Read this piece that Robert Franklin cited: Boys and young men: A new cause for liberals (A crisis that needs to attention of American liberals)
It is a sad fact of life that liberals don't care about boys, even though boys need help, because boys don't belong to a victim group. This writer, a self-proclaimed liberal, has seen the light. Here was my comment, which I posted at the original article:
Depressing statement about liberals
Submitted by Pierce Harlan on April 1, 2010 - 2:18pm.
The writer feels conflicted about helping boys because, apparently, he feels only far-right Christian misogynists care about boys, even though they need help.
Now, seriously, doesn't that say a lot about liberals, and none of it good?
Here's a cinematic analogy. Near end of the elegiac lament to the passing of the old west, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," beloved U.S. Senator Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) returns to his home town out west and confesses to the town's newspaper editor that his legendary reputation, in fact his entire career, was built on a lie. Until then, everyone believed that in his youth, Stoddard had shot and killed the notorious gunslinger Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Now, at long last, Stoddard is coming clean, telling the world that Valance was really shot by a tough-as-nails rancher played by John Wayne.
But the newspaper editor, having heard the entire story and believing every word of it, is not interested in publishing any of it.
"You're not going to use the story?" Sen. Stoddard asks incredulously.
The editor famously replies: "No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
And so it goes here: We're progressives, sir. When the facts interfere our victim metanarrative, print the victim metanarrative.
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25 comments:
I am a liberal and know exactly how this cat feels. The feminist and other post modern victim groups are a cancer to the left and worse many of them are as reactionary as those on the far right. These groups hurt the left in so many ways pushing people like me from the movement, losing election after election that they take the primary role in but worse passing bad laws. Take the issue this site deals with as a perfect example, rape and false rape. The feminist groups funnel the money and "awareness" to the groups least in need of the money and education. They are leaving low income white and minority women that actually suffer the majority of rape and sexual assaults with less resources because Brown needs a larger rape crisis center to go unused. They create an environment where the safest and most privileged actually believe they are at great or greater risk than a women living in Detroit.
Well, are you going to blow the money on victims, or use it for salaries for sistahs who will sing from the same hymn sheet and thus guarantee more money next year?
Actually, before all this happened to me and the press was full of the paedo hysteria about a decade ago, I went on record as saying that the hysteria was in fact benefitting nobody, except paedophiles.... you can imagine how I was shouted down and abused.
then Brass Eye went on the TV with the "paedogeddon" skit...
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&oi=video_result&cad=9031532194656768989&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CBUQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D9031532194656768989&rct=j&q=brass+eye+paedogeddon&ei=Dje1S93lLaT80wTi1P0f&usg=AFQjCNG-fmPlNtA9FtVfE6ooHoiqL6RwXA
BTW, EVERYONE should make 27 minutes spare and watch that linked video.
I say "EVERYONE should watch" because the programme makers got a lot of famous and well known people (a Lord, Gary Lineker, Phil Collins, etc) to go on camera and talk absolute SHIT as fact.
same hysteria the rape hysteria types use.
Hey,
Thanks for representing liberals and progressives with one big huge fuckin' brush-stroke there, bro. You're really helpin' out there.
It's awesome. The fuck am I supposed to do now? Obviously I can't share this site with my friends now because they'll write it off as typical bullshit from an opposing political party.
This is not an issue to turn into "conservatives vs liberals" unless you've decided that you can just do this thing without us.
ugh, i just had a disgusting conversation with my pal. he says:
“so i go out last friday with a bunch of people, this black dude picks up one of my old friends, is kickin it to her in the bar, he tries to convince us all he played for the dolphins. not the case, he was an accountant. to make a long story short, her and her friend wake up naked in his bed, cry rape, have him locked up.
i don’t know what to think, she’s been single for a long time and this never happened. she’s waiting for the toxicology reports to see if she was drugged.
And it was her and her friend, taken to an apt within walking distance of the bar.
The guy just seemed like a d-bag trying to get laid, not a rapist. He bought me a beer so he can't be all bad right? The bartender knew him and called him out on his game, which he probably does on a weekly basis.
She said neither of them remembered anything after leaving the bar. I left the bar around 330 and they were still there, after arriving around 11."
can you believe this? a threesome-rape, that's gotta be some kind of first. how far can we go here? what if he banged three chicks in his bed? four chicks... even ten chicks at a time? could they all cry out sexual assault and be taken seriously?
and not to go off-topic, but how much must this guy hate whitey right now?
Anon at 9:31,if your friends support Obama, who is tied at the dick to NOW, then you need a better class of friends. Maybe when y'all grow up you'll understand.
RE: Obama. Did you see that the group that will be hit hardest by the new health care act? Young males. Yep. I don't understand these early 20s guys who were in love with Obama's "charisma" (I think he's a damn boring speaker, he really does come off like Mr. Spock). Pierce, you ought to do an off-topic on that. Young men will STILL pay the highest rate for auto insurance because they're the highest risk, but for health care, even though they're the LOWEST risk, they'll pay what some woman will pay, who runs to the doctors every week. Gee, that's fair, isn't it?
All,
This is not a political site. I think that no matter our affiliations or beliefs, we can all agree on the importance of the objective of the FRS to shed light on injustice.
Axel, good points. Neither party cares much about men, do they? But the GOP isn't tied to the -- as a previous commentator wrote -- dick with NOW.
Anon at 9:31: everyone's entitled to his or her opinion. My opinion is that we need to effect political change and that my party will be of no help to the men's movement because of its allegiance to feminists. Truth be told, I am more liberal than Obama on various issues. I part company with him and the others on the way some "victim" groups are treated, women among them.
Cannon's Canon: extremely screwed up. I know most of you love your alcohol but, man! That's at the core of almost all these acquaintance rape cases. Me, I don't drink hardly at all (I've only had too much to drink one time in my life -- at the home of a very important leader in the Catholic Church. Aside from that one night, if you put all the alcohol I've consumed together in my entire life and drank it right now, it wouldn't be enough to get you drunk). I think young men need to lay off it -- seriously. I know why you do it, but it's dangerous. You don't need it.
The interesting part is that two of them accused him. Wow! When a girl has sex with multiple guys, that often leads to a false rape claim (how else can she explain THAT to her friends?). So, what? Now when multiple girls have sex with one guy -- that's rape, too?
An. at 9:45
And that comment is why I and other male and even some female liberals that are partial to arguments from this site and the MRA in general will not fully support the cause. Blaming Obama is pointless and nothing but partisan. The Republicans have nearly the same track record of giving into the demands of NOW as the Democrats. VAWA had plenty of Republican support, was renewed under a republican congress and president. The religious right was as big if not bigger force in pushing for more laws and harsher penalties for sex crimes of every type.
Jim, you raise good points. Neither party is very good for men, are they?
I was a tad concerned about the tone of the article I linked to. Because the guy is a liberal, he felt he needed to explain why he supports boys. Wow! We really have a long way to go, don't we?
I will add to what Jim said: the thing that most bothers me about the GOP is its law and order stance that led to the passage of Fed.R.Evid. 413, the most unfair rule in our entire jurisprudence. That was Bob Dole et al. You know who opposed it? BIDEN.
Also, Obama was,I think, the only Senator who called for a federal investigation of Nifong.
So Jim is correct: it's not black and white. My ultimate fear is that we need a party to hook onto if we're ever going to get anything done, and I just get the feeling the feminists are too powerful in my party.
Afor
I watched the video you posted.
Even though it's a parody that is pretty much how it is treated on the news...and on oprah.
Just this week here in my little part of the U.S. they are at it on every broadcast with the sex offender priest stories.
That stuff $ells!!
@Axel
Yeah, I'm totally going to hate the fact that since the first time I've been off my parents health insurance that I can get some coverage because of my pre-existing condition.
Shit yeah, bro, let me tell you, I've been _wailing_ at the moon every since I discovered I wouldn't go bankrupt or have my insurer deny paying my hospital bills after the fact.
If we're gonna do this based on political party, I'm on their side, 'cuz there's no way I'm going to live a life of debt and poor health.
The hammer is coming down - and you NEED to pick a side.
Two things I personally consider are, the sex abuse and child molester witch hunts are being whipped up more by Republicans.
What does that have to do with adult false rape accusations?
The SAME unConstitutional laws and efforts to convict at any cost are 'trickling' upward. "Children Don't Lie" lies are now encompassing adult women in it's 'non liar' benevolence.
Just as innocent men are convicted on the mere say so of a child, no evidence is needed, it is becoming more commonplace for adult cases to be ruled the same way. "Prior accusations", however unfounded are now worming their way into being admissible.
It's a situation to keep an eye on. As the child abuse cases go, so goes the adult cases. It's a matter of time.
Look at who's relentlessly promoting those laws - who is promoting lifetime GPS (companies they are invested in)who is promoting death penalty for child rape, who prosecutes these cases most, who wins elections by fear mongering 'soft on crime'?
You'd better start looking, because it's coming your way.
The guy who wrote the article remains a very rare exception amongst liberals - I should know, seeing as i am myself one of those exceptions.
Damn liberalism, damn conservatism, i think I'll become an anarchist.
As long as black men support feminism they can't hope to get anywhere. Feminists will always find a way to turn the spotlight from the very real problems that black men face and onto the exaggerated troubles of middle class white women.
Anon at 11:25: these sorts of debates often devolve into emotion -- and there's nothign wrong with that. You will find reasons to oppose any points raised by the previous commentator, and he/she will do the same for your points. That's because we often defend our politics based on emotion, and an attack on our party is viewed as an attack on your identity. My guess is that your parents are strong Dems, because that's ususually the way it works. I understand, believe me. In 1968, my grandmother thought the world was ending when Richard Nixon was elected. Truth be told, Nixon was liberal in many respects by today's standards. He ordered a wage and price freeze in 1971 on big corporations. If Obama did that, they'd want to hang him. (That's because Reagan, the most successful president in a long time, kind of reestablished conservatism and moved the entire country to the right.)
The older I get, the less wedded I am to any party, any ideology. As for the GOP, I do not like the law and order business that treats the rights of the presumed innocent too lightly. As for the Dems, I do not like what the Dems did to fathers in the inner city; I do not like how the Dems insist the gender wage gap is due to discrimination, which they use to justify more and more affirmative action-type laws; I do not like how the Dems refuse to support shared parenting because so many fathers are supposedly abusers (NOW's position); I do not like their callous treatment of young men in cutting male sports programs in the name of Title IX (McCain didn't like it either); I do not like all the initiatives for girls and women and none for boys; I do not like how virtually all the changes in rape law that made it easier to arrest and charge men for rape were initiated by feminist legal scholars, using the Dems as their tools, but the Dems didn't bother to consider what to do if women abused that power.
The GOP is almost as bad on some of these issues. Here's the difference: the GOP can be swayed if it felt it was important to keep male votes; the Dems are lost, beholden to NOW. The Dems will never do anything to oppose NOW and its ilk.
As for your points: I could do an entire post on pre-existing conditions. Sounds like you have one so this new law might help you. It is doubtful that any insurance company is going to be able to stay in business over the long haul being required to cover pre-existing conditions. Same for the insurers' own reinsurance companies. And, for that matter, the reinsurance companies of the reinsurance companies.
As Axel pointed out (he reads Reddit Mens Rights where I wrote about this), young men will not benefit from this law. See this article: "'Young males will be hit the hardest,' O'Connor says, because they have lower health care costs than young females and older people who go to doctors more often and use more medical services."
Funny, young men are still going to pay their "fair share" for auto insurance -- parents pay, on average, far higher premiums for boys than for their twin sisters, even if the boys are safe drivers and their twin sisters are reckless drivers. Boys/their parents are penalized because the boys were born male. For health care, young men should pay far lower premiums than any other class, but they won't. Why the disparity? It's all politics. Nobody -- and I mean, nobody -- cares about young men. And maybe, just maybe, that's because young men don't vote as a block.
For this movement to make progress, it needs to get political. The Dems won't be swayed by anything this movement does, so where does that leave us?
Anon at 1:12 does raise good points. Maybe the false rape movement needs to ally itself with the ACLU et al.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/05/the-war-against-boys/4659/
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sommers-war.html
http://www.friesian.com/sommers.htm
Q: "The Dems will never do anything to oppose NOW and its ilk."
I don't know that to be true. Is there some justification you have that makes you feel this is the case?
I don't know of any indications of that one way or the other - which to me means, it's possible.
Young men DON'T vote. Young men volunteer to die yet make no demands of their country. It's why they are not valuable.
Squeaky wheels get the grease.
It's time to squeak. LOUDLY.
Republicans depend on 'tough on crime' stances to get votes, and they do it very, very well.
If incarcerating huge populations of male citizens is a 'win' for them - it's going to continue. NOW doesn't need to lift a finger, the Republicans have criminalized and incarcerated a huge population of American males - and they will continue to do so as long as ....women vote.
Like I said - you gotta ASK to get. Hell, YES! FRS should make contacts with the ACLU. Contitutional rights are being destroyed in courts across America every minute of every day.
Men are losing ground every minute of every day. It MIGHT behoove men to start networking instead of fighting against each other.
Inner city black men. Registered sex offenders. Fathers losing their children in family court. It's the "First they came for HIM" principal. NO ONE is speaking out, and we ALL know it's wrong.
It's the BIG picture that everyone seems to be missing. It's time males work together as males, even if they don't like each other's personal politics or lifestyle.
Man, it's sink or swim time.
I agree that Republicans are generally not as bad as Democrats when it comes to promoting feminist nonsense like affirmative action or closing the phony wage gap or whatever. But Republicans are often worse than Democrats when it comes to promoting law-and-order populism or pandering to the religious right. So we are between a rock and a hard place.
A lot of MRAs make the mistake of assuming that because PC leftist feminist appeasers are against us, it must mean conservatives are on our side.
Remember,the Dems weren't always the champions of women (Ted Kennedy once opposed abortion) or blacks (Martin Luther King was Republican). One or the other of the parties must see that men are ready to act as a block -- it's never happened yet. As a lifelong Dem, I just don't think men (and especially white males) can possibly fit into the Dem's victim metanarrative. Single mothers are their icons, and the party's been taken over by group identity politics. White males are the only group that positively can't be a member of that club, as a group (though they're happy to have us when we support women et al).
Sorry if some disagree. These are emotional issues, and to some people, what I'm saying will seem like an attack on their identity. It's not intended that way. I just think we need to get a party to pay attention to us if we're ever going to effect policy change.
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