Women, what do you think of "false equivalences"?

Question

Here's an article about working with men's groups:

http://awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Issues-and-Analysis/Men-and-gender-justice-old-debate-new-perspective

It says:

It's certainly the case that many men share with the women in their lives similar experiences of indignity as a result of social and economic oppression. Yet it is important to recognise the real differences in power and privilege experienced by women and men....and avoid glossing over men's accountability.... While it's important to engage with poor men's realities, this should be done without positing men as the "new victims".

'...it was noted that this issue of false equivalence surfaces frequently in discussions of men's own experience of violence. It is not uncommon to hear the statement that "men are also victims of violence at the hands of women". Such comments can be profoundly unhelpful, not least because this violence is nothing like on the same scale as the many forms of violence experienced by women from men. Alan Greig [8] made clear at the IDS symposium that the mere counterposing of women's and men's experience and perpetration of violence is a trap; the challenge is rather to help illuminate the workings and functions of violence within the systems of oppression that organise our different societies, while holding accountable the individuals and institutions (mostly men and male-dominated) that are responsible for enacting this violence."

***I'd appreciate your honest thoughts. If you're an anti-fem answering this, I'm not really interested in the same-old-rhetoric on here that there is no such thing as male-dominance or what-have-you.

And note, I didnt write this...I'm seeking opinions only for curiosity purposes.***

Answer 1

By putting "women" in your question you basically show that you're not interesting in hearing others point of view, you're just looking for answers that fit your prejudice view points.

Answer 2

"Same old rheotoric"? What about the way feminists endlessly carp on about their being "oppressed", then?

I'm an equalist so I abhor feminism and racism.

Answer 3

Part of belonging to a privileged group is that you're used to seeing your group's view as the truth. That makes it easy to dismiss anything people who don't belong to that group say because "they're just whining".

I think it's very important to help male rape or abuse victims (so do most other feminists I know), and I'll do what I can to support those things. But if you're talking about raped or abused women and a man immediately says, "But men are raped and abused, too!" - what he's doing is bringing the conversation back to focus on men. And as a feminist, it would be nice to be able to talk about women's issues without anyone instantly saying, "Let's talk about men's issues instead!"

Answer 4

I know you feel bad and maybe abused and like rascist you want a certain group of people to weep in guilt and shout that they are evil but thats not happening.In this time women are just as abusive as men.They abuse kids,boys sexually and get away with it and they kill people too.They use steroids and show men as monsters on the media so stop it you hatebox.Its not cute.You are just a suck up.

Answer 5

So why did you block my dad after he answered your question?

Did you only want to hear what you wanted to hear?

Answer 6

"If you're an anti-fem answering this, I'm not really interested in the same-old-rhetoric"

Yes Jo, we are well aware that you have no interest in getting to the truth, only backing up the same tired old feminist 'poor us' rhetoric.

Answer 7

MM actually most studies that actually pay attention to DV state its roughly equal on the DV aspects. Others I have seen suggest that occurances of non-reciprocal violence are much higher interms of female on male. It doesnt help much when these days not agreeing with her is enough to be termed violence and have that recorded as DV male on female. So I guess with some really interesting stats like that the stats might be true in the usa now.

Interesting no where in the article did they seem to point to the dv stats that assertion is based on.

.... ya ...as usual then.