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I stopped watching after the first ad hominem. Which was about 5 seconds in.

No, ad hominem there. I read the book in its entirety and refuted her moronic tenets in entirety. You'd do well to pay attention and learn how to work a little harder.

I watched thus unhappy little screed in its entirety, and I felt physically repulsed by the reader/presenter's facial expressions. Not by his face, but by the intensity with which he screwed it up to spit out one or another piece of resentment, and by the manic tautness that overcame it whenever he read one of his text's key talking points. What's particularly unfortunate is this: Any given version of feminism, like any other ideological position (excepting neither my own nor, of course, the angry man in the video), makes arguments with which one *ought to argue*, but meaningful argument becomes impossible under the conditions laid out by texts like that driving this film clip.

This is to say, of course there are some flaws in the arguments Valenti outlines--but there are also *far more* serious, important points being made. It is truly a pity that this Chapin character didn't engage with any of those points seriously, preferring from the outset to denounce Valenti and feminists in general as "totalitarian." Ha!

Mind you, I'm treating his little film clip in much the manner he treated her book--as a rather contemptible display of pseudo-erudition wrapped hastily around a vitriolic rejection of any stance but his own. That's right--this critique is itself liable to the criticisms it levels against the Chapin character! I am, in this, following what is clearly the clip-maker's preferred form of discussion: abuse. Which leads me to wonder: Bernard, might you have been abused by a woman, when you were a child? Or does your hate and anger have some other source in your history? My own anger, in response to your post, is rooted in the material reality that angry male perspectives, voiced in the dismissive way in which your own is, regularly serve to legitimate the actual rape of actual women. That is, very simply, male anger that rejects completely the legitimacy of feminist perspectives is--and this is empirically validated--an important part of a rape culture, a culture in which protesting, no-saying women are raped by angry men.

Bernard, you present your anger in the film clip as though it were a response to such oppression, too. That is, you suggest that you are afraid of feminists, because they are actively trying to take over the government and create a totalitarian state--with gulags and all. Now, you and I and every other halfway-sane person in the States are all well aware that there is *zero actual danger* of a feminist-totalitarian takeover of the government. So, what is it that you actually fear? Were you abused, as a child, by a woman? This is not nearly as uncommon as some people think, and if so, you'd be far from the first. If that should be the case, I sincerely hope you find help and recovery--it is possible to recover. And, if your hate comes from some other such experience of oppression, I hope you find recovery from that as well. I wish you something different and better than what you seem to have found.

To all others: I wish you a different and better discussion of feminist concerns--and good argument about what we ought to believe gender and sex mean, since those are truly open questions--than has been possible to find here.

- Ira

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