Feminism Thread.

[machiavelli]

Bearing in mind that we still have a ton of rape, a ton of domestic violence, genuine (not made up) sexual harassment, lots of professions where women are often de facto not welcome, etc. Honestly, feminism has a lot to add -- I go back and forth about whether or not I want to call myself a feminist. Because some schools of feminism do go way overboard, but many are right-on.

As for the MRA people -- c'mon. Yeah, women have some advantages in the getting laid department. Although I think even that's overrated: really hot women have advantages in the getting laid department, but I know women who get rejected a lot. And they may not have that big an advantage in getting laid by *those who they want* -- the advantage is only really there if they lower standards. And hell, we could lower standards too, sleep with ugly chicks...

Hell, let me go further. The kind of women we all want to fuck have an easier time getting laid than most men do. OF COURSE THEY DO, THEY'RE THE KIND OF WOMEN WE ALL WANT TO FUCK! I'm sure the kind of men women want to fuck have an easier time getting laid than most women do, for the same damn reason.

The other big thing the MRA people go on about is legal. According to the MRA folks, women have all kinds of advantages in terms of divorce/custody/child support, plus in the power to make false rape/sexual harassment/domestic violence allegations. Here's the thing about that idea: it's total raging bullshit. Lemme undermine my anonymity here for a second and say: I'm a lawyer. I've done a few of those sorts of cases. And they do not confer some kind of magic power on women -- in fact, lots of women get screwed in those domains because of non-legal power that the men involved have, like controlling the money and being able to pay for better representation, violent intimidation, routine disbelief of/disdain for sexual harassment/rape claims, etc. etc. The MRA are completely full of shit, all their claims are based on a few high-profile cases from which they extrapolate to the legal system as a whole. (Psychology wonks: read up on salience bias.)

Moreover, people get falsely accused of crimes all the time. The MRAs only pay attention when it's men getting accused of sex crimes, but unless they can point to data (DATA, not anecdotes) showing that false accusations by women against men of sex crimes are more prevalent or damaging than other kinds of false criminal accusations, all the talk about duke lacrosse players and the like should fall on deaf ears.