Xlrq [sic], we’ll just have to wait and see about the draft, won’t we?

Wait no longer. When was the last time that any bill got voted down 402-2, with its own author voting against it?!

But then again, I had no idea that I was a groupie until you and a few other (male) so kindly enlightened me.

I’ve read your past blog posts now (well, I skimmed a few of the really long ones) on the men’s movement, and generally like what you have to say. I think you’re right on in most of your assessments. However, I also chuckled sympathetically when one commenter wrote about your “feminist groupies” among your blog readers. I frequently find both the feminist and father’s rights wing of the men’s movement to contain out-of-balanced perspectives that are very deficient, including comments by some of your “feminist groupies.”

I prefer to call myself an integral thinker, rather than a pro-feminist man, because a balanced perspective just makes a lot more sense to me. As a gay man in the men’s movement, I tend to see thinks from a more balanced gender perspective anyways.

I’ve just added your blog to my blogroll. Looking forward to more of your writings on gender issues.

Joe

1) You’re right–I don’t think I could convince you women are oppressed in our society. I also don’t think that I can convince Hugo that organized religion is a bad idea, or convince a libertarian that they should actually be a socialist. On this issue, the evidence seems clear as day to anyone who looks around. Obviously, you see the world in a very different way. I enjoy discussions and debates with people who see the world quite differently from me, but I find those conversations more productive and rewarding when they focus on more secondary points on which both parties are more likely to be flexible and open to conversation. (For example, I wouldn’t come here and try to convince Hugo he shouldn’t care about women getting abortions–what’s the point–but I will try to convince him that legal prohibition is the wrong way to combat abortion. And so on.) If you wish to take this as an occasion to declare victory, by all means feel free.

2) Not that it matters, I’m not into that whole “real manhood” stuff Hugo likes, but I’m a boy :)

If you don’t think that women in intimate relationships commit domestic violence through those other forms of abuse and harassment, I don’t think there’s much hope to convince you. Note, I’m not saying all women do it or even that most women do it. But do they do it as often as men? You bet they do!

The mere fact that male-perpetrated domestic violence tends to be more physical than does female-perpetrated DV doesn’t prove anything. The research is insufficient to cover all forms of domestic violence.

There are no doubt facts that most of us can agree on. However, if one’s goal is to deny that men commit domestic violence or to deny that women commit domestic violence, then we’re not going to get very far.

Finally, we need to do more in terms of prevention. We need to study men and women to find out why some of them behave violently. We need to discover the roots of the problem.

Saying “there’s no excuse for abuse” and funding shelters and other programs for survivors of DV will help us in the short term and they’re very important. But we also need to dig deeper into the manifold causes of DV if we hope to develop lasting solutions and the underlying social transformation that will buttress those solutions.

To be sure, knowing that someone who rapes you will get a long jail sentence under some circumstances, and that under no circumstances will your family kill you for being raped, is a whole lot better than what happens in certain other cultures, where the probability that the victim will be killed appears to be higher than the probability that the rapist will be significantly punished. But I’m not convinced that traditional Western handling of rape was more rape victim friendly than modern Western handling of rape.

Are you serious in asking me to identify where you are hostile? Your hostility is dripping from every post, but here are just a few:

“Hugo’s privilege and oppression theory is a bunch of crap”

“Spare me the rhetoric….”

“…the plural of “anectdote” isn’t “data.” Show evidence … and you may have a real point.”

“Please.”

“It’s clear that you are very thin-skinned….”

And on and on.

And yes, my response to your tone is hostile — and fully justified.

It’s difficult to put your finger on exact laws–it’s only relatively recently that Westerners have demanded that law and custom fall in line and have so much definition to them. But here’s an interesting story about the culture around the French story “Little Red Riding Hood” that will better explicate how a woman’s consent, aka the difference between rape and seduction, was not considered the important factor in a sexual encounter outside of marriage:

http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/danceswithwolves.asp

Again, inside marriage, a woman had no legal or cultural individuality and couldn’t be raped–no ability to consent or reject, no rape.