7 ms·

I was originally going to lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff until I saw the author was Jonathan Haidt. I had the honor to take Psyc

I was originally going to lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff until I saw the author was Jonathan Haidt. I had the honor to take Psyc 101 with Prof. Haidt years ago at the University of Virginia. He was a wonderful teacher who expected the best out of his students. He struck me as a very intelligent man who had put a lot of thought into both what he taught as well as his opinions. When he bring up his own beliefs in class he was very open to letting others voice dissenting opinions. More importantly, he always seemed willing to consider alternative views. I know this is all anecdotal, but I put a lot of trust in his opinions and pay attention when he says something. Unrelated, but he gave a great Ted talk in 2008 about the difference between liberals and conservatives: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind

derptron 11y ago
"I was originally going to lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff" What?
- richard_mcp 11y ago
  Normally if I read an article about the men's right movement, it ends up being slightly malicious or dismissive of other movements like feminism. I don't disagree with a lot of their points, but there often seems to be a thread of misogyny just under the surface which makes me less likely to take them seriously.
  - rewqfdsa 11y ago
    > it ends up being slightly malicious or dismissive of other movements like feminism When feminiism has become a movement against truth and against half the population, what do you expect?
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Niceness, community and civilization. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-co...
    - iamsohungry 11y ago
      When that happens, I'll be malicious and dismissive toward feminism. But that hasn't happened yet. There are more feminists who are reasonable people than there are vocal crazies. Some things said by feminists: * "Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill." -- Betty Friedan * "Women and men communicate differently, often on entirely different planes. But just as men have failed us, we have failed them. It has been one of our great collective female shortcomings to presume that whatever we do not perceive simply isn't there, or that whatever is not communicated in our language is not intelligible speech." ― Norah Vincent * I can't find the reference, but I seem to remember that the first person to widely spread the idea that it's possible for men to be raped was a feminist. Remember that the college kids at Yale are exactly that: kids. I remember a time shortly after I became an atheist where I was angry at everyone religious for wronging me. It took me a while to realize that many religious people weren't horrible people, they were just humans, who were doing the wrong thing while trying their best to do the right thing. College students who are newly finding their voices are defining the conversation here, but they're not bad people, they just haven't realized yet that the people who they're attacking are just humans, too.
      - rewqfdsa 11y ago
        And then you get people who promote the Duluth Model, which declares men guilty until proven innocent. No, feminism has turned into an anti-male movement. Prominent exceptions aside, feminism is the excuse the current illiberal generation is using to curtail the rights of men. "Bitch" is profane, but the word "mansplain" is apparently respectable vocabulary. Tell me all you want that feminism isn't a harmful force in society today. That idea is not consistent with my experience. When modern feminists hear that boys are doing worse in school than they used to, they just say "good; it's about time". These days, every time I hear someone arguing against equal treatment, against free speech, against due process, and again diversity of opinion, that person is a self-proclaimed feminist. Modern feminists really believe that today's men, especially white men, should suffer for imagined crimes of our ancestors. It's perfectly fine to have women-only conferences and events, but if we even think of a men-only club, that's backwards and sexist. Feminism is about double standards and about setting the genders against each other. The idea that feminism benefits men too is a lie.
  - forgottenpass 11y ago
    When disagreeing with a particular popular liberal thought is so taboo, the people who want to vocalize their dissent will find strange bedfellows. In this case the unabashedly misogynistic. Without carefully measured responses, the larger moment will steamroll the dissent with guilt by association (the last many years) until it becomes unavoidable (the last year-ish?) when the ideas are presented in non-hitpeices by The Atlantic and Vox.
    - iamsohungry 11y ago
      > When disagreeing with a particular popular liberal thought is so taboo, the people who want to vocalize their dissent will find strange bedfellows. In this case the unabashedly misogynistic. That's not something I'm going to do. I don't subscribe to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and I want nothing to do with misogyny. We're not doing ourselves any favors by associating with terrible people just because they agree with us on some issues.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  That exact quote is part of the current problem - dismissal of a serious and concerning issue. Nowadays you'd never see someone going "I was originally going to lump this article in with other "black people's rights movement" stuff", except maybe on the more extremist parts of the internet.
- ps4fanboy 11y ago
  That is the text version of finger snapping.
  - richard_mcp 11y ago
    I'm unfamiliar with what finger snapping means. Can you explain that to me?
    - ps4fanboy 11y ago
      Its mentioned in the article but a quick google came up with these articles.. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/17/oh-snap-campus-kids-drop-triggering-applause-to-show-approval/ http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/17/oh-snap-campus-kids-dro... https://twitter.com/womcam/status/580389025892175872 https://twitter.com/womcam/status/580389025892175872 I must admit I dont understand the motivations and it does seem like the onion to me but I dont want to dismiss it unreasonably.
    - throwaway999888 11y ago
      It's a more passive aggressive form of clapping.
bmelton 11y ago
It is anecdotal, but as someone who disagrees with Haidt on most things political, his TED talks and books are, to my ears, spot on, and comprised of very rigorous science, which I previous did not think possible in psych fields. I confess that I liked the article before I noticed the author, though I honestly kept expecting it to devolve into some kind of MRA tirade which would likely have lost me, but after finishing the article and having found no such vitriol, I scrolled up and saw that it was Haidt, which I wish I'd seen earlier as it might have assuaged the tension I felt.
gohrt 11y ago
I hope this experience opened your eyes to the anti-pattern of 'lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff '
- dasil003 11y ago
  And vice versa! Biggest problem the internet currently has around these social justice issues is that the loudest voices are often extremists on one side or the other completely lacking empathy for anyone different from themselves.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
id 11y ago
So it doesn't matter what is being said as long as it is coming from the right person?
- Tarrosion 11y ago
  Or more charitably, the grandparent comment author found a way to do the admirable (and for almost all of us, all-too-rare) task of reevaluating with renewed respect something previously dismissed.

derptron 11y ago

"I was originally going to lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff" What?

richard_mcp 11y ago
Normally if I read an article about the men's right movement, it ends up being slightly malicious or dismissive of other movements like feminism. I don't disagree with a lot of their points, but there often seems to be a thread of misogyny just under the surface which makes me less likely to take them seriously.
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  > it ends up being slightly malicious or dismissive of other movements like feminism When feminiism has become a movement against truth and against half the population, what do you expect?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Niceness, community and civilization. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-co...
  - iamsohungry 11y ago
    When that happens, I'll be malicious and dismissive toward feminism. But that hasn't happened yet. There are more feminists who are reasonable people than there are vocal crazies. Some things said by feminists: * "Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill." -- Betty Friedan * "Women and men communicate differently, often on entirely different planes. But just as men have failed us, we have failed them. It has been one of our great collective female shortcomings to presume that whatever we do not perceive simply isn't there, or that whatever is not communicated in our language is not intelligible speech." ― Norah Vincent * I can't find the reference, but I seem to remember that the first person to widely spread the idea that it's possible for men to be raped was a feminist. Remember that the college kids at Yale are exactly that: kids. I remember a time shortly after I became an atheist where I was angry at everyone religious for wronging me. It took me a while to realize that many religious people weren't horrible people, they were just humans, who were doing the wrong thing while trying their best to do the right thing. College students who are newly finding their voices are defining the conversation here, but they're not bad people, they just haven't realized yet that the people who they're attacking are just humans, too.
    - rewqfdsa 11y ago
      And then you get people who promote the Duluth Model, which declares men guilty until proven innocent. No, feminism has turned into an anti-male movement. Prominent exceptions aside, feminism is the excuse the current illiberal generation is using to curtail the rights of men. "Bitch" is profane, but the word "mansplain" is apparently respectable vocabulary. Tell me all you want that feminism isn't a harmful force in society today. That idea is not consistent with my experience. When modern feminists hear that boys are doing worse in school than they used to, they just say "good; it's about time". These days, every time I hear someone arguing against equal treatment, against free speech, against due process, and again diversity of opinion, that person is a self-proclaimed feminist. Modern feminists really believe that today's men, especially white men, should suffer for imagined crimes of our ancestors. It's perfectly fine to have women-only conferences and events, but if we even think of a men-only club, that's backwards and sexist. Feminism is about double standards and about setting the genders against each other. The idea that feminism benefits men too is a lie.
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  When disagreeing with a particular popular liberal thought is so taboo, the people who want to vocalize their dissent will find strange bedfellows. In this case the unabashedly misogynistic. Without carefully measured responses, the larger moment will steamroll the dissent with guilt by association (the last many years) until it becomes unavoidable (the last year-ish?) when the ideas are presented in non-hitpeices by The Atlantic and Vox.
  - iamsohungry 11y ago
    > When disagreeing with a particular popular liberal thought is so taboo, the people who want to vocalize their dissent will find strange bedfellows. In this case the unabashedly misogynistic. That's not something I'm going to do. I don't subscribe to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and I want nothing to do with misogyny. We're not doing ourselves any favors by associating with terrible people just because they agree with us on some issues.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
That exact quote is part of the current problem - dismissal of a serious and concerning issue. Nowadays you'd never see someone going "I was originally going to lump this article in with other "black people's rights movement" stuff", except maybe on the more extremist parts of the internet.
ps4fanboy 11y ago
That is the text version of finger snapping.
- richard_mcp 11y ago
  I'm unfamiliar with what finger snapping means. Can you explain that to me?
  - ps4fanboy 11y ago
    Its mentioned in the article but a quick google came up with these articles.. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/17/oh-snap-campus-kids-drop-triggering-applause-to-show-approval/ http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/17/oh-snap-campus-kids-dro... https://twitter.com/womcam/status/580389025892175872 https://twitter.com/womcam/status/580389025892175872 I must admit I dont understand the motivations and it does seem like the onion to me but I dont want to dismiss it unreasonably.
  - throwaway999888 11y ago
    It's a more passive aggressive form of clapping.

bmelton 11y ago

It is anecdotal, but as someone who disagrees with Haidt on most things political, his TED talks and books are, to my ears, spot on, and comprised of very rigorous science, which I previous did not think possible in psych fields. I confess that I liked the article before I noticed the author, though I honestly kept expecting it to devolve into some kind of MRA tirade which would likely have lost me, but after finishing the article and having found no such vitriol, I scrolled up and saw that it was Haidt, which I wish I'd seen earlier as it might have assuaged the tension I felt.

gohrt 11y ago

I hope this experience opened your eyes to the anti-pattern of 'lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff '

dasil003 11y ago
And vice versa! Biggest problem the internet currently has around these social justice issues is that the loudest voices are often extremists on one side or the other completely lacking empathy for anyone different from themselves.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

id 11y ago

So it doesn't matter what is being said as long as it is coming from the right person?

Tarrosion 11y ago
Or more charitably, the grandparent comment author found a way to do the admirable (and for almost all of us, all-too-rare) task of reevaluating with renewed respect something previously dismissed.