social equity | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

Rereading MSNBC’s article on the first annual International Conference on Men’s Issues, I have to marvel that so firmly has feminism taken hold that even reporters (whose watchword is objectivity) may respond with Pavlovian menace to an act of civil disobedience—which challenging feminism is.

Consider that feminism originates with the 19th-century suffrage movement, that is, with some ragtag groups of women banding together to oppose second-class citizenship and demand the right to vote. Consider, too, that reactions to their early rallies to assert their rights presaged those of the MSNBC reporter who wrote about last month’s men’s conference.

His rhetorical strategies (which, like an apt pupil—or myrmidon—he lifts straight from the feminist playbook) were these:

Underrepresent the opposition. The MSNBC piece is surmounted by a photograph (snapped and cropped by the writer) showing a sparsely populated conference room. Some 16 people are visible if you count the odd pair of hands or feet poking into the frame. Though in a passing nod to journalistic accuracy the writer later reports attendees numbered “more than 100,” the first impression the reader is clearly meant to draw is “handful of nutters.”
Distort and caricature. Quotations featured in the piece were plainly culled for sensationalist impact. Commentary—for example on the phrase equity feminists, coined by a female feminist philosopher whose acumen is redoubtable—was confidently careless and pandering.
Distract. “The conference comes amid increased focus on women’s rights,” the writer observes saliently. Later he quotes a feminist post-grad as saying, “[D]ue to concerns for physical safety, we have decided the best way to oppose the conference that is now going on…is to keep our distance.” The source of fear was unspecified.
Ridicule. Pick a paragraph, any paragraph.

Attacks on the efforts of the early suffragists to have their grievances answered were…right, exactly the same.

Apparently the first annual International Conference on Men’s Issues was held in Michigan recently. I read this fact on the MSNBC website in an article that disdained even to capitalize the title of the conference and which, for more reasons than just that one, reminded me of the days when I edited my high school paper.

My journalism adviser would’ve given the piece a C, among other reasons because it seems uncertain whether it wants to be a news story or an editorial—or an advertisement for its writer’s Twitter feed.

Its introduction, at least, was gripping to read: “At what was billed as the first annual international conference on men’s issues, feminists were ruining everything.” I was keen to hear about how the meeting was disrupted by a mob of angry women swinging truncheons.

I’ve come to expect disappointment, which expectation the reporter continued to cement over an ensuing two dozen paragraphs.

Not having attended the conference, I can’t say whether the reporter’s characterization of its presenters’ arguments as cranky is fair or not. Remarking that he failed to probe any of the topics he glosses in the article, however, does seem fair. A reporter’s job is to ask questions, not assemble a boa of plucked horsefeathers and hyperlinks.

I’m sympathetic to men’s plaints about legal mockeries that trash lives, including those of children, so I found the MSNBC coverage offensively yellow-tinged in more senses than one, but I’m not what feminists call an MRA or “men’s rights activist.” I don’t think men need any rights the Constitution doesn’t already promise them. What they need is for their government to recognize and honor those rights. The objection to feminism is that it has induced the state to act in wanton violation of citizens’ civil entitlements—not just men’s, but women’s, too.

On this subject, something useful the referenced MSNBC article does accomplish is reveal its writer’s unexamined presupposition that women’s rights and what feminists advocate for are the same thing. Probably many women are under the same illusion.

It’s understandable. Feminism still waves the same banner its pioneers sewed decades ago on which is blazoned that rainbow word EQUALITY. Today’s mainstream feminists, however, have redefined that word to mean “whatever’s best for us,” which doesn’t always mean what’s best for women.

To illustrate, take the 60-year-old woman who wrote last year to relate that she was expelled from the home she’d shared for 10 years with her invalid mother and terminally ill brother, whom she nursed, by her sister. The latter spitefully lied about her to the court—possibly because she was the executor of her mother’s will—and then destroyed her belongings, including her clothes and family memorabilia (photos, videos, etc.—a lifetime’s worth) when it was mandated that she vacate her residence. Her sister’s malicious testimony was rendered in a few minutes without the woman’s even being present. Though the fraudulent restraining order it succeeded in having issued was tossed on appeal, the woman’s record was sufficiently corrupted to cost her her job at a bank and the income and medical benefits it provided. When I last heard from her, she was living out of her car and trying to stay warm.

Or take the naïve girl who was lured away from her family, knocked up, and deserted by a twice-divorced pastor’s son. When the girl appealed to him to take an interest nine months later and moved to Virginia with her newborn on assurances from him that he’d found Jesus and wanted to do right by her, he and his family represented her as a hysteric to the court and, when last I got a status update, were in the process of seeking custody of her baby (cf. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”).

These aren’t merely people who “believe” they’ve been treated unfairly; these are women who’ve been used viciously and rolled into the gutter.

Women I’ve corresponded with in the three years I’ve maintained this blog have reported being stripped of their dignity and good repute, their livelihoods, their homes and possessions, and even their children according to prejudicial laws and court processes that are feminist handiworks. These laws and processes favor plaintiffs, who are typically women, so their prejudices are favored by feminists. Feminists decry inequality when it’s non-advantageous. They’re otherwise cool with it. What’s more, when victims of the cause’s interests are women, those victims are just as indifferently shrugged off—as “casualties of war,” perhaps.

I don’t know that feminists are “ruining everything,” but I do know that among the fruits of their industry has been ruining a lot of people’s lives.