Comments on Michael Kimmel's "Rebuttal" to Men's Rights Activists

The latest episode of "Red Pill: Raw Files" features portions of Cassie Jaye's interviews with feminist sociologist Michael Kimmel that didn't make it into the film. My comments follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebhe7wEyygk&index=40&list=PL7HeX2SUI9v84DMIawkSBzLRANIc9RQ7t

He asks why MRAs “think women are to blame” for men’s restrictive sex roles. That’s a straw-man argument, because MRAs in general don’t claim “women” are to blame. Obviously at least in a formal sense, as Kimmel says, women for the most part aren’t “in charge.”

MRAs don’t blame women as a group, we blame gynocentrism in general and feminist ideology in particular, as implemented and enforced (mostly) by men in positions of authority who’ve internalized these ideologies. And they do so with the unqualified support of the vast majority of feminist women.

Then at 3:48 he points at corporate boardrooms etc. as “proof” that women are still discriminated against, without explaining why he thinks that’s the only possible explanation for their small numbers there. And he’s factually wrong about the IMF -- that’s been run by a woman (Christine Lagarde) since 2011.

At 4:17 he mentions that women earn less money on average than men. He fails to explain why this discrepancy matters, but men’s getting less time off from work doesn’t. The point of receiving income is be able to live your life, after all. Having less time to live it -- because you’re instead living your company’s life -- is fully as much a disadvantage as earning less income.

At 4:26 he mentions (some) women’s experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace. It doesn’t even occur to him that men also experience sexual and other forms of gendered harassment.

He says women have to police themselves to reduce their chances of sexual assault. Somehow it doesn’t matter to him that men are at much greater risk of violence overall than women, while being just as likely as women to experience sexual assault in a given year, as likely as not by a woman.

4:41: “It’s incontestable that women are still victims of discrimination” -- after rattling off a whole series of facts about women and no comparative facts about men. This is an example of what Alison Tieman calls “the Church of Wimminwursting” -- the faith-based assumption that women have it worse in every area, such that one considers it “proven” that F > M simply by piling on evidence of how big F is with no need to address the size of M.

7:09: “If you let them in, they’ll come” -- again, he’s supplied no evidence that women aren’t being let in in most areas. And they do come -- just not in the same numbers as men. He invokes “antediluvian attitudes” and “structural obstacles” without showing that these are the reasons for correlations between sex and occupation.

“Iron my shirt” -- the best Kimmel can do to show the continuing acceptability of sexism, apparently, is to cherry-pick a single anecdote.

9:40: “In the guise of protecting women in their porcelain fragility, we’re actually perpetuating discrimination against women.” It’s remarkable that, unwittingly, he’s giving a perfect description of much of what “fainting couch feminism” does these days in relation to sexuality. Also that he doesn’t acknowledge this same protectiveness is expressed in discrimination against men in connection with Selective Service.

“Like making movies.” Actually, that’s something women have been seen as capable of doing at least since the time of Ida Lupino.

10:28: He acknowledges women are 30% of surgeons even in “one of the most male-dominated professions.” And still without offering any actual evidence of discrimination. Not a very strong case!

When it comes to the “wage gap” -- more accurately an earnings gap -- he acknowledges that this is mostly about parenthood rather than gender. It’s unfortunate he doesn’t go into any detail on how we should be supporting parenthood more. I would advocate making it a socially acknowledged and financially compensated job, while promoting more efficiency and community by encouraging those who care for children to form cooperatives.