{"id":726,"date":"2019-05-06T21:59:11","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T11:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pbw.id.au\/blog\/?p=726"},"modified":"2021-07-27T16:34:23","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T06:34:23","slug":"men-are-mortal%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2019\/05\/men-are-mortal%ef%bb%bf\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Are Mortal\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[First published in Quadrant Online as \u2018Slut-Shamed\u2019 Victimhood\u2019s Loose Logic<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMen\nare mortal.
\nScoMo is a man.
\nTherefore, ScoMo is mortal.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is there anything wrong with this argument?  A stickler for logical forms would insist that the first premiss should be All men are mortal<\/em>.  Fair enough.  But if you put the initial form of the argument to a large sample of Australian voters, how many would object?  A statement like men are mortal<\/em> will generally be accepted as a class<\/em> attribution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now try this one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMen\nare rapists.
\nDavid Leyonhjelm is a man.
\nTherefore, David Leyonhjelm is a rapist.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow\ndoes this one hold up?  That depends whom\nyou offer it to.  To my mind, if you\u2019re\ntalking to those who retain some grip on common sense they will become\nsticklers for form<\/em>, and reject the\nargument.  While all<\/em> can be implicitly added to men\nare mortal<\/em>, the same cannot be done here.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, there is an increasingly large group,\nalmost exclusively university educated, who will accept the argument, along\nthese lines.  There are men who have committed\nrape, and are therefore unarguably rapists. \nOn the other hand, there are men who have not committed rape, per se<\/em>, but who benefit from the\nintimidation of women by toxic\nmasculinity<\/em> and the rape culture<\/em>,\nand who therefore are empowered by their male\nprivilege<\/em>. One has only to look at the rape\ncrisis<\/em> at Australian universities. This dichotomy effectively partitions\nmen as a whole. The first premiss of the \u201crapists\u201d argument is implicitly All men are rapists<\/em> (by virtue of being\nmen.)  Those who believe this have lost\ntheir grip on reality, but there are plenty of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings me to Sarah Hanson-Young, or SH-Y as the\nwoman-child is ironically known.  Is\nthere a group in Australian politics in which the \u201cmen are rapists\u201d mantra will\nfind more enthusiastic support than among Greens?  Admittedly, it\u2019s a close-run thing, what with\nthe Labor Party en masse<\/em>, and with\nmuch of the much-bullied women\u2019s caucus of the Parliamentary Liberal Party, but\nthe Noes have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday, 28th of June, the Senate was debating a\nmotion from Fraser Anning that the Government allow citizens import tasers,\nmace and capsicum spray for self-defence. The motion was spurred by the raw\nmemory of the rape and murder of Eurydice Dixon, and was directed mainly to the\nself-defence of women.  The major parties\nand, of course, the Greens opposed the motion. \nIt was lost 46 to 5, but all five supporters were men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The argument against the motion picked up from earlier\noutrage that women walking alone at night be advised to exercise prudence.  To suggest that women take responsibility for\ntheir own safety, it went, was victim-blaming. \nThe problem, as Greens women loudly insisted, was men.  The rape and murder of women, an immemorial\ncrime, can be eliminated by fixing men. \nThe connotation is apt.  \u201cThe\npriority,\u201d said Senator Janet Rice, \u201cmust be to eradicate men\u2019s violence.\u201d No\nquantifier or qualifier attached to the word men<\/em>. Nor was this rancour towards men a novelty in the red chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SH-Y barracked on the sidelines.  Peta Pan, the girl who never grew up, sprinkled\npixie dust and flew off to Never Land.  Anchored\nnearby, though, was mean ol\u2019 Cap\u2019n Hjook.  Senator David Leyonhjelm, across the corridor\nand two seats away, says he heard from SH-Y the comment, \u201cmen should stop\nraping women.\u201d In response to another display of toxic femininity, he offered\nthe now infamous suggestion that she \u201cstop shagging men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s logic in the riposte.  If specific crimes like the rape and murder\nof Eurydice Dixon happen because of men<\/em>,\nif men<\/em>\u2019s violence must be eradicated\nby Governments, if men<\/em> go about\nraping women, then shagging a plural subset of men<\/em> is surely the worst kind of fraternisation and gross hypocrisy.  But the barb depends for its force on the\nfacts of SH-Y\u2019s behaviour.  Does she shag\nmen?  The following Sunday Leyonhjelm\nunderlined his point by telling 3AW and Sky\u2019s The Outsiders<\/em> that around Parliament SH-Y was known to \u201clike men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His attempt to buttress the logical structure of his\ncomment just poured fuel onto the fire. \nThe story was all about a man\u2019s callously bad manners and the offended\nfeelings of a woman.  Up to that point, though,\nno-one, least of all SH-Y, had argued that she was actually a chaste woman, hence\ndeeply offended.  This may simply have\nbeen an economy: why address that point when Leyonhjelm was being attacked on\nall sides for daring to make his original comment at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, on Tuesday, the Senator from South Australia put the\nquestion beyond doubt.  She accused her\nfellow Senator of slut-shaming<\/em> her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slut-shaming<\/em> is\nan inherently absurd product of the femmunist word-mill. Once upon a time, slut<\/em> conveyed severe opprobrium. It was\nthe obverse of chaste, when a chaste woman was a pearl beyond price.  In these enlightened times, the values have\nbeen reversed.  Behaviour befitting a\nslut is now applauded and encouraged in girls and women.  They now wear their promiscuity as proudly as\nthe temple prostitutes of Babylon displayed their sashes.  It\u2019s the right thing to do, so there can be\nno shame in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curiously, femmunists remain squeamish about the word, though not the behaviour.  Slut<\/em> is one of those words which is held to reflect poorly on the one who utters it, rather than the one it is uttered about.  So what is slut-shaming<\/em>?  It is drawing attention to perfectly acceptable and widely encouraged promiscuous behaviour of the kind that used to be called sluttish<\/em>, in order to call down no-longer relevant opprobrium upon the woman so named.  The only way the term makes sense is as ridicule of the person attempting the shaming, and thereby humiliating, not the woman named, but him- or herself.  So why is it presented as something that causes humiliation to the slut-shamed<\/em> woman?  The concept is irredeemably incoherent. One salient fact pops out of this.  A woman bemoaning her slut-shaming is not<\/em> complaining that she is accused of something she did not<\/em> do.  SH-Y is not<\/em> disputing the truth of the Parliamentary scuttlebutt that she \u201clikes men.\u201d  If, in fact<\/em>, she does \u201clike men,\u201d then her anti-male rhetoric, in Parliament and out, is hypocrisy, as Senator Leyonhjelm pointed out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether Senator Hanson-Young can grasp this point is moot. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[First published in Quadrant Online as \u2018Slut-Shamed\u2019 Victimhood\u2019s Loose Logic] Men are mortal. ScoMo is a man. Therefore, ScoMo is mortal. Is there anything wrong with this argument?  A stickler for logical forms would insist that the first premiss should be All men are mortal.  Fair enough.  But if you put the initial form of … Continue reading “Men Are Mortal\ufeff”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,57,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quadrant","category-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-bI","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":731,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2019\/05\/men-improved\/","url_meta":{"origin":726,"position":0},"title":"Men, Improved","author":"admin","date":"Mon 6th May '19","format":false,"excerpt":"[First published in Quadrant Online as Gender Quotas, Merit and Faux Equality.] Since the outbreak of #metoo hashtagging in the Federal parliamentary Liberal Party, Peta Credlin (among others) has been promoting targets for Liberal women in Parliament.\u00a0 Simultaneously, she decries quotas as promoted by, for example, the Labor Party.\u00a0 Women,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":855,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2020\/03\/the-burden-of-proof-and-the-pell-case\/","url_meta":{"origin":726,"position":1},"title":"The Burden of Proof and the Pell Case","author":"admin","date":"Sat 7th Mar '20","format":false,"excerpt":"[Originally published by Quadrant Online on 30th December 2019. 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It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Feminimalism"","block_context":{"text":"Feminimalism","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/feminimalism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Male-and-female-students-reading.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Male-and-female-students-reading.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Male-and-female-students-reading.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Male-and-female-students-reading.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Male-and-female-students-reading.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":975,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2021\/01\/breretons-backup\/","url_meta":{"origin":726,"position":3},"title":"Brereton\u2019s Backup","author":"admin","date":"Tue 19th Jan '21","format":false,"excerpt":"The most interesting, and in many ways the most useful, part of the Brereton report is Annex A, the Whetham Report, to Part 3, Strategic, Operational, Organisational and Cultural Issues. 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The shocked and sombre reaction of\u00a0most\u00a0Parisians to the burning Cathedral was shared\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/faith\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":907,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2020\/09\/endemic-pandemic-panic\/","url_meta":{"origin":726,"position":5},"title":"Endemic Pandemic Panic","author":"admin","date":"Thu 10th Sep '20","format":false,"excerpt":"[A version with slight differences was published 27th April, 2020 on Quadrant Online QED.] The previous \u201cpandemic\u201d, commonly know as Swine Flu, was caused by a type of Influenza virus known as H1N1. Spanish Flu was also caused by an H1N1 variant. 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