My god, but the stupid is past burning...

[pecunium]

I am going to assume you are all sitting down for this.

I am going to assume you have neither liquids in your mouth, nor delicate objects near to hand.

Because I have, I think, encountered one of the most incomprehensible arguments of Libertarian MRA... nonsense is too generous. Words fail me.

First... realise that Roissy thinks this thing was a good observation on male female relationships.

Second, and this is the part which is hard to fathom... this guy is arguing that... no, I can't sum up; it would take too long. I'll have to quote him.

Rape is equality

It's not hyperbole. It's not poorly phrased (thought, expressed, whatever rationalisation you might like to get around the bald-faced horror of that concept) he defends it in comments.

His thesis is that men have money, power, social leverage, etc, and women are taking it away from them, so; to balance the books, and establish a truly equal footing men need to take something from women. That would be sex. If you take away men's resources and status in the interest of "equality" then we need to introduce sexual coercion to reestablish sexual fairness, if not equality, and, "Rape is making the best of a bad job and men know this instinctively. And it does not take an awful lot of men with my mindset to make life as unpleasant for women as it is for men. Think about it -- do you women really want equality? If you you aren't willing to put up with men demanding the equal right to have sex anytime we want just as women can, then doing things such as forcibly dissolving Norwegian companies who don't have at least 40% women in the boardrooms and other affirmative action is probably a bad move.

The buried ideas in that are croggling. When you read further, in the comment you see that women have gotten what equality they have not because it is just, but because they have stolen it (by force... he's a Libertarian, so the gov't passing a law which prevents discrimination is a taking, a la Rand Paul. There is a whole lot of evil in that.

When you parse out his thoughts, they boil down to women aren't really people.

For every female beneficiary of affirmative action there is, by definition, a male victim. I am not just speaking for myself. , I think he's trying to say women aren't actually capable of being competent at anything, esp. when I see, "still you are saying that it is more OK for a man to be forcibly stripped of his money, status and power in the name of "equality," because he doesn't really "own" it, while a woman's assets -- her body -- is inviolable because she owns it. So you are saying that a man cannot even in principle own anything valuable and inviolable that the opposite sex wants. I am arguing that those assets are morally equal and that if it is OK use affirmative action to redistribute male assets to women, even if men have earned these assets though superior motivation and harder work because we desperately need them to attract a mate, and probably because of superior ability on average in many profitable fields, then it is also OK for men to forcibly take what we want from women, which is sex. ."

Note the weasel words, "probably because of superior ability on average." The mind boggles. The thing in there which is so sad is the idea that the only thing women want is material goods.

Hogwash. I have never been rich. I have never been more than tolerably comfortable. This has not kept me from having a fair number of women find me interesting, and sexually desirable. I have even (shock of shocks) been able to have a moderate amount of romantic, and some purely libidinous, success with women I was interested in. Not having to put up with, "some Alpha's cast-offs" as Roissy and Berge seem to think ought to be my light (I'm no Cary Grant, no Brad Pitt and no Donald Trump. I am not an asshole to other men, nor a jerk to women. By the model they have I am supposed to be teaching myself to enjoy enforced abstinence as a way of life, so I can stop suffering the, "pangs of dispris'd love. If this my life has been so abstinent as all that, I'll be happy to live in the monastery).

What really irritates me (the equality = men are losing out so women need to be raped thing doesn't irritate me. It makes me both angry, and pitiful. Angry that this little twit can be seriously arguing it [even as a gedanken experiment and pitiful that he is so pathetic in his failures) is that he can believe this would somehow make things equal. He doesn't really seem to think it would make things better.

Which means he doesn't think women should be equal. Since he is a libertarian, and so thinks all people should be allowed to do what they will, and holds that women aren't entitled to equality (at least not in a world worth living in) it must therefore follow that he doesn't really think women are people.

Which is, actually, so blindingly obvious from the get go that I wonder at my being upset enough to waste all your time pointing it out.

But, to close, lets posit a little thought experiment of our own... would Eivind Berge be willing to have been born a women, in the present age where they are, by his lights, in the catbird seat; they have "forced" equality economically, and situational superiority sexually/emotionally.

Anyone want to take the bet he wants to be a woman? I'd even be willing to offer odds.

Comments

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

I have written and scrapped two replies to this. I am glad I was able to provide you with some insight. The Libertarian political philosophy is actually rather dangerous, especially in the light of corporate psychopathy. I mean, if we lived in a libertarian world BP would be brazenly saying, "oops. Oil spill. Whatever," instead of trying to squeak by with a minimum of clean-up. And if those people living on the Gulf were harmed, well, it was their own stupid fault for living there - which you could equally apply to everyone, living everywhere.

I bet your ex-bf and his step-dad were white and middle class. I assume this because every Libertarian I've ever met has been a white, middle-class man. I don't know about you, but I'm automatically suspect of any political philosophy that doesn't hold a good-sized cross-section of the nation's population. There are reasons that Libertarians are a fringe party.

I'm sorry, I don't know what "spicy cat" means, why he would call his chinese food that, or what the problem is. I suppose it's because I don't know east-coast slang, which appears to be where you grew up. Would you mind explaining it? I don't doubt you - I've just never heard that term before.

[amberite2112.livejournal.com]

yep, both white middle-class. my ex was italian, step-dad was of swedish extraction, i think. and the dad was/is a computer designer/writer, the ex is sort-of an engineer. he works with way more white guys than i'd be comfortable working with. to try to be fair to him, it wasn't till he got this steady, years-long job that these attitudes started cropping up.

'spicy' isn't so much the problem. the cat reference talks about a practice in some south east asian cultures of eating cat meat or dog meat. the implication from him, is that the restaurant is serving feline. personally, i believe that what others eat is up to them, but i an offended, and would simply prefer not to hear about it with such lip-smacking enthusiasm. every day. i'm not sure if he heard the phrase somewhere, or made it up, but i'd never heard it till i heard him say it. he's traveled quite a bit as a youth, so i couldn't even hazard a guess as to where he got it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_meat

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I see. My brain must have checked out. We used to say that the college dorm cafeteria served up cat meat because the quality of food was bad, but there was no (at least intended) racist connotation there.

I tend to think that agreeing to eat one animal because it's a "food animal" while eschewing eating another because it's a "pet animal" is sentimentalist and silly, but I eat various herbivores and couldn't imagine anyone eating my cats - so I guess I'm a sentimentalist. And silly.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Re: cat meat in Asian food, it's a fairly common somewhat-racist stereotype. ("Somewhat": yes, it really happens in some cultures; no, it doesn't really commonly happen in North American food establishments.) Bob Rivers did a Harry Chapin parody, "Cat's in the Kettle", for example.

[sanat.livejournal.com]

I assume this because every Libertarian I've ever met has been a white, middle-class man.

Same here, except I'd tack on "able-bodied", as well. My god, the stench of privilege I felt when interviewing these guys in my former career in local politics...

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

My daughter is dating one (they're teens) and she wishes he would just shut up, look cute, and play Mario Galaxy instead. (I don't see it lasting long. He mocks her for being an idealist.)

He added me on Facebook today and a thread on libertarianism EXPLODED. It makes my head hurt. :( I don't know if I want to beat him or mother him until he comes to his senses (his mom is a bit off).

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

You'd think I'd tack on "able-bodied" to every listing of privilege because my bf is permanently disabled, as was one of my advisors in my MA program - but since I'm able-bodied, I keep forgetting. I shall hammer it in. No excuse.

[elf]

Kennita Watson, who ran for CA State Assembly in 2002 on the Libertarian ticket, is neither white nor male. I mention her because when I hear Libertarian, she's who first comes to mind as the one I personally know best, because she's fannish.

She's not the only female Libertarian I know of, nor the only person of color, nor the only one who's both--but yeah, the Libertarian membership demographics look a lot like the cast lists of film noir movies.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

She's fannish? I am having a non-vocabulary day, so I'm wondering what this means ... to me, it means someone who is sort of a fan of something.

(This is a response to what she wrote, not to you. I don't assume you support the Libertarians.) The Libertarian statement of purpose is very nice, on the surface, but it leads to developments that are not so nice. I wonder if Ms. Watson knows that, 150 years ago, people with the same political leanings argued against the Freedman's Bureau? Human beings, including Americans, seem all too prone to determining that people who don't fit their idea of "human being" don't need to be treated as equal to themselves. If the government hadn't stepped in, raised taxes, and determined how they would be spent, black people would still not have the vote and we wouldn't have public education of any kind. "Big government" my left foot.

I just completed an MA in US history and let me tell you, the situation the poor were in before the 20th century was dire. Women who spent their whole lives caring for their families and their neighbors could end up living in shacks, with the community begrudgingly delivering them a load of firewood once in a while. That was 'charity.' It was better than nothing at all, but it wasn't actual assistance. And all of it depended on whether her husband had predeceased her, which was usual, and whether she had any children still alive, around, and capable of caring for her, which was uncommon.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

"Fannish" = "member of the science fiction fandom community". Someone you might encounter at a science fiction convention. SF fandom contains a small but significant number of people who have been heavily influenced toward Libertarianism by the more political works of Heinlein, and who haven't yet figured out that Heinlein's Libertopias work for the same reason that Rand's do -- because they have an Author standing in the background making sure they work.

[elf]

In my youth, I had a stretch when I considered joining the Libertarian party, in part because of Kennita's campaigning at sci-fi conventions. I gave up on them when they removed the children's rights plank from their platform. Since then, I've had plenty of time to consider the basis of a government based on "everyone pays his own way;" I kinda like having firefighters and a lack of plagues. And I notice that a lot of Libertarians are a bit blurry on things like "who pays for interstate highways" and "how, exactly, is society improved by increasing illiteracy by removing public schooling?"

Also, I'm opposed to dead baby policies. Libertarians are in favor of a lot of economic policies that boil down to "if they're too poor or ignorant to arrange for birth control, prenatal care, labour attendants, and educated childcare help, those babies didn't deserve to live anyway." Which, um. Despite liking some of the "cut back on gov't spending" ideas, I can't quite wrap my head around.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Libertarianism works in Theory (Theory is a swell place, everything works there).

In Reality, not so much. For Libertarianism to work in practice all the people in the system have to be that mythical creature, The Rational Actor.

Only when every actor is acting rationally, can the Utopia be attained; where the market is perfect, exploitation of power differentials doesn't happen, back-room deals to shaft one's competition, corner cutting and scrimping to save money/increase profit won't take place, etc..

If everyone were that rational actor we would not need police (because no one would engage in the sorts of things which need police to rectify), no prisons, no SEC, no OSHA, FDA, etc.. There would be fire depts, because everyone would see the wisdom in subscribing. The same would be true of roads, and hospitals,and libraries, and all the other trappings of modern civilisation.

Barring that, the world needs regulations, and cops, and the FDA, FAA, FCC, FTC, etc.

[elf]

Took me a while to figure that out. Our crowd calls it the "enlightened masses fallacy"--any plan that hinges on the eventual total enlightenment of the general public is doomed to failure. Doesn't matter how many brilliant, sensible, generous, wise people you have in key positions; if the system only works if The Average Joe stops being the average joe and instead has to be The Excellent Joseph, it's going to fail.

Selfishness & paranoia are survival traits; we're not breeding them out of the species. Any plan based on "eventually, people will understand how interdependent we all are" is a pipe dream, not a plan for the future.

[cleverthylacine]

Holy crap, I know her, but never knew her real name, and would never have pegged her as libertarian.

[elf]

I didn't have to peg her as a libertarian; she used to campaign at BayCon. She held political room parties.

Kennita had a big influence on how I thought libertarianism worked; it took me quite a while to sort out that her ideas didn't mesh with much of what the party actually advocated.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

There are also Libertarians among the working poor; these are generally people who have convinced themselves that they could strike it rich if it weren't for all that nasty government interference with whatever plan they have in mind. I classify this as a version of the "handicapped-space fallacy," which is the (not necessarily conscious) conviction that if the government didn't mandate handicapped parking near the entrance to malls and such, that invitingly-open space would still be open and waiting for THEM.

And yes, the vast majority of them are white.

[cleverthylacine]

I'm a recovering Lib and definitely female, and I have never nor would I ever have called Chinese takeout "spicy cat". I don't think all Libs behave in racist and sexist ways in their daily lives, sorry. Kennita Watson certainly doesn't.

The white, male ones usually do, but um, most white males do so unconsciously until they learn to recognise their privilege and the ways they are abusing it, regardless of political party affiliation. Nearly all people do. We absorb racist and sexist thinking from our culture and if we manage to expunge it from our souls it's because we have done the work. Libertarianism doesn't force anyone to behave like that; what it does is allow the people who don't want to do that work an excuse for not doing so.

The reason I joined the party was that I started out in a family that was fairly conservative and, being non-Christian and queer, decided that I wanted to be in a political party that was fiscally conservative but did not attempt to enforce "Christian" sexual morality on people or restore lost Christian privilege.

The reason I left the party was because of the overwhelming scientific evidence that poverty in childhood especially causes a lot of the social problems that Libertarians think are caused by the "welfare state" and makes it absolutely freaking impossible for most people to overcome the stacked deck that is being played against them.

So.

In my own, personal experience, having known rather a lot of Libertarians before I stopped being one, they fall into two categories:

* people who have significant amounts of privilege (usually but not always white or male) who believe that because they worked hard for everything they have, they are being ripped off when they have to pay taxes, not understanding that their hard work brought them more returns than most other people's hard work does because of their privilege and the other advantages they have enjoyed in life.

* people who lack privilege (often white and male, but usually working-class and therefore blind to their white male privilege because they don't see that as bad as they are doing, it would be worse if they weren't white and male) who have the little they have because they have worked INSANELY hard, and think that everyone else should have to work that INSANELY hard to hold on to what they have, and that other people who don't work 80 hours a week, hunt bargains obsessively, have children (these men usually don't have children or wives or partners and blame it on their lack of financial resources, though this isn't always the case), etc are getting a free ride somehow, and that anyone who is getting a "handout" is stealing their food directly out of their mouths. They are people who, despite being white and mostly male (I was in this category once), have never got the help they should have got from society, and begrudge it to everyone else, instead of having it dawn on them that because of class privilege or lack thereof, and other conditions, they did not receive what every person ought to receive, and committing themselves to ensuring that EVERYONE gets the help they need in life.

Libertarianism is, essentially, objectivism mated with the Calvinist work ethic, stripped of its religious trappings. If you are completely blind to privilege it makes perfect sense. It is easy to be completely blind to privilege if you are white, able bodied and lower-to-working class, because you lack the perspective to understand how being white and/or male has improved things for you even if you are not doing as well as an upper-class white able-bodied person. It is essentially the belief that anyone can be Horatio Alger.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

I agree with what you say here. Especially the last three paragraphs, which I could have written myself had I the brain today.

But I wonder if you're aware of just how hostile you sound saying it. I certainly didn't say I knew every Libertarian. I'm pretty sure I used the word "assume" in there somewhere. And my saying that I haven't met a Libertarian who was not a racist, sexist, white middle class (ableist) man doesn't mean there isn't one out there, though I reserve the right to continue disbelieving that somewhere there exists a Libertarian who is an actual champion of liberty and equality. I'm not sure if I should feel attacked by this, but I do.

As for "we absorb racist and sexist thinking in our culture," I completely agree. I'm working on that, myself. Last week I had a nasty row with my mother, who identifies as liberal and Green, because she kept talking smack about black people but refused to believe that, as a liberal, she could be racist in any way. No political following forces people to act in a sexist or racist manner, but like you said, I believe that Libertarianism does foster that kind of belief. And it's not only Libertarians who are racist, sexist, etc. There are a great many of those in every political party, one reason why I'm nonpartisan. Still, I note that the people who do most commonly explore their own privilege and how it affects others and who make it a point to change tend to be more to the left.

I'd like to go further, though, and say that Libertarianism gives people who are unwilling to examine their privilege a party under which to coalesce and attempt to gain control of the government and nation, upon which they would control who received what services (or dismantle them altogether). Here, in this circumstance, they would be forcing people to behave in such a fashion, namely by making behaving in any other way illegal. To wit, it used to be illegal to teach black people how to read or to allow them to own guns or dogs. Some white people ran the risk of death if they resisted and helped educate black people. Not everyone is willing to risk death to teach someone else how to read - this is reasonable coercion by law. Now you could argue that Libertarians don't want any more laws, they want less laws - but our legal system has laws in place to make it illegal to prevent someone from registering or turning out to vote. Without that sort of law, as we saw in the South for at least 80 years after Emancipation, black people don't vote. Social, moral, and physical suasion work just as well as legal threat or imprisonment.

I didn't mention in the comment you've responded to that Libertarians act in racist or sexist ways in their day-to-day lives. I am actually unconcerned about overt racism and sexism, as our society these days polices that rather readily. But when Libertarians exercise their political voice by funding PACs and voting other Libertarians into office, or by writing and championing laws to pass, there they are exercising a racist, sexist (etc.) ideology. I don't know Kennita Watson at all well, but if she's a Libertarian because she's fannish of someone's utopian society written up in a SF book, as was hinted at by another commenter, then I reserve the right to make the initial judgment that she's terribly naive. That's rather like thinking that megadosing on Niacin will clear the body of toxins because L. Ron Hubbard said so.

[cleverthylacine]

But I wonder if you're aware of just how hostile you sound saying it.

Sorry you don't like my tone, but you seem to have confused me with an actual Libertarian. I am a former Libertarian, and I am not disagreeing that there are large numbers of racist and sexist people in the Libertarian Party. Where we disagree is over the notion that one crazy Libertarian in Norway who has written a post encouraging rape is typical of the entire LP.

I agree with you that Libertarianism is wrong philosophically and ethically; I don't think it's appropriate to say that all Libertarians are actively racist and sexist any more than I think that it's appropriate to say that about any other large group of people. I don't agree with you that most people who get over sexism and racism tend to be to the left to start out, but I do agree with you that they tend to eventually end up there. As I did. (Not to imply that my work on myself is done, either.) I certainly don't disagree with you that the majority of well-meaning, non-misanthropic Libertarians are naive and/or misinformed. I don't know Kennita at all well, and in fact didn't know her real name until recently, having met her through fandom, but I pegged her as naive pretty early in my limited acquaintance with her.

I think people join parties because of beliefs they already hold, and that being in a party doesn't change them much. One of two things tends to happen: either they find that they agree with the people in the party they're in, and their beliefs may get more entrenched, or they find that they don't agree with the people in the party they're in, or they change their minds about things, and they leave and find another party.

I certainly agree with you that the Libertarian party is not a force for good in the world--which is why I'm no longer a member thereof.

And my saying that I haven't met a Libertarian who was not a racist, sexist, white middle class (ableist) man doesn't mean there isn't one out there, though I reserve the right to continue disbelieving that somewhere there exists a Libertarian who is an actual champion of liberty and equality.

Well, I have not noticed a shortage of female Libertarians. Nonwhite Libertarians are rarer because to be a Libertarian you really have to be kind of blind to the effects of privilege in a way that is difficult if you're black, Kennita Watson notwithstanding. Most of the nonwhite Libertarians I've met have been Asian-American.

I doubt that there are any Libertarians whom you (or I) would consider an actual champion of liberty and equality, but that's because they have a different understanding of "liberty" than you do and they tend not to understand privilege at all, not because they all hate women or non-whites. That doesn't mean that they all want women to live in terror of rape, even though this misogynist asshat does.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about the apparent hostility of your tone (which is apparent in this comment as well, especially in the second sentence) because I wanted to know if you were deliberately being hostile or if I was misinterpreting you. I've learned to ask because it's rude to assume one or the other. I am still learning to interpret the words and tone of others correctly.

I think that Libertarians in general are racist and sexist. I don't think they advocate rape as a form of manufacturing equality. Obviously this guy's a kook and I doubt most Libertarians are overly-eager to embrace him as the party's poster child (even if he was American and not Norwegian). I don't believe I said anything to that effect anywhere. Saying a group of people demonstrate sexism in how they vote is quite a bit different than saying a rape advocate represents Libertarianism. Also, I was not in any way saying that all Libertarians hate women or non-whites. I know a great many people who are, or love, women and who vote for sexist laws, or who are or have nothing personal against non-whites but who still vote for racist laws because they don't understand how institutionalized racism works. These people are from all political parties, not just the conservative ones.

It seems to me that you and I are in agreement about just about everything, so I am wondering why you are finding ways to say "I don't agree about ..." when I never said those things in the first place. Did my words offend you in some fashion? Do you think I am casting judgment on you because you used to be Libertarian? I am not trying to be snide here; I used to be the queen of insulting people unintentionally and am trying to learn how to speak my mind without giving undue offense. It's entirely possible that I am casting judgment on you and simply not realizing it - I am still learning about my own beliefs about privilege and I do have some prejudices against conservatives that I am working to modulate or eradicate. In short, I am trying to respect you.