OK, so a stray comment came in to this piece. It was an invitation to debate, of sorts. Or rather it was the closest thing we get around here from a feminist. This one calls themselves notsince67. Notsince wanted to make some points, and wanted some answers from me. Rather than put an hour into a two year old comment section, I though some readers here might find some of this interesting.
First, notsince’s comment:
Would like your thought’s Mr. Elam. So here goes.
Your most heavily cited paragraph, in attempt to qualify the legitimate status of this site, not as misogynistic, but as a bearer of the human rights torch, to me, carries many red herrings. I’ll elaborate.
First, I believe your statement of men “committing” (it is hard to commit what is no longer a crime, as you as a “mental health” professional should understand.) suicide more often than women is in fact a red herring and simply a misrepresentation of the issue of suicide. Women are far more likely to attempt suicide, whereas men are far more successful in COMPLETING suicide. Reasons for this have been attributed to the difference in lethality of suicide methods when split along gender lines. Your statement is made to present that men are under more mental duress than women, but the numbers tend to suggest the opposite is true.
Secondly: “America’s exploding prison population, which overwhelmingly includes and victimizes the working class and new poor, contains more than 2 million people, but under 100,000 women. This disparity has had profound effects on African-American men, as more of them are incarcerated than in post-secondary education… Young men, ignorant rather than criminal, are placed on lifelong sex offender registries that prevent them from obtaining education and even healthcare, and ensuring that they will never contribute to society.”
I first, had to laugh. Let’s call a spade a spade. Criminals (IMO) are violent and property offenders. Sex offenders are violent offenders. “Young men ignorant rather than criminal…placed on lifelong sex offender registries” in itself displays sympathy for ALL male sex offenders, regardless of the specifics of the offense. Now I do understand, yes there are men who are wrongfully convicted as the result of fraudulent accusations. However, I’ve seen the figure placed at around 10% or less. So do we give 90% a free pass? And how does the picture change when you taken into account the under reporting of sexual crimes, on both side of the coin? The statement in itself in itself draws sympathy to all sex offenders. That’s garbage. If your bone to pick is the WRONGLY ACCUSED, so be it, but it seems it is not.
But in terms of the prison population, it’s entirely unrelated to gender dynamics when you consider all the facts. The reality of the situation is the vast majority of the explosion in the U.S. prison population is due to the use of mandatory minimums on drug crimes, with drug offenders representing the largest growing segment of all incarcerated offenses. When you take into consideration the vast majority of drug offenders (and crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing beginning in the 1990′s) that police departments centralize enforcement in poverty-stricken black communities, and the black male population bears the brunt of these harsh sanctions. Add in the fact labour at 0.18 cents an hour for 40+ hours a week is MANDATORY in Texas prisons, you see an evolving scheme of neo-slavery which strengthens the prison-industrial complex. What you speak, or point to, is not an issue of gender rights, it about punitiveness and racial equality. It is a criminolgical issue which you have entirely hijacked to support your cause. And let’s not get into the effect “three-strikes and you’re out” type legislation has on the mentally ill and essentially makes life sentences for drug addicts who struggle to shake their habit.
Finally, I laughed too at this: “Relatedly, male attendance in higher education has fallen to 40% and continues to diminish, and men lag far behind women in obtaining advanced degrees. The performance of boys in our grade, middle and high schools is deteriorating. Meanwhile, men have become a minority in the workforce, ensuring their further social and economic marginalization, as well as any hope of upward economic mobility.”
Is seems to suppose that there is some sort or concerted effort to discriminate men from employment. Is that what you suggest? That employers are denying candidates jobs for being male? That academic institutions are turning away otherwise qualified and dedicated applicants on the basis of having a penis, and systemically they are denied education where ever they turn? Is that something you can support?
I’ve read a few articles. I can say that you touch on real issues. Gender-bias in the courts, the use of family law and domestic violence policy that is preferential to women. But to attribute it to feminism is misguided. Why? If you killed EVERY feminist, the policy would remain unchanged. Feminism is not the issue, policy is the issue. I understand the link between feminism as the advocates for change, but saying “well, fuck them” is ignorant of the issues (and that’s aimed at more of your “minions” than you yourself) and really is misguided anger. Don’t be mad at women, be mad at the courts. So women fight to keep that staus-quo? Engage in dialogue. This “fuck those bitches” type mentality is just a sign of someone who feels sleighted which, as someone with BPD, is what cause stupid rage. Rage gets you no where, and is unproductive. What works is constructive dialogue, such as what MLK aimed to do.
I could go on, but I’ll leave you the chance to reply and leave a little meat on the bone.
And here is my answer:
Normally, I would not invest this kind of energy on a stray comment on article pushing two years old, but I think this will make an article, so I will bite. OK, then, point by point we go.
First, People commit suicide. It is common terminology. Deal with it. Pedantry and silly semantics won’t make your points. Well, neither will anything else, as we will shortly see.
As to the issue of suicide, genuinely suicidal people, both male and female, generally tend to succeed at their death-wish. Ask your nearest mental health professional. It is common knowledge in the profession that people who want to die, usually do.
So either that leaves us with women being too incompetent to choose a method that gets the intended result, or it means that their choice to employ a non-lethal attempt is likely indicative that the action was for a different outcome than death. Yes, many non-successful “attempts” just like suicidal “threats” are attempts at gaining attention, or gaining control – not genuine attempts to die.
Still, that leaves us with a question. What is a greater problem? Several people who scratch at their wrists and call for help, who are then still alive and available for counseling and support, or the fewer people who wind up dead?
One of the most telling aspects of feminist and traditionalist mentality I regularly encounter is people who, with a fucking straight face, call foul on the subject of male suicide by comparing three women who swallowed 10 Advil and immediately called 911 to one man who put a gun to his head and blew his brains out. If the comparison were not so sick I would laugh.
I never made the argument that women were under more or less mental duress, just that men ended up dead from it a lot more. Capisce? Never mind, the question was rhetorical.
Next, regarding alleged sexual offenders, the sympathy you imagine I harbor for them, and your ridiculous attempt to characterize all sexual crimes as violent. NOTE: Your attempt to break down all crime into violent or property was equally fatuous, but I only have so much time.
Sorry, but you are just being stupid. Men get on sex offender registries for a variety of reasons, and many of them have nothing to do with violence. There have been young men placed on them because as teenagers they had consensual sex with girlfriends who were younger than them. Consider the case of Ricky Blackman.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/sexual-predator-insanity/
His story is just one nightmare. I could link you to more, but you don’t really care about it so I won’t waste keystrokes.
There are men on offender registries for “public indecency,” again, a non-violent crime (given that public nudity is somehow criminal)
Your claim that registries are for only violent crimes is just, well, ignorant. So here’s something else for you to either not click through on, or to go read and then ignore. It is about how the lives of normal, innocent kids are ruined on these registries.
Or perhaps I can tempt your sick indifference to this story of a 15 year old boy that killed himself after streaking at a high school football game, likely because he feared being put on a registry.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/asshole-of-the-year-principal-michael-campbell/
Maybe I can get you to callously disregard this story about a 78 year old man beaten to death with a baseball bat because his name was similar to someone on a registry.
Tell you what, after you ignore all those items you can go back to ignoring the wrongly accused and wrongly convicted. Or you can just add all of this to your personal “don’t give a fuck about it” pile. I am sure there is always room for more.
Now, you actually make cogent points, some anyway, about the exploding prison population and the profiteering of the prison industrial complex off the drug war, but then shoot yourself directly through the clay in your feet before you can even conclude your points.
You admit, explicitly that “the black male population bears the brunt of these harsh sanctions.” And then, nearly in the same breath, you say, “What you speak, or point to, is not an issue of gender rights, it about punitiveness and racial equality.”
Your problem, in black and white (no pun intended), is that you have no problem seeing Black men as Black. You just don’t see them as men. It is the same problem with almost every feminist ideologue I have ever encountered.
News for you, cupcake. Black men are men. And when Black men suffer disproportionately more than White men and more than Black women from the intentional acts of others, or from systemic injustices, then it is because of their race, and their sex. If Black women were filling prisons I have no doubt you would see this clearly.
By the way, we have other words for people who look at a human being and the only thing they can recognize about them is their race. I trust you won’t need a dictionary to help with that one. Now, lets move on to some other information you care nothing about and from which you will learn even less.
I pointed to the fact that men were disappearing from both higher education and the workforce. And it is true. Here are a couple of charts for you to gloss over and forget.
Men disappearing from education:
Also, as to men and employment, here are some links to articles you will find completely boring:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204505304577000380740614776
http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/IB-Bean-Unemployment.pdf
Now, to all this you had to say:
Is[sic] seems to suppose that there is some sort or concerted effort to discriminate men from employment. Is that what you suggest?
Seems and suppose. Right. Actually, I did not attribute or attempt to attribute a cause to these problems. I just stated them as problem. In the world of people who give a fuck, that counts enough to, say, start looking for the causes and solutions. Sorry, won’t bother you with that any more.
Finally, you say you read a few articles and then proceed to tell me that feminism is not the only problem. Conclusion: You did not read (or comprehend) enough articles. Woven throughout the content of this website is repeated references to the very facts that you have somehow imagined that you are imparting here for the first time.
Funny thing about a couple of hundred years of collective experience invested in the issues faced by men and boys. We tend to stumble on certain ideas, like the problems with traditional culture, gynocentrism and misandry, and were aware of them long before they started being red-lined by spell checkers. We certainly had a grip on those subjects long before you showed up.
The rest of your comment, the condescending emotional advice, the misrepresented and misunderstood ideas on this website, delivered from the mouth an ignorant bigot, is really what is laughable.
Now, you said you wanted a reply with some meat on it. There is plenty of meat there. Feel free to chew on it, at least if you have not at this point already forgotten it is there.
