparently, so do a whole bunch of other people, even those inclined towards the philosophies of the MHRM. We can go nowhere until we are willing to confess to such flaws in our thinking. Where do we go from here? I can see why women would tend to share this particular blind spot with me, since we’re the ones who are asking for the right to hit men without feeling the full force of reprisal. That’s easy enough to understand. I’m curious as to whether men feel the same way. As a man, can you be committed 100%, intellectually, to the concept of equality, and still feel that you shouldn’t mete out violence towards women simply because they’re women?
Feminism: women are always the victims of men’s violence, no matter who started it
Me: women start shit, but you shouldn’t treat them the same as men because …..
There’s no good answer here. Is this simply a prejudice I need to get over? I will be very interested in the comments on this article. I know Borowski and Sh0e and Brave took a lot of heat for expressing what I have just expressed, and I am prepared to take some heat, too. I’m also prepared to examine my beliefs carefully, and change the ones that are inconsistent with what is moral, just and right.
To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
If there is work to do, I am prepared to do it.
Lots of love,
JB
Source
Is this true?Dr. Randomercam, Men’s Rights Edmonton and Hannah Wallen all responded to the accusation that the MHRM and feminism have some uncomfortable things in common, and personally, I think they did a great job, but……
….if we are being honest with ourselves, there are certain ways that the MHRM and MRAs can resemble the most radical of man-hating feminists, and we need to address those issues, and in particular, the perception that the comparison is valid and legitimate. Both Hannah and Random drill down into the reality of what men’s rights and feminists fight for, and why they can’t be compared, but the fact of the matter is that they are being compared, especially by people whose instinct is to side with the humanist drive of the MHRM, but who know little, if any, of the evidence or the factual basis on which MRA claims are made.
So, for example, Julie Borowski can cite some of the ways that domestic violence between men and women plays out (acknowledging that women can be, and are, violent instigators), but she makes no reference to the data (well over 200 academic studies that show women are more likely to be the perpetrator in non-reciprocal violence), preferring instead to focus on the fact that men tend to be bigger and stronger than women, and using that to justify why men should generally stand down from violence against women.
Borowski is making a traditionalist argument, and it’s fine, IMO, to argue the merits of the philosophical stance that men and women are equal, except when it comes to x,y, and z, at which point men should defer to women. I can swing both ways here: okay, fine. Men defer to women on x,y,z, but women defer to men on a,b and c. I am also sympathetic to the argument that x=x, period. Hit someone, expect to get hit back. Divorce a man with whom you have a baby, and custody is 50-50, period. Have sex with an underage person, you go to jail, period, and for the same length of time. But the reality is that many people do not see the world this way: we have to deal with the world as it is, not the world as we wish it was.
Let’s look at domestic violence in particular.
Should men ever hit women? Borowski agrees that it is always acceptable to hit someone in self-defence, but then argues that men, being bigger and stronger than women, are rarely in situations where hitting back is required, because the woman simply doesn’t present much of a threat, physically.
I’m very pro self-defense. If a woman has the potential to do real damage– then yeah, you got to do what you got to do to protect yourself. If she’s coming at you with a knife or a frying pan, then, clearly. Fight back.I will side with Borowski here that ‘examining the threat’, which I take to mean proportional response, is of great importance, but I will also argue that if I slap a man, he has every right to slap me back.
But self defense should also include common sense and examining the threat.
I fully acknowledge that there are women who, in the heat of the argument, will push and slap and try to provoke the situation. This is beyond stupid and she’s wrong for doing so. Seriously. Stop that.
Is it acceptable for a man to hit a woman in that situation?
Some MRAs will say that a man has every right–and should– hit back.
Common sense says no.
Slap. Not punch.
Paul Elam’s infamous Bash A Violent Bitch article, in response to a Jezebel article in which senior editors, staff and Jezebel readers gleefully admit to abusing men physically, was warranted at a time when culturally, we simply were not willing to discuss women’s violence at all. An article titled Slap Her Back If She Slaps You First would never have gotten the same traction, because I suspect a lot people agree with that statement! Slapping a person isn’t really meant to hurt them (although it does hurt!). It’s meant to humiliate, to shock, to violate without causing harm, and it makes no damn difference who is doing the slapping. But…..
…..am I alone here in thinking it matters who slaps first? If it’s the more vulnerable partner, does that not make a material difference? I will agree without hesitation that men can easily be the more vulnerable partner. Perhaps I am out of line here, but I immediately think of men who are neural atypical – the gentle, nerdy geeks, more interested in microscopes and anti-matter than weight-lifting and muscle mass. I feel (yes, I know feelings aren’t evidence) that slapping a man like that would not only succeed in hurting him, humiliating him, shocking him and making him feel violated, it would hurt a part of his soul. There are also plenty of men who have been socialized to believe you never hit women, although any woman who hits a man with complete confidence he will never hit her back is taking a big risk.
Here is what I am trying to say: feminism insists that women are always the victim in DV, and never the aggressors. Any MRA who insists men always have the right to hit back are engaging in a strategy that the public can, and does, perceive to be equally radical and unacceptable. I agree that there is a big difference between hitting first and hitting back, but that nuance is not necessarily perceived by the general public, and it does no good to insist on any kind of always scenario.
Here is what I would like to see: we acknowledge that in most cases, DV involves a primary aggressor and a more vulnerable person. The Duluth Model accepts this scenario as the most common. The Duluth Model insists that is it men who are the primary aggressors, and that’s where it goes off the rails. If the Duluth Model could be tooled to train first responders and law enforcement to evaluate DV situations with a gender blind eye, to understand that women can be, and often are, the primary aggressors, I would find it to be useful. By no means am I arguing that a vulnerable person is entitled to hit the stronger person, nor am I arguing that the person who hits first should not be punished: what I am saying is that there is no universal right to hit back.
I’m making a mess of this. I can tell. Let me make it personal. I would never slap my husband, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I don’t hit people I love. That is not how you solve personal differences in intimate relationships. I don’t hit my children, I don’t hit my friends, I don’t hit my brothers, I don’t hit my father, and I would never hit my husband. Now, having said that, aside from philosophy, I’m also not stupid. He’s way bigger than me. Mr. JB is not one of those gentle souls who would be wounded if I slapped him, nor is he a man who cannot control his temper. But if I hauled off and slapped him across the face for something? He would be pissed! He would be incredibly angry, and he is not a man who has been socialized into the ‘you never hit women, ever’ camp.
He would (probably) slap me back.
And I would fully deserve that. Without reservation or compunction, I accept that if I slap him, I deserve to get slapped back. Not punched. And in such a scenario, I am criminally liable. And a lot of people would think a 6’2 man who slaps his much smaller wife back is in the wrong, always. In the unlikely situation that he slapped me first, I would never slap him back. If he is angry enough to slap me, the base differences in our physical stature mean I am crazy to escalate. That is not going to end well for me.
That, I believe, is at the heart of what Borowski, and others, are describing as ‘common sense’. It’s a belief shared by many others, and responding with absolutes to what is clearly a far more nuanced situation is why some people perceive men’s rights and radical feminism to be opposite sides of the same coin.
It’s a tough argument to articulate, never mind defend, but the reality is that when one person is much bigger or stronger than the other (and that will usually, but not always, be men), then who hits first is a material fact that mitigates what happens next. Hope Solo is a professional athlete and cantankerous bitch, by all accounts, and when she punches out her teenage nephew and gets a pass, we can all quite rightly scream bullshit! When Ray Rice punches out his much smaller fiancée, even though, technically, Rice and Hope are engaged in the same thing, it’s not the same thing. Rice is much, much bigger, and it just seems …. wrong. It’s not wrong because he’s a man and she’s a woman, it’s wrong because he is so much bigger and stronger than her, and his response was in no way proportionate.
Solange Knowles is no delicate flower, and when she unloaded on Jay-Z, I was kind of hoping he would give her a nice, 1940’s style man-slap to settle her down, but Jay-Z is smart enough to realize he would be the one in jail. Had he slapped her, it wouldn’t have felt wrong to me, at all. Had he laid her out flat with a punch, then my feeling would change. Jay-Z is a big guy. Slap her? Sure. Punch? No.
Now here’s the million dollar question: let’s say it was a man of small stature who got up in Jay-Z’s face, and started hitting him with shoes, a bag, his fists. If Jay-Z turned around and laid him out cold with a punch, would I be okay with that? Would I feel like the smaller man asked for it?
Dammit.
I would be okay with that. I would probably laugh and feel like the little jerk deserved it. I would feel no sympathy, so clearly I am full of shit.
You know, I really wanted this post to be an articulate defense of the men’s rights movement for their strict adherence to equality. But I can’t deny that, despite my best intentions, and best efforts, I afford women special protection, based on nothing other than the fact they are women. Smaller stature and vulnerability and proportional response are just sophistry. They’re a smokescreen I deploy to delude myself into thinking I treat men and women as equals. I don’t. When push comes to shove, I think women are special.
How depressing.
So now I’m stuck. On the one hand, I am passionately dedicated to the idea that if men and women are equal, then they’re equal. Make the declaration, and you need to back it up with actions that demonstrate you consider them equal! And on the other hand, I don’t think that men and women are equal, and when it comes to people punching each other (I wish they wouldn’t), I want men to afford women special privileges, and not hit them back, at least not disproportionately to the violence women display, and yet I won’t give men the same consideration.
It’s not easy to admit to such hypocrisy publicly, but it’s the truth. It’s honestly how I feel. And apparently, so do a whole bunch of other people, even those inclined towards the philosophies of the MHRM. We can go nowhere until we are willing to confess to such flaws in our thinking. Where do we go from here? I can see why women would tend to share this particular blind spot with me, since we’re the ones who are asking for the right to hit men without feeling the full force of reprisal. That’s easy enough to understand. I’m curious as to whether men feel the same way. As a man, can you be committed 100%, intellectually, to the concept of equality, and still feel that you shouldn’t mete out violence towards women simply because they’re women?
Feminism: women are always the victims of men’s violence, no matter who started it
Me: women start shit, but you shouldn’t treat them the same as men because …..
There’s no good answer here. Is this simply a prejudice I need to get over? I will be very interested in the comments on this article. I know Borowski and Sh0e and Brave took a lot of heat for expressing what I have just expressed, and I am prepared to take some heat, too. I’m also prepared to examine my beliefs carefully, and change the ones that are inconsistent with what is moral, just and right.
To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
If there is work to do, I am prepared to do it.
Lots of love,
JB
Source
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