Vox Day asks some (dumb) questions about feminism

Vox Day

Amidst reiterating his usual claim that feminists are literally worse than Nazis (because most of them promote abortion rights, and terminating pre-viability fetuses that can’t feel or think is obviously worse than murdering millions of mature adults), Theodore “Vox Day” Beale then presents one of his critics with the following query:

[T]he statement [that feminists demand that women be immune from any legal repercussions for any breaches of contract, theft, and murder] not only is true, but it can be easily defended. There is no reconciliation necessary to defend it because it is based on straightforward observation. I direct the following questions to A. Man.

1. Did American women not demand, and do they not presently possess, the right to break marital contracts at will?
2. Have feminists not defended the right of women to kill men who abuse them?
3. Does the feminist definition of abuse include non-physical abuse?
4. Have feminists called for ban on actions that make a woman feel uncomfortable?

And so, partly to break the tedium of spending all day coaxing recalcitrant audio mixing software into working properly, here I go:

1. Wait – that’s a bad thing? Forget for a moment about Vox’s apparent wish of stripping women of the right to extract themselves from abusive or loveless unions; the ideals of personal liberty and bodily autonomy alone – which, as a self-professed libertarian, Vox should take particularly to heart – require that people have the right to enter or leave any relationship as they see fit. (Or are women so inferior to the Great Purveyors of XY Chromosomes^TM that some fundamental freedoms are just too good for them?)

   Furthermore, how does giving women the right to file for divorce somehow equate to allowing them to break any other contract at will? And when has any feminist ever demanded such a thing? That’s an impressive hybrid of strawman and non-sequitur right there.

2. What a ridiculously loaded and overbroad statement. It would certainly help to know what the hell he’s on about; but ravings from fringe-dwelling nuts on street corners aside, no, feminists most certainly do not request the right to murder anyone they see fit, except in extreme cases of self-defense (an exception that applies to anyone, not just abused women).

3. No, Vox, that’s the standard definition of abuse, as employed by anyone, anywhere, ever. Look, it’s in the dictionary and everything:

   ²abuse transitive verb

   3. : to use so as to injure or damage : maltreat
   4. : to attack in words : revile

   If Vox doesn’t count women who endure screaming fits from domineering partners as being abused unless they’re physically struck, I fear to know what his view of marriage is like. (After all, he already believes that husbands should be allowed to rape their wives at will, so maybe just yelling at them should be considered tame by comparison.)

4. Another misleadingly vague question. Which “feminists” is Vox referring to, and which behaviors does he accuse them of trying to prohibit, exactly? If he’s referring to women complaining about being unduly objectified and harassed, then yes, such acts should certainly be discouraged, and in some cases (such as at conventions, or in other contexts where inappropriate behavior is damaging to everyone’s experience) banned outright under penalty of expulsion or other reprimand. But of course, Vox & co. spend their time kvetching about those uppity buzz-killing harpies cramping their natural manly behaviors by refusing to be treated like sexualized slabs of meat in the workplace and elsewhere, so one can understand why such things may not be of particular concern to the “chauvinist pig” subset of society.

But amidst all this, Vox apparently forgot about his accusation that feminists supposedly want legal immunity for theft (the part about “murder” being explained by the typical anti-abortionist trick of equating embryos to adults). Not that I expect him to have any rational argument in support of it, any more than he was able to explain why women’s rights to divorce and self-defense somehow lead to the destruction of all things good and pure, but it’s still interesting (at least to masochists) to get a glimpse into the twisted worldview shared by regressives like him.

EDIT: 03/30/13 6:10 PM ET – Added a paragraph about Vox’s bizarre conflation of divorce rights with any other contract.