THIS is the great mystery (and I personally belive: great human fear) since there is no test to measure it and never will be!

All my life I’ve been drawn to books and films and stories about men. All my favorite artists and movie stars are men. Men are my heroes and role models. If you had had asked me two years ago I would have said my ideal society is a society with ONLY men (like the utopia in Fight Club.) They’d have to solve the breeding problem with artificial uteruses but otherwise would be okay.

I even wished I had been a man myself for the longest time, heck if you asked me today what I would chose to be if I had an extra life time I would chose a man. But I eventually grudgingly realised that no matter how much you fantasize about being the other gender you can never “get it” because you are using your own brain to do the fantasizing. Reading Lord of the Rings doesn’t give you understanding of what it feels like to be a man!

Same thing goes for men. I’ve read about some men who had undergone sex reassignment surgery despite not actually having gender dysphoria. They simply felt a strong sexual desire to be a woman because of their testosterone. Once they lost the testosterone, after the surgery, being female lost its appeal. (This kind of misdiagnosis is hopefully extinct by now!)

I say this is the great human fear when it comes to gender - that we’ll never be able to touch “The Other,” that the very essence is so different you can’t share your experiences because they seem and feel different to you. Kind of like a child being taught that the color of bananas and sunflowers is called “blue” - she will never be able to communicate her experience of “the color blue” in any meaningful way to others.

Society consists of structure, and requires a system to produce that structure, a system of social construction. It is possible that a gender system is an inherent characteristic of society, produced by a naturally occurring social construction system that operates outside of the will of any individual or group of individuals.

“Gilesy, please do keep writing those long posts. They’re brilliant.”

No, they are not. They are tedious.

Apart from not attending carefully to what is being said by others, Gilesy tends to back away from arguments by claiming that he is not willing to accept anything that is not supported by ’scientific research’. However, he is quite happy to voice his own opinions without such backing.

He is simply trying to score points.

Besides which social science research these days is too politically sullied for it to be of much scientific value. Much of it is also utterly invalid, mostly because the complexities of real life are way beyond its reach and understanding.

“I wonder if the biological-determinist response of ‘well men shouldn’t be going to uni as much as women cos they love manual labour work more’ ”

This might well be true for a large percentage of men. If so, then so be it.

Gilesy, please do keep writing those long posts. They’re brilliant.

That was a list of points that I’ve collected myself over the past few months. I don’t really know of any other good lists, but perhaps someone else here can help you out?

@Michelle
Thanks for the tip. I’ve read the book and I point to it every now and then when I write about innate gender differences. Simon Baron-Cohen has done some incredible work in that domain.

@james
“While I think that this blog of yours is first-class and a joy to behold, particularly given that it is quite rare to find MRAs with your obvious intelligence and expertise arguing the case for men, the situation in the real world is that politics, power and “the means to persuade”, not science, are what govern where we tend to go.”

I agree that it’s important to present this material in such a way that it can have a real impact. When I write an article for a newspaper, I use a different tone and a different rhetoric than I do here on the blog. Society in general does not premiere a balanced take on a certain issue, it is usually more efficient to be clearly against something, or make a shocking claim. I find that it is a balancing act to be true to myself and still use a language that has an impact.

@Danny
Good points as usual.

One you could have mentoned.

http://www.angryharry.com/esScienceDoesNotHelpVeryMuch.htm

I would like to think that a person could be both MRA and feminist (because frankly I think that if the two movements got on a united front they would be unstoppable) but when I look at the people on each side it seems to me the the main reason they are on that side is because the other side ignores what it important to them (and this works both ways).

Gilesy:
The power lies in the majority opinion, not any radical minority - they just make the grabbing headlines that get people outraged.

james:
You seem to forget that there are numerous laws, policies and attitudes prejudicial to men which now exist as indicated by Pelle. These are not just “opinions” or people “grabbing headlines”, these are real laws, real policies and real attitudes, and they have been inspired by feminism and feminists.

Based on that does it mean that the laws, policies, and attitudes that prejudice against men were put in place by the majority and that said majority does not represent the whole class?

Because if so then I would like to say that for the godzillionth time that the few men at the top with power do not represent the entire gender despite what feminists might say. How often do we hear:

“Men as a class have power” - If we did would we really and actively supporting things that actually hurt us?

“Women as a class have don’t have power” - If so then how have things like the VAWA gone on for so long without being seriously challenged?

What I’m getting at is that men don’t have as much power as people like to assume we do and women have more power than they would like to admit.

““Thirdly, I do not need a peer review article to know, for example, that family breakdown causes numerous problems to many people in society.” So women/men should be kept inside marriages they don’t want to be in?”

You seem to have a problem focusing on what people say, the above quote of yours being another example of this.

! used the phrase “family breakdown” not “marriage”.

Previously, I used the word “article” not “website”.

Further, Randy’s link works for me and it takes me to one single article about the concept of equality.

Once again you seem to be point scoring and avoiding answering directly what is being said.

You said; “Its easy to grab individuals views who most people would disagree with, however how representative is it of your standard feminist? Its like asking, ‘what do muslims believe?’ then asking a terrorist. The power lies in the majority opinion, not any radical minority - they just make the grabbing headlines that get people outraged.”

You seem to forget that there are numerous laws, policies and attitudes prejudicial to men which now exist as indicated by Pelle. These are not just “opinions” or people “grabbing headlines”, these are real laws, real policies and real attitudes, and they have been inspired by feminism and feminists.

Thus, once again, you have avoided what is being said to you. You have been willfully blind to Pelle’s list of male prejudices.

You said; “The stereotype of man-hating feminist I’ve never seen 1st hand in my life. My guess is that they’ve been painted that way to create a particularly easy enemy straw-man.

The second sentence does not quite follow from the first one, does it? It is an obvious attempt at sliding hopefully unnoticed from feminists whom you know “1st hand” to those whom you don’t know “1st hand”.

So, you do not know any man-hating feminists 1st hand. I do not know any female murderers 1st hand. What are we supposed to learn from this?

You said; “Perfect equality I doubt will ever happen”.

If you read the article about equality you might want to readjust your view to “it will never happen”.

Just about the only point of serious significance of yours with which I would concur, and which is of importance to someone like Pelle, is your recognition of the fact that if societies base too much of their structures on biological considerations then men will probably lose out in many ways.

@Pelle

While I think that this blog of yours is first-class and a joy to behold, particularly given that it is quite rare to find MRAs with your obvious intelligence and expertise arguing the case for men, the situation in the real world is that politics, power and “the means to persuade”, not science, are what govern where we tend to go.

To quote His Highness, from whom I got the link to this site; “neither men nor women need to be ‘equal’ to each other in order to be happy with each other”.

The author researched studies with babies and defined the two main types of brains, one formed by higher levels of testosterone while the baby is in the womb, and the other by less: 1) the E-brain (empathetic brain), and 2) the S-brain (systematizing brain).

On average more men than women have the S-brain, and more women have the E-brain.

That is not to say though that there are not cross-overs. I am a women and I scored higher than most men for the S-brain…and my partner, who is a man, scored really high for the E-brain skills and traits. So, it is never 100%…

Book (source):

The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the tTruth about Autism.
By: Simon Baron-Cohen, 2003.