Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)

Yes, forgive me for making a 'semantic' argument. That is, an argument that is concerned with the meanings of words people use. How petty of me.

Unfortunately many people who say things like "every other group is a men's group" believe and mean exactly that. That is how they justify seriously arguing that men forming men's interests groups is inherently oppressive.

>Right. That's a problem, too. It's just not a feminist problem.

Right. Which is exactly what I'm saying. It's not a feminist problem, so why don't certain strands of feminists want men's groups to worry about those problems? What are these men supposed to do? Tough it out and hope for the best? Why don't they deserve advocacy just as underprivileged females do?

>Surely not EVERY feminist! That statement is provably false and anyone caught saying it should be instantly discredited.

Nice catch :)

>if you don't take a polarizing stance, it's incredibly hard to provide compromises when it comes down to actually deciding policy

I don't disagree with much that you've said. I don't have a problem with feminists or any other interest group taking a polarizing stance. I have a problem with those who do so but then completely deny the other pole on the dialectic legitimacy. If you're going to polarize the issue, admit that there are two sides, and allow both to exist. Fight it out on the merit of the arguments.

"Every other group is a men's group" so men's groups should be prohibited from existing?

Nah. If you want to take the binary stance, fight for your issues and let The Other Side fight for theirs. Otherwise admit that you just want totalitarian control, and tell The Other Side sorry, you're screwed, enjoy fighting us every step of the way.

The MPAA pretends it is fighting for consumer's rights, and we all get pissed off because that's obviously a lie and the MPAA's only interest is furthering industry goals. Yet when this strand of male-exclusionary feminists that I'm speaking of pretends to fight for men's rights as well as women's, while obviously not doing so, we're all like "yeah, that's cool". It's bizarre.

As a European, I am unfamiliar with this term, can you explain?

Also, you have a messed up vision of what "critical engagement" means. Addressing arguments on a logical basis -- which is what I'm doing -- is a perfectly legitimate form of argumentation.

When I tell you that a->b and b->c thus a->c, do you really need me to cite a source?

Saying that "every other group is a men's group" directly in response to the question "why don't we need men's groups?" is very explicitly wanting to prohibit men from addressing men's issues. I do not need to cite sources to show that.

To placate you, here are just a few examples of certain strands of feminism actively blocking efforts by men to organize for men:

"CAFE has attempted to open chapters at several campuses across Canada in the past year, only to be met with heated protests. In June, the Canadian Federation of Students put forth a motion to oppose “men’s rights awareness groups” like CAFE, alleging they “provide environments of sexism, patriarchy and misogyny to manifest and be perpetuated on campus.”" [1]

"The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) takes issue with a men’s issues club. If it were not so serious, it would be laughable. An organization that collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in mandatory levies from Ryerson students is afraid of three students—two of them women—starting a men’s issues group." [2]

University of Toronto feminist group pulls a fire alarm to prevent a men's group lecture from happening, since they couldn't stop the lecture by protest alone. [3]

[1] - http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/15/controversial_men...

[2] - http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2013/04/01/ryerson-stu...

[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2KPeMcYsuc

I'm certain that if you warm up your fingers and do some googling, queries like "X university bans mens group" would provide more such articles from around the world.

I'm getting the sense that you were introduced to specific schools of thought in college and mistook them to be a lot more pervasive than they actually are. Maybe I can ask you a question in different terms: of your professors, how many of them would you say were male-exclusionary feminists? I'm looking for a ballpark percentage and expecting it to be high.

Because here's the thing: I've never heard of these male-exclusionary feminists. I don't claim to be a feminist (though other people would probably apply the label to me fairly; I don't care), nor am I particularly well-studied in the area (because at the end of the day, I don't actually care about women's rights). So maybe it's just my scholarship that's lacking.

But you're talking about this group as if they were a major and extremely significant subset of feminists. I would like to believe that I'm not so completely ignorant as to have missed these people over the last few years of absorbing feminism, but it's entirely possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they existed, and I would be even less surprised to discover they've found a home in a "feminist-oriented humanities department" because that's exactly the kind of thing that universities do: provide homes for extreme views that don't cross the line into actual crazy.

So basically, can you show me, at all, that the argument you're arguing against isn't made of straw?

I'd be willing to more directly respond to your post, too, but this seems more important.