One attempted refutation of some of my views is Antifeminism at: http://www.psychocats.net/essays/antifeminism . It is fairly high in the Google search rankings, which means that some people may be taking it seriously, and that is why I am replying to it here. Having said that, I must emphasise that it is a very weak attempt at a refutation.

The author, A.Y. Siu, attacks Chapter 3 (The "Rape is Violence" Lie) of my book, Sex, Lies & Feminism. His essay contains a lot of emotive terms -- such as the accusation that I am "cocky" -- but I will try to stick to the facts, rather than replying in kind.

 

One valid, minor criticism

Two feeble substantive arguments

Two trivial points

Conclusion

 

One valid, minor criticism

His first criticism is that I lump all Feminist positions on rape together as if there was only one such position. I respond as follows:

1. I agree that I did do that.
2. I criticise him for not listing all the so-called "Feminist" positions on rape himself, so that we can all see if this criticism really matters.
3. I criticise him for not defining "Feminist", which I do in my book and in the article: Defining Feminism. I use the phrase "so-called Feminist", because he does not have a coherent concept of the term "Feminist", as demonstrated by the fact that he thinks it is possible for someone (he names Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia) to be an anti-Feminist Feminist (which is a self-contradiction). This self-contradiction shows that he is intellectually incompetent, like most Feminists. (Please note that it is irrelevant whether some writer calls themselves a Feminist -- the issue is whether they actually are a Feminist).
4. Although I admit lumping all Feminist positions on rape together, I do not consider this to be a serious problem, because there would be few writers who are actually Feminists who would disagree with the position that I was attacking in my book.

 

Two feeble substantive arguments

A.Y. Siu's article is somewhat confused, and the key to this confusion is his sentence: "What I don't understand is the way Zohrab has presented the supposed catch-22 facing men." The key point is that he does not understand the issues. I will explore his lack of understanding in detail.

I refer the reader to the excerpt from my book which A.Y. Siu himself quoted. In it, I debunked the Feminist lie that women always mean "no" when they say "no," by relating an experience I had of women laughing at the fact that men could be so naive as to believe that they meant "no" in the context of saying "no" when they were asked if they wanted a birthday present. My point, obviously, was that, in intimate relationships, women clearly and admittedly do sometimes say "no" when they mean "yes". By playing a passive role, and placing on the man the burden of "reading the signs" and of then making the decision, women put men at risk of derision (in the case of present-giving) and of imprisonment (in the case of sexual intercourse). This is a very serious issue! Because Feminists like A.Y. Siu are callous about men, and never look at things from a male point of view, they ignore this point.

A.Y. Siu first substantive point is to argue that present-giving has nothing to do with sexual intercourse, but any intelligent reader can see that that is not the point. The point is that no legal burden is placed on the woman to be clear as to her desires. That is not "equality" or "equity" -- that is "girl-power" and oppression of the male.

A.Y. Siu says that the second issue is the nature of consent in sex. That must refer to the part of his essay where he again shows his incomprehension. He states that the following statement about present-giving (in my book) makes no sense:

"That's just like rape. The woman says 'No', and the man's wrong whatever happens."

He says that even Andrea Dworkin would not look down upon a man who did not have sex with a woman who said 'No'. The issue is not what Dworkin would think -- the issue is how the woman concerned would react. If the woman said 'No' and meant 'No' and the man misunderstood and had sex with her, he might end up in jail. But if the woman said 'No' and meant 'Yes' and the man misunderstood and did not have sex with her, she might retaliate against him in various ways out of feelings of frustration.

A.Y. Siu then constructs an imaginary and rather passionless scenario, where a couple proceeds through foreplay, in a rather cold manner, to the point where the man breaks off physical contact and starts undressing, whereupon the woman says "No, not tonight, honey." Obviously, there is not much chance of ambiguity here (depending on exactly how coquettish the woman is, of course). However, I expect that this is not a typical scenario, and that more passionate encounters, with partial undressing taking place within the embrace, and with the woman making only a monosyllabic response (rather than a whole sermon), are very common. That is the context in which ambiguity may well arise.

 

Two trivial points

1. A.Y. Siu tries to show that I use words such as "obvious" in a way that I accuse someone else of doing, but, since his argument is feeble and has little to do with Feminism, I will not go into it any further.
2. He denies that the women who shouted "No" were trying to shout me down or bully me. Why, in that case, did they express their opinion out loud? In such settings, I hear many things that I don't agree with, but I very rarely say what I think out loud -- it would be bad manners and egotistical, for a start. In fact, of course, shouting down the opposition has long been a core Feminist tactic -- see Female Academics' Power and Control over Male Academics and Feminazi Law Students Become Feminazi Lawyers and Judges.

 

Conclusion

Given that I believe that Western populations have been indoctrinated into Feminism, if I resist the social pressure to conform to this indoctrinated norm, I will seem to be arrogant. But since I see the arguments in favour of Feminism as weak, and since I see them being put forward by stupid and totalitarian people, I do not see myself as morally bound to tolerate them without a fight. Through political pressure, large numbers of brain-dead Feminists have become lecturers in such topics as "Women's Studies", "Psychology of Women", "Feminist Jurisprudence", and so on and so forth. They have students and publish textbooks which their students have to learn from in order to pass their courses. They also write articles for journals influenced by Feminist political pressure. Then people like A.Y. Siu come along and call some of these Feminist writers (Susan Brownmiller, in his case) and lecturers "respectable scholars", and call me "cocky" for attacking their views. This is a complete farce, and Western universities have lost all credibility. I will be writing more about universities in future articles.

A.Y. Siu says that he has seen no Feminist writing that could be described as "man-hating", but he is no judge of that, since he is a man-hater (misandrist) hiself. His entire article is devoid of any smidgeon of interest in or concern for the rights and interests of the man in the sex/rape scenario. On the other hand, he goes into considerable detail about what a woman might feel in such a scenario. Even when he admits that there is such a thing as a coquettish, playful, teasing "No", even then he does not argue for a legal burden on the woman to avoid acting in this way, and he does not mention the legal jeopardy that this ambiguity puts the man into.

A.Y. Siu admits that the "problem" of the backlash is quite widespread. Manhaters like him are the cause of it. On the other hand, it is true that bigotted people exist on the other side of the fence, as well. Just being Anti-Feminist is not a guarantee of virtue. However, educating people about injustice should not be carried out by manhaters, because they equate justice with manhating, as do the justice systems of most Western countries.

 

Last Update: 15 March 2008