Ahh yes day light again, well actually it is getting dusk, but we are talking last night here.

John I have measured some fine tweaking into the Sparkle*patriarchy radar and I can understand your intent. Read your last paragraph posted here again.

Three:am and a couple of vodis tend to mess up this fine instrument of detection.

To be honest you are the first MAN I have had (as in comments) on here that has not been a Troll. Now this is an achievement, which has led me to question whether sparkle* is giving up the habit of a life-time and non-dysfunctional XYers are homing in to her wholeness ~ as in a fully functioning and ubber sorted human ~

Please find a gift in the post John

Sparkle*Greetings

PS We will give the ‘great post’ malarkey a wide birth, but I catch your drift

I got most of it, but what wasn’t clear in the original post (addressed in the latter) was the determination and self regulation to override the collective.

You were #142 in Alas’ post?

Certainly more pro-fem men should be screaming loudly at ‘the ones who fall from the wagon’ (yes, it is a cop out to say that the individual slip of one person will not have repercussions). And I guess it is up to the feminists themselves to ‘police’ the actions of other feminists.

I was quite disgusted with some ‘rad-’fems flocking around poooor widdle Barry, bloody Amp’s Handmaidens.

Bottom line is that a rad-fem CANNOT defend any man in this position, even if deemed borderline. Men’s actions have always been excused.

At some stage, if I get time, I wanted to blog about the impact of Ampgate on pro-fem men (I still haven’t got the thing straight in my head yet).

Anyway, I completely agree that everybody is capable of change. I didn’t mean to imply that anything controls a man’s behavior and attitudes but himself.

What I meant was that I believe every man is part of a collective, and the purpose of that particular collective is the subjugation of women. Recognizing what it is and rejecting it as illegitimate can be done at the individual level, and obviously that’s an ongoing (never-ending, really) process.

At the same time, I don’t think that rejecting it removes us from that collective. We still benefit from male privilege, we’re still socially conditioned to follow certain patterns and roles, stereotypes that have been beaten into our heads from day one can persist at an almost hidden level, etc.

So for me, it’s important to remember that I’m part of that collective and continually ask myself if what I’m doing/saying/writing is perpetuating sexism or partriarchy.

If I wasn’t keeping vigilant like that, I would most assuredly fall back into old patterns that I’ve rejected. And that’s where the choice lies. I can willfully relax that vigilance, I can relax the examination of my subconscious reactions. In short, I can slip back into the ignorance of male privilege simply by doing nothing.

Ampersand seems to think he lives on an island. From his weak-sauce rationalizations, it’s seems he may have asked himself questions like, “how damaging is porn, really?” or “Is this really a net gain for porn producers?”, but what he very clearly did NOT ask was “Would doing this perpetuate the collective male strategy to subjugate women?”.

This is the problem, IMO, with the individual man presenting himself as only an individual, as though he had just opted out of a collective that he still benefits from every day. And now he’s serving the purpose of that collective, overtly, every day – thinking of it as an “individual” compromise.

Anyway, that’s why I see no reason why feminists should trust pro-feminist men. I think they have every right to be cynical, especially with pro-feminist men who just happen to be taking leadership positions among them and speaking publicly on their behalf(which makes me start thinking about displacement of women, which I haven’t quite sorted out yet). -j

Anyway pleased to meet you Sparkle*

Since your questions pretty much covered my comment, I’m not sure which “shit” you don’t want to be bothered with.

In what way can you not *choose* to drop out a collective, and by merely slipping into things at will sounds as though you really do beleive you are in control? Please do NOT bother me with this shit.

Remind me again why I should automatically trust pro-feminist men, without any proof?

I don’t see why you should. Not even with proof. It’s not like we can just choose to opt-out of the collective. We can slip into it at will, and I think feminists should be prepared to drop us like a rock when we do (no matter how many boo-hoo sob stories we tell).