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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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A few thoughts on the male feminist sex pest.

With the (in internet terms, not very) recent news of Neil Gaiman's escapades, a lot has been said about the agency (or lack thereof) of women, and to the corrupting effect of fame on men, but I've been giving some thought again to the Male Feminist Sex Pest phenomenon.

Most people here are probably aware of it, it's notable enough to get a comic from good ol' Stonetoss. Basically, the idea is that male feminists are disproportionately prone to acts of sexual misconduct.

What is the reason for this? I've been thinking about a few possible ones:

  • The MFSP as a predator: The classic right-wing stereotype. Guys of dubious moral character will take up an ideology with the intent of making potential victims lower their guards.

  • The MFSP as salience bias: Basically, male feminists are not particularly rapey, it's just more suprising so it makes the news. This could be true, but is basically impossible to verify in either direction.

  • The Male Feminist as a man struck with guilt: In this formulation, the man's bad behaviour is in their past, and their male feminist views are, in a way, compensation for the fact that he has behaved shittily towards women.

  • The Male Feminist as a man seeking absolution: If all or most men behave poorly, then the male feminist's past behaviour is not particularly noteworthy. By subscribing to the most deranged feminist assumptions, the male feminist can morph from a "bad man" to just "a man", or even a "good man", because at least they're willing to fight their deplorable male instincts.

  • The Male Feminist as a man stuck in time: For this man, being a feminist means some vague notion of "equal rights" and it being acceptable to have non-committal sex with younger girls. This is not in line with which more modern feminists believe, as he might eventually find out.

I am aware this is not the audience most in tune with the mentioned cohort, but what do you guys think? Any of the above resonate more? A little bit of each? Something else entirely?

As an aside, the last few explanations imply a type of person that people here might be very familiar with: the nerdy anti-feminist nice guy (no capitalization). It is perfectly possible, as an upper-middle class guy in a moderately to very liberal environment who doesn't like partying or going clubbing, to never notice the behaviour many women complain about (because neither you, nor your close friends and family engage in it), see that they don't seem to be particularly disadvantaged in any of the environments they interact with them, see that their ire is directed very broadly at men in general, and conclude that the whole thing might just be a scam.

I think all of the reasona outlined contributed to at least some degree, but for me the one that has the most salience and is the dominant reason is definitely "the Male Feminist as a man seeking absolution".

Every card-carrying male feminist I'm known has been a sex pest. To clarify, by 'card carrying male feminist' I don't mean a general liberal man who says he's a feminist when I asked, I mean the man who will unprompted talk about 'women's issues' and will make sure everyone (especially the women' knows he is a feminist and one of the good ones. And by sex pest, I don't necessarily mean someone who has committed sexual assault (though they also count) but someone who constantly pesters (as the name suggests) women for dates, relationships, sex. Everytime he talks to any new women he's thinking about how he can manipulate get this woman to date him. He will literally ask out every women he meets.

I have known several men during that fit the above description (unfortunately so, as I have a visceral dislike of them).

The reason I think they fit the "seeking absolution" reason is because:

  1. They seems to intuit that their behaviour is not appropriate on some level

  2. Feminism as a religion gives them absolution by blaming their bad behaviour on an external force ("the patriarchy") rather than taking personal responsibility, where as most other religious or moral systems would demand more of them in taking personal responsibility. It also allows them to project their bad behaviour on other men to minimise their culpability ("it's not just me, ALL men are like this.")

  3. Consent being the be-all-end-all for sexual ethics in feminism allows them to rationalise away the worst of their behaviour. They're not being inappropriate, creepy or overstepping boundaries, they're merely "seeking consent". I am reminded of that thread a while back here discussing a reddit thread about a literal virgin teenager asking a girl he studies with to be fuck buddies and being confused about her negative response.

A quote from the ever wise Heinlein

You tickle trout by gaining their confidence and then abusing it

Feminists are easy prey - because the modern feminism is so entangled with safetysm and not safety many of them have no proper instincts where the real danger is.

Some amount of the variance must necessarily be the heightened definitions of bad behavior when your dating pool is feminists and other man-haters.

"Sexual assault" is one of those fun terms that depending on strict definitions may be literally any behavior.

Probably easier to get caught "sinning" when you're banging nuns.

I think there is a class of "sex pest" that has always been around, which is men who are hyperattuned towards what is popular with women and optimise their personality and social strategy around charming and bedding new partners. They only become "pests" in that their handling of partners, once bedded, is essentially consumptive - rather than trying to build a relationship, they just speedrun whatever sexual acts they feel amount to having "used up" the sexual partner (often by maximising extreme/degrading acts, which register as conquest milestones), and then move on to the next.

This is not to say they don't believe/inhabit the personality they arrived at by optimisation - much like Mr. Beast is an honest product of reinforcement learning under the YouTube algorithm, the pump-and-dumper is an honest product of reinforcement learning under the female attention algorithm. It's just that any attendant preference structure remains strictly subordinate to the "conquer more women" terminal value. The actual manifestation depends on the fads of the day: in the '40s, it could be a dashing young GI, an Elvis-like character in the '50s, a philosophical druggie rogue in the '70s, ..., or a soft-spoken feminist alpha nerd since around 2015.

Solid point. The "Lothario" genre of male has existed for most of human history (I say 'most' because I'd bet that it was harder to pull of consistent pump-and-dump schemes when your social circle was a tribe of <100 people and you couldn't just hop to the next town on a whim).

They adapt to copy and send off whatever signals will get women to sleep with them. Provided those signals are cheap to replicate. And I'd argue that signalling "I'm a male feminist" is about as cheap as it gets. It is basically free, you literally just affirm what a woman says and denigrate males as a class while subtly implying you're not really a member of that class.

To the extent this keeps working for them they'll keep doing it until they run afoul of a particular woman's feelings and are suddenly called out as an abuser themselves.

Double bonus, in that feminists are substantially less likely to try to lock you into marriage and will happily abort any pregnancies the Lothario causes AND other men aren't allowed to police your behavior because that would imply that women aren't capable of handling their own affairs.

And I'd argue that signalling "I'm a male feminist" is about as cheap as it gets.

Had you heard about this when you included the hyperlink? I hadn't heard of it prior, but I can't say I'm terribly surprised. That whole caption doth protest too much.

Holy cow yes I remember hearing about it but it had completely slipped my mind.

And I'd argue that signalling "I'm a male feminist" is about as cheap as it gets. It is basically free, you literally just affirm what a woman says and denigrate males as a class while subtly implying you're not really a member of that class.

I think that this part is a bit of a cope/emotionally comfortable belief about the triviality of the outgroup. The dating market is not so uncompetitive that a priori one would expect any successful strategy to be cheap. Gaiman's schtick was hardly just that he is "a male feminist" - he is a bestselling author, gregarious convention-goer, and supposedly a commanding storyteller in person and all around magnetic personality, on top of being a male feminist. It is this whole package that allowed him to enrapture groupies so easily - of course there must be some natural predisposition involved, but he nevertheless would have worked hard his whole life to become the New Feminist Man that a particular type of woman finds irresistible. Neither you nor I would get anywhere by just suddenly going out there, affirming what women say and denigrating males as a class; people like that are dime a dozen, and they are more likely to wind up as sad caricatures or give up in short order to churn through other cheap-and-ineffective approaches than to even get to the point where they would be #metoo-ed.

I have encountered a good number of guys who fit the same archetype in my life, and it is always abundantly clear that they pour a lot of effort into verbal skills and social standing, like by volunteering as DMs for D&D sessions, volunteering for all sorts of things in general, or attending improv theatre. One of them even forced himself to pretend to be bisexual.

Gaiman's schtick was hardly just that he is "a male feminist" - he is a bestselling author, gregarious convention-goer, and supposedly a commanding storyteller in person and all around magnetic personality, on top of being a male feminist.

True, although I'd argue that signalling his progressive bona fides was a necessary component to him successfully bedding women given the social circles in which he was considered to be a high-status figure. Bestselling authors in the sci-fi and fantasy genres who don't have the "correct" politics will get cancelled and deplatformed long before an opportunity to bed a groupie presents itself. Just ask Orson Scott Card.

Bestselling authors in the sci-fi and fantasy genres who don't have the "correct" politics will get cancelled and deplatformed long before an opportunity to bed a groupie presents itself.

Weren't some of Gaiman's, er, "conquests" from well before Sad Puppies, though?

The conservative mormon authors remain successful and widely read, though. They aren't bedding groupies but they don't seem to try to.

I never said it was inherently successful, I said it was cheap.

Gaiman obviously has charms that work irrespective of his stated ideological positions.

The fact that its cheap and easy to replicate one portion of the signals is why actual Lotharios might adapt it.

I like this theory the most. It definitely maps to my observations of people exploiting niches to get what they need sexually.

People have roughly alluded to related concepts, but I'm surprised no one explicitly mentioned the Chinese Robber Fallacy. That's what I think it is.

Edit: I see someone posted that 30 minutes ago, between when I loaded the thread and commented.

My instinct is that MFSP is just a form of the chinese robber fallacy. There are enough male feminists who also happen to be sex pests, that when presented one after the other and subject to the availability heuristic on recall, people erroneously conclude that it was because there's something up with male feminists.

This is similar to your "salience" bullet point, but I would consider it part of a more general phenomenon of "Good Guy Sex Pests." How many interviews are there with the next door neighbors of malefactors who say things like, "He always seemed like the nicest guy"? I don't think "male feminists" are particularly special, except insofar as it is one of many ways to earn some people's automatic trust. But I think there are many categories of "good guy" that this applies to: pastors, police officers, a wholesome actor, etc. Different communities have different roles that confer automatic trust, and so every community is going to have problems with malefactors who take advantage of such trust in some way.

The Male Feminist as a man seeking absolution: If all or most men behave poorly, then the male feminist's past behaviour is not particularly noteworthy. By subscribing to the most deranged feminist assumptions, the male feminist can morph from a "bad man" to just "a man", or even a "good man", because at least they're willing to fight their deplorable male instincts.

This is the one that tends to match what I've seen, though I'd split it into a few subtypes. First, for quite a few, it seems to me to be less about "absolution" than typical-minding: 'I know men are all sex pests because I'm a man and a sex pest; surely they're all at least as much of a scumbag as me.'

Next are those who line up with your final clause: 'Yes, feminism is right, because all men are scum. But I am one of those rare few who have mightily struggled to become better than my base male nature, so everybody praise me for this heroic feat.' And then there's the sort who come closest to your first bullet point, with an attitude of 'I, as a male feminist, am one of the few good ones, so however badly I treat you, any other guy you'll encounter will be even worse; I'm as good a man as you'll ever get, so you might as well settle for putting up with me.'

(Most of the remaining mail feminists, IME, tend to fall into three categories: the first is 'feminism as "duckspeak"' — they repeat all the feminist slogans, and will say they "believe" them if asked, but they never actually think all that much about them or apply them personally. The second are autistic sorts who grew up in the same environment, but actually take all the slogans and messages deadly seriously, much like the young Scott Aaronson. [There's one left-winger who comes across my Tumblr dash sometimes, who falls squarely in the second category, and has repeatedly ranted about guys in the first category, tending to blame them for his lack of dating success.] And then there's the "if I repeat these slogans loudly and self-flagellate enough, will you all stop being mean to me?" guys.)

The Male Feminist as a man seeking absolution: If all or most men behave poorly, then the male feminist's past behaviour is not particularly noteworthy. By subscribing to the most deranged feminist assumptions, the male feminist can morph from a "bad man" to just "a man", or even a "good man", because at least they're willing to fight their deplorable male instincts.

As someone who would call himself a feminist, what's described here is precisely the thinking process of a sex pest. He's receptive to the feminist argument insofar as it absolves him of his sins. He rejects toxic masculinity, and he would call himself reformed, an ally. He is one of the good guys now.

But to say this is to miss the feminists' point entirely. There is no reformation. You are a man, and you, as a man, are inherently a danger to women.

Radical feminism is women's self-defense against biology. It's ultimately a futile effort. But in its radicalness, it horseshoes back into being the only current day social discipline that correctly engages with the biological reality of the sexes.

Pushing feminism on society promotes divorce and single motherhood causing more fatherless girls which are easier prey. Most of the risk of rape and molestation comes from mother's boyfriend. Basically it comes down to the sign.

This is pretty low effort and is nothing more than you using your hammer on anything that looks like a nail. Nothing in your post is directly relevant to male feminists (except the word "feminist"). That sign meme you are so fond of pointing at - what kids are being diddled here?

You've been warned about this before, quite a few times, but it's been a while since your last ban so I'm just warning you not to start up again with the stream-of-consciousness snarling at your enemies or the bans will resume and escalate steeply.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the very recent allegations against fantasy book YouTuber Daniel Greene, who ironically covered the Neil Gaiman story on his channel. It's a great case study, in my opinion.

Unlike Gaiman, Daniel had a wholesome, "shucks," good-boy image. Ostensibly, he cares hugely about his appearance but gives himself the title “disheveled goblin host” in his videos.

More on the man himself:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6BhPv-NDcPI

He claims to be a strong #ally, but definitely more in the Disney-safe way. He was never aggressive or went on a moral crusade, just signaled frequently that he's aware of the shibboleths and in touch with the Gen Z LGBTQ zeitgeist. He makes the right noises in response to controversies but never starts one himself. His whole brand is non-toxic but woke enough that the online fantasy fandom won't tear into him, which is a high bar.

He came out as bisexual while engaged to his fiancée, now wife (more on that later).

In a review, he would say: “The protagonist is an interracial trans man. That's really neat. We need more perspectives from non-cis voices.”

But never: “This book was too white and male.”

And I think he actually believes what he says! I think he's sincerely trying to avoid the disapproval of his peer group because he thinks they're right.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ASgwqjjmkOQ

It turns out he cheated on his fiancée with an affair in a cringe way. He allegedly also sexually assaulted the affair partner, also in a pathetic way (SA is always pathetic, of course).

I have so much to say about that woman who made the video in the link. Judge her exactly by what you think she is purely based on her other recent video thumbnails and titles (cluster B attention seeker, man-eater).

Daniel Greene has denied the sexual assault but not the affair and will respond in depth soon.

I have so much more to say.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to get at is this: Since mental health issues are accepted in communities like these, both the victims and the perpetrators are not stigmatized. A sane community would be extremely wary of a woman like Naomi and a man like Daniel.

It would recognize the vulnerability of the BPD girl and the danger a smooth-talking, insecure, and unmanly boy poses to her and she to him.

Instead, she's bravely rediscovering herself every week, and he's battling his depression and mental health struggles.

And this is how i think it went down and how sexual assault in cases like these go down 90% of the time.

He talks and begs her into unenjoyable/painful sex she's unsure if she wants, with false promises which she will regret later. The rest is history.

I still think, despite verbal consent, and even if they had sex before and sex after and still hung out for a few days, that this is rape and the woman is not at fault. But I have a feeling people here will disagree.

I’ve been following this situation closely because while I wasn’t a fan of his, he was a big source of my reading recommendations since the pandemic and I hope to be a published writer myself someday. Is there any interest in a breakdown of the situation? On the one hand I’m one of a handful of people on the internet who is actually seeing the big picture here (mainly because every major platform including his discord is banning anything mildly skeptical of the girl who accused him) and it does have some culture war implications, on the other hand it’s very niche drama from a particular subculture.

EDIT: Message heard, breakdown coming tomorrow morning

EDIT2: Naomi posted a second video where she contradicts herself and adds new context to the first (all of which actually makes her look worse) so I'll need more time for this writeup.

I would like a breakdown too. Like you, I followed him briefly for book recommendations, but stopped due to the constant LGBT stuff.

I would also like a breakdown. I followed him back in covid before I started to divest myself from the whole youtube ecosystem.

Do it. We both remain those handful of people. This is a first hand, reading between the lines, account from me. I did find some small skeptiscism towards noami in the reddit post of his response video. I wanted to do a proper breakdown but I had to go to bed. My post is already 50% tired brain garbage.

Absolutely do a breakdown! Very niche drama from a particular subculture is the best kind.

Did you mean to write that you weren't a fan of his and I'm just parsing it poorly or did you succumb to fat finger syndrome like a lot of people today (I know I have, but I also noticed the insulting tax breaks and some other minor flubs)

I've been watching Fantasy News weekly for a while, he does have an annoying political skew (the one time he made a video on a non-fantasy book recently was to praise gay erotica writer Chuck Tingle, and supported the needless race-swapping of The Wheel of Time show) but it was the best summary of the state of the genre and publishing ecosystem on YouTube. Admittedly, he's also responsible for me and many other Zoomers reading the Wheel of Time, which is one of my biggest inspirations as a writer.

I’d like a breakdown. The only thing I’d seen is his 1 minute prepared statement on his YouTube channel.

Holy crap thank you. I'd never heard of any of these people, but it's the perfect example of what I was trying to say about the intersecting communities of pop-feminism and weird fetish shit that hides under X layers of irony, where X= ("ick factor"^"peer pressure"/"how jealous all my friends would be")

/images/17394973257445385.webp

I agree with @2rafa that these are all different archetypes who are seen in the wild, but I don't think there is any reason to believe that being a "male feminist" says much at all about how likely any particular man is to be a sex pest. Obviously people who dislike feminism and/or male feminists love theories that flatter this bias: of course they're predators; of course their feminism is performative; of course they don't actually believe what they're saying and it's just another tactic to get into women's pants; of course they act just like any other man and delude themselves that being a "feminist" absolves them. I doubt male feminists are more (or less) predatory in general, though. It's just when a particularly famous one (like Neil Gaiman or Joss Whedon) is found sticking his dick in someone he shouldn't have, it's broadcast widely because (a) they're famous! and (b) given their loud, performative feminism, which annoys anti-feminists, of course the latter will delight in crowing about their downfall and holding them up as a "typical" male feminist when in fact they are not.

don't think there is any reason to believe that being a "male feminist" says much at all about how likely any particular man is to be a sex pest.

Sure, but the vast, vast majority of muslims are not terrorists, yet most terrorists who fly airplanes into buildings are muslim. Most male feminists are not sex pests, but many sex pests turn out, ironically, to be male feminists. There may be some kind of cluster that is worth examining.

Statistically we can say that most such terrorists are Muslims, and we can point to clear and historical causes for this which even terrorists themselves would agree with. They actually tell us their motivations!

Is there any statistical evidence of most sex pests (however you want to define that) identify as feminists?

I have zero knowledge, evidence, or stake in the sex pest claim. Just wanted to point out the logical inconsistency that I saw in your claim.

That is, having the knowledge of "male feminist" would (indeed) give very little indication of "sex pest", even if it is true that the vast majority of sex pests turn out to be male feminists.

Thus, the fact of very little indication, which we both agree on, weighs very little on the OP's claim.

(b) given their loud, performative feminism, which annoys anti-feminists, of course the latter will delight in crowing about their downfall

I would add that for isomorphic reasons the actual feminists will disavow him as loudly as they can, adding to the overall prominence of the story.

So based on this we should assume that the theory that there are no more mfsps than regular sps flatters your biases?

Well, you can assume that, but I think you'd be making a few incorrect assumptions. Like for starters, do you think you know what my biases are regarding male feminists?

I would start with the null hypothesis: being a self-proclaimed male feminist provides no information one way or the other about a man's likelihood to be a sex pest.

All the theories about why it's a "red flag" (theories that are popular with both feminists and anti-feminists) seem to be largely anecdotal. I don't find those theories implausible, necessarily, but they all sound like just so stories. You know this male feminist, he turns out to be a creep, you invent a story to explain why a male feminist would turn out to be a sex pest. For feminists, it's to make sense of why a man who's supposed to be one of the "good ones" isn't; for anti-feminists, it's to explain why there must be something wrong with a man who'd embrace feminism.

This is no different than liberals and conservatives who make up theories about What's Wrong With Those People, shellacking a coat of evolutionary psychology onto it.

I think you are at the very least negatively predisposed to the anti-woke, but I am glad that wasn't the point you were making. I base this on your immediate recognition of the motivated reasoning used by the anti woke re mfsps -

of course they're predators; of course their feminism is performative; of course they don't actually believe what they're saying and it's just another tactic to get into women's pants; of course they act just like any other man and delude themselves that being a "feminist" absolves them."

coupled with the motivated reasoning you employ in your final sentence

of course the latter will delight in crowing about their downfall and holding them up as a "typical" male feminist when in fact they are not."

You say that based on no more evidence than the anti-woke say 'hey why do all these male feminists keep turning out to be sex pests?' but it must flatter your biases as you don't look any deeper.

If as it appears there is no data available on this, if for some reason academia are willing to write up thousands of studies on heteronormativity and androphilia and black feminism and queer theory, but are entirely incurious as to the intersection of male feminism and sex pestery, then all we can learn about are each other's biases, since we lack any evidence to change each other's minds.

As one of the anti-woke, I will tell you that I didn't latch onto the mfsp stereotype to explain why there must be something wrong with a man who'd embrace feminism - I do have some friends like that, but before the meme I thought male feminists were sycophantic, sanctimonious and misled but trying their best like everyone else. At that time, pretty much every man I knew called himself a male feminist. It was noticing how my pattern recognition system for believing stories about sex pestery kept getting tripped up if the accused was a male feminist that made the meme resonate.

Which is definitely bias, but informative bias imo which is why I call mfsp a stereotype rather than a just so story. I would do the same for your of course statement up there - I don't know think it's wholly accurate, but I think it points in the the direction of the truth, recency bias definitely plays a part. Reasoning from biases is never entirely accurate and only really works on these macro scales at all, but it's more realistic and useful than assuming we can't know anything without scientific evidence.

I think you are at the very least negatively predisposed to the anti-woke

Not really, or at least, no more than I am negatively predisposed to the woke. As I suspected, you have a poor understanding of what I think. That's okay, I get that a lot.

You say that based on no more evidence than the anti-woke say 'hey why do all these male feminists keep turning out to be sex pests?' but it must flatter your biases as you don't look any deeper.

I just wrote about all the theories that both feminists and anti-feminists present as to why "all these male feminists keep turning out to be sex pests," and why I think they are basically Chinese robber fallacies. Unless you have some stronger evidence. It's not about my biases (because you are wrong about them). It's because there isn't really any evidence that I am aware of that male feminists are more likely to be sex pests (or that sex pests are more likely to be male feminists).

I do have some friends like that, but before the meme I thought male feminists were sycophantic, sanctimonious and misled but trying their best like everyone else. At that time, pretty much every man I knew called himself a male feminist. It was noticing how my pattern recognition system for believing stories about sex pestery kept getting tripped up if the accused was a male feminist that made the meme resonate.

So are you saying that the majority of the male feminists you knew turned out to be sex pests?

So are you saying that the majority of the male feminists you knew turned out to be sex pests?

No they all stopped calling themselves feminists. One of them told me it was specifically because of the mfsp issue. But there was a joke at the time I'm sure you've heard - "of course I'm a feminist, I want to get laid bro". That joke stopped getting play shortly after the mfsp issue arose.

I just wrote about all the theories that both feminists and anti-feminists present as to why "all these male feminists keep turning out to be sex pests," and why I think they are basically Chinese robber fallacies. Unless you have some stronger evidence. It's not about my biases (because you are wrong about them). It's because there isn't really any evidence that I am aware of that male feminists are more likely to be sex pests (or that sex pests are more likely to be male feminists).

You wrote:

I doubt male feminists are more (or less) predatory in general, though. It's just when a particularly famous one (like Neil Gaiman or Joss Whedon) is found sticking his dick in someone he shouldn't have, it's broadcast widely because (a) they're famous! and (b) given their loud, performative feminism, which annoys anti-feminists, of course the latter will delight in crowing about their downfall and holding them up as a "typical" male feminist when in fact they are not.

That is the theory you put forward in the just so format. You have no evidence for it. Your biases led you to proclaim that "given their loud, performative feminism, of course the latter will delight in crowing about their downfall etc." with the exact same weight and force as the anti-woke said "of course they're predators etc." You start from the position the number of mfsps don't exceed the number of regular sps and once you hit upon an answer that flatters your biases you stop, just like the anti-woke do when they go 'of course he was just a predator the whole time'.

I thought that was the point you were making originally, that we're all held hostage to our biases, by setting up a link between flattered biases and of course arguments and then using that exact same structure in earnest, like an irony double dip or something. But if you didn't do it on purpose to make a point, then by your own reasoning either your biases are flattered by that of course argument or the first half of your post is just nonsense with no explanatory power. I don't think that's the case. If you would like to lay out your biases I can reassess, but if you are going to continue to be vague and secretive about them for no reason I assume I'm right.

You quoted my point. Yes, most people choose a narrative that flatters their biases. My biases are that male feminists are mostly performative but many are sincere, and anti-wokes tend to rely on Chinese robber fallacies.

There is, imo, no evidence to support the theory that male feminists are more likely to be sex pests, nor any evidence that they are less likely.

Something nobody's mentioned yet: it's not just feminist men, it's men who are part of the "new age liberatory open relationships and bsdm because all old-fashioned sexual ethics are tools of the patriarchy" feminism that's popular in scenes like new atheism, lit shit, the film industry, etc.

You don't see e.g. Dworkin's husband getting accused of rape, because radical feminism doesn't provide the environment for weird sex shit. (At least involving men. They have their own issue with "womyn cannot rape or be violent, so telling anyone your lesbian partner beats you with a chair leg would be Letting Down The Systerhood")

But yes, as I've said before, 90% of it is the cycle of "high status men in feminist scenes have an endless supply of women who will happily do weird fetish shit" -> "retroactively regret it once the man goes from young and high status to old and merely rich" -> "reinterpret all old memories with the help of a therapist to match her current ick" -> "receive infinite praise and attention"

That's why none of these accusations are ever about something that happened last night, and there's always some string of enthusiastic text messages that are totally at odds with the way the accuser currently remembers things.

Edit: the situation Rincer talks about here is like the archetype for what I mean.

You’ll notice sex negative feminists don’t seem to have sex scandals- they apparently really believe and practice.

Are there any male feminists who describe themselves as "sex-negative"?

Yes, but traditionalist conservatives don't generally describe themselves as "feminist".

You don't see e.g. Dworkin's husband getting accused of rape, because radical feminism doesn't provide the environment for weird sex shit.

IIRC Dworkin was married (in the common-law sense) to a gay man. If he was never accused of raping a woman, it was probably for reasons unrelated to his politics or hers.

Dworkin was a political lesbian, Stoltenberg was a political gay man (IIRC way less of a thing but did exist), then they surprised themselves and the community by falling in love. Awkward! I know this from having been involved in the community, but I'm pretty sure Stoltenberg mentioned it in some of his writing, and Dworkin may have as well. Stoltenberg notably gave "nonsexist het sex" tips in IIRC Refusing to Be a Man (and they aren't implausible).

IIRC Dworkin was married to a gay man.

Would watch that anime.

I don’t know any male feminists in person, at least not well. I think, however, there’s another possibility- feminism changes social dynamics to result in more sex pesting.

In its weakest form, the insistence on women and men being just the same leads to dubious assumptions, like women being as agentic and interested in casual sex as men. This leads high-agency men(who are attractive to women, especially much younger ones) to take advantage of women without meaning to(eg, insistence on coming back to his place after a date, bedding with her because as least she didn’t say no, etc). As support for this weak form, I’ll offer the feminist solution to date rape being ‘affirmative consent’, ie that women have to specifically opt in to sex, they can’t just go along with it, and that most of these guys are accused of taking advantage, but not doing so forcibly.

In its strongest form, this is the idea that abolishing gender roles leads to men just trying to get laid, not seeking a relationship, and this inherently leads to worse behavior towards intended partners than the opposite. In itself this strong form has both an ultra-strong form, where the abolition of patriarchy means men no longer have any responsibilities towards women to go with their lack of leadership responsibilities, and a slightly weaker form that the abolition of gender roles makes relationships inherently difficult to seek for because they run off of gender roles. I feel like we discuss a Reddit story about this latter idea every once in a while- some young male, maybe a bit socially hapless, is interested in a young lady and she might have been open to it if he hadn’t approached her in a awful and awkward way that his grandpa wouldn’t have done- because he took feminist dating advice seriously.

There’s also a middle form, where the traditional structures of a patriarchy to protect women from men actually worked, at least to an extent, and when you abolish them unscrupulous men find themselves in a target rich environment.

I think all four of these ideas have at least some truth, but I also think most of what got outlined above is true to one extent or another.

If you're a male sex pest in denial, feminist messaging must be perversely comforting. You'll hear these angry women ranting about how all men are bastards who just see women as holes to put their dicks into and how men will never respect them, ever - and you'll think to yourself "woah, all men are like that? I thought it was just me, phew!"

I think the "every accusation is a confession" thing gets abused, but when I read an article by a male feminist talking about how men need to confront the fact that they tend to be dismissive towards women's lived experiences and fail to properly value their input, all I can think is - speak for yourself, dude.

My experience of observing a serial-monogamist male feminist was that the "feminism" was just one element of the omni-leftist persona he had adopted in his quest to marry an affluent (preferably) white woman. It was a combination of tech startup agile corpo-speak, DNC volunteer, radical Marxist revolutionary, and Blackness (lots of talk about "Bodies" and playing up the Childish Gambino schtick). He also spent some time declaring he was non-binary (which apparently meant wearing a midriff-bareing top once or twice). Women apparently lapped it up, he didn't need to pester anyone. (Seeing all this made me hate the world)

He'd be emotionally manipulative to a pointlessly psychotic degree once they were in a relationship with him, though. Despite all this, he could do no wrong in the eyes of leftists, because how could a gay black feminist communist be a bad person? The very statement is an oxymoron.

I think it’s all of these to varying extents, they’re all characters who exist.

Most ‘male feminists’ who are sexual predators are just sexual predators in spaces where ‘male feminism’ is normal.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.

If you set up any moral system that gives people prestige for conspicuously following it it'll attract bad actors who try to use it. These people can do outsized damage and are thus more salient and all movements that plan to survive must develop antibodies against it. Hence Jesus' warning and the feminist disdain and suspicion of people who constantly display their piety.

So The MFSP as a predator + The MFSP as salience bias. I think feminists overrate the salience of all sorts of things for ideological reasons (e.g. the risk of conservative domination, the risk from random incels vs normal men you know) but this one is probably a bit rational.

The real interesting question is where progressives have not only failed but stubbornly refused to develop antibodies and insisted on credulousness.

Basically, the idea is that male feminists are disproportionately prone to acts of sexual misconduct.

How true is this though? I get that it's the sort of thing that's hard to get numbers on - I don't think police tend to record whether sexual predators describe themselves as feminist or not - but are cases like that of Neil Gaiman common enough that this can reasonably be described as a particular phenomenon?

I don't think the OP was asserting that it's true - I think they were saying "this is the hypothesis, do you think there's any truth to it?"

I think it's largely that the proto-male feminist hears feminist talking about all the myriad ways in which men are just the absolute scum of the earth, and the proto-male feminist takes a deep look inside themselves and sees that it's all true (for them), and thus a convert is born.

In much the same way I've heard it said that church is for sinners, feminism is for sex pest. They probably need that message about what a piece of shit they are more than the typical male. But in much the same way we all fall short of our moral aspirations, a sex pest is going to sex pest.

It probably doesn't help that they find themselves surrounded by vulnerable, hollowed out by abuse, p-zombies that will agree to anything. You read that original article about the nanny, and the thing I'm most struck by is her absolute inability to articulate a single thought she had. It's all her echoing things people thought she should feel. Gaiman, Gaiman's ex-wife, her friend/therapist. This is a person so completely disassociated from themselves though some alluded to past trauma, it brings into question if they are even capable of consent, in much the same way we understand an animal, a child, or a person with severe mental disabilities isn't capable.

Edit: Once upon a time, the jannies here explained what rule you broke, and how you broke it. I see now they just take things out on people without explanation or comment and interpret you not getting it as more evidence that you are participating in bad faith. How is anything I said here worse than the prompt, or any of the other comments?

Man.

You keep doing this thing, this complete disregard for the spirit and letter of the rules, and we keep letting it slide. You’ve been an articulate and passionate and interesting commenter. But now when I see your name in a thread I know exactly what I’m going to get.

One month ban.

Edit: fuck me, this is what I get for modding on my way out of work. I read this as a straightforward attack on the general category of feminists as “hollowed out p-zombies” who “aren’t capable of consent.” And I thought, Jesus Christ, this is the clearest possible violation of the Specific Groups rule and the general proscription on Booing the Outgroup. I could write up a detailed explanation, or I could assume that he and any observers would recognize the same old fight as always.

We have been politely asking you to stop tarring all leftists/Democrats/Californians/NGOs/women with the same brush for literal years. And every time, you insist that no, you’re just speaking truth to power! Surely there can be no transgressing against people who want to MUTILATE and STERILIZE your kids!

I have so much respect for you as a writer, a craftsman, a father. You’re smart and you’re damn funny. You also have this pathological urge to tell everyone about how evil the other team has been lately. And that comes into direct conflict with the Specific Groups, Outgroup Booing, Antagonism, and occasionally Evidence rules. A lesser poster would have earned a permaban several times over.

I banned you for a month because the last one was two weeks and I saw this as more of the same. Now all sorts of pillars of the community are popping in to tell me it was a bad shoot. There’s also the fact that Amadan thinks I was too harsh; you were only “pretty close” to generalizing about all lefties/feminists.

So…did I get you wrong?

  • -17

Here is the problem.

I hate my outgroup. You know I hate my outgroup. I know you know I hate my outgroup. The circle is complete. There is no more charity to be had. The rules here are clear, you are not allowed to nakedly hate your outgroup.

So to comply with the rules, I have to hide my power level. In my above post, I'm trying to be as narrow, as evidence based, and as charitable as I can. I'm talking about the narrow category of the prompt "Why are there sex pest in feminism?" It should be understood from the prompt I am discussing the subset of feminist that are sex pest. Likewise, when I'm talking about the abuse victims (funny how you omitted that in summarizing my thought as "hollowed out p-zombies"), I'm talking not talking about all feminist, I'm talking about how abuse damages victims.

But... you know. You know I hate feminist more than the plain read of my comment would indicate. You know my feelings towards them extend well beyond the scope of what I actually said. Does it really matter if I say or not, if we both know I think it?

I mean, according to rules, if the rules matter, it does. But increasingly the attitude from the mods that enforce the rules is that it doesn't. All I hear repeatedly is "Stop it, you know what you are doing". And all I can figure that means anymore, is that I continue to struggle to participate, despite feeling deep in my heart a hate I'm not allowed to express, but which everybody knows I have. It needs not be expressed anymore, it's just assumed, and so everything I say is a rules violation.

It might not even be wrong.

It's been stated before that the amount of evidence you provide should be proportionate to how inflammatory your claim is.

One sentence post that says "I hate feminists" = low effort and inflammatory = not ok.

Thorough, thoughtful post that offers "I hate feminists" as a thesis statement and goes into the history of how you developed this attitude, how you contextualize it in broader culture war discussions, what you think this means for the possibility of future dialogue etc. - maybe ok?

Hate is a part of life, it's a natural emotion, and I would hope that TheMotte's rules recognize the possibility of discussing hate in a constructive and civil manner. But I don't know if all the mods agree and maybe some of them would just think that the word "hate" was a violation of the rules on tone no matter what.

This might be relevant to your interests.

Frankly, while the p-zombie etc. description seems a little offensive, it also appears accurate for the specific case that sparked the discussion. In how far does it generalize. however? My subpar reading skills don't really let me parse what group exactly @WhiningCoil describes there, which makes it difficult to decide whether a rule has been broken.

I'd point out two things that might be responsible for some of the "bad shoot" feedback.

  1. WhiningCoil did note that feminism has a point with regard to at least some men.
  2. "Serial abuse victims" are, in fact, a thing. There is a statistically-significant class of people (mostly women AIUI) who are attracted to Bad Guys. As you might imagine, this doesn't turn out very well for them, because Bad Guys are in fact bad, and they get abused a lot (either by going back to the same bad eggs or by continually picking new bad eggs). It is actually a fair assumption that Bad Guys' pools of available women contain a lot of this class (due to self-selection). I do think calling people of this class "p-zombies" is not very nice, but it doesn't sound to me like it's meant to apply to feminist women overall (@WhiningCoil, correct me if I'm wrong).

In case it was not clear from the edit, @netstack reversed this mod decision. @WhiningCoil is not banned at this time.

There is often a very fine line between booing your outgroup and discussing your outgroup. Especially when the topic of discussion is some of the worst characteristics of the outgroup. I feel like the post hit some "boo" applause lights while actually being a true discussion. I might have made the same call as netstack had I been in a hurry and just clearing out the backlog.

The mods are human. We care about the community. We do respond to feedback. We are active participants here and we care about the quality of discussion.

I don't see how this ban is warranted.

Join the fucking club, I guess.

Explanation in the edit.

I'd also like to know the rule violation.

Based on what?

What was the violation of the rules here? Seems like a pretty normal Motte post.

What a joke

Here, let me try an alternate frame, the Male Feminist as Something Like a Victim:

Many male feminists are fish swimming in water and unable to see it; they've been raised to accept certain social frames as authoritative, and so they grant authority to those social frames. They want to be Good Boys in a simple kind of way. However, the frames are full of huge amounts of problems.

  • No one is in charge. Sex positive feminists say very different things from sex negative feminists. Extremists get lots of air time, way out of proportion to reason. The abstractions used by any particular ideologue turn into a broken mess on contact with any particular woman. A lot of men want simple rules, vigorously followed, for their moral systems, and that is not an accurate description of the messy, decentralized tangle of messages they get if they grow up under what currently passes as feminist discourses. But it takes a certain amount of critical distance to be able to recognize all this.

  • Women are people, and so on the ground, many of them don't know what they want, some don't like to take responsibility for their own actions, many are also confused and conflicted by the various messy social messages they think they're getting, and so on. One of the most useful observations I picked up from early online proto PUA stuff 20 years ago was that feminist activists don't really know what women want, they often think women are wrong for wanting what they want in a false consciousness kind of way, they don't actually speak for women even when they claim they do, and you get a lot farther paying to women as particular individuals and thinking about the turbulent mess in their own heads rather than whatever cultural marxist abstractions feminists are inclined to reach towards. BUT if you're a certain unreflective male feminist, all of this giant mess is opaque to you. It's easier to try to find an authoritative voice and latch on to it. But that doesn't actually survive contact with real people.

  • Lots of strands of feminism are just flatly, nakedly wrong (and sometimes hateful, and often viciously incurious) about male sexuality, male emotions, male concerns, male compulsions and weaknesses, and so on. Many are wrong about basic things on fundamental biological levels, and they have deeply wrong-headed norms and advice that stem from that ignorance. This isn't a giant problem if you have some critical distance from those schools of thought and can ignore ideas that are fatally undermined by their anti-biology ignorance and biases. But if you're an unreflective Male Feminist, you're loading up programs about the world and yourself in your head that are actively harmful and at odds with reality to you and those around you.

A sex pest male feminist might well be a hypocrite or liar, I'm not trying to argue that isn't possible. I think there are lots of different varieties out there. But I have the strong suspicion that there are a lot of guys who have loaded up a bunch of simplistic feminist claims in their head as authoritative about morality and gender in the world, and then when the actual messy reality of their own physical biology shows up, and the intensity of their desires, and the shame of their compulsions and their weaknesses, they are entirely unequipped to navigate it successfully because the social tools they have been given are non-functional and not even addressing the correct basic facts.

Yeah, I suspect there's a notable difference between guys who become sex pests because they try to actually follow the amalgamated kludge of feminist rules of engagement as stated, and enthusiastically take women at their word, and end up "innocently" crossing a boundary or barrier they couldn't even see and getting pilloried for a remark or action they thought was permissible...

And those who adopt it as an intentional strategy to get laid and will operate as long as they can before getting called out.

Perhaps there ARE more of the former than the latter.

A male feminist makes the mistake of thinking a woman is like a man. If a straight man (I'm less certain of gay men) was propositioned like Scarlett Pavlovich, he would be more assertive that he did not want sex with Gaiman. As a male feminist, Gaiman would have expected that kind of reaction if Pavlovich really didn't want sex with Gaiman. Because she didn't react the way a straight man would have reacted to being propositioned, Gaiman thought they were entering something consensual.

Alternatively:

BDSM and Feminism have a huge overlap with assuming the word "consensual" makes any sexual encounter acceptable. Male feminists may be more into BDSM, and regretted BDSM sounds gross when put into a news article.

One of the biggest things I had to deprogram myself of was the idea that consent is all that matters in terms of sexual ethics. Giving someone what they ask for can be the wrong thing. But that doesn't make it rape.

I highly doubt male feminists, whether genuine or fake, are more prone to acts of sexual misconduct. Off the top of my head, even if I recall specific accounts of sexual misconduct, most of them would not mention that the perpetrator was a male feminist in any shape or form.

In addition to "it's more surprising", it seems to me that most women writing highly public pieces on their experiences of sexual misconduct are feminists, and their social circles mostly contain men who pay some lip service to feminism at least.

The simplest explanation in my eyes is:

  1. Male feminists, being feminists, tend to hang around with female feminists.

  2. Female feminists are more likely to make sexual misconduct accusations at any given level of sexual pestiness than are non-feminist women.

It’s Simpson’s Paradox all the way down.

I agree with this assessment. Sex pests in other milieus tend to be suppressed or handled more orderly. For groups with religious ties there's the associated shame in sex-pesting which incentivises burying it. More secularly minded groups may be satisfied with letting it run its course through the courts. It's only with the combination of celebrity and feminism that it gets boosted to the stratosphere. Feminists want to signal their purity by loudly rejecting the pests (and receive feminist kudos for doing so), and media figures like Gaiman tend to lean left and consequently are more likely to pest within the feminist circles.

Am I more likely to make sexual misconduct accusations at any given level of sexual pestiness? That’s news to me. What evidence do you have that maintains that belief? And what is a “non-feminist” woman, according to you?

“non-feminist” woman

A biological woman, since there is no other kind of woman, who does not propagate an anti-men narrative or attempt to benefit from such a narrative.

Well, I don’t propagate an anti-men narrative, so does that make me a non-feminist woman?

Assuming that you are a woman in the first place and that what you said is true, yes, that's what I just said, isn't it?

But I have doubts about those assumptions. You already identified as a feminist, so please do lay out what constitutes the core tenets of this feminism for you. I suspect we will find many elements that are plainly aiming to put men at a disadvantage.

Core tenets of feminism for me: “equality between men and women in all aspects of life”. That’s it. I take a situation, I ask myself, “is this promoting equality between men and women”, and if it’s not then it’s not feminist and if it is then it’s feminism.

Strange that an ideology of equality would be named after just one of the two parties it purports to equalize. Anyways.

Can you go into more detail on what you mean by equality? Purely equal treatment before the law? Equal outcomes by specific metrics? A complete eradication of the concept of differences between the sexes? Men and women already have the vote, so I guess that's not what you mean.

Equal outcomes by specific metrics is not equality that’s equity. I don’t know how to elaborate other than “women should have the same political, economic, and social rights as men”. Pure equal treatment before the law? Sure. A complete eradication of the differences between the sexes? I don’t think that’s possible lol, male reproductive health and female reproductive health are radically different to start.

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And what is a “non-feminist” woman, according to you?

I am a woman who is not a feminist. I will not adopt an amorphous philosophical label that means different things to different people, and I find that many currently-popular strands of feminist philosophy poorly model social reality.

Yes, I have directly benefited from work by first-wave feminists. I have been paid for my work on the same level as my male colleagues. I vote, and while my vote counts for little except in very local elections, many politicians take women's issues into account, so I benefit from women having a vote.

I have also benefited directly from work by second-wave feminists. They pushed for increasing percent of women in various well-paid professions. I participated in well-financed programs geared to attract women into mathematics, then I benefited from graduate programs trying to increase female representation among their grad students, then I benefited from math departments trying to increase female representation among their full-time faculty.

Benefiting isn't the same as buying into the underlying philosophies, though. I gladly take equality of opportunity and equality under civil law, that I buy into. I question everything else, including the push expanding female representation in various professions that I personally benefited from. As for the third-wave feminist strands, I have yet to find one that I am willing to adopt.

So let me toss a question back at you: what specific currently-not-widely-adopted feminist philosophy do you find helpful in modeling social interactions?

I don’t split things into the “first wave” “second wave” “third wave”thing. To me, feminism is feminism; a social movement that advocates for equality between men and women in all aspects of life. Anything else is…not feminism. So, to answer your question I’d say none, because I don’t believe there’s a “currently-not-widely-adopted feminist philosophy”.

The statement "equality between men and women in all aspects of life" has lots of hidden assumptions, which feminist philosophers have interpreted in radically different and contradictory ways. Let's take a specific case and clarify what such equality would mean to you.

Incarceration: Which best describes your advocacy of equality: (A) the length of a person's sentence should be independent of one's gender, or (B) the penal system should be set up such that the burden of incarceration falls equally on men and women? Version A is "equality of opportunity", version B is "equality of outcome". The US penal system falls short on both versions of equality: women get much shorter sentences for similar crimes, and females make up just a bit over 7% of all prisoners in US.

So in this specific case (an important "aspect of life"), which kind of equality do you advocate for?

Uh, A? Equality of outcome isn’t equality that’s equity, and the definition doesn’t include that. If women are getting shorter sentences for similar crimes because of their gender, that’s sexist and very much so not feminist to me.

Don't you find it interesting that essentially every prominent feminist activist has campaigned in favour of shorter prison sentences (no sentences at all, in some cases) for women regardless of the crime? I mean, seriously, please point me in the direction of a prominent feminist activist or academic demanding harsher sentences for female murderers.

You can be as prescriptivist as you like, but at the end of the day you have to look at the facts on the ground, how the term is actually being used and how the people who describe themselves as such are behaving. This game of "my extremely specific stipulative definition of feminism is the only true and valid one, if you criticise anything associated with feminism that doesn't fall under that stipulative definition then you're arguing in bad faith" is really just a kind of navel-gazing, and it was old hat in 2014:

I point out something I don’t like about feminism, then everyone tells me in the comments that no feminist would ever do that and it’s a dirty rotten straw man. And then I link to two thousand five hundred examples of feminists doing exactly that, and then everyone in the comments No-True-Scotsmans me by saying that that doesn’t count and those people aren’t representative of feminists. And then I find two thousand five hundred more examples of the most prominent and well-respected feminists around saying exactly the same thing, and then my commenters tell me that they don’t count either and the only true feminist lives in the Platonic Realm and expresses herself through patterns of dewdrops on the leaves in autumn and everything she says is unspeakably kind and beautiful and any time I try to make a point about feminism using examples from anyone other than her I am a dirty rotten motivated-arguer trying to weak-man the movement for my personal gain.

Would you advocate for extending the sentences for female felons, then? Would you further advocate for undoing the "separate-but-equal" penal system of having separate women's prisons?

On a meta note: I realize that you have gotten a lot of responses from questioning your assumptions about feminism. Some people thrive on such attention, while others may feel overwhelmed. In case you feel more like the latter, let me assure you that I will not take it personally if you decide to stop responding to my particular line of inquiry, and neither will anyone else.

If you're aiming for a productive discussion with someone whose perspective is significantly different from yours, one useful technique is to taboo the words at the center of disagreement. Since "feminism" means so many different things to different people--even if we look at the main schools of feminist philosophy, of which some do indeed center equity--we can drop the term "feminism" and focus on specifically what you mean by it.

You and I did that.

Once we the specific ideal that you are defending ("equality between men and women in all aspects of life"), we have gotten somewhere further by establishing that you definitely "equality of opportunity", and not "equality of outcome".
Good, we are further along towards reaching common ground, since I also would rather live in a society where my opportunities are not constrained by my reproductive organs.

But I also realize that, if we are to consider "all aspects of life", we must also consider what "equality of opportunity" would mean in the negative aspects of life. Thus I ask for the two of us to focus on incarceration, a truly negative burden that our society places on a small but substantial portion of our population, where the differences between the treatment that men and women get are particularly stark. Examining what "equality of opportunity" means to you in this specific situation will help clarify the nuances that you allow "equality" to have, and also your commitment to the principle of equality (as opposed to whatever-benefits-women principle), since in this case men are very much the losers.

So if you are up for continuing this discussion, I will happily go down this rabbit hole with you.

I would advocate for extending the sentences for female felons to match the rate of male felons. There is not much a reason to do so otherwise than the sexist notion that women are incapable of being as conscious of their actions as men. I would not further advocate for undoing the "separate-but-equal" penal system of having separate women's prisons because I don't think incarcerating polar body types is a good idea. I suppose if there was a system that properly vetted an incarcarated person's weight to match their cellmate similar to wrestling I would support it, otherwise, putting someone obviously heavier than someone else inside a room is a recipe for wasting the prison guard's time.

I don't mind continuing I just have to move from my phone to my computer because I do a majority of this on my tiny little phone screen while squatting in the shower like a toad to pass the time until I can get out so I've got about as much bandwidth as that medium allows. I don't mind the questions; people are just curious and it's not every day a bonafide thoroughbred blue blood liberal feminist technically-nonbinary Democrat comes around here. I'm sure I represent the boogeyman they've always wanted to debate as much as they represent the boogeyman that haunts my nightmares lol.

See I think "feminism" means so many different things to people who don't want to be feminist but sure don't want to deal with the consequences of it. Same of Christianity; there are lots and lots and lots of people who are not Christians who try to convince others and themselves they are because, well, otherwise they would be in moral trouble. Imo it's the duty of actual Christians to remind everyone what constitutes, and more importantly, what doesn't constitute that; otherwise words and meanings are lost to manipulation and then nobody knows what the hell they're talking about.

Roundabouting to incarceration; I do not support unequal sentences for women or men. Let's jump together Mr. Rabbit.

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I think you are being a little naive here. Not disingenuous, but you are presenting something of a straw man. You're basically making the Marie Shear argument: "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."

Now to steelman this, I know what feminists would say is "Duh, we know anti-feminists don't think we're literally not human, we mean they don't treat us as people like themselves with agency and full equal rights." Which would be fair enough, but if you look around (even in a place like the Motte with no shortage of anti-feminists), you will find very few people who think women aren't "people." Yes, we do have a few posters who literally do think women are p-zombies or should be property, but they are a minority.

The people here who oppose feminism are mostly not tradcons who want to repeal the 19th (though there are some of those too). They are people who have grievances with feminism as it manifests today, particularly third wave or "intersectional" feminism. Such "currently-not-widely-adopted" feminist philosophies would be things like #BelieveWomen, which is a classic case of motte-and-bailey, the Motte being "take women's claims of being harassed or assaulted seriously and don't assume they're making it up," the bailey being "Believe any woman uncritically and never express doubt about a rape story," even if it doesn't pass the sniff test.

Intersectional feminism is what also brought us trans ideology, which got many previously feminist women terfed out. JK Rowling, unambiguously a committed feminist, is now called a fascist and worst by many modern feminists, simply because she doesn't agree that trans women are women.

I try to be sympathetic to feminist arguments, because I do in fact believe women are people, but very much of modern feminist writing seems to fall within the stereotype often described here of women wanting all the privileges, none of the responsibility. The memes are kind of mean, but they also aren't... wrong. (I note that the linked article makes an earnest argument that "AKSHUALLY the problem is when men flirt and it's unreciprocated!" Which entirely misses the point.) I think of people like Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valente, who were vanguards of modern third wave feminism and are some of the most bad faith writers I've ever had the misfortune of once taking seriously. They are practically memes themselves, with zero self-awareness.

Saying "feminism is feminism" and you don't split it into "waves" is kind of like a Christian saying he doesn't split Christianity into denominations. Well, great, you can say "Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship with God" all you want, but it is, in fact, a religion, and people ostracize, cancel, and even kill each other over denominational differences. I don't know if I can think of examples of feminists literally killing each other over sectarian differences, but as JK Rowling would point out, they most certainly care about them even if you claim they don't exist.

Point of order: SJ intersectional feminism is generally considered to be fourth-wave feminism, not third-wave (fourth-wave feminism being basically defined as "social justice orthodox feminism", and the dividing line being social media mostly welding feminism/gay-rights/trans-rights/anti-racism into a single movement with consensus on a wide range of issues). I think you'll find a lot less opposition around here to (actual) third-wave feminism than to fourth-wave (though not by any means zero).

The most notable current third-wave feminist movement would be the gender-critical feminists/TERFs (who rejected being welded into the SJ coalition, and are thus not fourth-wave).

I don't know if I can think of examples of feminists literally killing each other over sectarian differences

The TERF/TIRF debate has come pretty damn close at times, which is hardly surprising given that the latter denomination contains a higher proportion of male testosterone-y people than probably any nominally feminist denomination in history.

Well, I don’t appreciate being insulted by being called naive. I heard a lot of that growing up in life, and through sheer statistics I’ve must’ve contemplated the declaration too many times to appreciate it anymore.

As an ex-Christian who went from Lutheran to Methodist to Baptist and then just plain Protestant, I don’t really split it into denominations either and consider it antithetical to the whole Christianity kaboodle. If people are ostracizing, cancelling and killing eachother over denominational differences I can’t imagine God would sanction such behavior since I can’t find it in the 10 Commandments. That a lot of Pharisees think they’re Christians, to me, doesn’t change the definition of being Christian. If God is real, I’m certain there is a great deal of people in for a violent awakening dancing to the tune of “Charlie’s Inferno” when they die.

In my opinion, when I look around the Motte, I actually see a majority in people who think women are not people. Thinking a woman is secretly happier being a stay at home mother and TV shows, newscasts, movies and teachers have convinced her to be miserable removes her agency and treats her own choices as math results, or that women are inherently less funny, less intelligent, less emotionally resilient than men because of their genes. The casual language around here about women is so very much not centered on speaking about them as if they are people capable of the same quality of thought as me in my opinion. In the same vein, if a bunch of misandrist and misogynistic people call themselves feminists, they’re wrong and hopefully will cringe at themselves with enough introspection.

I can’t comment much on your opinion on transgenderism since I don’t think it’s an ideology. I certainly wouldn’t call JK Rowling a feminist since she thinks “femaleness resides in the sexed body”. I’m not a woman because I have titties and estrogen, I’m a woman because I identify with the Western cultural construct of a woman, and in elaboration, I don’t wear a skirt because it’s biologically wired in me to do it. Implying anything else removes my agency, which doesn’t treat me as a person, and therefore isn’t feminist.

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Thinking a woman is secretly happier being a stay at home mother and TV shows, newscasts, movies and teachers have convinced her to be miserable removes her agency and treats her own choices as math results

You're the one who thinks that any woman in a romantic relationship with a conservative or non-feminist man is secretly miserable and filled with self-loathing but isn't consciously aware of it. I've described this attitude as condescending before and I'm happy to do so again.

or that women are inherently less funny, less intelligent, less emotionally resilient than men because of their genes

I think men are (on average) inherently less physically flexible, empathetic and emotionally intelligent than women, and more prone to aggression and violence, because of our genes. Does that mean I don't think men are people?

Or could it possibly be the case that I think men and women have different, complementary strengths and weaknesses?

I’m not a woman because I have titties and estrogen, I’m a woman because I identify with the Western cultural construct of a woman

Out of curiosity, do you have a womb?

or that women are inherently less funny, less intelligent, less emotionally resilient than men because of their genes.

How is this the same as “not seeing women as people”? You’ve focused on three specific vectors along which men have an innate advantage on women; men are, on average, better at making women laugh than women are at making men laugh. When we’re talking about intelligence differences between the sexes, it’s not a simple as “men are more intelligent than women”; rather, men are more represented at both tails of the intelligence distribution. There are more highly-intelligent men than there are highly-intelligent women, which is what you seem to care a lot about; however, there are also far more very stupid men than there are very stupid women.

I could easily focus on vectors along which women outperform men. Women are more conscientious, more kind and empathetic, and better equipped to navigate egalitarian and heavily procedural social-professional environments. (And given evolutions in the culture and structure of the modern workplace, this is one reason why women are beginning to economically outpace men in most strata of the white-collar world.) It would be absurd to accuse me of “not thinking men are people” because I have acknowledged women as superior in these specific ways.

I do not believe I am any more kind or empathetic than my brothers, my father, my boyfriend, his friends, my male coworkers, my cousins, my uncles and my grandfather because of how I was born. I think thinking otherwise removes agency from all those people - that no matter how hard they try, they’re always going to be a little less than me - dehumanizes them and doesn’t treat them as a whole person with free will and the choice to be better.

We’ll have to agree to disagree on the whole “men are funnier than women and there are more smart men than women” thing.

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Well, I don’t appreciate being insulted by being called naive

Well, the alternative is believing you're just being disingenuous, which is more insulting imo.

You seem to define a lot of things according to how you personally feel about them. JK Rowling definitely considers herself a feminist, and on every single issue except trans women, she is probably on the same page as you. Yet you feel comfortable asserting that she is not a feminist because you are a third wave postmodernist feminist.

My opinion is that you are in fact a woman because you have "titties and estrogen" and that woman is not purely a social construct. You can disagree, and maybe there is some way you could prove me wrong, though I doubt it. But it doesn't mean I cease to consider you a person.

Agree to disagree? I don’t think I’m giving the impression of being honest and sincere, I think I am being both lol. That you struggle to understand how I can sincerely have my beliefs is one thing, but saying at best I’m inexperienced and at worst I’m a liar, well, Idk what to say other than “think what you want” and “that’s not very nice”.

I highly doubt JK Rowling and I are on the same page about every single issue except trans women. She probably doesn’t agree gender roles are a social construct, since she’s a TERF. She also likes to deadname trans women on Twitter; digging into the myriad of opposing sub-issues in that would be too long.

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I’m not sure feminists are more likely to report sexual misconduct, but I think using the specific words ‘rape’ or ‘sexual harassment’ is probably more associated with feminists- most conservative women would say ‘why can’t he take a hint/learn to leave me alone’ or ‘he took advantage of me’ or whatever, and the terminology difference probably makes a big difference in the level of formality the response has.

Am I more likely to make sexual misconduct accusations at any given level of sexual pestiness?

Of course. Unlike other women, you are aware of the patriarchy and rape culture and the myriad ways in which they threaten and coerce and pressure and nudge an entire sex into sex. Is it surprising that a strong perceptive woman unafraid to stand up for herself would run afoul of the meek sexual object role the patriarchy assigned to her?

I'm going to upvote all your posts so you get out of the filter already, I promise that's the only reason though.

It’s ok, I’ll forgive you this one time ;)

I suspect she'll drop back into it (if you even manage to get her out of it) due to all the downvotes she gets; AIUI it's (upvotes - downvotes) that determines whether you're filtered. There's a reason 80-90% of mod actions are approvals of SJer posts.

It's not 80%-90%, but yes, someone who is a consistently liberal poster will unfortunately stay in the new user filter because they get downvoted so much the system cannot distinguish between "someone with unpopular opinions" and "troll." We're actually working on a solution.

First two pages of the mod log have 40 approvals and 10 other actions (first four pages 81 approvals and 19 other actions), although I suppose a few of those approvals were of actual noobs and that might be above average. (Note that I'm counting a modpost and the ban (if any) accompanying it as separate actions here, because that's what the mod log does.)

A solution would be neat, both to help retention and to save you guys some time.

Am I more likely to make sexual misconduct accusations at any given level of sexual pestiness? That’s news to me.

One of Feminism's main pushes 2014-2020 was explicitly to make sexual misconduct allegations require less proof and to have more consequences, and to increase the rate of report generally while explicitly arguing that safeguards against false accusations must be systematically removed. Notable early examples included Atheism+, #ListenAndBelieve, Jackie's story, #TeamHarpies, We Need to Talk About Jian, along with too many smaller ones to name; on a policy level, we had the Title IX "Dear Colleague" letter implementing these as policies in the university system, and "affirmative consent" laws in California. This led to #MeToo, which culminated with the farce of the Kavanaugh accusations. This is a very abbreviated list, and this particular set of demands has been at least arguably the dominant one within Feminism over the last decade.

Maybe you are an atypical feminist, but to the degree that Feminism is a coherent category that can be analyzed, "dramatically lower threshold for sexual assault accusations" seems very clearly to be one of its most prominent characteristics.

And what is a “non-feminist” woman, according to you?

I would define it as a woman who does not identify with the presently-dominant ideological form of Feminism. This would describe my wife, sister and mother, as well as a number of other women in my life.

farce of the Kavanaugh accusations

I'm tempted to claim that the Kavanaugh accusations were the tragedy and E Jean Carroll's allegations against Trump were the farce.

Even if you want to set the threshold of tragedy at Blasey Ford, which I'd consider rather inflammatory, we went from tragedy to farce by Julie Swetnick.

“Sexual misconduct allegations requiring less proof”, “increasing the rate of reports” and “arguing that safeguards against false accusations must be systematically removed” all, to me, run afoul of the definition of feminism, which is “a social movement that advocates for equality between men and women in all aspects of life”, so that’s not feminist.

Well, except things are what they do, and feminists consistently advocate for these things, therefore they are feminist.

There’s nothing inherently Republican about driving a pickup truck. But, uh.

You can have ridiculous no true Scotsman definitions that exclude any bad behavior from your own side. They’re just wrong.

But uh what? I don’t think there’s something inherently Republican about driving a pickup truck.

As a feminist myself, I'd agree that that's not the type of stuff that I support as a feminist (in fact, I've spoken out against other feminists who espouse them). Unfortunately, feminists like you or me tend to be either rare or quiet (for me, personally, I chose to be the latter due to noticing that speaking out in the way you did in this comment tended to be met with extremely harsh abuse from other feminists), so I have to admit that comments like Quantumfreakonomics's or FCfromSSC's in this thread are entirely accurate when describing the general group of people who both call themselves feminists and who other people recognize as feminists. I've just had to learn to leave my ego at the door and not feel attacked when people talk about "feminists" supporting [thing I, as a feminist, oppose]. I think having relatively unpopular or at least less-loud (we could be a silent majority among feminists, and I actually suspect that that's the case!) perspective within a particular ideological group unfortunately tends to require this kind of thinking, and this forum in particular tends to have a high proportion of people with fairly idiosyncratic opinions that make them relatively unpopular or, again, less loud compared to the common, mainstream ones within any given ideology.

I think feminists “like” you and me are quite loud and common. They’re just not very reactionary and tend to be busy doing things instead of participating in online flame wars. That there are people on Twitter posting sexists takes and arguing that it’s not sexist and getting a bunch of other people angry doesn’t change the fact they aren’t feminists and it’s wrong to regard them as such. If they get together in a group and say they’re feminists their numbers sadly don’t change the definition. If that group makes noise and mainstream news outlets pay attention to it, that still makes them not feminist, and if some Congress people call them feminists that’s a lot of wrong Congressmen and a very wrong mainstream that is using the wrong word. It’s Pharisees all the way up and down, in my opinion.

They’re just not very reactionary and tend to be busy doing things instead of participating in online flame wars.

Well, besides online flame wars, these self-described "feminists" also tend to run actual policy and companies and write essays in mainstream publications and books. These are the people that the layman picture when they hear the word "feminist," even if they don't meet your or my personal standard for what constitutes a "feminist." And they are certainly far more influential in modern USA politics than feminists of your or my sort (though the recent election might be evidence that that is changing).

That there are people on Twitter posting sexists takes and arguing that it’s not sexist and getting a bunch of other people angry doesn’t change the fact they aren’t feminists and it’s wrong to regard them as such. If they get together in a group and say they’re feminists their numbers sadly don’t change the definition.

I disagree, but our disagreement here doesn't matter. God didn't hand us a tablet that says "the English word that starts with 'f,' ends with 't,' and has 'eminis' in between shall forever be defined as XYZ." If enough people use a word to mean something, and they all agree with how it's used, then people like you or me with unpopular definitions don't get to walk in and demand that they submit to our own idiosyncratic definition of the term.

In any case, again, this disagreement doesn't matter. You are free to believe in a prescriptive model of word definitions rather than a descriptive one. But what should be understood is that other people, including likely most on this website, see the word "feminist" as meaning something different from you, and they have zero problems communicating with each other this way. If this semantics issue is too much of a hump for you, I wonder if a mental trick of replacing "feminist" with a new made-up word "pheminist," where it's prescriptively defined as something like "person that people on TheMotte generally agree is being described when they use the word 'feminist.'" would be helpful. At the very least, that'd be a way to escape from feeling like you yourself are being scrutinized or discussed.

Gonna have to agree to disagree for sure. To me, by your logic Jesus should have submitted to the judgement of the Pharisees because a majority of people agreed with them, and yet we can all universally agree he was right to call them un-Christian and he was right to flip tables in the temple. God didn’t hand us the tablet, we wrote it ourselves. A bunch of sexists being sexists and calling themselves feminists is no different than a bunch of people thinking beating their children into submission is God-approved and Christian. That sexist people go into governmental work and try to enact sexist policies while calling it feminism still doesn’t make them feminists. And if people want to talk about sexism on this site and call it feminism that still doesn’t change the definition of it. “A person that people on TheMotte generally agree is being described when they use the word 'feminist’” would be, to me, a sexist.

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I wish more feminists were more like you, then. But I think it would be hard to argue that the things FC listed weren't advocated by feminists as feminism, and you were cleared out of the room.

I'm sympathetic to people like you who may have been boxed out by a wayward media machine - in much the same way I think many reasonable LGBTQ voices got boxed out by the strident 'blockers before 18' movement sucking all the oxygen out of the room. But I can't help but be suspicious that both groups suppressed their misgivings due to outgroup fear, the want to not be a 'bad ally', or were content to soak up the secondary benefits up until it looked like they might be drying up.

I think most feminists are like me, because a feminist promotes equality between men and women, the end. If a bunch of misandrist Pharisees wanna call themselves feminists, and some news outlets call them feminists, and outraged people call them feminists, I could care less than Jesus, and, like his Holy Word, the principle of feminism still stands.

Leaving aside that I think "equality between men and women" is a fairly empty balloon with a lot of details to be filled in - you must appreciate that the kind of feminism promoted in the meanstream are the materials we have to work with.

I respect your position on an interpersonal basis. But it doesn't really mean much outside of that. I think my disposition is still fairly liberal in the 90s/00s sense of the term. And I can fully see the argument that 'liberalism' today is far more authoritarian and fails to live up to its own namesake. But at a certain point, I am wasting everybody's time if I insist that wokescolds aren't 'liberal'.

Maybe that could change, and it will fold back on itself and meet me where I planted my feet a decade ago. I will have reclaimed 'liberalism'. But in the meantime, I'm not going to fight how the term is used in most conversations. I might put down an asterisk, but the conversation must proceed.

a feminist promotes equality between men and women, the end.

If that's the entirety of the definition, why aren't we calling them masculinists instead? It would be same difference.

I don’t know, I don’t make up the rules lol. The whole thing falls under egalitarianism of which feminism is a subset of it. I’m sure if you want to call yourself a “masculinist” you can, you just might have to re-explain the definition a lot.

A text that was popular when you were still in high school, so you might have not encountered it:

So what you're saying is that you, a commenter using a username on an internet forum are the true feminist, and the feminists actually responsible for changing the laws, writing the academic theory, teaching the courses, influencing the public policies, and the massive, well-funded feminist organizations with thousands and thousands of members all of whom call themselves feminists... they are not "real feminists".

That's not just "no true Scotsman". That's delusional self deception.

Listen, if you want to call yourself a feminist, I don't care. I've been investigating feminism for more than 9 years now, and people like you used to piss me off, because to my mind all you were doing was providing cover and ballast for the powerful political and academic feminists you claim are just jerks. And believe me, they ARE jerks. If you knew half of what I know about the things they've done under the banner of feminism, maybe you'd stop calling yourself one.

But I want you to know. You don't matter. You're not the director of the Feminist Majority Foundation and editor of Ms. Magazine, Katherine Spillar, who said of domestic violence: "Well, that's just a clean-up word for wife-beating," and went on to add that regarding male victims of dating violence, "we know it's not girls beating up boys, it's boys beating up girls."

You're not Jan Reimer, former mayor of Edmonton and long-time head of Alberta's Network of Women's Shelters, who just a few years ago refused to appear on a TV program discussing male victims of domestic violence, because for her to even show up and discuss it would lend legitimacy to the idea that they exist.

You're not Mary P Koss, who describes male victims of female rapists in her academic papers as being not rape victims because they were "ambivalent about their sexual desires" (if you don't know what that means, it's that they actually wanted it), and then went on to define them out of the definition of rape in the CDC's research because it's inappropriate to consider what happened to them rape.

You're not the National Organization for Women, and its associated legal foundations, who lobbied to replace the gender neutral federal Family Violence Prevention and Services Act of 1984 with the obscenely gendered Violence Against Women Act of 1994. The passing of that law cut male victims out of support services and legal assistance in more than 60 passages, just because they were male.

You're not the Florida chapter of the NOW, who successfully lobbied to have Governor Rick Scott veto not one, but two alimony reform bills in the last ten years, bills that had passed both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support, and were supported by more than 70% of the electorate.

You're not the feminist group in Maryland who convinced every female member of the House on both sides of the aisle to walk off the floor when a shared parenting bill came up for a vote, meaning the quorum could not be met and the bill died then and there.

You're not the feminists in Canada agitating to remove sexual assault from the normal criminal courts, into quasi-criminal courts of equity where the burden of proof would be lowered, the defendant could be compelled to testify, discovery would go both ways, and defendants would not be entitled to a public defender.

You're not Professor Elizabeth Sheehy, who wrote a book advocating that women not only have the right to murder their husbands without fear of prosecution if they make a claim of abuse, but that they have the moral responsibility to murder their husbands.

You're not the feminist legal scholars and advocates who successfully changed rape laws such that a woman's history of making multiple false allegations of rape can be excluded from evidence at trial because it's "part of her sexual history."

You're not the feminists who splattered the media with the false claim that putting your penis in a passed-out woman's mouth is "not a crime" in Oklahoma, because the prosecutor was incompetent and charged the defendant under an inappropriate statute (forcible sodomy) and the higher court refused to expand the definition of that statute beyond its intended scope when there was already a perfectly good one (sexual battery) already there. You're not the idiot feminists lying to the public and potentially putting women in Oklahoma at risk by telling potential offenders there's a "legal" way to rape them.

And you're none of the hundreds or thousands of feminist scholars, writers, thinkers, researchers, teachers and philosophers who constructed and propagate the body of bunkum theories upon which all of these atrocities are based.

You're the true feminist. Some random person on the internet.

That a bunch of people are wrong about feminism and a bunch of other people agree with them does not change the definition of a feminist or feminism for me nor does it make them less wrong. I don’t pay those people mind, because they’re not talking about feminism. If I knew half of what you know about the things non-feminists done under the banner of feminism, which I do, because I was once a self-described anti-feminist MAGA Republican who agreed with everything you just reposted, I still wouldn’t calling myself one any more than Jesus would rescind his message because a bunch of hypocritical Pharisees told him they knew God better than he did.

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For a more recent example, if lower-stakes, I'll point to Julia Serano. She was, for quite a long period of time, the go-to example in the ratsphere of a Real Feminist who Cared About Everyone. And then it turned out that her work about not dismissing the perspectives of other people was really about not "dismissing perspectives/experiences of marginalized groups".

Why is the post you're replying to "Filtered"?

Argh.

Because there's a "new user filter" baked into the codebase that we can't remove, and it auto-filters posters who haven't gotten above a certain threshold of cumulative upvotes, and because other then a very small greyed-out icon, the only way for mods to see which posts are filtered is to check a separate page.

@justawoman has been posting here for years, why would she get caught by the new user filter?

It’s the leftist plot to cancel me, they’re coming for my progressive card lol.

Because it's not a "new user filter" it's a net-upvote filter. The mods have no tools for whitelisting a specific poster, though it is possible to give it to them.

That's... odd. I've never had issues seeing her posts.

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My default presumption with anything of this sort, such as the supposed phenomenon of anti-gay activists/preachers/etc. being discovered to be gay that was all the rage 2 decades ago, is your #2. However, the strongest alternative IMHO is the final bullet point. I wouldn't emphasize the stuck-in-time one, though, but rather population clustering. A typical male feminist will tend to spend more time around female feminists than a typical male non-feminist does. And female feminists tend to have standards around rape/sexual assault/harassment/abuse that are quite a bit lower than those of female non-feminists, and more importantly, they tend to have standards that are a lot less legible, predictable, or consistent than female non-feminists. When standards are both lower and more random, it's more likely to accidentally cross it.

I'd guess a mix of predator and salience bias, but possibly also one or two you missed:

  • The MFSP as moral self-licensing: if it's really those men who are the bad ones, then why would the male feminist bother to get too introspective when his own behavior turns creepy? He already knows he's a good person, even if maybe there have been a few misunderstandings here or there. Wiki says this effect may have been exaggerated pre-replication crisis, but I think anyone paying attention to the culture war has seen people insisting Our Heroic Adventurers are nothing like Their Brutish Invaders too often to count; imagine how much easier it is to rationalize failures in one's self rather than just one's favored politicians, activists, and commentators.
  • The MFSP as under-policed serial offender: Joss is the guy who casts the Strong Women Characters! Neil's writing subverts the misogyny in Patriarchal Society! If you've heard some dubious rumors that seem to conflict with that, do you really want to thoughtlessly spread them around? Even if people in such positions aren't initially more likely to offend than male non-feminists, if they don't get as much pushback when they cross lines then they're likely to end up committing more and more serious offenses before they're finally outed.

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