There are many people who would claim to outright hate TheAmazingAthiest (one of the loudest atheist YouTubers), and that is their right. I don't hate him. I really don't. Sometimes I do agree with him, mostly on religious viewpoints. But there is one topic that he feels the need to talk about that never fails to get my eye twitching: Feminism.
I know, I know, hating him for his lack of feminist views has been done to death, but stay with me for a bit here. I don't disagree with his viewpoints of radical feminists. Quite frankly, they scare the living shit out of me too. It's the fact that there seems to be no middle ground feminists he pays attention to that bothers me.
His video "Failure of Feminism" has quite a few points that make me irritated, to say the very least. To me, there was one quote in particular that made me really irritated with the video: "...they believe in something called the patriarchy...this is integral, this is the key, this is the cornerstone of all feminist theory. And it's completely bogus. It's wrong..."
Now, he is entitled to his opinion, that is his right. But I'm entitled to say: I disagree and find your opinion out-dated, over-exaggerated, and misinformed.
Now, by the wikipedia definition you gave, there is no patriarchy. But I believe that the definition is a little outdated. When the feminists are referring to the patriarchy, they are referring to the fact that current society benefits men (most of the time) over women. They are not claiming that women are still completely submissive to men, as was implied.
I'm now going to directly talk about the examples he has given in the inequality of men over women. I really do think that TheAmazingAthiest (or TJ) is what people would identify as a Men's Right Activist (seems a little oxymoronic, but lets roll with it). I'm going to now go through the issues, in order, that he brought up.
1. "...domestic violence against men is nearly as common as domestic violence against women..." Now, the first part of that statement, that it happens nearly as often, is wrong. "22.1 percent
of surveyed women, compared with 7.4 percent of surveyed men, reported
they were physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting
partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, or date in their lifetime" (http://www.nij.gov/pubs-sum/183781.htm) More than double the women than men are assaulted or on the victim's end of domestic violence. That is not "nearly as common", that is less than half as common.
2. "Men are not treated anywhere near fairly when it comes to child custody..." I will concede that an unfair amount of the time, a mother will gain custody over a child over the father. It's not entirely fair, but there are reasons behind this. Women are more nurturing than men. It's our nature, it's our instincts. It's how we are raised in society. We are supposed to be connected to our emotions and feelings more than men. And in cases of dealing with a small child, these are integral to their development. Put a baby in a room with a group of men and women, more often than not, the people coddling and cooing at the baby will be women, not men. Moreover, as indifferent many are to this point, women do gain an emotional connection to their children. They carry them around for 9 months, it kind of just comes with the territory.
3."...when it comes to who has to make child support payments..." Child support is given to the party that earns less, more often than not, it's the female half of the dynamic. Women still only earn 77 cents to the male dollar on average (http://www.aauw.org/GraduatetoaPayGap/upload/GradtoPayGap_AAUW_embargoed.pdf). So logically speaking, women will usually be the party earning less, leaving men to be the one usually paying child support. Ironic that one of the things feminists focus on has side-effects on men's rights issues.
4."...when it comes to reproductive rights." I almost didn't want to comment on this one, but I will state that certain politicians want to regulate whether or not women should have the right to an abortion. Seems like a major betrayer of reproductive rights to me.
5. "...but male genital mutilation? That's still standard operating procedure throughout the US...If you live in America, you live in a nation where it's just standard procedure to chop off a piece of a boys' penis when he is born. Don't say that is is just a piece of skin. So is your eyelid, you wouldn't want that chopped off... Why don't you let people decide to get rid of it as adults?" First of all, comparing the foreskin of a penis to an eyelid is ludicrous at best. Look at their purposes before comparing the two. Without an eyelid, you'd go blind due to your eyes drying out. I don't think there is anything that handicapping about circumcision. And as for letting people decide as adults, you are forgetting the major part of humanity that makes us human and illogical: we make decisions based on emotions. I can nearly guarantee you that if circumcision was deemed one of the healthiest decisions a man could make, there would still be a good portion of men who would not do it, due to purely emotional reasons. Sometimes we get attached to parts of ourselves that are unnecessary just because it's familiar. It happens all the time with people and their hair. Essentially a useless feature of mankind now, yet people are so attached to it, that they will pay people thousands of dollars in their lifetime to get it cut right.
6. "Women are sentenced to 40% less prison time than men for equivalent crimes." Honestly, I concede this point to TJ, as I haven't found anything to state otherwise, nor can I think of a compelling argument as to why this is. I agree that's not fair, and that that should be addressed within our legal system.
7. "...it's only men that can be signed up for the selective services in the United States. We can be drafted." This is probably due to the fact that woman, as a gender are biologically weaker than men, and more susceptible to emotional disorders after war (mainly PTSD) than men are. If the government are going to send people off to fight for them, they are logically going to want to send the stronger half of a nation so that there is less soldiers dying, and less costs of dealing with trauma after the fact.
8. "Why would we... pour way more money into women's cancer research than men's cancer research?" While it is true that Breast Cancer research gets way more funding than Prostate Cancer, you have to keep in mind that men can also contract breast cancer. It's less often, but not unheard of. So it's not like it doesn't benefit both genders. I do agree that we should give just as much money to men's cancer research, but it's not like men aren't benefiting from monetary donations to breast cancer research either.
Now, do I think that there are some double standards between the two genders? Yes. And I will concede that a majority of our issues come from gender roles. We do have to break these gender roles in order to move forward as a society.
I am a feminist. Not a radical one, mind you. But I am one. I believe that a majority of the time, women get the short end of the stick. I believe that some of our issues do outweigh the issues that a male would have. Declaring myself a feminist is not a ludicrous or heinous idea. I think it's something to be proud of and to be able to announce with that pride.
Next post I will probably ramble about some of the issues that should probably be dealt with from the side of feminists before we get all huffy about men's rights. It'll probably take awhile, as I will have to fight the urge to get on my soapbox, but it'll eventually come.
TJ, TheAmazingAthiest, if you ever happen to read this, understand that I do respect you, and on many points, I do agree with your ideologies, this is just not one of them. I fought the urge to name-call, as doing that achieves nothing, and I hope you'll logically look at my arguments and maybe even have some back. I critique because I was raised to believe that if you see something, and don't actively disagree with it, then you are silently agreeing
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