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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:47
Emma Watson’s UN Speech: What She Didn’t Say #HeForShe
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Hi everybody, Stephen Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope you're doing magnificently.
So recently Emma Watson gave a speech at the United Nations dedicated to inviting men to join women in the fight for gender equality and made some excellent, excellent points.
While other points were, at least to me, somewhat confusing.
First she says, I was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women six months ago.
And the more I've spoken about feminism, the more I have realised that fighting for women's rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating.
If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.
Now I'm not sure if she means some feminist hate man which has to stop, or whether the incorrect assumption that some feminist hate man has to stop.
Assuming she meant the former, kudos to Ms.
Watson for naming the elephant in the room, which is that certain elements of the feminist movement have become kind of virulently anti-male.
Certainly no movement can be defined by its extremists, but movements can be, and I think should be, defined by how they react to those extremists.
So, for instance, I recently gave a speech at a men's conference in Detroit that had to move venues, pay tens of thousands of dollars in extra security costs, and was almost cancelled.
As a result of radical feminist death and bomb threats.
I did not see any write-ups, any outrage, or any condemnation of the violence from feminists as a whole, even though a number of women speaking at the conference would also have been blown up if the threats had been made real.
Just imagine if a feminist conference was disrupted and almost destroyed by threats of extreme violence from men's rights extremists.
The outrage would be universal, and I guarantee you that men's rights activists would loudly and repeatedly condemn such actions and threats.
Ms.
Watson claimed that many people misunderstand what feminism really is.
For the record, Feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.
It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.
I have found it a generally wise policy to judge groups empirically, rather than according to their mission statements, their public relations text, or whatever the dictionary happens to say.
For instance, if feminism was really about gender egalitarianism, then feminists would be working hard to correct imbalances which favour women At the expense of men.
For instance, women now significantly outnumber men in the halls of higher education in many countries, and girls are significantly outperforming boys in many schools.
Feminists work very hard to promote the interests of women in the field of education.
Now that women are outstripping men, are feminists promoting policies that help men and boys achieve equality?
If they are, it must have escaped my notice, with due exception to the wonderful Kristina Hoff-Sommers.
From family courts to divorce settlements to alimony, from father's rights to child support, from inequalities in criminal convictions to gender-biased sentencing, there are many areas where women are generally treated better than men.
But I have not seen feminists spend any real effort attempting to promote egalitarianism where women In other words, empirically, feminism is generally more that which promotes the interests of certain women rather than that which aims for true equality between the sexes.
I'm sure that there are exceptions, of course, but reciting a dictionary definition and pretending that this somehow alters the accumulated evidence of many decades is somewhat naïve, to say the least.
Miss Watson then provides some examples of sexism that she has witnessed and or experienced in her childhood.
When I was eight I was confused being called bossy because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents but the boys were not.
When at 14 I started to be sexualized by certain elements of the media.
When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their beloved sports teams because they didn't want to appear muscly.
When at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings, I decided that I was a feminist.
First of all, I don't think I would have the arrogance to imagine that I understood everything that a young girl had gone through in her childhood.
If as a boy I had constantly told my friends that I was in charge and they had to do what I wanted, I would certainly have been rejected as bossy.
But Miss Watson imagines that she knows what all of the boys in her childhood circle experienced.
Has she asked them?
Also note that she does not talk about sharing directorial duties, but rather wanting them all to herself.
In every childhood group, everyone wants to try out being a leader.
Learning to negotiate a hierarchy among equals is an essential task that all children really need to learn.
Now, it goes without saying that the sexualization of 14-year-olds is reprehensible.
It certainly gets no argument from me, of course.
I am confused when Miss Watson reports that her female friends dropped out of their beloved sports teams because they did not want to appear too muscley.
Did they imagine that toned and muscled female bodies are unattractive to men?
There appears to be countless cheesecake shots of female athletes scattered around the web, Dancers are often considered to have wonderful physiques, and women's health websites are continually promoting the value and attractiveness of exercise, so I don't quite understand what this means.
Perhaps some of Ms.
Watson's friends were weightlifters, but the unattractiveness of some people to extremely large muscles is not confined to either gender.
Many women find extremely muscled men unattractive as well.
Thus, if women were toned and healthy, that would seem to be an ideal that most women aspire to.
If they were excessively muscled, that's a different story, not one really just confined to women.
Miss Watson then sounded the clarion call for male involvement.
I want men to take up this mantle, so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too.
We claim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves.
To be honest, this troubles me enormously, because she is basically saying that women cannot free themselves.
They have nothing whatsoever to do with the cycle of oppression, and require men to release them from bondage.
I certainly implored her encouragement of male vulnerability and emotional openness.
One significant way that feminists can help that process along is, as I mentioned before, to strongly reject and oppose feminists who threaten to murder, bomb, and kill men for speaking their minds and sharing their experiences at, say, conferences.
But smuggled into this general statement, is also an incredible condemnation of men and excusing of women.
Men must get involved because only men are bad.
Women cannot free themselves without men saving them because women are only victims, never perpetrators.
Man bad, woman good.
If a woman is drowning and she needs someone else to save her, yelling at her to save herself is worse than you so she can't instantly learn how to swim if she doesn't know.
Demanding or requiring or inviting men to save women strips women of any moral responsibility or moral agency in the cycle of violence that so consumes the world.
But is that true?
Are women always victims of men?
Welcome to the underground world of female violence, the great unspoken horror that drives so many of the world's evils.
Women are responsible for half of domestic violence incidents in many Western countries.
80% of British mothers hit their babies before the babies are even one year old.
Estimated 25% of pedophiles are women.
In a recent US study, middle-class mothers hit their babies and toddlers on average over 900 times a year.
The idea that endlessly bashing toddlers has nothing whatsoever to do with the perpetuation of the cycle of violence is absolutely jaw-dropping.
I, for one, would be thrilled to hear a feminist say, Something like the following.
Certainly there is anti-female prejudice in the world, and we have been speaking about it for decades, if not centuries.
But ladies, my sisters, I invite you to turn away from men and look inwards, towards yourselves, and see what we can do, independent of men, to bring about a better world.
Most mothers hit their children.
This cannot be blamed on children.
It is a moral failing of women.
No man stands behind us and commands us to hit her children.
Men have their issues and faults and evils, to be sure.
But in this instance, in this circumstance, we need to look directly in the mirror to find the source of so many of the world's ailments, evils and catastrophes.
It is time for us to stop only blaming men, which merely disempowers us and insults men, and accept the responsibility of becoming peaceful parents.
This is, in fact, our fight to win, and it will probably take a generation or two at least to turn the tide of this female-fueled violence against children.
Let us turn our eyes away from the faults of men, which has had our attention for far too long, and support each other in finding ways to be parents without being violent.
Now that would be what I would call empowerment.
Her next point.
Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation.
I've seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help, for fear it would make them less of a man.
I've seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success.
Men don't have the benefits of equality either.
It may seem nice for Ms.
Watson to extend the olive branch to men and tell us that men suffer from gender inequality, but frankly, men already know that.
And we have known it for a very long time.
Men around the world are drafted into insane wars, work night and day to provide for women and children, die by the tens of thousands in horrible industrial accidents, are regularly barred from seeing their own children, have no reproductive rights, and are forced to pay alimony to ex-wives for decades, die sooner, just to name a few.
It certainly is true that men often find it hard to ask for help.
And sometimes do have a distorted view of what constitutes male success.
And I certainly do appreciate Ms.
Watson for bringing these two topics up.
But I'm afraid I must take issue with her reliance on her merely personal observations, rather than say, asking men what is important to us.
She is speaking at the United Nations, after all, not to her tiny circle of friends and family.
Women are supposed to be great listeners.
Might not be a bad time to take that for a spin.
I mean, if I were to do a speech addressing the issues of gypsy migrants in Romania, I don't think I would talk about a gypsy I saw once in a fairground in Pennsylvania.
If I want to speak to men about gender issues, what should I do?
So what feminists seem resolutely opposed to doing, which is, say, googling the term, top men's rights issues.
I did just that, and chose the first result, which gave the following top 10 list.
10.
The male gender role, 4%.
That's right, folks, chivalry has got to go.
No longer should men be expected to be the providers and protectors of society.
There needs to be no shame in showing weakness, fear, and emotions other than anger.
No one should be expected to man up and internalize their problems until they go mad.
We don't want to be conscripted and sent over to die to protect the womenfolk, or be expected to do all of the back-breaking labor on our own.
Just because we have penises doesn't mean we should be forced to abide by additional societal expectations, especially when those lead to an early grave.
Miss Watson, in her attempt to motivate and enroll men by addressing our issues, chose the very least important aspect of the very least important men's rights issue.
Also, she appeals to chivalry, he for she, and asks men to man up and be the providers and protectors of women, which is exactly what men don't want anymore.
The very essence of disposable masculinity, that men are faceless utilities only useful for delivering resources to women and children, is so ingrained in society that a woman attempting to address men's issues cannot conceive of actually asking us what our issues are.
It only matters what she has noticed, not what men have been desperately trying out for, for decades.
The number nine men's issue.
Negative portrayal of men in the media, 5%.
Tired of seeing dumb and deadbeat dads, sick of every man on TV being a sex-obsessed womanizer?
So are we!
Men are often seen as incompetent, misogynistic, brutish slobs with few redeeming qualities.
When there is a boys versus girls competition in a children's television show, when scripted, the girls always win and the boys are treated like fools.
When boys complain, they are expected to man up.
TV shows, commercials and movies ought to portray men in a more positive light.
Number 8.
Educating boys.
5%.
Boys are being misdiagnosed with ADD, ADHD from the time they enter grade school.
They're falling behind in math and literacy.
And the number of boys going for college degrees is incredibly low.
Something needs to be done about that.
By expanding help and assistance for boys' education, we can continue to help boys learn to enjoy school and continue learning, leading to better futures for themselves and society.
Number 7.
Making government programs gender neutral or accompanied by a male equivalent.
6.2%.
Whether for single mothers, domestic violence or health research, tremendous amounts of government money Go to Women's Aid Men have the right to the same assistance.
Domestic violence programs and policies that name women as the only group that are abused, and therefore the only group deserving of assistance, should be expanded to cover men as well.
Men and women are different, and sometimes an approach that will work for women will not work for men.
Other aspects, such as health research, cannot be gender neutral always, which is why a male equivalent is needed.
6.
Better treatment of men regarding false accusations 7% Unfortunately, false accusations of rape and domestic violence occur.
Men are publicly shamed and often face ire even after proven innocent.
Court trials for accusations last too long and there is a minimal sentence, if any, when a false accusation is discovered.
A major goal of men's rights is to expand anonymity for men accused of rape and for false accusations to be treated like the serious crime.
They are.
Number five.
Reproductive rights.
Seven percent.
Tied with false accusations is reproductive rights.
There is no male pill and there is no way to avoid fatherhood at will.
If a woman gets pregnant and doesn't want to have the child, but the man does, the man loses.
At the same time, if she wants to have the child and the man doesn't, the man loses.
The goal is not to let men walk away in the middle of parenting, but to have the choice if they want to be involved in raising the child in the first place.
When a man chooses not to be involved from the start, he's considered a deadbeat.
Yet, when a woman chooses to give a child up for adoption, or to not be involved, or to have an abortion, it is completely accepted.
There are countless options for women, and none for men.
4.
Removing the notion that all men are potential rapists and pedophiles.
In her 1977 novel, The Woman's Room, author Marilyn French wrote a line of dialogue in which a female rape victim says, all men are rapists and that's all they are.
This line has become a well-known quote among the men's rights movement.
Today, the idea is rather strong in people's heads that men in the company of small children are, by nature, abusers.
We have organizations such as Men Against Rape teaching that women are afraid and we all need to be careful not to rape women.
The overwhelming majority of men have no interest or intention of raping a woman or being a pedophile, yet all men are treated as a threat.
We need to hold these few people accountable, not the entire male gender.
Number three.
Anti-male double standards.
10%.
This is a widespread issue that's related to number 10.
There seems to be the notion that when men break a gender barrier, such as playing field hockey, they're being aggressive, bent on winning.
At the same time, if a girl wants to play football, she's a groundbreaking fighter for women's rights.
An adult man has a relationship with a younger teenage girl.
He's a disgusting pedophile.
A teenage guy with an adult woman?
She's lauded and called a cougar.
It's considered hot.
While women seldom go unpunished in cases of abuse, their sentencing is often nowhere near as severe as men's.
2.
Feminism You can debate whether the original goal of feminism was to bring men down, or if it was an unintended consequence.
But when we started helping girls more in school, boys were pushed aside.
In recent years, we've seen protests against anonymity for rape accusations, denial of false accusations as an issue, and father's rights groups demonized for wanting power instead of time with their children, and fair alimony slash child support payments.
We can't undo what has been done, but by dealing with the parts of feminism that are anti-male, we can prevent further damage.
Number one, father's rights, 20%.
Winning twice as many of the votes as the second place option and one-fifth of the votes overall, Father's Rights reigns supreme as the top issue.
A father has the right to see his child after a divorce and to have his child in his custody more often.
Accusations without support are exactly that.
accusations, and a father should not be separated from his children on that basis alone.
Child support payments are often extreme and unmanageable, making it a struggle for a man to even meet the necessary payments while keeping a roof over his head.
In some states, rates do not change even if there is a pay cut, unemployment, or a career change involved.
Ms. Watson, if you want to speak to men, you must first listen to us.
The previous list is just from some website. - Right.
It's not comprehensive, it's not scientific, it's not perfect, but it's not a bad start.
Look, I'm sure you spent many days or weeks preparing your speech, but you clearly did not spend even ten minutes of that time actually finding out what men need and want, what our issues are, what our priorities are, what is actually destroying so many of us.
Your speech in this area is the equivalent of me doing a speech about the needs and wants of Native Americans and earnestly telling the world that I knew a Native American once who got drunk a lot.
People would rightly castigate me for my complete failure to research the Native American perspective at all.
Did you actually talk to a Native American?
Ah.
Well, that's never really crossed my mind.
If you are a feminist and you want to enroll and motivate men, lecturing us about our supposed failings while failing to ask us any questions whatsoever is mere finger-wagging narcissism.
Anti-male prejudice is so ingrained in our hive minds that not one mainstream or female commentator, to my knowledge at least, has pointed out the blindingly obvious fact that Ms.
Watson wants to talk about gender equality and the needs of women and cannot even conceive of asking men what our needs are.
There are Thousands of passionate, committed and dedicated men's rights advocates throughout the world.
Ms.
Watson could have called any of them up to ask about men's issues.
I'm sure they would have leapt at the chance to bring men's issues to the forefront of an international discussion.
Can you imagine how powerful it would have been for men throughout the world to see their most desperate and essential issues brought to the attention of the entire planet?
Ms.
Watson's speech was a tragically missed opportunity to genuinely speak to men and to genuinely motivate men, to trigger an outpouring of relief and gratitude from men at finally being heard.
Sadly, her speech contains no curiosity, no questions, no men's voices or concerns.
It was just yet another example of a woman lecturing at men without listening to us.
and demanding that we provide resources for the safety, security and comfort of women to boot.
It was about as retrograde a speech as can conceivably be imagined.
And it only served to remind men just how far we still have to go to be heard.
So other than repeating the endlessly debunked myth that women make less than men for the same work, in fact, women with the same education, who have been in the workforce for the same amount of time as men actually make a little bit more than men, Miss Watson had two last points she wanted to make.
Men suffer from gender stereotypes too.
We don't often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes.
But I can see that they are.
And that when they are free, Things will change for women as a natural consequence.
If men don't have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won't feel compelled to be submissive.
If men don't have to control, women won't have to be controlled.
Okay, so here she explicitly states that women are helpless victims of male actions, with about as much free will and moral autonomy as your average shadow.
This is standard feminist accusatory tone.
When men improve, women will naturally improve as well.
The idea that the exact opposite could be possibly true is so foreign and incomprehensible to people that it's like going to a physics conference and stating that gravity actually repels rather than attracts.
Ladies, my sisters, Let me lay it out for you as plainly as I can.
Before we are men, we are boys.
When we are boys, we are under the command and control of women almost exclusively.
We are parented by women, disciplined by women, educated by women.
We are raised And those women scream at us and hit us a lot.
In a recent study, as I mentioned, middle-class American women hit their toddlers aged 7 months to 3 years over 900 times a year.
Eighty percent of these British moms are hitting their babies.
African-American mothers are even more violent towards helpless, independent boys and girls.
In India and China, the most populous regions of the world, hitting children is an epidemic and staunchly defended.
Treatment of children in Africa remains, in general, brutal.
Feminists, are you concerned about male aggression?
Three- to five-year-old toddlers spanked by mothers are much more likely to break rules and act aggressively by the age of nine than children who aren't spanked.
Ms.
Watson, feminists as a whole, do you want men to use their words rather than act out aggressively?
Spanking reduces verbal fluency and increases aggression.
And mothers in the West hit helpless children 50% more than fathers do.
Do you really, really, really think that women can do nothing whatsoever other than lecture men to end the cycle of violence in the world?
Ladies, now, now, now is the time for empowerment.
Forget about blaming others.
Empowerment means focusing on what you can achieve right now, today, without begging for the participation of others.
Mothers, mothers, mothers.
Stop hitting your children.
Just stop.
Don't blame men.
Don't blame poverty.
Don't blame your children.
Don't blame some abstract institution.
Don't blame the patriarchy.
Just stop hitting your children.
You are individual moral agents.
You don't give excuses to men for hitting women.
There are no excuses for you hitting children.
Which is a far worse moral crime because children are completely helpless and dependent and they never chose you as their mother.
Boys – and countless girls, of course – are hit by their mothers hundreds of times a year.
From babyhood onward, they crawl forward under a literal hailstorm of female assaults.
For women to claim that they are helpless in the face of male aggression, that they can do nothing to change the cycle of violence, is literally madness.
It's like planting an apple tree.
And then railing against the apple tree for being an apple tree.
We reap what we sow.
If there is one thing that I know, it is that women have the greatest possible power and influence over the cycle of violence that has forever strangled peace in this world.
I am a stay-at-home father to a wonderful daughter, and I'm certainly sensitive to the needs and issues of women.
But really, ladies, my sisters, crying out that you can do nothing to end violence and that men need to rush in and save you from the patriarchy turns women into hysterical Victorian caricatures, fainting unconscious crying out that you can do nothing to end violence and that men need to
Yeah, it's this old myth about the rule of thumb.
You know, that men couldn't hit women with a stick no bigger than their thumb.
This has always been a falsehood calculated to slander men.
It was never true, by the way.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony prohibited wife-beating in 1655.
No man shall strike his wife, nor any woman her husband, on penalty of such fine not exceeding ten pounds for one offense, or such corporal punishment as the county shall determine.
Hmm.
Well.
No rule of thumb there.
Do you get what that means?
Ladies.
My sisters.
Do you get what that means?
359 years ago, it was illegal to hit your wife.
And yet mothers still hit their children and complain about the violence in the world, the violence they helped create.
Punishments for white beaters in history could be severe.
According to an 1882 Maryland statute, the culprit could receive 40 lashes at the whipping post.
In Delaware, the number was 30 lashes.
In New Mexico, you could be fined from $255 to $1,000 for one to five years in prison.
Religious groups, especially the Protestants, the Quakers, Methodists, and Baptists, punished shunned and excommunicated wife-beaters.
Husbands, brothers, and neighbors often took vengeance against the batterer.
Vigilante parties sometimes abducted wife-beaters and whipped them.
That's the kind of protection that women have had throughout history.
Not perfect.
But hitting children remains legal in most of the world's countries.
Ladies.
Women.
My beautiful sisters.
You can change the world.
You are the most essential aspect of fixing the world, of healing the world.
And it fundamentally has nothing to do with men or the patriarchy.
It relies on you, your children, your fists, and your conscience.
The hidden violence of the world is the violence of women and the men they choose against children.
Stop hating children.
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