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Comment by hng | Hacker News Reader

"He is a libertarian, atheist, anti-feminist..." I stopped reading when I saw his self-description

I don't think that means he's against the dictionary definition of feminism. Much more likely he's against the contemporary feminist movement, which is a pretty common sentiment. Here's a good explanation: http://www.feminisnt.com/2009/biography-of-a-pornographic-po... There's a lot on that page but start here:

Why would you NOT want call yourself a feminist? Barring being a feminist, the only option left is that you must be a misogynist.

I don't call myself a suffragette, either, but that doesn't mean I am against women being allowed to vote. I consider myself very much anti-sexist and pro-equality, because sexism is still a problem in my society. However, oppressive attitudes based on gender and sexuality are frequently perpetuated by people who call themselves feminists, and anti-male sexism (perpetuated by feminists in particular) is on the rise.

Is someone's self-labeling as anti-[insert any politically correct opinion] a good reason to dismiss one's argument?

Not necessarily, but it's a decent heuristic for spotting a confused point of view and argumentative tendencies, which suit an irrational voice so well. Also, it's a fine reason not to bother reading something. ... I hadn't noticed the self-description; but the sophomorically sloppy, self-important, ungramatical writing style made it dismissable enough for me.

No, but it does explain why his argument is as strident and stilted as it is.

No, but he sounds like a complete dickwad. What sort of sane person is against the notion that women should be equal? I doubt his understanding of feminism is much deeper than some garbage he read on an MRA site once, and thus it follows that he's likely to be wrong about a lot of other things due to having an axe to grind whilst simultaneously being an ignoramus.

I mean look at the description of his YouTube channel:

"What is equality? We in the men's rights movement believe in equality of opportunity, that as long as the playing field is level then the outcomes should not matter. The feminists tend to believe that equality of outcome is what matters, that the columns under men and women must match for there to be no more sexism. So what really matters at the end of the day is what you are comparing. Rights or outcomes? This is the foundation of our debate."

So essentially his entire worldview is based on a complete strawman. Skills.

> What sort of sane person is against the notion that women should be equal?

What the hell does it even mean? Today "equal" is just a semantic stopsign [0]. His YouTube channel description at least attempts to explain how he understands the term 'equality'. You can agree or disagree with "equality of outcomes" vs. "equality of opportunity", but "men/women should be equal" is just plain meaningless.

> No, but he sounds like a complete dickwad.

Also, it's still an ad hominem. We should evaluate his arguments on their merits, not on his beliefs. Which we can do after we actually read them.

[0] - http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Semantic_stopsign

Well exactly, within feminism the issue of what equality is is a hotly debated thing, and even moreso is the way to achieve it. But I guess if he just wants to disregard that and keep hacking at the strawman it's his problem.

It's really irritating how feminists insist that anyone who disagrees with their very narrow and totally contradictory views of what it means for "women to be equal" is against equality for women.

It is really irritating how people insist on using the term "feminist" to refer to a narrow, incoherent media trope.

Someone clearly let the straw feminists out of the closet again. HSSSSS!

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=341

Well that's a complete strawman if ever I saw one...

Go away, troll. This does not contribute anything to the discussion at hand and only shows that you don't want to process information that may contradict your own idea of fairness.

Yeaaaaah. MRAs aren't exactly known for their even-handed and rational evaluation of anything involving women or women's issues.

I'm not sure that's fair. I think both the majority of MRAs and feminists are egalitarians. It's the vocal crazies that cause us to characterize entire groups. I've seen it from both sides.

In any case, as yummyfajitas points out it's an ad-hominem argument. We should discuss the argument itself rather than the merits of the man making them.

MRAs that describe themselves as "anti-feminist" tend to be a certain kind of bitter - the vocal crazies that you talk about.

The better MRAs are more even-handed and rational than any feminists I've come across, and screw women over less too in some important regards. For instance, they actually consider female-perpetrated rape and abuse against other women to be just as wrong as any other form of rape or abuse, which is something feminists fairly consistently fail at.

I've even seen a major feminist blogger take her own experiences of abuse, conclude from them that all such abuse is caused by the abuser being male, then tell another woman who'd been abused in the same way by her mother that it was "irrational" for her to be upset by this and that she was "erasing" the blogger's own "lived experiences" by complaining about said blogger's conclusions, and bemoan how she'd been lead astray by the evil MRA community into thinking that her experiences actually mattered.

I'm confused - is he correct or incorrect? Please justify your answer without using the ad-hominem fallacy.

Why stay confused? Just go read jgrahamc's reply above. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4648430

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