Hate speech under the title: Feminism's deadly fallout

24 posts / 0 new
Last post
remind remind's picture
Hate speech under the title: Feminism's deadly fallout

Somewhow all societies ills are the fault of feminists, eh?

 Gunter at the National Pest is trying to sell  it as such, and the man should be sued for hate speech IMV.

Quote:
Particularly in the M. T. case, Ms. Timson blames the girl's actions on "a very retro scenario," an "ages-old pre-feminist scenario" in which girls believe they have no power on their own. So they convince themselves that they must attract a man and keep him at all costs, even murder.

Pardon me? Girls have turned to murder because they have no power? The truth is, they have turned to murder and "obsessive irrational hatred of one girl toward another, depict[ing] an emotional landscape devoid of respect, conscience or heart," because they have too much power. I don't mean too much power relative to boys -- with whom they are now equals in every real sense -- but rather relative to teens of past generations.

It is just possible that all of this is the logical end product of feminism, instead of, as Ms. Timson postulates, the harbinger of some return to a regressive age.

....Feminism in its most political form was a sexual revolution as much as it was a sex-role emancipation. It also scoffed at women who freely chose traditional female roles because the movement's founders were convinced anything feminine was inferior and enslaving.

So when you tell girls for four generations that they are weak and should demand the kind of power boys and men have, and when you -- through the pill and abortion -- signal to them that sex is nothing more than a consequence-free, pleasurable act and when, finally, you remove faith-based morality from the mix, too, you should not be surprised to wake up one morning and find that you have created an M.T.

 Having taken away all the old inhibitors that kept sex and violence in check,

oldgoat

Good Lord.  That sad sad publication has absolutely reached the bottom.

For those with a truely heroic gag reflex though, check out the man's disclaimer...

[QUOTE]

Now before anyone flies off the handle and accuses my of being a patriarchal, barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen reactionary, let me point out that my wife is a lawyer and we teach both our 14-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son that they can and should be whatever they want. [/QUOTE]

 

Now there, see remind?  He's cool.

ElizaQ ElizaQ's picture

 I was just looking at this and about to post it but I got stuck on figuring out a title.

 My first thought was 'Holy F'ing Crap!'  but no that might not be the best for the front page feed even though that was my first reaction. 

  Then I was pondering just posting the title of the article itself but that just seemed wrong without some qualification.

  Then it  was 'Feminism leads to murder? Wtf?'  and then I just got  to annoyed and pissed off thinking about it and trying to just figure out what part of this article to actually quote because all I wanted to do was just repost the whole vile thing, that I left the computer to go make some tea. 

  Anyways,  thanks for posting it...

 

The Bish

The author of the op-ed obviously misunderstands feminism greatly, but on what grounds could "hate speech" possibly be charged?  Hate speech charges can only be brought when the comments are made about one of the groups protected in the Charter, and "feminists" are not one of those groups.

remind remind's picture

The covert and overt attacks against feminists are really starting to piss me off.

But this article transgressed the boundaries of attack and took it to  outright hate speech.

The Bish

The remarks were stupid, but I don't think they could be called "hateful" and they certainly aren't provocation to violence.  This kind of ignorance is better fought with words than law suits.  When we start using the law to deal with criticisms of feminism, however misguided those criticisms may be, that says some very frightening things about the prospects for free speech.

remind remind's picture

This is not criticism, this is making false allegations which are geared to incite hatred against an identifiable group.

Michelle

I agree with The Bish about formal hate speech charges, but I sure get why remind is pissed off.  What a troglodyte this creep is!

martin dufresne

I find it so anti-men to treat only women's violence as beyond the pale. As if having a penis made murder par for the guy course, and  men's lives a natural "emotional landscape devoid of respect, conscience or heart".

Someone should challenge the NP editorial on that basis.

The Bish

remind wrote:
This is not criticism, this is making false allegations which are geared to incite hatred against an identifiable group.

Could you provide a specific passage from the article that you think incites hatred, which could actually be used to gain a conviction in a court of law?  I think it's quite clear that the op-ed takes issue with the [i]views[/i] of feminists.  There's nothing in there that seems like it would incite violence or anything else that "feminists" could take issue with on a legal level.

EDIT: And before someone accuses me of something I'm not saying, I'm not trying to justify or defend the article.  I think it's bullshit.  I just don't think we should be using the courts to prevent people from saying bullshit unless it poses a clear threat to someone's safety.

Michelle

I think you've made your point, The Bish.  Let's move along and discuss the article now.  I doubt that remind meant for the focus of this thread to be whether or not this constitutes formal, legal hate speech - looks to me like that was just a side comment.  Let's not spend the entire thread bickering about it.

(Unless I've mistaken the intent of remind's opening post and she WAS intending for us to discuss the hate speech angle at length - let me know if I'm mistaken on this one...)

remind remind's picture

Well, I will start with the title of the article, and then move along to the statements concerning feminism creating murders because of our fight for reproductive choices, as if somehow how reproductive choice prompts women to murder and we need to have controls on those, or all we women will become murders..

This article is all some religious whack job needs to start murdering women/feminists.

Michelle

Hmm, okay, I guess I was mistaken. :)  Sorry about that.  Never mind then, continue! 

In that case, I disagree.  I don't think this article constitutes "hate speech", but then again, I'm against hate speech laws, so there's my bias.  Any whack job could take pretty much anything and start murdering people over it.  If he didn't specifically incite people to violence, then I think there's no call for legal action. 

The thing about brandishing the hate speech club is, the right-wing troglodytes are the ones with cronies in high places, not us.  If you try to stop them from expressing themselves, you can be sure that when you express something unpopular, you're going to be on the receiving end of that same repression.  What goes around comes around.

The Bish

I don't think he was saying that reproductive choice makes women into murderers.  It seemed like he was saying:

a) women have been told they are weak, and so feminism has made them more aggressive (i.e. masculine, in the author's mind).  More aggression easily leads to more murders.

b)  that issues of reproductive health are [i]symptomatic[/i] of a broader moral degradation that seeks to replace religious morality with atheistic amorality

martin dufresne

Letter to the editor No way to talk about men

In "Feminism's deadly fallout", Lorne Gunter adopts an astonishingly anti-male position when he selectively denounces in young women such as "M.T." an "emotional landscape devoid of respect, conscience or heart" that makes them "equal to men".

As a male I object to this caricature of my morality. If it is only when women plot it that murder becomes monstrous in Mr. Gunter's eyes, I have to conclude that he is writing off my gender as being naturally beyond "natural decency".

Them's fighting words, sir.

Martin Dufresne
Montreal, Qc

Maysie Maysie's picture

Like many men who understand the impact of patriarchy, since the author benefits from it, he can only imagine powerful vs powerless in those terms. In other words, the more power women have the less power men have *and* women (de facto) *will* act in oppressive ways towards men that men, historically, have acted towards women. Individually, systemically, etc. This is how he sees feminism, as evidenced here: 

Quote:
Feminism's attempts to release women from the strictures of the old sexual morality, and the movement's encouragement for women to act like men,

As for this:

Quote:
So when you tell girls for four generations that they are weak and should demand the kind of power boys and men have, and when you -- through the pill and abortion -- signal to them that sex is nothing more than a consequence-free, pleasurable act and when, finally, you remove faith-based morality from the mix, too, you should not be surprised to wake up one morning and find that you have created an M.T.

Well, if that's not a call to return to the good old days (that never existed) then I don't know what is.

One cogent point, however, is that his caricature of equality feminism points to similar flaws that I've had with that version of feminism for decades. He would not be able to write such an article if he "understood" even as superficially and doofusly as he does liberal/ equality feminism, the notion of anti-oppression feminism, anti-poverty feminism, and intersectional feminism (I don't think there's anything officially called that but you know what I mean).

I say, everybody! Reduce your blood pressure: stop reading the National Post! 

remind remind's picture

Well, to be fair Michelle, you are not really mistaken, ;) I recognize that he walked a fine line, and that there is probably not enough hate mongering to bring him before the courts,  but I do take hate mongering accusations of feminism fostering a culture of murderers, pretty damn seriously.

The women in my family have been feminists for 6 generations now, and none of us are murderers, nor do we know any. Well that is not true, I know Colin Thatcher and he sure as hell was not influenced by feminism to murder his wife, unless of course you count that he is a conservative who was pissed off because his wife would no longer tolerate his abuse and feminism encouraged women to leave abusive men.

Moreover, sneaky hate mongering attacks such as this, against feminists, diminishes the autrocities against women, that patriarchy has done and is still doing. As if there was no violence on in the world prior to feminism, or something.

remind remind's picture

*blush* to be truthful I found it while snooping FD, to see what they were saying about the court decision.

Stargazer

FD is a breeeding ground for wing nuts. Try to stay away from FD remind, for your sanity.

ElizaQ ElizaQ's picture

  *blushes too* That's where I found it as well, while doing the exact same thing Remind.

remind remind's picture

okay maysie, ;) I actually usually stay away from both. Though we really need to know what attacks the msm is espousing.

And Eliza, I kinda figured. :D Did you notice the only thread they had about it was locked to non-registered peeps?

 

Maysie Maysie's picture

Okay, now it's all clear. I'm very glad you all don't read that crap (NP or FD) on a regular basis. Whew.

Self care, women! That's actually a huge learning that I've taken from feminist mentors in my life.

Feather Sky

I don't see why a discussion of the faults of the National Post is relevant.

What shall we discuss next? The Western Standard? The Drudge Report? Mein Kampf? The King James Bible?

Perhaps we can find something wrong with those as well.

George Victor

One of them for sure!