Is It Fair to Say Feminists Don't Care About Violence Against Men and That They Only Care About Violence Against Women?
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The Strawman Cometh
Not only is it unfair, it's extremely dishonest and intellectually lazy. It's your typical, garden variety strawman which is only meant to distract from legitimate issues involved in a subject or debate. Something that is akin to saying "feminist issues don't need to be addressed, because they are wrong in their attitude toward men." The obvious fallacy lies in the fact that feminism's legitimacy should be based on the actual validity of their positions. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that feminists don't care about violence against men, then that doesn't invalidate such issues as equal property and contract rights, equal voting rights, opposition to forced marriages, sexual and reproductive rights, economic and employment equality, and, of course violence toward women.
All of these, and many more, are issues that feminism has dealt with and none of them are dependent on feminist's attitudes toward men in order to have value as an issue. In fact, every one of them is an issue that could be debated, independent of feminism's advocacy for them, as a stand alone subject. You certainly don't have to be apathetic toward violence against men to believe that women should have a right to vote, receive equal pay, and not be sexually harassed or physically abused.
A Feminist Answers:
"No one is saying that discussions on men and masculinities (sic) shouldn’t go on. It is absolutely important to have dialogue on men’s issues, including discussions on violence done towards men. But, the thing is, men, not women, need to be the ones creating the spaces to discuss men’s issues." Feminism 101 Blog - FAQ: Aren't feminists just sexists towards men?
"Just because a person decides that they want to address one specific topic does not mean that they don’t care about, or address, other topics. Most people have more than one area of interest, and therefore will have more than one topic that they discuss.
Furthermore, just because someone decides to spend an article, or a series of posts, or even an entire blog entry to one specific topic does not mean that they think that said topic is the only important — or even the most important — issue to discuss. Nor can we assume that the discussion of Special Interest X is the only thing that the person is doing; for all we know they could have a gaggle of other posts devoted to Important Issue™ Y, or be involved with activism related to Y, or even be active in discussing not only Y by Important Issue™ Z and W as well." Feminism 101 Blog - FAQ: Why are you concentrating on X when Y is so important?
Men Are Big Boys
The reason that feminism is associated closely with those issues is because they are issues that profoundly affect women. For obvious reasons, feminists have a primary interest in issues that effect women. It really shouldn't be surprising that a group chiefly populated by women would take up matters that relate mostly to women. By the same token, why shouldn't men be the ones advancing uniquely male issues, such as violence (exclusively) aimed at men? It generally follows that the person or group most effected by discrimination drives the discourse surrounding that topic. All the more so, being that feminist issues generally involve women's treatment by, or in relation to, men.
Furthermore, men simply don't need feminists to run to their rescue, because they are very much capable of standing up for their own rights. Men are overwhelming represented within every segment of society, including government, business, and the media. There is no shortage of access to venues for men to address issues that predominantly effect men. By contrast, most feminist issues would receive little, if any, attention if not for the fact that a group devoted to issues effecting women exists.
What is Feminism?
Feminists Are Multi-taskers
Having established that men are the ones responsible for men's issues, yet another reason this isn't a fair question is because it assumes and/or falsely implies that feminists aren't in fact involved with issues that relate to violence against men or other non-female groups. Truth is that activists are rarely involved in one, singular group or issue. There are many subjects and political disputes that effect individual activists that might not necessarily be universally connected to women's issues. Thus, while they might appeal to certain feminists, they would not be a part of feminism itself. For instance, a vegetarian feminist is likely to be involved in animal rights groups; an Asian feminist is likely to be involved in anti-racism groups; a feminist, who is also a pacifist, is likely to be involved in anti-war groups, etc.
It's rather naive or simple-minded (if not both) to believe that people involved in one group are incapable of being involved with or having sympathetic feelings toward other groups and issues that might be outside the realm of the first group. In regards to violence, it would be unlikely that you would find a peace rally that did not have its share of feminist attendees. While that might not relate specifically to violence toward men, it certainly would include them. So, not only is it unfair to make such a statement, it is an expression of ignorance and probably willful ignorance at that.
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CommentsLoading...
You're very welcome.
Thanks for suggesting a great topic.
Absolutely.
Just because I believe women should be equal to men doesn't mean I hate them. That's an old stereotype.
Very old and very much outdated.
thanks for shedding light on this dim subject. yep I agree archetypal perception of men and women should be put in the back burner, it simply has no room in a progressive society. Greta hub! :D
Thanks Cris,
Feminists have made some great strides, but there is still alot of work to do, especially in some areas of Africa and the Middle East.
Unfortunately, I'd have to agree to that too. What a downer :( Even in my country, it is a sad reality that although feminism has big support in cities, women in the rural areas are not as fortunate. And adding to that already tragic fact is that the media's arm only reaches as much. But but BUT it's never too late, no throwing in the towel :D
Nope, gotta fight the good fight.
Everyday, everyway!
Barefoot N Preg!
You're about 60 years behind the curve.
Very nice answer - Another tired old stereotype is slain.
Keep up the good fight!
Thanks alot Suf,
It is a silly stereotype, but the thing that is even sillier is the idea that it should have any bearing on whether women or any other group should have the same basic civil rights that everyone else has. It's one of the most common tactics to try and attack the group behind an issue in order to avoid actually addressing the issue.
A great hub, and one I agree with.
I would add, though, that it is possible for domestic violence to be considered as a gender-neutral issue
Sadly, whilst feminism has come so far, there are still so many inequalities. Earnings gaps, glass ceilings and bullying are still condoned by the 'powerbrokers.' Whilst most countries have laws against such discrimination, there are so many loopholes.
As you explained so beautifully, they use 'Fear of the Feminist' and 'What about Men?' to promote their agenda. I know many feminists, and they would be the first to speak out about any violence, so even the strawman can be argued against. I suppose that I am technically a feminist myself, part of my belief in equality for all, irregardless of gender, sexuality, age, race or disability. My mother is a child of the 60's!
Education is the only answer and I do see a lot of hope for equality amongst younger folk. My generation still has too much sexist, homophobic and racist baggage, but the next generation seems to be a lot more open-minded.
Absolutely, I think any issue can and should be considered as a gender neutral issue. The fact that a type of abuse or discrimination is more prevallant among a certain demographic doesn't mean a member of another group can't also be a victim of those same abuses. This isn't a question of whether it's possible for men to be victims of some of the same abuses women face; it's a question of whether feminists are obligated to defend men or if they are somehow invalid if they don't.
Yes, I agree with you.
Even I agree with the point that violence at home should be considered gender neutral issue. It happens that in most of the cases violence are caused to a woman and men the the culprit and this has given us an impression that if it is a violence especially a domestic one then "the victim has to be a woman and the tyrant has to be a man". But I guess it is high time to overcome this notion.
I believe in natural law, so when you boil it all down, I think the essence of any issue should be neutral to the parties involved and simply judged on what is right or wrong.
1) the issue is pointless (no offence) you can't get your bowels in an uproar about everything. if you have a cause, you need to stick to the point or you'd just be running around like an activist with ADD
2) feminism has made life a lot easier for men
I wouldn't agree that you need to limit yourself to only one cause, but it is pretty true that almost every activist I know alternates between running around like a beheaded chicken and declaring that they are burned out and need to take a step back for a while. I think it's important that you just do what you can when you can and not try to be some sort of crusading superhero.
Just a quick note on some updates:I added a links section with some related hubs; a new video in the last section; and a couple polls people can vote on (vote early, vote often).
This hub and it's comments are recommended reading for all sexes in my view. I am proud to be a hubber especially when I read a really clear well thought out hub like this.
Well done eyem4anachy and well done hubbers!
Thanks alot Earnest, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And I share your opinion about the level of quality responses in the comments.
Sometimes I think battered men don't know how to stand up and be big boys. There is alot they could learned from these women. Thanks. Great hub!
Your welcome RK, that's a very complicated subject. In many ways it's even more complicated subject than battered women, even though men generally have may more options to get away from the situation.
Somewhere along the way Feminism became about women taking on the worst characteristics of men & men taking on best characteristics of women.
There certainly have been some wrong turns along the way Zeke, but I believe that, in the big picture, there have been many more pluses than minuses overall.
If feminists did care about violence against men, there would certainly be evidence in abundance. But there isn't, and argument is no substitute for evidence.
There are plenty of feminists that still beleive all men are rapists or abusers.
That depends on how you want to define plenty, since it's a pretty subjective term. But there are "plenty" of members within any group that subscribe to any random belief.
In spite of the fact that your first statement completely misses the actual point, there is no shortage of feminists that care about violence towards men or any other group. Refusing to accept that evidence isn't a substitute for disproving its existence.
Actually, my first statement dismisses (rather than misses) your 'point' (your answer to the opening question), for lack of material evidence.
All that can be asserted is that there are probably some feminists that exist that aren't gender biased, i.e. they care about violence against men.
That still leaves room for the probability that there exist at least as many feminists that don't care about violence against men. By your own standards "refusing to accept that evidence isn't a substitute for disproving its existence"
In which case it is "Fair to Say Feminists Don't Care About Violence Against Men."
No, your first statement quite completely misses my point, which is that it isn't the feminists responsibility to care about violence against men.
There is plenty of room for the possibility that bankers don't care about bricklayers, which is also completely irrelevant and in no way represents a valid criticism of bankers.
"There is plenty of room for the possibility that bankers don't care about bricklayers, which is also completely irrelevant and in no way represents a valid criticism of bankers."
Well, sure. But if bankers cared about violence against bricklayers who build chimneys but were ambivalent over violence against the guy who installs ceramic tile, then we'd have a proper analogy.
It's not a banker's responsibility to care either one, nor is it a reflection on their ability to run a bank if they don't care about violence against either or both of them.
Your argument is a classic example of a Straw Man. No one said it was a banker's responsibility to care about either one. We were discussing the hypothetical situation wherein a banker does care for one group and doesn't care for another group that is virtually identical to the first.
It's an interesting thought experiment anyway. Thanks!
No, my argument is a classic example of a metaphor to help someone who didn't bother reading the article understand what is being discussed. We are discussing the actual situation where someone is attempting to criticize Feminism by saying Feminists only care about women.
It's not a valid criticism of Feminism that Feminists don't spend enough time worrying about violence against men because the purpose of Feminism is to advocate for the rights of women, not the rights of men, or dwarves, or left-handed people. Whether Feminists care about puppy dogs or the housing market is irrelevant.
No, the implication in polite society is that violence against men or women is undesirable. When an organization emphasizes the horrors of violence to a narrowly defined class rather than the entire population, people naturally see their position as disingenuous.
No, when members of a less than polite society are experiencing the horrors of violence and many other things at a level disproportionate to the entire population and that population doesn't care and/or perpetuates it, they create organizations that advocate for that narrowly defined class and they don't care if you think it is disingenuous.
So yer sayin' it's OK for a girl ta sock a guy, but the da other way 'round.
Who's creating a strawman now?
The question that is supposed to be being answered is "Is it fair to say *feminism* doesn't care about violence against men? and that it only cares about violence against women?"
See the box "Answers the question".
Substituting the word 'feminisim' with 'feminists' is creating a straw man argument, which by your own standards is "extremely dishonest and intellectually lazy".
No material evidence has been presented to show that women endure violence that is "disproportionate to the entire population."
Since you have admitted that it isn't the resposibility of feminists/feminism to care about violence against men, then it is "Fair to Say Feminism Doesn't Care About Violence Against Men and That It Only Cares About Violence Against Women."
"Who's creating a strawman now? "
It's contagious!
Actually, I've addressed throughout both the article and the comments whether Feminism's purpose is to advocate for men and whether the fact that it doesn't in fact advocate for men is a "fair" criticism of Feminism. So, the fact you've made the amazing discovery that I typed one of the letters different when creating the title doesn't make it a stawman argument.
Nor does pretending that Feminism wasn't created s a result of the fact that women were culturally and in most cases legally considered property and that in a good portion of the world it is still legal to abuse or even kill women do anything, but make you look like someone who likes to ignore reality.
I'm pretty sure at this point that you don't even know what a strawman is nicomp.
Whhaaa?? I learned plenty about strawman arguments simply by reading your hypotheticals. You create contradictory situations, then incorrectly apply them to an unrelated point. If Wikipedia crashes, please donate your examples to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man so they can recover.
You changed three words of the question: 'feminism' to feminists, 'it' to they, and 'cares' to care.
I.e. you changed the question. To dismiss that as an inadvertant change of 'one of the letters', is perhaps "extremely dishonest and intellectually lazy".
Since feminism is unapologetically biased towards the interests and welfare of women, claims of feminism championing gender equality are fallacious. Without knowing and/or caring about the interests and welfare of men, feminism is prejudiced in these matters, and thus is not fit to make claims of gender equality.
Btw in many parts of the world (and for thousands of years) it has been (and still is) legal to kill and or abuse men and boys. Whether it's the military draft or hard slave labour, refusal to comply results in imprisonment and/or death.
Human history is littered with victimhood, and womens' claim to victimhood is no greater than mens' (and vice versa). Pretending otherwise is for "someone who likes to ignore reality".
Criticism is justified and necessary. An inclusive approach to solving human problems is needed, not a narrow minded one.
Is that really the best you could come up with nicomp even after looking up what a strawman actually is on wikipedia? You should have tried looking up a metaphor while you were there. Thanks for confirming for me that you didn't and still don't know what a strawman is, though.
You'd almost have an argument if you didn't try to pretend that a few different letters in the title changes the fact that I addressed feminism in relation to the question both throughout the article and the comments Mr. Invisible Man. You can toss that distraction out a hundred times a day and it won't change the fact that the answer to the question is and always has been "feminism's legitimacy should be based on the actual validity of their positions. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that feminists don't care about violence against men, then that doesn't invalidate such issues as equal property and contract rights, equal voting rights, opposition to forced marriages, sexual and reproductive rights, economic and employment equality, and of course violence toward women."
Feminism was set up to to advocate for women's rights and to counter the unapologetic bias against women's rights that was, and in many cases still is, prevalent. Bringing up isolated cases where men have also at times been victims and yelling "but men are abused too" doesn't invalidate that or eliminate the need for it.
It didn't require a Supreme Court decision in 1878 to allow married men to own property. Nor were women legally entitled to use "mild physical punishment" in order to keep their husbands "within the bounds of duty" in England up until the early twentieth century or the right to "physically chastise an errant" husband in America until the late 19th century (yet another Supreme Court decision). It didn't require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution less than 100 years ago in the order for men to gain the right to vote in America (All of which were changed as the result of the actions of early feminists.) In the Middle East, women not men are thrown in prison or stoned to death because they blemished their family's honor by being raped. And in Africa hundreds of thousands of women have been raped and/or killed by those men who were drafted into the military.
Sorry as much as you would like to pretend otherwise, women have more often been the victims of violence and many other forms of abuse and discrimination and less likely to have been in a position to resist it. History doesn't go away because you don't want to accept it.
It is childish fantasy to credit feminism with many of womens' advancements in welfare and rights, and because feminists are obsessivley biased towards female victimhood, that's all they choose to see and give importance too. Feminists are all to eager to engage in victimhood competitions too.
According to the WHO violence webpage, of the 1.6 million people killed yearly by violence, 14% are men, 7% are women:
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/viol
A man is more likely to be murdered. A man is more likely to be killed or injured at work. Poorer health is a cause for mens' shorter life span. But I'm not complaining.
Since feminism considers womens' interests more important (superior) to mens', and since it does not concern itself nor care for the welfare of men, there is nothing in feminism that discourages feminist outcomes where the rights and welfare of men are neglected or infringed upon.
Thus feminism is consistent with a supremacist movement, by having no consideration for the rights of men, even if infringed upon by the movement.
In feminism, as with other forms of supremacism (nazism, racism etc), victimhood is exaggerated with the help of hate speach. The hate based claim 'all men are rapists' has its ugly roots in feminism.
Your suggestion that men in England were legally permitted to beat their wives is shown to be without foundation, according to this debate about feminist scholarship RE domestic violence:
http://chronicle.com/article/Domestic-Violence-a/4
You're right about one thing: having feminism incorporate mens' interests is indeed absurd... about as absurd as the KKK incorporating black peoples into its membership.
Not only is it true to say "feminism doesn't care about violence against men" and "that it only cares about violence against women", it is fair to say it.
Previous comment should have stated that violence accounts for 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females.
No, it's a childish need to maintain a sense of willful ignorance to pretend that it magically happened by coincidence within the couple decades that feminists first began organizing and protesting to accomplish exactly those things. And to disregard the fact that the people who made those changes said as much.
That's quit a lot of completely irrelevant information you managed to drag up. The simple question is: out of the 14% of men who met violent deaths, how many of them were killed by women and how many of the people injured at work (disregarding for the sake of simplicity that workplace safety was one of the major issues of early feminists) were working for women? The slightly more complex, but just as relevant question is: how many of those 14% violent deaths are being enabled by female dominated societies?
The actual relevant facts are that between 1993 and 2001 seven times as many women as men were victims of domestic violence in America alone, which at this point has one of the lesser levels of domestic violence (once again, in large part because of feminist activism) in comparison to the Middle East and third world countries. Also as long as we are talking about WHO studies, look up the one that found that 71% of women worldwide report having been a victim of domestic violence during their lifetime. Or the USDOJ report that states that in 2001 588,490 women were victims of violence by current or former partners compared to 103,220 men and that among total murder victims 3.7% of men were killed by intimate partners, while 33.5% of women were killed by intimate partners.
BTW, You should go tell the Teamsters how unfair it is of them not to care about unemployed people who get injured. It's very discriminatory for them to concentrate all their efforts on workplace issues when people who don't work are getting injured also.
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Trsmd 3 years ago
thanks for responding this for my request..