So evidently some Going Their Own Way (separatist MRA) men have so much spare time on their hands that they're (at least talking about) setting up straw-feminist websites in order to... discredit feminism.

David Futrelle has the scoop.

Eventually, our false flag bloggers will coordinate with our legitimate bloggers and have “debates” where both sides are controlled by us.

...

If you feel you are getting really good at this, attack some prominent feminists for not being feminist enough. I don’t even know what that would mean, but, hey, this is feminism. Nonsense is our bread and butter.

Source: ManBoobz

I don't get it. If feminism was actually all that bad you'd think GTOWs wouldn't need to make shit up.  If it's not actually all that bad then why bother?

Update #1: The term of art is evidently "false-flag blogging."

Update #2: Reading further down Futrelle's post it looks like a bunch of racist false-flaggers say whenever they try to pretend to racist cartoon stereotypes of African-American "ghetto" types they're always outed.  (Gee, wonder how that could happen?)

Update #3: Hmm.  Knowing that there are already separatist woman-hater GTOW/MRAs false-flag blogs, the odds go waaaay up that over-the-top "feminist" bloggers like "JusticeWalks" was actually a sock-puppeting MRA, and that their posts asserting moronic crap like "feminists should refuse to nurture their male infants" was calculated provocation.

Ok, so this is fairly long post inspired by a NSWATM post. It's about the question of whether someone who thinks him or herself a feminist could ever imagine there could ever be a circumstance where Becker's actions could be justified in contemporary, non-fringe feminist terms. The answer isn't just no in humanitarian terms, nor is it just no in never-blame-the-victim terms. It's no in terms of 40 years of feminist activism!

While pondering the problem of blaming the victim in response to limited but loud reactions to the Catherine Kieu Becker, DoctorMindBeam said

You might’ve heard about Catherine Kieu Becker, the woman who recently attacked and mutilated her husband, apparently without provocation. If you haven’t, here’s the short version of the story: They were estranged, and he had filed for divorce. She drugged him, tied him up, waited for him to wake up, cut off his penis, turned on the garbage disposal, and threw it in.

...

We talk a lot about not blaming the victims of rape, sexual harassment, assault, etc. So why is it suddenly acceptable to assume that this guy cheated on her or did something else to provoke it? Not even mentioning that even then, this action is heinous and indefensible. But why are people making that assumption?

It started for me on Facebook. I wrote about the story, briefly, and one of my friends said something to the effect of, “Why do I think that he did something to provoke this?” This morning, it spread over to The Pursuit of Harpyness. Now, I want to don kid gloves for this section. I discovered the blog because they recently gave [NSWATM] props, and so I don’t want to assume ill intent and slap them in the face. But ladies, seriously…

The victim reportedly told the police that her husband—who had initiated divorce proceedings—”deserved it.” Maybe. Maude knows, I’ve been keeping a list of men I think deserve it for some time now (yeah, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, you’re at the top).

No. Just, fucking, no. No one deserves to have their genitals brutally mutilated.

Source: No Seriously, What About Teh Menz?

First of all this is an obvious point: no blaming victims, m'kay?  No speculating about why they should be blamed.  No assuming the victim must have done something to deserve it.

Secondly, as DMB points out, in civil society no individual acting alone has the right to render another person unconscious and then mutilate them even if their victim really is a very bad person.

But third of all?  Almost no matter how you look at it, even if you could construct a case where Becker's husband "deserved" it, in contemporary non-fringe feminist terms Becker's assault is no cause at all for feminist celebration.  In fact quite the opposite!

A few years ago I took a continuing-ed course that included a feminism 101 section (the other two were sex education and communications. Best non-degree course I've ever taken!)

Anyway, at one point the women's studies professor brought up the Lorena Bobbett castration case and pointed out that contrary to popular imagination and conservative Senator's wive's bravado (“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”) most actual feminists were horrified by Bobbett's act. Here's why, here's why this is relevant to the Becker case, and here's why anyone who claims to be a feminist yet celebrates rather than abhors husband castration is a really bad feminist.

My professor pointed out, correctly, that instead of trying to escape an abusive relationship by cutting off her husband's dick she instead could have contacted a number of hotlines, agencies, support groups, and shelters, and relied on a huge array of policies, procedures, and laws that were available and well-publicized in her area.

Instead, in keeping with her deeply religiously-conservative upbringing she didn't initiate divorce proceedings against her husband the first time he came home after sleeping with prostitutes. Or the second. Or the Nth. Because of her upbringing she didn't dial 9-1-1 the first time he physically assaulted her. Or the second. Or the Nth.

In fact, when she'd gotten literally to the end of her rope and began contemplating, and then fantasizing, and then resolving to violently disable her husband in hopes of being able to get away she didn't instead contact one of the many public or private resources that could have helped her non-violently divorce her husband. She didn't try to locate of the shelters that would have helped her quietly establish a new life.

Instead she took it upon herself to wait till her husband had incapacitated himself with alcohol, cut off his dick with a kitchen knife, jumped in the car with some belongings, and drove... not really all that far because she didn't have a plan, didn't have resources, and just plain had no idea there was any real way out to begin with!

In other words, said my professor, there were multiple points where a feminist would have decided she wasn't going to put up with her husband's shit, there were multiple points where a feminist would have known she didn't have to put up with his shit, and there were multiple resources that a feminist would have known she could have taken advantage of rather than put up with his shit, and multiple resources that a feminist would have resorted to long, long, long before.

In other words, Lorena Bobbett did was a triumph of anti-feminism and not a feminist act at all.

Now this long digression is relevant to this post for two reasons:

First, it invalidates any hypothetical assumptions that Catherine Kieu Becker's actions could somehow be "justifiable." Thanks to the hard legal cases, legislative action, social activism, and educational outreach of mainstream feminists the answer is no. Even if there was any substance to speculations or assumptions about abuse (so far at least there isn't) then Becker could, and should, have made use of any of those legal, accepted, and entirely non-violent ways to exit her relationship and protect herself from her husband. Instead her decision not use any of those resources but instead to commit violence invalidates any possible justification within a feminist framework.

Second, any actual feminist who imagines Becker or Bobbett's in terms of "delightful as the thought is of some particularly loathsome men having their junk cut off…” is at best alienated from or ignorant of the achievements of contemporary feminism, or, at worst completely contemptuous of it.

So!

Even if there was ever any justification for blaming the victim of a violent crime Bobbett or Becker's actions would still be a repudiation of feminism rather than a feminist act. Consequently anyone who entertains fantasies of justifiable castration rather than speculating instead about the long chain of missed opportunities to avail one's self of feminist resources is just looking at these cases from at least a pre-feminist and possibly an anti-feminist perspective.

I mean, let's go waaay back up to the top of this too-long comment to that quote I pulled from Sen. David Vitter's arch-conservative wife Wendy Vitter:

I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.

That's not feminism talking.

Bottom line: do not ever assume that someone who either commits castration (or other violent assaults) on her husband is a feminist. Don't ever assume that someone who approves of such an act is a critically-conscious feminist either. For the most part the clowns and asshats we see on The View and elsewhere around the cable networks are going to have a lot more in common with Wendy Vitter than Shulamith Firestone. And not to put too fine a point on it but the trolls and "harpies" around the blogosphere who've been nodding approvingly have far, far more in common with Spearhead-style MRAs than they ever have or ever will have with mainstream feminism.

Heads Up: This is a long post with lots of triggery stuff about representations of sexual assault in movies, particularly in comedies.  There's a clip of from the movie at the bottom of the post.

Summary: This one's about a particularly graphic one played for laughs in last year's Judd Apatow vehicle, Get Him to the Greek.  Looks like dozens or hundreds feminists from minor Tumblr blogs to the L.A. Times stood up for the male victim.  For all the "but men get raped too" derailment you see when feminists mention women victims the man-o-sphere remains remarkably silent.

Asexual activist Ily digs into the (top grossing!) 1947 Bing Crosby and Bob Hope misogyny and date-rape fest Road to Rio and then lobs the ball back into the 21st Century's court with a dissection of Judd Apatow's extremely popular Get Him to the Greek.

[F]ast forward to recent years. "Road to Rio" would probably not be written. Of course, the 40's were just more sexist times...right? However, today, we're expected to laugh at a man being raped (not to mention having his bodily integrity violated in countless other ways). Stuff like this has led some people to believe that feminism has gone too far, and now women are holding privilege over men. But I don't think these folks are aware of why we are supposed to find male rape funny. I think it's for the same reason that we're supposed to find men in dresses funny--being raped is feminizing, and therefore embarrassing. At the same time, men are so sex-crazed that being raped (at least, by a woman) is not a big deal to them emotionally. There are a few assumptions here:

...

So yes, I believe that bell hooks was very much correct. Patriarchy does hurt everyone. In a truly post-feminist world, Jonah Hill's friends in Get Him to the Greek wouldn't have laughed off his rape experience. He could have admitted that yeah, there were times when he didn't want sex*, and the other men wouldn't have mocked him for that. And we, the audience, wouldn't be expected to laugh, either.

Source: Asexy Beast

And who, you might be asking, would be making fun of men being raped? In, um, certain quarters the knee-jerk reaction is that it could only be feminists. In this case? Not so much. But they'd be so far wrong radar couldn't find them: the movie was made by Judd Apatow's all-men, no-women-at-all creative team of directors, writers, and producers.  Director? Nicholas Stoller. Writers?Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel. Producers? Judd Apatow, David L. Bushell, and Rodney Rothman. Co-Producer? Jason Segel. Executive Producer? Richard Vane. Associate Producer?Phil Eisen.  Not a feminist in the bunch.  Not a woman in the bunch.  Not even a "feminist man" in the bunch.  It's dicks and balls all the way down till you get to the casting coordinator.

And oh well, one might be inclined to say, it was a comedy for goodness sake, maybe it was portrayed as daffy slapstick. If one did one would be disappointed. While the event is supposed to be just one more bit of physical comedy that befalls a sad-sack character from a police-procedural standpoint it wouldn't be a minor incident at all!

Instead, when the Arron character is physically incapacitated by alcohol but still able to clearly express his absolute lack of consent the woman pins him down, exposes herself to him when he manifestly does not want her to, aggressively and repeatedly forces his attention up her skirt, yanks off his pants, straddles his groin, pulls a large phthalate-laden dildo out of her purse, aggressively rubs it in his face, slaps him with it, forces it into his mouth, and then reaches back and jams it between his legs in a manner that strongly (if anatomically-improbably) implies she's inserted it in his anus.

The most disturbing part to me about the scene is the breezy familiarity with which it's set and directed, as if the producers were... a little too familiar with the way rape committed by drunk people on drunk people actually goes.  (And no, this isn't accusing Apatow, Stoller, or Segal of committing gross sexual assault on drunken victims.  They may have or they might not.  If you asked me I'd guess one or more of the creative team has been on the receiving end either from another man or from a woman.  And, sort of like the victim in the film, they're not resolved to it because of a couple of really fundamental misconceptions of who can be perpetrators and, even more particularly, who can be victims.)

One thing that doesn't seem realistic? Right after the anal penetration the camera cuts away to what appears to be the Arron character's love interest, wearing hospital scrubs at a desk in what appears to be a hospital nursing station, is listening to the entire event on her cell-phone. Her reaction? To shake her head angrily, hang up, and move to put away the phone.  Ha ha, just one more way that poor schlub Aaron I'm pretty sure

And who do we find writing critical reviews of this movie? Ily, an asexual woman,

Alicia Sowisdral of Feminist Review.

Sarah M at the feminist anti-rape site SaferCampus said

I’m pretty used to rape being used as a punchline, especially when men are the victims. This usually comes in the form of jokes about prison rape, but I’ve also seen more than enough films in which a guy is basically forced into having sex with a woman or is really uncomfortable with it (like, he’s in a relationship and she’s seducing him!) and it’s supposed to be funny because ya know, women can’t rape men LOL! And prisoners deserve it! That’s bad enough to me. But this was just so beyond explicit—the guy is sodomized with an object while saying no and then uses the word rape to describe it—that I was genuinely shocked. I actually can’t even imagine an explanation of how this is funny outside of the fact that a man being raped is SO IMPLAUSIBLE to folks that it’s just laughable. You’re not watching a “rape scene” because call it rape all you want, it couldn’t be real rape, so it’s funny.

Lauren Brachman at Equal Writes put the consequences in black and white

[I]f that is the way we view rape and sexual assault, aren’t we doing a disservice to men? The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) reports that 1 in every 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Do we emasculate the men who survive sexual assault because our culture constantly reminds us that real men do not get raped? Are these assaults as funny as the rape of Aaron Hill in Get Him to the Greek?

You might argue that women are not the only assailants of the sexual assault committed against 3% of all American men. Often, men assault other men. But don’t worry – Get Him to the Greek is an equal opportunity exploiter! Aldous Snow, one of Green’s “best friends”, also assaults him. This time Aaron Green is coerced into inserting a balloon of heroine into his anus. Later Aldous Snow digitally penetrates Aaron Green, violently ripping out the balloon. Was there an outcry in the theater when we all witnessed this assault? Not that I could over hear over the laughs and guffaws of my classmates.

I found a Tumbler post that's nested three deep with women harshly attacking the idea that rape of a man could ever be funny, with the angriest denunciation of playing male rape for laughs coming from a (now deactivated) Tumblr blog called thehumorlessfeminist.

Sigh.

For all the men that show up saying "but men get raped too" anytime someone starts complaining about rape culture in movies you'd think there's be a few more men chiming about, you know, men actually getting raped in movies.

Speaking of discussion that shakes out of the Anthony Weiner fiasco without actually involving Weiner himself of Sheryl Gay Stolberg mentions a serious double standard in our expectations of men and women's sexual "propriety." And I'm passing it along because to a certain (I think probably extensive) degree

“I have no hard evidence that women are less likely to engage in risky or somewhat stupid behavior,” Ms. Pearson said. “But women in Congress are still really in a situation where they have to prove themselves to their male colleagues and constituents. There’s sort of this extra level of seriousness.”

And voters demand it. Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, says women politicians are punished more harshly than men for misbehavior. “When voters find out men have ethics and honesty issues, they say, ‘Well, I expected that.’" Ms. Lake said. “When they find out it’s a woman, they say, ‘I thought she was better than that.’"

Source: The New York Times

One of my big axioms about expectations is that while nobody's perfect, in the aggregate human beings are remarkably good at rising to their expectations but remarkably bad at exceeding them.

So... what do you think the consequences might be of saying "We can't expect men to control their sexual urges but we expect women to be better than that?"

Note: Celinda Lake isn't saying those are her expectations, she's reciting commonly held social expectations -- expectations that are held as dearly and enforced as rigorously by the likes of arch patriarchs like Mike Huckabee and of uber-radfems like Twisty Faster as well as fans and commentators of relative lightweights like Bret Farvre ("some guys just never grow up") and Britney Spears ("what a slut.")

Check out all the foofaraw over the recent SlutWalk protests. The whole thing was triggered by a Toronto cop setting expectations: we expect women to control themselves because men are incapable of self-control. And the reaction, again from left and right, has had a disappointing tendency to revolve around social expectations that... women must act "respectably" in order not to "make" men behave irresponsibly.

Ironically, but in a lot of ways not at all surprisingly, the only voices of dissent from that particular status quo are the subset of generally-younger feminists who aren't old-school "man-haters" at all but instead have a rather generous expectation that men are human beings and not animals, and who are mostly just over-the-moon exasperated that men don't, won't, or (even more often) are heavily pressured not to meet their expectations.

Those are the feminists, for instance, who got the original intention of the SlutWalk organizers, or like Halifax crisis center co-ordinator Jackie Stevens who, according to reporter Hilary Beaumont (emphasis mine) says

Rather than automatically thinking that way, she says society needs to see that an attacker has chosen to take advantage of someone who is vulnerable.

When Stevens reads articles about drunk driving, the police are quoted telling people to stop drinking and driving. But when she reads articles about sexual assault, there is no warning telling would-be attackers not to rape. Instead, the authorities tell potential victims to take precautions.

...

“Rather than always putting out the messages of ‘don’t walk alone’ or ‘don’t drink’ or ‘don’t talk to strangers’—all of those things—we need to say ‘don’t sexually assault,’” Stevens declares.

...

As a result of these misplaced messages, we say, "She shouldn’t have been walking home alone late at night," or, "She shouldn’t have worn a short skirt," rather than, "He shouldn’t have raped her."

Source: The Nova Scotia Dominion

Not that expectations are all about rape, even though questions about expectation and rape abound. It also boils down to crap as petty as expecting adult men to figure out how to tie their own ties instead of needing their partners to do it for them. (Hint: My dad taught me how to tie a tie on Sunday mornings before when I was about eight. And then expected me to do it from then on. An expectation I've somehow always managed to rise to even during my hippie and every-day-is-casual-Friday tech days when I could go years at a time without needing to wear one. But I digress....)

Anyway, that's the big realization that caused me to drop my lackluster search for a non-misogynist, non-sensitive-new-age-guy men's movement and switch to unapologetic feminism: that feminists had higher expectations for men than not only society at large but of considerable numbers of nominal "men's rights" activists. (Because with a few notable exceptions most of the "rights" MRAs are activist for read a lot more like excuses. I'm pretty sure this is one of the big reasons they get so little traction from feminists and non-feminists a like.)

Does that mean I agree with everything feminism has to say about men? Why no as a matter of fact I don't. And does it mean I think men should just go along with whatever feminism says would be good for us? Bwahahahahah! No, because that would be just more of the same letting women do the heavy lifting expectation-wise wouldn't it? Which in my very sincere opinion would be falling once again into the most insidiously anti-feminist trap possible. It's ok to listen to feminists as human beings contributed to what might be a consensus on expectations, but because they are human beings there's no reason to believe they've got any essential insight. In fact almost the opposite! There needs to be a consensus on equal expectations precisely because society demands as much too much of women as it expects too little of men. That's something we can only all work out together.

Anyway, I seriously appreciate those feminists who've got enough respect for men (and, I'd add, enough realism about women) to recognize that one of the most critical equalities is not simply equality of opportunity ("classic-liberal" feminists) or separate-but equalities (essentialist feminists) or even equality of power (original-radical feminists) but equality of expectations. Because, seriously, the sentiment captured and related, but one hopes not shared, by Celinda Lake does no favors either for men or for women. Period. At all.