Listen to Gavin McInnes rant. He makes up statistics, he raves that having women work goes “against 40,000 years of evolution”.
Women are forced to pretend to be men. They’re feigning this toughness. They’re miserable. Study after study has shown that feminism has made women less happy. They’re not happy in the work force, for the most part. I would guess 7 percent [of women] like not having kids, they want to be CEOs, they like staying at the office all night working on a proposal, and all power to them. But by enforcing that as the norm, you’re pulling these women away from what they naturally want to do, and you’re making them miserable.
His gut tells him that women prefer to live domestic lives. He berates others for citing mere ‘anecdotes’ while declaring that his twisted, baseless view of how the world works to be the absolute truth. McInnes really is committed to his unfounded views about sex roles.
Here’s the cold biological truth: (And it’s not based on fear or sexism or anything else you like to argue about in a classroom) Women’s bodies are not as good at making babies after 30. The hourglass turns upside down at that age and the sand keeps coming out until 35 when it is gone. Yes, I know you can still make babies after that. My mother had my brother at 40 and my youngest boy came out when my wife was 39. These are EXCEPTIONS. Liberals seem to think that one piece of anecdotal evidence completely wipes out mountains of evidence to the contrary. When discussing the vast majority of women, they TEND to prefer family to career and they TEND to want to make babies and they TEND to need to create them in their 20s / early 30s. This isn’t my opinion. It’s a general truth and the fact that simply stating it is controversial, shows how far the pendulum has swung into Crazy Town.
Mary Anne Franks did a great job rebutting him. If you watch the video, McInnes comes off as a total emotional bro-ron; Franks is calm and rational. Jennifer Raff has a much more thorough take-down.
Clearly, McInnes is suffering from excessive testosterone. Damn biology and the way it torments us men with these constant high hormonal levels!
Citations? We don’t need no stinking citations!
He’s talking about himself here. Not women. He’s the one “pretending to be a man,” when he’s just a scared little boy. Pathetic.
Citations are for wusses! Do you want to be a man and exert opinion without verifiable evidence or be a woman and hide behind citations and reasoned logic?
Love it.
Um… in most human cultures, women work far more than men. A big part of feminism is to get out from under these cultural expectations of work.
He interviewed at Sun TV News (Canada’s cheap Fox Newsy channel), and it was much worse. I can’t link properly at the moment, but the video is called ‘when feminists go too far’. In case you are overly happy today and need to tone things down with bullshit.
That was almost too perfect in how he set himself up for rebuttals. Especially when he hurled “fucking idiot” at the only woman on the panel.
Trusts his gut instinct, and in the next sentence denounces other peoples anecdotes.
He was so far out of his league in this conversation, definite case of huffpo being biased towards a false balance by putting him on with the other experts. Or biased towards generating sensational headlines. Fucking media.
Feminism is destroying the mighty male autonomy, give it back, give it back right now! :stamps feet:
Ha. Reminds me of a friend who, in the 1970s was often asked, in social gatherings, “Do you work?*”
She always answered. “Good Lord, yes. I get up in the morning, fix breakfast for my family, then take my hubby to work, then clean the kitchen, then feed the dogs, then work in the garden, then fix lunch, then go to the bank and shopping, then get home and put away groceries, then clean the bathroom, then start supper, then pick up my hubby, ALL of that done with a 3 year old in tow, After supper I do the dishes, fold clothes, give the kid a bath and get him to bed. So yeah, I work.”
The idea that women who don’t work outside the home don’t work (as the idiot in the OP implied) is as offensive as it is stupid.
*This was at the time that the assumption that women stayed home was beginning to die.
Bah, I didn’t read Jennifer’s post before replying. I promise I didn’t plagiarise my third sentence from her, I thought it up with my own brain.
You know, that 7% he pulls out of his ass actually sounds like the rough proportion of MEN who like not having kids, want to be CEOs, and like staying at the office all night working on a proposal…..
Oh, and let’s ignore the fact that some women have been working outside of the home all along. But THOSE women don’t count, right? My people were farmers for generations, and those women worked alongside their husbands keeping the farm in business. After that we were factory workers, then office workers. Women in my family have been working outside of the home for over a century. There were never any SAHM in my working class family, but also never any CEOs.
Arguments like the one McInnes presents come from a distinctly classist perspective that ignores poor women and women of color, who have ALWAYS worked outside of the home.
Amphiox:
No, I wouldn’t say that at all. Traditionally, men have always had an out – they get to breed, pass on the golden seed and all that, without having to sacrifice any time at all, what with being the breadwinner. The notion that the brunt of child raising is 90% on the woman is still alive and healthy. Think for a moment how many men who have kids will say “nah, I have to babysit today” or the like, not “I’m taking care of my kids today”.
He needs to read a good helping of The Way We Never Were. As Chie said, working-class women have been working the whole way through. Women staying at home while their husbands worked outside the home was an oddity of the rich and post-WWII middle class US populations.
Carlie, I love that book! Definitely recommended reading.
I hate “bro-ron” it has an ableist subtext.
Not to mention any “family owned businesses” where one spouse is the manager and one spouse does the trade. And which spouse does which has never been confined to one gender.
While it is close (I love my current job), I prefer my family to my career. I guess my y is changing itself into an x? I mean, am I allowed to love my family, or is it just you stinkin’ libs that make me think I do. I caught myself doing dishes the other day! Oh, god! I even know how to change a diaper. I’m not a real man like from the cereal commercial. I’m so confused, and it’s all my fault for thinking women should be given choices.
When women are accused of behaving like men, what they’re guilty of is behaving like human beings.
Donovan:
Uh oh. I’m afraid it’s too late for you, Donovan, you’ve morphed into a *gasp* parent!
what a pathetic twit. Again, we see one stupid human being sure that women, REAL women of course, only want to breed and take care of children which isn’t really work because, you know, that makes us women “miserable”.
I’d call him a douche but that denigrates douches. And McInnes suffering from too much testosterone? No, not at all. He’s suffering from being a very very scared man.
One of the criticisms of Cordelia Fine’s book “Delusions of Gender” was that it was too ‘scientifically correct’. She had too much science to back it up, which is suddenly a bad thing (?).
Most of my female friends and relatives are having their first kid in their mid thirties, I can only think of a couple who started in their late twenties and none in their early twenties or late teens. We must be freaks.
Telling women they have this very short window of opportunity to have a family is just a scare tactic used by sexists so that women will rush into marriage and not be so picky about who they do it with. The more women gain freedom and human rights, the shorter and shorter the window seems to get.
theoreticalgrrrl:
Trying to impress women with the need to breed young takes care of a few other problems (from the patriarchal view): get knocked up, and you have no time for that extended education business, which means you wouldn’t be able to get a good job anyway, so breed more!
Women taking the time to invest in their education and careers also allows them the time to consider whether or not they actually want to breed.
They’re not happy in the work force…
…as opposed to us men, who are consistently happy with the jobs we get.
And of course in the days when birth control was a series of “home remedies” that included tactics such as falling down stairs, getting punched in the stomach, and drinking various nasty concoctions that could also poison you, it was routine for women to get pregnant over and over and over again well into their 40’s. My uncle did a thorough job with our family tree on his mother’s side, and you could see women who were pregnant with their last child at the same time their oldest daughters were pregnant with their first. Sadly, the other common thing that stopped women from having children into their 40’s was dying in childbirth before reaching the age of 40. Yes, let’s keep celebrating what’s “natural.”
Of course it’s a bad thing! It introduces reality into the
conversationfantasizing, and that is obviously false, not-relevant, and an invention of the controllingReptilian MastersCootie Monsters.Right, becaue that’s exactly what it means to “be in the workforce”. *eyeroll* Men who live like that are pathetic freaks imo.
(Also, I would have guessed 7.234%, just to be on the safe said.)
got an example handy?
Chas:
:Snort: Er, I mean, yes, that sounds much more scientifical!
Best moment; McGinnis tells us his “gut tells me” that women are happier staying at home, then mocks the next speaker for relying on “anecdotal evidence” about his happy successful wife…
Self awareness is not this guy’s strong point. Nor are logic or reasoning…
p.s. to PZ: the penultimate sentence is missing a ‘tos’. Or an ‘ost’, depending on your reading frame.
vexorian raises an interesting point. The implication of “bro-ron” is that Gavin’s difficulties with logic derive from lack of intelligence. Not only is this unfair to developmentally challenged individuals, it also represents a misdiagnosis. It probably takes considerable intelligence to develop delusions of such magnitude and to nurse and nurture them against all the facts reality can throw at them. Mr. McInnes is not unintelligent. Rather, he is stupid–actively using his intelligence to dupe himself into believing falsehoods that for some reason he finds comforting.
@ ChasCPeterson
Here: http://blogs.plos.org/blog/2011/02/11/let%E2%80%99s-say-good-bye-to-the-straw-feminist/
A_Ray:
No, it really doesn’t require intelligence, let alone a considerable amount. Men have held these ideas and ideals for centuries. Again, I recommend reading Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland to those who haven’t read it, so as to have a basic background on this issue.
Speaking as part of “the work force,” I go to work, and do things, for anything from four to twelve hours, which range in likeableness from “I don’t particularly enjoy,” to “feck, this is awful,” and none of which I would consider doing if I wasn’t being paid to do them.
From observation, my experience of work done for pay is typical of most members of “the work force,” male or female.
theoreticalgrrrl: thanks for the link.
However, I read it and all 56 comments with interest, and did not find your claim that “One of the criticisms of Cordelia Fine’s book “Delusions of Gender” was that it was too ‘scientifically correct’. She had too much science to back it up” anywhere in there.
Caine,
Point taken. I do, however, think that those of us who are intelligent have to be especially diligent to avoid fooling ourselves–and more to the point hat it isn’t lack of intelligence that motivates douchebaggery. The unintelligent may believe impossible things. The intelligent sometimes take it as a challenge to believe as many a six impossible things before breakfast.
I’ve always thought that one reason our brains had so many convolutions and crevasses was so we could drop inconvenient facts into them out of sight.
@Chas
Here is the link Fine provides in the blog post to The Psychologist:
http://issuu.com/thepsychologist/docs/psy1110/15
I read it a few years ago, couldn’t remember the exact quote.The actual quote is: “In striving for scientific correctnesss, I would describe the book as relentlessly methodological.”
You know, just for argument’s sake, let’s assume absolutely everything this dickwad has said is absolutely 100% correct. Unless he’s saying that women should be forced to have kids simply because only 7 percent don’t want kids, they should be prevented from being a CEO because that only appeals to 7 percent, and they should be forced to have kids under the age of 30, or banned from having kids after that age because their bodies become progressively worse at handling pregnancy as they get older, those arguments seem to be totally irrelevant.
Oh, and I like how this is ‘enforcing that as the norm’. Maybe he’s having problems seeing what it actually is (simply failing to prevent women from doing these things) because he can’t see women as being capable of deciding for themselves whether they put family or career first (or even try to have both), or decide whether to have kids when they’re ‘too old’, despite any risks that may or may not entail.
I agree with ARIDS’ point. I think of my ex-boyfriend, who, after breaking up with me, joined up with the very repressive 12 Tribes Christian cult group. He’s a very very smart guy who, prior to that, was liberal, progressive, and as far as I could tell, bisexual or gay. Now that he’s in the 12 Tribes, he’s not just against all those things, he’s one of the coordinators of the propaganda they use to justify telling people that it’s wrong to go against their interpretation of the Bible’s strict gender roles. Being intelligent doesn’t make it less likely that you’ll fall for a false belief. However, it does mean that you’ve got more resources at your disposal to justify your beliefs, be they true or false.
Thanks to theocraticgrrrl and Caine for those book recommendations. Been meaning to do some reading on feminism for quite some time and am glad to know where to start!
Oh, and if you are in a good mood I do not recommend Gavin McInnes’ twitter account. Misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and general toxic machismo galore. Nasty arsepimple of a man.
One would think that if women were so hard wired towards gender roles, we wouldn’t need people like McInnes telling us that we’re doing it wrong.
Kinda like the repressive traditional cultures of the world. “Women hate sex! No really, it’s a fact! That’s why we have to lock them up to make sure they don’t go off having it with the wrong man.”
well Becca that is your first mistake thinking about these things. You need to just accept that McInnes has done all the thinking for us and has decided against all the conflicting arguments and evidence to the contrary that he is right and this is really how things are!
I’m sure that there is a reason all this bad stuff happening but as I have grown old my ability to think paranoid has diminished so if it is the homosexual agenda, the horrible leftist cabal bent on the destruction of western civilization or the devil sent to torment us mere mortals I do not know but am willing to accept instruction from my betters like mr McInnes
ya sure!
uncle frogy
Wonder what he thinks those women were doing most of that 40,000 years, if not working all that time and very hard. Some of this notion of the stay-at-home mom is actually the new thing. Except for privileged classes where a few men could afford to “keep” a few women, women have always been in the work force right along side the men. Whether it was hunting and gathering or pulling the plow, everyone’s sweat was essential for survival and women were sweating too. And of course, women and children provided much of the labor force for the Industrial Revolution.
So it seems to me that Mr. McInnes is the one running against the tide of 40,000 years of evolution…much less the several million before that.
As an off-hand guess which is just that, the “7 percent” figure is probably implying that those are the gay ones. That’s a figure for the gay population I’ve heard a bit.
Why are nerdy dudebros so cool with 40,000 of history that says (yeah, I know) a woman’s place is in the home, but not with the 40,000 years of history that says a nerd’s place is stuffed in a locker trying to mend a pair of glasses with masking tape?
Ah, but you see, the problem is in the thinking. That’s a dangerous thing for a
womancootiehost to do. Thinking overheats the female brain, traumatizing the cooties and forcing them to swarm to the nearest place of safety (obviously the man). Which means the man is now severely infected and must, must, insert his penis into every female he can jump on to relieve the infection and return the cooties.If you kept your cooties to yourself we won’t have all these problems. So stop thinking! Now. Do your proper gender role/duty and keep those nasty cooties to yourself.
When women are given a choice, and I mean a real able to say no and walk away without consequences choice, then guess what – we do choose something else for ourselves other than the servitude that the misogynists declare to be so natural. This is what scares men like this so much, that we will make our own choices, and that doesn’t include being their servants and fuck-toys.
Inflection:
I doubt it, as most people want children, even those gay ones.
There is this glaring absence of creativity in the thought processes of bigots; no understanding that any person can live a unique life. All women must live exactly like other women so that all men can live exactly like other men, and once we’re all the same we will be happy because we won’t know what we’re missing – except for that gnawing, nameless dread as we go to sleep. This refusal to ask “what if?” isn’t hard nosed realism, it’s cowardice.
Not happy in the work force, hmmmmm.
Who wouldn’t be unhappy making a fraction of what men make while doing the same or more work. You want to see unhappy, cut my salary and increase my workload and you’ll see a whole new level of cranky.
Well, it comes always down to that: The bitches aren’t having enough children, all sired by their rightful owner.
It’s the sluts that think they can have it all, a job, a career even, and some cock, maybe kids and neither do they ask for permission nor do they pay the respect those guys think they’re so clearly due.
Also, that video was fun to watch. You got the impression they had just invited him to illustrate their point.
Well, it comes always down to that: The b****es aren’t having enough children, all sired by their rightful owner.
It’s the s****s that think they can have it all, a job, a career even, and some cock, maybe kids and neither do they ask for permission nor do they pay the respect those guys think they’re so clearly due.
Also, that video was fun to watch. You got the impression they had just invited him to illustrate their point.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space @ 31
I think the complaints against bro-ron have legitimacy due to the association with moron and the splash damage that may cause. However, I read it earlier as bro culture affecting the emotional (the adjective immediately prior to “bro-ron” was “emotional” after all) abilities of McInnes. I think a better substitute to avoid the “moron” association would have been “emotionally blinkered” or just plain “blinkered”. I’m also rescinding my earlier appreciation for the word.
I have truly never understood what could possibly be appealing about conformity. Whether complaining about the punks with the purple mohawks or the gays, guys and gals who don’t play The Assigned Gender Role…why on earth would anyone advocate for a lack of diversity, of stimulation in life? is 60 years of gray block buildings, cubicle work and cookie cutter routine before falling apart and dying, repeated generation by generation, really something that people want? Incomprehensible.
I apologize in advance for the trojan horsing, off topicing and personal armying, but I’m wondering if anyone had in mind any good articles etc regarding feminism and video games? My English class requires a research essay and the topic I chose was “Why is it important for video games to increase the role of female characters as story complexity and popularity increase?” When I finish the essay I probably won’t be answering exactly that question but it’s the idea. Obviously I have found my own sources as well, but the more the better and I thought this crowd might have found some good ones.
I’ve watched Anita Sarkeesian’s series (it was the inspiration for this topic) so I’ll definitely be using that. And I apologize if I would have been better posting in the lounge, or not at all – I don’t often read the comments so I don’t know the culture here very well.
@rpjohnston:
It’s appealing because being and feeling different can be alienating and lonely.
In my experience with cognitive-behavioural therapy in a group setting for instance, people with depression can feel as if they’re ‘broken’: that they’re the only ones that feel the way they do, and ‘normal’, healthy humans just can’t understand, and probably shouldn’t, because only a broken person would think/feel that way, and broken people are wrong somehow.
Given that context, it’s sometimes very relieving (as well as therapeutic) to learn that such a perspective is not only common among people with depression, it often traces back to a time when such thoughts and feelings were adaptive, rather than maladaptive.
Personally, as a young child, I hated hearing all that “You’re special and unique” bullshit from teachers and the curriculum. I got that loud and clear when the other boys wanted to trade hockey cards or talk about cars. I would have loved to hear “you’re common and ordinary” instead. Would have saved me a lot of existential angst in junior high.
Of course, that’s just my perspective.
Anthony,
Different experiences, but I share the sentiment.
And the person most able to tell what a woman naturally wants to do is, of course, a man.
Because our pink fluffy lady brains aren’t even able to think about what we like to do by themselves.
Any one would hate to be the woman in McInnes’ dreams. Or should I say grand delusions. It would be so claustrophobic and devoid of colour. Like living in tyranny.
Anthony K @ 55
And for what works for you and for people who feel like you do, that’s absolutely valid and should be respected. I wish that it was.
At the other end of the spectrum, it upsets me when I’m trying to talk about something that I know for a fact isn’t common and ordinary and people try to convince me that it is. This is especially aggravating pretty much every time I say something about my gender identity and a bunch of binary cis people pipe up to talk about how everybody feels that way. It’s stifling and makes me feel like shit.
Special and unique? No, and that’s not something I’m striving to be. Experiencing life in a way that is unlikely to be exactly like the life of whatever random person is currently talking to me? Probably.
Thanks for that, Mellow Monkey. I’m ashamed because I know that I’ve done that in the past, but I promise I’ll remember your words so as to not do that in the future.
Anthony K @46:
Harry Potter is 40 000 years old? :O
Since when have women not worked?
There would be many bal maidens and fish wives who would disagree;
Sarah Guppy, Tabitha Babbit, Louisa Courtauld, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper and Stephanie Kwolek would definitely disagree;
The female gladiators of the Roman Empire would probably find it difficult to stop laughing.
Every woman who pulled a plough because the family mule had died or who bent double reaping the grain with a mediaeval reaping hook, spinners hoisting a mass of wet linen fibre up on a distaff would kick Gavin McInnes buttocks back into his romper room.
Women have always worked, worked hard and worked exceptionally.
The comments on Jezebel are a hoot: Vice co-founder throws epic tantrum about women defying [his idea of] gender roles. Women have always worked, usually carrying babies as well. Same old, same old.