Feminist Equality? Or Feminist Hypocrisy? by BJSparky

So, I initially browsed your links, took some notes, then got tired and thought 'wow, what a hot load of bullshit', and decided to ignore you. I still think this is all a hot load of bullshit, but hey, the person I'm visiting in the hospital is currently asleep so I don't really have much of substance to do, so why not?

Full disclosure: I'm not going to watch any of the YouTube videos. Videos of things I'm actually interested in feel tedious enough to me as it is (when I watch YouTube I'm almost always multitasking), so I'm not really eager to watch Christina Hoff Sommers condescendingly drone on and on at a camera. I'm much more of the reading type, but hey, if you're so confident in your arguments, the articles should hold themselves up, right? (That doesn't mean I didn't look to see what sort of videos you were trying to show me. Maybe I'll get to that at some point. I'm just kind of winging this to pass the time.)

Also, holy shit. That's some class A document dumping if I've ever seen it. Like, you can source this shit as the perfect example. The YouTube links alone can seal the deal. Really? You send me literal days worth of videos and expect me to, what, watch the hundreds upon hundreds of them? (Quote from the Wiki article: 'The shipment of dumped documents is unsorted, or contains a large quantity of information that is extraneous to the issue under inquiry'.) Not to mention the questionable choices you made: in an attempt to show that you're not anti-feminist, you sent me a bunch of playlists called things like 'Anti-Feminist', 'Lol'ing at Feminism', and 'Feminism is Bullshit', so you already kind of dropped the ball with that one. And you sent me Feminist Frequency playlists because... why? A woman made some videos that you disagreed with? A singular woman? Gasp.

But really. You showed me endless videos about a bunch of dudes complaining about feminism and not actual feminists saying actual things, so you can't actually point at those and go 'LOOK AT THIS FEMINIST'S HYPOCRISY!!'. There's also just a bunch of trite fluff like 'Tropes vs Women in Breakfast Cereal'. And then we get to shit like 'Feminist: Satanic Agenda' and a bunch of videos by The Amazing Atheist (who, by the way, is pretty much the laughingstock of the internet at this point) and I'm just sitting here wondering if I'm still supposed to be taking this seriously. I am legitimately confused by what points you were trying to prove here.

(Sort of extraneous, but I found it hilarious how many GamerGate videos there were considering how often they try to proclaim that they're not about feminism at all.)

Before we get to the articles, to be pedantic: sure, I misread your sentence since I was skimming and assumed you were brushing off accusations of bigotry by saying you weren't in your description. But calling that a strawman argument is showing a severe misunderstanding of what a strawman argument is. I might have misread that, but that'd just mean I was incorrect. That. That's not a strawman??

(Also, A+ job addressing some of my concerns in my comment. And by that I mean A+ job ignoring everything except a mistake and just vomiting up a bunch of links into the comment section instead of trying to, y'know, personally defend your position.)

I'm getting kind of bored, so I'm not promising a direct addressing of every individual article. I'll also be sourcing my notes and, like I said, I was tired by that point. What I can tell you is that literally none of them offer any 'explanations' of 'feminist hypocrisy'. You showed me a bunch of articles about stuff you disagree with. Things written by women that may or may not identify as feminists, just a wall of things you take offence with-- no explanation on why. It 'explains' literally nothing.

You want evidence to back up these statements about feminist hypocrisy and explanations of them? You got it!

To make what I just said absolutely clear: you gave me nothing.

Anyways.

1.) I don't have a penis, so I don't really feel qualified to make a comment on this one. (Which is advice that might be helpful for some other certain people.) To be fair, though, nothing in the article actually said anything about making it 'illegal', just highly discouraged, and I'm not sure how they'd enforce it anyways? Also, the person who made the proposal is a man. Just. Y'know. Throwing that out there. (Also, women do have boxes to put their used tampons in in their stalls, so I don't really know what you're talking about re: the second part of the relevant 'point' on your poster.)

2.) There was actually no proof on what horribly abusive things these feminists boogeymen said, so. Hard to make a judgement on this one. And this isn't evidence inasmuch an anecdote, but all of the feminists I know (including me) think that being a stay-at-home mom/housewife is perfectly okay and awesome as long as that's what the woman personally wants.

3.) Surprise, I actually do think the shirt is pretty sexist. And if you disagree with that, you have to admit it was highly unprofessional to wear during such an important accomplishment. And again, to reiterate: there's no 'explanations' or rebuttals here, you're just showing me something you don't agree with. Nothing about 'hypocrisy' as far as the eye can see.

4.) The actual title says 'generally' instead of 'automatically', which I agree with. If, like the article says, only 2-8% of rape claims are false, it makes much more sense to side with the person who is, statistically, telling the truth. If 10% of car theft reports are fraudulent, we should be seeing more people acting with suspicion to theft claims than rape reports, and yet exactly the opposite is true. As ~GamerGate~ says, 'trust, then verify'. (By the way, did you see the part where there are apparently 400k or so rape kits sitting around, untested and just gathering dust? Shit's terrifying.)

5.) I. I don't understand the point of linking this?? Are you trying to say that all of the people who have come forward and said that Bill Cosby has raped them are liars?? Like, sure, the author does cite rape as penetration, but it could be just because that's what these certain women in this certain circumstance faced. After all, she quickly says 'nobody is truly immune from the threat of it' afterwards, so it's not like they're saying only women can be raped which is the only explanation I can think of for you linking this.

6.) This one was dumb. However, this was just one individual; it doesn't show some huge feminist conspiracy of hypocrisy. I skimmed the comments a bit and didn't see a single person agree with her, so... I'm not even positive she's against jailing women at all (despite the title, which are often written by other people to me eye-catching; her language is too waffling in the article for me to really tell) or just non-violent offenders for people like drug addicts/dealers and prostitutes. (Which I agree with, and believe should apply to men as well.)

7.) I honestly don't know why I'm supposed to find disagreeable in here? 'Ultimately led to him being found guilty of rape, though not in an official court of law, as no charges were ever filed with the police.' Like, I don't know about you, but it seems like he raped someone and got off easy because she didn't go to the police (like many rape victims don't). Even if this was supposed to prove something about false rape accusations, it... didn't, because he's still walking around having a good time with his girlfriend and hardly seems like his life is ruined.

8.) I personally disagree with many of the points brought up by the women featured here.but the article is not actually 'attacking' them for their opinions, just saying they're 'misguided'. (They have a point: being a feminist doesn't mean you can't like muscle cars and beer and bars, or that you hate men, or that you have to be full of uncontrollable anger.) In fact, evil harpy Jezebel's first comment is about how somebody can kinda understand why the label would make someone uncomfortable and there's lots of bemoaning the negative stigma. Most of the others seem to show disappointment, but no rage.

9.) So, uh. What does this prove other than the results of the survey are incredibly creepy and disheartening? Is this supposed to be ~shaming~ or something? Because newsflash: judging rapists and people that think like them are not ~shaming male sexuality~, they're judging someone for being an utter piece of shit. Amazing. Honestly, it greatly disturbs me that you thought this had a place on your list. (By the by: most feminists I know are sex-positive, and that's actually a big thing in third-wave feminism.)

10.) Hooray, you finally showed me something that we can both agree is terrible. Still: the majority of the comments seem to be people saying 'violence is violence and violence is not okay' or people saying that they have hit a partner, but in self-defence. Some of the 'yes'es are even about playful banter between friends. However, to be pedantic, as a commenter from 8 said, Jezebel doesn't brand itself as a feminist site. And while I admittedly didn't read all 439 comments, none of the people from the thread who were actually abusive didn't go '...but it's totally not okay if a guy does it!!' so it still doesn't quite fit your 'feminist hypocrisy' narrative. You just proved that some people who may or may not identify as feminists are pretty damn terrible, which surprises no one. (And no, 'but I'm sure that's what they actually think!!' doesn't work without proof.)

11.) Eh, I agree to some extent. But pretty much anyone who agrees with the 'power+privilege' definition for sexism also holds the same beliefs when it comes to white vs non-white people for racism, cis vs trans people for transphobia, etc., so that's still not hypocrisy. Just another thing you disagree with.

12.) Aaaaand people criticising street harassment towards women justifies anything from your poster how? I do have some criticisms for that video, though: its racial politics are shitty.

13.) Jackie could've actually been raped. Shocker. Still don't know what this is supposed to prove.

So. All you've managed to actually prove is that you have no idea how to debate for yourself, find decent sources, or that you actually have a clue what a strawman argument is. Feel free to try again, but I'm not promising a reply. This was enough of a time-suck as-is.

TL;DR: How many fields did you have to raze to get enough straw for this poster?