Looking for advice. Was I assaulted?

God help you, boy. Keep your distance.

Why would misandry be any different from misogyny, in the way we approach it? Any discrimination is bad, nuf said.

Edit: i mean, my way is to confront such prejudice where I see it. I don't run away.

I was thinking that it might not be a public school situation. Then, being me, I think of catholic, or fundamental christian schools, but that doesn't jive with tank top with weak if any bra. Unless the lad was a major scooper while being untangled.

You assume PUBLIC. She just said 'school'. Could be private.


Whitebars is not mentally ill.

and even then could have been non sexual.

It may be odd fiction, but it's also meant to reinforce the very questionable argument that boys are falling behind in school because the school classroom environment and curriculum in elementary school is better suited to girls' success, and that the preponderance of female teachers on the elementary level don't know how to handle active little boys' behaviors which is why they are often considered hyperactive and placed on medication. That notion has also been floated around by some in the A2K anti-feminist/anti-female contingent in other threads. It's a repetition of the views of a noted anti-feminist, Christina Hoff Sommers

The author/creator of whitebars made sure to touch on all of those points in how the little boy in question was perceived by her--by the end, he was being seen as constantly aggressive--and the terminology whitebars uses is verbatim the language Christina Hoff Sommers attributes to the feminists she sees as responsible for boys falling behind in school. The purpose of whitebars, as a fictional creation in this thread, is to serve as an ideological tool for its anti-feminist creator, allegedly to show that feminists are waging a war on boys in our classrooms, just as Sommers claims, by having this fictional character sound exactly like the negative feminist stereotype Sommers conjures up--that exactness of language is another dead-give-away that this is anti-feminist propaganda--straight out of Christina Hoff Sommer's mouth, thinly disguised as an allegedly real teacher asking for our advice.

What's wrong with the argument that boys are being disadvantaged by feminists and female teachers is that most elementary school teachers have always been women, nothing has changed in that regard to account for any recent falling behind by boys. Being an elementary school teacher was traditionally regarded as "women's work", one step removed from child care, and for men it was considered a low status occupation and not particularly desirable, so the job went to women really by default, sort of the way nursing used to be. I also suspect that, in the past, men who were too desirous of working with young children were regarded as possible pedophiles.

And active little boys have always been active little boys, and they didn't, apparently, manifest particular behavioral problems in the elementary school classroom, or with academic success on the elementary level, in the past. And a genuinely hyperactive child is going to be hyper in all situations, and not just in a relatively sedentary classroom setting, and to have beyond the norm impulse control problems that manifest in other situations as well, and it's not female teachers, or feminists, who diagnose and prescribe medication for these problems it's physicians, based mainly on parental reports and their own tests and observations.

And boys seem to be falling behind in college and graduate school admission and graduation rates as well. Even on the high school level, girls are now excelling the boys' grades even in science and math.

I don't doubt that something may be going on with today's boys and school, but I do doubt that it's due to a prevalence of female teachers on the elementary level, or to an elementary curriculum that is designed to favor girls, or to the influence of feminists who allegedly want little boys to be as well behaved as little girls.

Why not look at the fact that we generally value and reward athletic prowess and success for boys much more than we do their academic success and high grades--being on a sports team is seen as much more "masculine" and "cool" than having the top grades in the class.

Why not look at the time spent by young boys playing video games, which deliver high levels of stimulation and excitation, and require constant responses, and which might predispose some male children to a higher need for stimulation and a lower tolerance for situations, like a classroom, where ongoing stimulation is largely absent. These games certainly can acquire addictive properties, particularly in older children, and they weren't around generations ago when boys weren't manifesting the sort of school-related problems being seen today.

Anyway, whitebars' creator really should have credited the well known anti-feminist, Christina Hoff Sommers, for the ersatz feminist dialogue coming out of whitebars' mouth--it's Sommers' negative view of feminist teachers, to a T.

You know real life people who speak exclusively in the clichés and catchphrases and buzz words of a particular ideology--any ideology?

Someone who does that might well be considered to have a form of Autism.

They wouldn't be teaching in any school.

I've not read up on that. No present opinions. I've a relative who is an expert on hyperactivity, and she seems to have diagnosed all of us with it, my only half kidding.
I might not disagree with that "antifeminist stance" you mention as I have thought similar - but I don't get why it is tied to anti feminism. I don't know enough to argue one way or another.

I've been reading a NYer article about parents talking with children, by Margaret Talbot, interesting and fairly complex re opinion pros and cons, all pro at first and later with the 'not so fasts'.

That's exactly why the bourgeois oligarchy, which brainwashes generation after generation of our decadent nation's young into a state of false consciousness in our fascist school system, won't let me teach! Damn them to historical obsolescence...

That, or Sommers may have a point...

Has anyone heard about about the standard of American education compared to other countries lately?

In my youth, I have been unfortunate enough to meet with a number of young ideological people, communists, fascists and islamists in particular, who spoke exclusively in their respective clichés, yes.

On message boards, you see them a lot because ideologues are vocal activists.

Only once their "shield" of clichés is broken, when they start to allow room for doubt (something which tends to happen to people growing old) can one see the real person behind the ideologue.

Feminism, like all political ideas, can bread its own type of ideologues. In fact that's the easy path. For a political movement, remaining free of 'dogma' is much harder than publishing a manifest and aligning everybody behind it.

Ok, this has gotten ridiculous. I'm going to very quickly address "whitebars", because I'm now almost certain this person is a troll, then I'm going to address the much more serious problem of people here taking firefly's brand of radical (i.e. mainstream) feminism seriously.


Whitebars has now both called me a "rape apologist", and a "pedophile". Not only that, she has endorsed cutting men's penises off.

I challenge anyone here to find ANYTHING I've ever posted, where I advocate either rape or pedophilia. And that includes you whitebars. Find me something I've said and quote me.

But Like I said, whitebars is most likely not real. On to much more disturbing comments here...



The education system is in fact overrun by feminist ideology. Do I really need to call hawkeye in here? Do you ever think before you speak firefly? Young boys are disciplined and put on mind altering drugs like ritalin just for acting the normal way that boys act. Because our feminist educational system punishes boys just for being male. It treats them like subhuman dogs that need to "domesticated" (i.e. act more like little girls). Boys are far behind girls in our educational system. And this goes all the way up through college where feminism and phony rape culture has run amuck, and there are more women obtaining degrees because men are afraid to set foot on college campuses because of phony rape claims. But let's just step back and look at elementary education. How many female feminist teachers are there as opposed to male teachers? Is it any wonder that males are disparaged by society at large when we're raising the minds of the future with almost entirely only female, feminist authority figures?




100% bullshit firefly. Children have been removed for behavior like this. In our paranoid culture, children have even been removed simply because of making a gun shape with their fingers and saying "bang!" The sad truth is that helicopter parenting, political correctness, and hate mongering feminism have rendered the children of today under an ever scrutinizing microscope, such that almost ANY behavior can be deemed "deviant".



How is this the essence of feminism? Explain that to the hundreds of thousands of man hating feminists on tumblr! Dictionary definitions are not the same thing as REAL LIFE BEHAVIOR.



And here's how Hillary Clinton values female life versus male life:

"Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children." ~Hillary Clinton.

That's your hero firefly^ Apparently to her, women who lose husbands suffer more because they've lost their meal ticket than you know, MEN WHO ACTUALLY LOSE THEIR MOTHERFUCKING LIVES! And this is another great example of hypergamy in regards to it being an inherent trait in women. Instead of pointing out the brave sacrifice that soldiers who have died in battle have made, Clinton plays a violin for women, because they can't rely on someone else's hard work to support them and may have to work themselves. I hate to break it to Clinton, but PLENTY of men out there are widowers, and those men don't wine and cry and yell "Poor me!" because they have to support their children alone. I'm sure they hurt, and it's terrible whenever someone you love dies, but men do what they've always done: They get a job and support their kids. Because they have to! Society has no sympathy for men who are deadbeat dads. On the flip side, let's not forget that women are the VAST majority of people who receive government handouts such as welfare.



Well! Let's take a sobering look at some of the most famous MAINSTREAM feminists, shall we!

~Jessica Valenti. Another one of firefly's heroes. Valenti has said that men's pay should be reduced across the board in order to make it "equal" to women. Nevermind that pesky concept of actually EARNING what you are paid, Valenti would rather penalize men who have made the CHOICE to work harder jobs and longer hours, while rewarding women for CHOOSING to work less dangerous jobs and less hours.

In the wake of the UVA rape debacle, Valenti (along with other well known MAINSTREAM feminists such as Zerlina Maxwell) has stated that claims of rape should ALWAYS be believed regardless of any lack of evidence. She states: "I choose to believe Jackie. I lose nothing by doing so, even if I’m later proven wrong".

Valenti has also appeared in the famous picture where she wore a t-shirt that reads "I bathe in male tears", while smiling and frolicking on a beach. Apparently making fun of the suffering of an entire group of people (men) is very funny to her. And let's never forget what firefly had to say about this:

http://able2know.org/topic/257742-27#post-5808760

By default through firefly's statement, she is condoning anyone who makes light of the suffering of an entire group of people by wearing slogans like:

~I bathe in Muslim tears
~I bathe in faggot tears
~I bathe spic tears
~I bathe in Jew tears
~I bathe in nigger tears
~I bathe in rape victim tears

But continuing on...


~Amanda Hess. Among her other numerous misandrist instances, while writing for Slate, she stated that Hope Solo should be held to different standards (and in fact she has been because of our culture that doesn't hold women accountable!) than Ray Rice simply because she's a woman. Even though both Rice and Solo were both perpetrators of domestic violence!


~Lena Dunham. Dunham wrote a chapter in her memoir about sexually fondling her UNDERAGE sister. When she was criticised for being a pedophile, and engaging in sexual abuse she claimed that those criticising her were "MISOGYNISTS". She also falsely accused a man she went to school with with raping her. He has been proven innocent, but since his identity has become public, he has been harassed, bullied and stalked.


~Anita Sarkessian. She swindled over half a million dollars from the public by faking threats against herself. The police have even stated publicly that the threats against her are not of a serious nature, and likely from sock puppet accounts. And yet through her "women are poor victims" narrative, she's accumulated over a HALF MILLION DOLLARS in donations. She's also been crusading for censorship/banning of video games that feminist dogma deem "unsuitable" for the public to choose to play OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL. She's also publicly stated that ALL violence is a direct result of masculinity. As if only males commit violence!


~Sheryl Sandberg. This one is a great example of how feminists tend to be both misandrists and misogynists at the same time. Sandberg started the "Ban Bossy" campaign, the message being that 1) The word bossy should be banned (censorship again, feminists LOVE censorship) 2) When girls are called "bossy", that one word has so much power that it crushes all hope of that girl ever being successful later in life. So what Sandberg is doing is infantilizing women. She's pushing the message that women are so inept, so utterly incapable as human beings that one word is enough to stop them from ever achieving anything. That is incredibly misogynistic, and condescending.


~Rebecca Watson. She became most famous for claiming that she had been "attacked" when a man in an elevator with her politely asked if she would like to get a cup of coffee with him. She publicly decried this man a misogynist and compared him to a rapist. Watson has also publicly stated that she endorses "doxing" (making public of highly personal information such as social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, etc) of people that oppose feminism, with the hope that these people will meet with proxy harassment and violence.


~Andrea Dworkin. Who famously stated that ALL penis in vagina sex is equal to raping of women, including consensual sex.


~This statement has been echoed by Harvard law school professor and lawyer Catherine MacKinnon, who said ""All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman." MacKinnon has also said "Feminism is built on believing women's accounts of sexual use and abuse by men.", and ""Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism."


~American feminist activist and author Susan Brownmiller has said ""[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."


~Marilyn French a well known feminist and university professor has said "Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relationships with men, in their relationships with women, all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes"


~Judith Levine a feminist author has written for Harper's, The New York Times, Vogue and many other publications. She has stated "Men's sexuality is mean and violent, and men so powerful that they can 'reach WITHIN women to ****/construct us from the inside out.' Satan-like, men possess women, making their wicked fantasies and desires women's own. A woman who has sex with a man, therefore, does so against her will, 'even if she does not feel forced.'


~American feminist, teacher, and activist Sally Miller Gearhart has said "The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race." So I guess genocide is A Ok with feminists!


And I could go on and on. Feel free to Google any of this information. It's all easily accessible. These are not fringe feminists on the outskirts of society; these are well known major MAINSTREAM feminist figures. People that are teaching in universities and contributing to mainstream media! This is what mainstream feminism is. It's bat **** lunacy at it's absolute craziest. There is no way that firefly can deny that all these women and more aren't part of mainstream feminism.

This is what a feminist looks like...




People are free to come to whatever (misguided) conclusion they wish. That's the great thing about free will! But what people need to understand is that feminism and women are two distinct and separate things. They are not one and the same. Feminism is an ideology. Women are a group of people. An attack on feminism is not an attack on women, and if someone chooses to view it as such, that's their own problem.

And despite the fact that feminism is more unpopular than ever, and the vast majority of women don't even identify as feminists, we still have these myths being perpetuated that if you disagree with feminism you are by default a misogynist. And part of the reason that is, is because feminism is a billion dollar propaganda machine that has a stranglehold on education, government, and the media. Feminism bullies people into submission! Just look at the backlash that women receive when they publicly state that they're not feminists. Go read up on Kaley Cuoco, Shailene Woodley, Kirsten Dunst.

And let's not forget that there are plenty of women out there who are proud to wear labels like "Anti-feminist", because they are sick to death of being infantilized by feminists. They're sick of seeing the men they love being marginalized and demonized by feminists. Beautiful, compassionate, intelligent women like Karen Straughn who gave this moving speech about how feminism is OPTIONAL, not mandatory for everyone including women.





Are you so lazy that you can't even do a simple Google search on Sommers firefly? Sommers is a feminist, NOT an anti-feminist. She states this repeatedly in her work, which by the way is well researched and backed by evidence. But then evidence it would seem is something that you have an allergy to.




And again here you are confusing females and feminists. They are not one and the same. Feminist influence on education has steadily increased to the stranglehold that it is now over the past 50 or so years. YES, most teachers have always been women, BUT not all women are feminists and it's only been in recent history (again about 50 yrs) that feminists have monopolized the education system.

It's a very simple concept that you seem to be having trouble with so I'm going to try to explain it slowly and clearly to you like I would a child in hopes you will understand:

Woman = human being

Feminism = ideology

Women Feminism.

Do you understand now???




And this is still true today, and it's one of many examples of how men are openly discriminated against in society. For instance on some airlines men are not allowed to sit next to unaccompanied minors.



Like I've said, it's likely that whitebars is a troll. But what gives her away isn't her catchphrases or the MAINSTREAM feminist sentiments that's she's echoing. What gives her away is her bad writing, lack of creativity, and over the top cartoonish anger at people like myself. Even if she is an imposter, she's a eerily accurate (albeit dullard) mirror reflection of what mainstream feminism really is.

Sommers (a feminist) has a whole lot of great points backed by research and facts!

Give her youtube channel a try!

I don't have to. I can pretty much guess what she'll say...

(1) When men surpass women in earnings it's because women have chosen not to do the hard work.

(2) When girls surpass boys in school it's not because girls have simply chosen to work harder.

Now back to my regularly scheduled program whereby my learning may actually progress.

1) That's not what she's saying.

2) Listen to what you're saying. You're saying that you have the right to decry something or someone, or to put words in that person's mouth without first listening to what they have to say.

When I speak about the ills of feminism I use examples of their behavior and their actual words. I've studied feminism extensively. Because not only do I know that as a critic I will be expected to be knowledgeable on a given subject, but I also know that the best weapon against any opponent is exposing their misdeeds for all to see. To be armed with the knowledge of their fallacies.

If you choose to live in ignorance that's your choice.

If there are 10,000 books in a library, then there isn't time to read them all, and I am not choosing to "live in ignorance" just because I pass by a few tomes that don't look particularly insightful.

I generally don't waste mental energy on paid AEI shills. Life is short.

I'm currently reading Daniel Dennett on Darwinism and Ursula Le Guin on anarcho-syndicalism -- both far more interesting reads than the ideas of someone who's mainly famous because her works further the goals of the monied establishment and its agenda.

===

I don't put words into anyone's mouth. I've heard you argue plenty of times that:

(1) When men surpass women in earnings it's because women have chosen not to do the hard work.

(2) When girls surpass boys in school it's not because girls have simply chosen to work harder.

...although not in those precise words and in such close juxtaposition, because that would expose your flip-flopping for what it is.

(Simultaneous support for claims 1 and 2 can also be found on Sommers' Wikipedia page.)

Thanks for Sommers' video. She seems serious and she cites her sources, a good sign. I'll try and check a few of her courses.
I came to learn of the phenomenon of male exclusion from school in the Caribbeans, where Prof Herbert Gayle from Jamaica (University of the West Indies) has studied gang violence and its social determinants for years. His theory is that society MUST start to pay attention to boys' needs, or it will come to regret it... He's a serious researcher, and has taken a lot of risks to do study gangs in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries affected by the problem (e.g. Belize).


http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Anthropologist-says-societal-neglect-of-J-can-males-breeds-rapists_13017136

And policies are being put in place: in Belize, the stipend that poor families and single mothers receive for sending their kids to school is now slightly more for boys than for girls, to provide an additional incentive to keep boys at school.

It would be extremely difficult for anyone to take my alleged "brand of radical (i.e. mainstream) feminism seriously" because I've never expressed or endorsed such views.

I have no "brand" of feminism because I'm not a feminist, I pay little attention to current feminist thinkers, and I find your obsession with feminists and feminism bordering on the comical, particularly when you declare, quite illogically, that a "radical" segment of a movement equates with being "mainstream"--by definition, a radical subgroup is not mainstream, it's a radical off--shoot that deviates from more mainstream, or prevalent, or less extreme, group norms or philosophical positions.

Why on earth would I regard her as a "hero"--and why are you peddling such a blatant untruth about me?

You cannot make a rational, or even credible, argument for your positions because you engage in willful distortions, comments completely taken out of context, and assert claims that lack any basis in research, and often in common sense as well, while ignoring counter-arguments and evidence that contradicts your position. You have a serious lack of ability to think critically, and you continually assert you have countered opposing views when you have done no such thing. You couldn't be less convincing.

Do you really think that Hillary Clinton is unaware of the fact that men die in wars? Does that diminish, or make insignificant, the grief of women who have lost their sons or husbands or brothers to wars? Do you really think that the only suffering of women, as the result of war or conflicts, is due to the fact "they have lost their meal ticket" and "may have to work themselves"? Where is your compassion, or even basic understanding, of the toll that wars and conflicts take on women, on a global level? Are you aware of what women and girls in Africa have been subjected to in just the past year --kidnappings, rapes, being sold into slavery, in significant numbers. Women in war torn countries, in places like the Middle East, who lose their fathers or husbands in conflicts, and often their homes as well, can't just go out and look for a job, they are left in the midst of conflicts extremely vulnerable and are often victimized. You make an idiotic big deal out of a sweatshirt Jessica Valenti wore to the beach--as a joke to irritate men's rights activists like you--but one that says "I Bathe in Women's Tears" might suit you quite well, given how indifferent you are to the suffering, and human rights violations, of women, on a global level, and how you do nothing but minimize and trivialize it, when you're not outright ignoring it.

Your misogyny comes across loud and clear. Your basic attitude toward women is hostile.

When did Hawkeye become the expert on the American education system? He relies on the same anti-feminist claims of Christina Hoff Sommers that you do---and both of you ignore the wide-spread criticisms and counter-arguments leveled at Sommers assertions.


If you think that boys are put on mind-altering drugs " just for acting the normal way that boys act" you don't understand the diagnostic difference between abnormal hyperactivity/attention deficit and normal age-related gender-related impulse control ability. There is a definite deviation from the norm in the case of ADHD--the age related norm for boys. And your issue is with the medical profession, particularly pediatric psychiatry, and not with feminism or feminist teachers, because that's who diagnoses and treats these impulse control disorders, which are psychiatric conditions that can be extremely disabling to a child's overall functioning, and not just in a classroom. Most boys do not suffer from this condition, and most boys are not on medication.

When I went to school, back in the dark ages, long before second-wave feminism ever reared its head, the boys in my elementary school classes were able to remain in their seats, raise their hands before speaking, refrain from disruptive behavior in class, attend to what the teacher was saying (and all of our elementary school teachers were female), and complete their assignments and class work. Weren't "boys being boys" back then too? How come they didn't need to be "domesticated" back then, when their classroom behavior didn't essentially deviate from that of girls? When you went to school, were you treated like a "sub-human dog?" If so, didn't your parents object?

They are not far behind, but they do tend to be behind--on a global level--so the problem is unlikely to be related to any alleged negative influence of feminist teachers in the American school systems.

You're ignoring the fact that most men are mainstream "feminists" these days, including the President and Vice President of the United States. Male teachers would probably be just as likely as female teachers to be "feminists" now--notions of gender equality have become as culturally ingrained as notions of racial equality. And most feminists are not man-haters, and never were man-haters, despite your absurd attempts to characterize them that way.

Who says that "males are disparaged by society at large"? Aren't they still firmly in control of the government, the media, the financial industry, the corporate sector, etc.--and earning more money than women?

And most men are not raised with "almost entirely only female, feminist authority figures"---if they have fathers who are actively involved in their children's lives and serve as role models and authority figures for their children. And what about all the male coaches of boys sports teams and male scout leaders?

Now that's absolute bull ****.

How about considering the possibly that women are now more highly motivated to succeed, and more focused on career goals, and that they consequently work harder, and longer than men, to attain academic success, and that men are not currently willing to put in comparable effort.

You once posted a link to an article that helped to explain why young men might be less successful academically, and even socially, now--because they tend to retreat into viewing pornography, playing video games, and drinking excessively. I found that very interesting, and it certainly does help to explain how competing leisure interests--like viewing internet porn, and playing video games--might take precedence over academic motivations and involvements, since these are forms of more intense stimulation, and immediate gratifications, and they are available at will. And these are also forms of "entertainment" that past generations of young men, and boys, did not have available to distract them from more scholarly pursuits.

Your paranoid obsession with feminists became boring a long time ago, particularly since your views of feminism are rather warped, distorted, and just inaccurate. Your views of feminism are like the sort of person who views all Muslim Americans as dangerous, and committed to engaging in a holy war and terrorism against our country, because a very very small number of them might hold such radical/extremist views.

You're also unable to distinguish between feminist thinking, and philosophical positions, and the views of average women when they complain about things like being subjected to catcalls on the street, or sexual harassment on their campuses, or Republican attempts to limit abortion rights, or the fact that some men keep leaving the toilet seat up. And your attitude toward women in general is hostile--which is why you've previously announced you don't want to marry one.

And, just for your information, this is also a feminist...and she was shot in the head for being a feminist activist.



Malala Yousafzai--co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, is also the youngest person to ever receive that award.