Looking for advice. Was I assaulted?

I am pretty sure, Oliver, you misspelled "blabla". I think it is spelled blaH blaH. But I am not 100% positive.

I know. I used the french writing, which has only 2 'bla'. The english has 3 'blah'.

Oh really! So I guess all those women who cut the father of their children out their lives and then bleed them dry through alimony and child support payments are being "oppressed"? Well, as men's rights activists will tell you, men would GLADLY be the assumed caregivers for their children. 1) Because men are fed up with being forcibly cut out of their children's lives by vicious, money grubbing women! 2) These men would gladly take a life of living off of someone else's hard work as opposed to being forced to be wage slaves to women who don't even allow them to see the children they're supporting anyway!



...Except the feminist indoctrinated legal system, and the greedy wives who force their children's fathers out of their lives!



And let's just assume this article (from USA today LOL) is accurate. So what! First of all it doesn't mention which gender is covering the financial burden of elderly parents. And I'm willing to bet it's men! Because the fact is that men foot the bill in pretty much every square inch of society!

But this still isn't a right that men have that women don't. You still haven't answered my challenge.

Here's some other rights that women have that men do not:

~Women have the right to not be sexually mutilated at birth. That's right! Women don't have to worry about their sexual organs being cut up before they are even able to speak. Anyone who would cut a baby girl's sexual organs would be put in jail!

~Women have the right to choose parenthood. If a woman gets pregnant, she alone gets to decide whether the child will live or be aborted. And if she chooses to let it live, she has the right to give it up to the state via 'safe haven' laws. Men on the other hand have ZERO rights to decide what happens with their genetic material after impregnation. If a man doesn't want the woman he impregnated to get an abortion, well he gets no say in it. On the converse side, if the man wants no part in the pregnancy, well the woman has the right to sue him for child support.

Also male birth control is not as ubiquitous as female birth control is.

~Women have the right to call any sort of sex they deem "unpleasent"/not up to their standards RAPE. If a woman decides after the fact that she regrets having sex with a man, she can scream "RAPE!" at the top of her lungs. Even if she had previously consented, and laws like "Yes Means Yes" will give her the authority to throw a man in jail and/or ruin his reputation/livelihood.

LOLOLOLOLOL! Plus 1 gungasnake!

You're right Oliver!

I'm sorry for the PC bullshit.

Here's one for you:

Why did Hitler commit suicide?

Because he looked at his gas bill!!

Friggin foreigners!!! ))))

And see, nononon has a sense of humor! He is just not using it...

That's right! You're a ma soggy nist! Simply because you disagree with a woman!

Sorry Eliusa. All this arguing with hypocrital feminists has dulled my sense of humor.

I enjoy humor wherever it lives. And I can't stand people who act like politically correct wet blankets and ruin everyone else's fun.

My apologize.

Made me laugh... Sorry.

One can joke about everything but not with everybody. I won't entertain such holocaust jokes when speaking with a neonazi, but if a jew tell the same jokes, they can be hilarious. Eliusa is not a man hater. In fact she is desperately in love right now, with the wrong man unfortunately.

The worse thing is that firefly and I actually and objectively agree on many points. But since I am a man, she won't listen to me nor understand a word I say. All she wants is to write walls of text scolding me.

Oh well, I tried.

LOL! Do you understand how many times I've bit my tongue and tried to be nice to her?!?!

She scolds literally ANY man who disagrees with her. But she's not a feminist! Of course not!

Just F her. There is no getting through to her. You've read my responses to her in this thread right? No matter how many facts, and how much logic you lay down, she will scold you if you don't bow down to the mighty God that she worships, which is feminism/gynocentrism/marxism/social justice (...it's all the same thing!)

Again, i consider myself a feminist -- perhaps for lack of a better word, I now realize, because what i really care for is gender equality, including when necessary the protection of boys and men, and evidently the latter has less to do with feminism than I used to think. So should I call myself a gender equalitarian or something?

Whatever. The important, non-semantic point here is that I disagree with some of your arguments to fly. I could expand if you're interested.

Don't call him wrong. It is just a situation we are in...wrong. and fact that I can't find right medication

quoting firefly -

"I'm not sure you understand or differentiate between feminism and simply women's views and perspectives--they are not synonymous. What feminists accomplished was to help make women, as a group, more assertive, so they began speaking up and speaking out more on societal issues of concern to women. Once that starts to happen, and men start listening, seriously listening, and they begin to address those concerns too, you don't need feminism as an advocacy group any more, you can just let women speak for themselves, and advocate for themselves, and organize for themselves, without a defined activist movement called feminism. And that's where I think we are now, or at least we're clearly moving in that direction, which is why I think, in the U.S., feminism is becoming obsolete and unnecessary, and that's fine, it's a natural progression. Once the issues are identified, it's up to the larger society to work on solving them."

Your view on all this is fine with me, your business. I see how you got there. Myself, I'm not interested in saying I don't identify as a feminist, since I see the women interested in equal rights for women as feminists whether or not they are engaged in a formal movement. I don't think the need for caring about feminine rights is going away any time soon.

I agree with Olivier and I gather the N.O.W. platform that this includes care about the rights of men and transgender folks, especially including the caring of all children, boys absolutely.

As an aside, my cousin's oldest boy is a high school teacher, loves it. Or has after he quit the job of vice principal (too much discipline oriented) to go back to the classroom.

That response shows little awareness or understanding of what I was saying to you in the post you were responding to. In no way, was I saying you were misogynist, or a "patriarchal stooge", I said you have blind spots in your thinking about some issues because you fail to understand them from a female perspective, and you need to listen to women, and hear them, if you want to understand why their views differ from yours---I wasn't talking about feminism at all.

What I said was:

I'm not sure you understand or differentiate between feminism and simply women's views and perspectives--they are not synonymous...

I want women to be heard and listened to--otherwise you cannot understand the female perspective on issues based on their life experiences as women. And I don't find you to be a particularly good listener to even the women in this thread. You may respond, to them or to me, but I don't think you really hear what was said, or consider it.

For instance, you keep asserting that patriarchy doesn't exist, you called it tilting at windmills, and you dismiss it as some sort of feminist delusion, but ehBeth, osso, and I, all disagreed with you. Did that cause you to consider you might be wrong? No, you went right on making the same assertion as though you didn't hear us. That's not just a difference of opinion, it's a blind spot you might have as a man because patriarchy doesn't affect you, it privileges you, or it certainly doesn't affect you in the way it would if you were a woman.

Forget about feminism, Oliver, you really don't seem to understand it anyway, and just start listening to women, really listening, if you want to understand where their heads are at. I think you might have lots of male blind spots you aren't even aware of.
http://able2know.org/topic/262626-13#post-5877798

This is essentially no different than saying to a white person in the U.S. they have to start listening to black people, and try to understand the black perspective and experience, if they really want to understand the complaints of the black community about racial profiling, or discriminatory attitudes, or injustice. White people in this country are not subjected to the same life experiences as blacks on the basis of their skin color. If they don't listen to blacks they will never understand the complaints because their perceptions and thought will continue to be riddled with blind spots. All of that polarization became abundantly clear during the Zimmerman case. Even when the President weighed in on his experiences as a black man, which related to racial profiling, there were people who refused to listen and hear him, and called him another "race-baiter".

If men want to understand why women might perceive issues, and situations, and behaviors, differently than they do, they have to listen to women and try to understand their perspective, and their life experiences, just as whites have to listen to blacks and try to understand their perspective on how they view the police, and how they are treated by the police, for instance, based on their life experiences.

If either racial or gender groups want to move beyond adversarial positions, reduce conflicts between then, and effect change from a status quo that may be maintaining inequality, they have to listen empathetically to the complaining group. That's what effects change. For instance, once straight people in this country began listening to the gay and lesbian community present the issue of same sex marriage from a civil rights perspective, and could understand and identify with it in those terms, their blind spots began shrinking and support for same sex marriage gained enormous strength.

And, it goes without saying that women should listen to men, and their gender perspective, on issues like child custody.

None of this means that everyone will wind up agreeing with each other, particularly on how to resolve existing problems, but really listening to each other will help to improve communication and understanding by gaining the other group's perspective on what the problems are.

Don't accuse me of not listening to you because you are a man, because that's just not true. I listen to you quite carefully, I have no difficulty, at all, understanding what you say, and I see blind spots in your thinking because you tend to disregard, dismiss, or ignore, the female perspective on issues, like whether we live in a patriarch, even when they are voiced in this thread by a number of women. That's a comment I am addressing specifically to you, not on the basis of your gender, or because you are a man, but because I see a narrowness in your personal thinking on gender issues.

And none of this has anything to do with feminism, a topic I'm not really particularly interested in discussing, and one you are not particularly well informed about. I'm more interested in promoting better communication and understanding between the genders, and you're the one who's misunderstanding where I'm coming from.

You said that my
I don't want to be patriarchal so i won't discuss my views of feminism with any woman anymore. That of course includes my views on patriarchy, a very feminist concept.

I have even changed my own label. I'm not a 'male feminist' anymore, i am now a 'gender equalitarian'... Sounds like &$@&@ but i guess it's closer to the truth.

N.O.W. continues actively opposing equal custody between mothers and fathers in spite of conclusive research that this is best for children in a divorce. I don't believe that the claim that they care about the rights of men and children is true.

I think that feminism goes beyond the somewhat vague notion of "equal rights"--it's specifically advocating, for instance, for an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. My state just tried to pass an ERA on the state level, and couldn't because the guarantee of abortion and contraceptive rights was a major hurdle they couldn't get bi-partisan agreement on.

N.O.W., as the main advocacy and lobbying group for feminism in the U.S., should be the frame of reference for the issues feminism is currently advocating. These are the issues.
http://now.org/issues/

There is little or no actual discussion of those issues, or N.O.W.'s position on those issues, in these alleged discussions about "feminism". I'm mainly hearing ignorance about feminist issues, and a lot of inaccurate stereotyping about how feminists think and act. I'm personally really not interested in a discussion with that sort of nonsense, or on that level.

Your views are fine with me too.

BTW, I love your new avatar.

A too late edit: I consider plenty of my male friends and associates as feminists as much as female friends and associates are.

On patriarchy, I was raised that women must obey the husband. That is part of why I doubted I'd marry and picked single woman in the world as my vocation when asked by the high school nuns. At that point I had plans to study medicine. I couldn't jibe that with having to honor and obey a husband - how could I find one I would do that obey thing with? It was actually a jesuit taught guy that straightened me out on that some time later, thank goodness.

Plenty of men in the U.S. that I've lived a long time in still expect obedience as due. And I think plenty of women promise that - I've no idea of that present data, but I've an idea where all that comes from.

"I think that feminism goes beyond the somewhat vague notion of "equal rights"--it's specifically advocating, for instance, for an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. My state just tried to pass an ERA on the state level, and couldn't because the guarantee of abortion and contraceptive rights was a major hurdle they couldn't get bi-partisan agreement on."

My feminism goes there too. Grrrr re it not passing.