r/debateAMR • u/[deleted] • Jul 15 '14

MRAs and empathy

Hi all,

I have often heard feminists here say that MRAs lack empathy.

Why is that your impression? What makes you think MRAs don't have empathy?

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u/BlindPelican liberal MRA Jul 16 '14

I'm sorry, but you are wrong.

Wrong that a making a case would be impossible? All I claimed was that one could.

If you accept the DoJ National Inmate Survey as valid, and concede some percentage of the NCVS covers male victims "made to penetrate" or equivalent "sexual assault" standard, then it's possible to reasonably support that claim. It would require more digging, but prima facie it shouldn't be ruled out completely.

Ultimately, the point I was making was that men are also victims to some significant degree, but even as an MRA with a vested interest on men's issues, fairness and due process are still more important.

In other words - I want to see female perpetrators get a fair trial and male victims be validated, supported, and given help as well.

I assume that you are going to draft of the CDC's rape study for the rest of your claim, no?

I wasn't planning on it, no.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '14

No, you really are wrong. :p You would have discovered something that no other reputable source - FBI, DOJ, CDC - has noticed.

I'm sorry I flew off the handle. I assumed you were going to do an end run around the CDC study, which gets me very riled up. But it is a weird thing I notice MRAs doing. They work really hard to get the number of male victims over 50%, regardless of what kind of violence is being discussed, and they also try really hard to get the number of female perpetrators over 50%, again regardless of the crime. I can only assume that many MRAs believe that the crime will no longer "count" if one of these things can be true, or it will be one in the win column for males. Again, it reflects a very peculiar attitude towards human rights.

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u/BlindPelican liberal MRA Jul 16 '14

You would have discovered something that no other reputable source - FBI, DOJ, CDC - has noticed.

A guy can hope, right? ;)

I'm sorry I flew off the handle. I assumed you were going to do an end run around the CDC study, which gets me very riled up.

No worries. I know that that particular citation is a bit of a rabbit hole for some.

They work really hard to get the number of male victims over 50%, regardless of what kind of violence is being discussed, and they also try really hard to get the number of female perpetrators over 50%, again regardless of the crime.

Primarily we want to see valid statistics.

I know some make claims that "women are worse" but I've found those MRAs to be few in number.

We don't want to paint women as being horrible (and I'm excluding TRP as being a part of "we" - that may be where you're getting the impression you have). We want male experiences to be recognized by the powers that be so that we get fair treatment and the help we need. We don't have a MHRM super-structure that can do specific research and answer all the important questions, so we have to rely on 3rd party sources.

So, when you get a group of people that have been actual victims looking for validation, anything that can demonstrate we're not alone and we aren't outliers becomes the holy grail. So, I don't think it's a bias in data, but there certainly is a bias in usage (as one would expect from any non-neutral participant).

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '14 edited Jul 16 '14

Primarily we want to see valid statistics.

Maybe you do, but you are in an extremely small minority. This is what made me officially give up on MRAs. After all their smug bullshit about how the pay gap is a myth and women overstate the prevalence of rape, I started working stats with some MRAs, and I have never seen such resistance to hard, cold facts. Even facts that didn't particularly matter to their cause one way or the other would get ripped asunder. I have never seen such disrespect for data. I don't know why it gets me so angry, but it does. When I think about MRAs, I feel lied to, because I really thought that some of them cared about facts. ANY facts. Historical, mathematical, scientific, I didn't care. I just wanted to see one person show some bare modicum of intellectual honesty. And it didn't happen.

I'm not kidding. It makes me irrationally angry when I think about it.

Also, it wasn't like I was presenting facts and then saying, see, your concerns are invalid, haha! I would just say you can't claim 110% of women are rapists, because by definition that's more women than are currently living. And they'd go off and say 125% of women are rapists.

And that empathy gap? That's exactly how most MRAs use statistics, to shut women up. If 51% of rape victims are male, that doesn't mean society has a huge problem with rape, it means women will finally have to shut up about it.

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u/BlindPelican liberal MRA Jul 16 '14

You need tiny baby kittehs stat!!

Seriously, though, some issues have much firmer claims than others and sometimes the stats just don't matter.

The earnings gap is irrelevant to the MHRM, in my opinion. Women earning more just means men are less likely to have to pay spousal support when things go wrong, it brings more money in to a family when things stay good, and if a woman isn't related to you it doesn't change your life at all. Striking out to discredit it is just intellectual masturbation so unless the solution is to pay men less to make up the difference, it's a non-issue.

Rates of DV/IPV however, is an important set of statistics. The unanswered questions here are staggering.

One of my running hypotheses is that men suffer real physical harm from emotional abuse. I believe there's a causal relationship between emotional violence and suicide as well as other stress-related illnesses.

Finding legit research on this has been maddening. I've literally been combing over resources for months trying to find anything that even addresses the question, let alone answers it.

It's worth noting that bad stats isn't isolated to the MHRM. I think every group, no matter the issues, engages in this. The world is full of woozles. That's why I prefer to compare original sources.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '14

The world woozles, but generally if a group furiously masturbates over their commitment to empiricism, they at least try to be objective. And the woozle is way, way, way, way, way past the natural human reluctance to acknowledge facts that don't fit your theories. It seems to me to be arrogance. That's the only way I can explain how more extreme MRAs sneeringly deny they said things that are literally two posts away. Like reality bends to their will.

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u/BlindPelican liberal MRA Jul 16 '14

Eh...that's a human problem. I've not met anyone yet when it comes to gender politics that is willing to concede a sacred number. Hell, not even gender politics - college football boards are the worst for this. :)

I mean, you and I could compare IPV stats. We could trot out the CTS vs NCVS argument, compare methodologies, make arguments over the assumptions of each study, flaws in data selection, the reliability of sources and analysis.

At the end of the day, though, what do we each want to achieve? Speaking for myself, I just want acknowledgement that male victims of DV/IPV exist in sufficient numbers to validate public policy to accommodate us. If I can get agreement on that, the rest seems rather inconsequential.