Turkish feminist objects to Erin Pizzey’s assessment of feminism

March 30, 2007 by Walter Schneider.

Cilek.Unsal@international.gc.ca wrote:

Dear Friends at Fathers For Life,

I came across your website when I read an Erin Pizzey [See Erin Pizzey’s CV - F4L] article from a few years ago. I was surfing the net, trying to understand why my homemaker 68 year-old mother-in-law hated feminists.

It takes all kinds obviously, but here I am, a (Turkish) diplomat’s daughter at 37 trying to make sense of the way women are treated around me… And then I meet people who are annoyed by feminism?!

In our villages women are still exchanged like animals, have no say and cannot leave their husbands when they are being systematically beaten.
In the cities, couples who put in the same hours at work and in traffic come home where it’s considered normal for the woman to continue working in the kitchen and with the children while the man relaxes his day off.

All extremists are problematic.
But to take a necessary, basic humanist movement and to turn it into the devil is beyond me.
Would Ms. Pizzey even be ‘allowed’ to speak her mind had not feminists of History fought for Her rights?
Would any of the female technicians, writers, lawyers, administrative officers at Fathers For Life even be able to create such a website had they not been freed to speak their minds, spend hours to formulate their work and continue it over time?
What happens when hubby is not understanding of this? Does she quit and leave herself or respect her own needs and leave him and be accused of ruining the sanctity of marriage?

Thank you.
Cilek

Hello Cilek,

Even in Turkey, women live on average a little over five years longer than men do on average. In fact, that gender gap in Turkey is close to the average for the greater life expectancies of women in the whole world, yet women are being seen by people like you as victims of men’s oppression. If all men oppress women, how does it come about that the oppressed live longer than their oppressors? If women were truly oppressed by men, their life expectancies would be shorter than that of men. There is no controlling biological reason for that gap between the average life expectancies of the sexes. The gap is a cultural artifact, evidence that men are being treated shabbily and that women are being treated more kindly than men are being treated.

Women own 70 percent of all corporate equity.

Men pay 70 percent of all taxes, social insurance and pension contributions, yet women receive 70 percent of all benefits from social insurance and pension plans, and a vastly greater amount of funding from tax revenues for women’s rights organizations (more than $400 million annually in Canada while men’s rights organizations receive exactly nothing).

Even though women have much greater life expectancies than men do, in many nations women become about ten years sooner eligible than men do to receive old age benefits.

Men comprise 18 to 19 out of all job fatality victims, not counting military service - which latter is compulsory only for men. Far greater numbers of men die in compulsory military service on account of the violence they encounter there than do minuscule numbers of women who die on account of violence in voluntary marriages.** Not even in many of the service and protection occupations into which women made inroads during the past few decades do women die or get hurt in numbers that come close to those for their male counter parts.***

* See US job fatalities for all occupations
** See Annual Fatalities by Sex
*** See US Job fatalities for selected occupations: Police, protective services, guards, firefighting

You provide no evidence at all for your claim that there is wage discrimination against women, although we would love to hear from you how things are in that respect in Turkey. However, I can give you much information that proves that in many localities no such wage discrimination has existed for decades, provided objective comparisons are being made, and when equal numbers of hours worked, women’s job choices, equal tenure and equal levels of education are taken into account. (See Pay equity for women doesn’t exist?)

If women do get traded like cattle in your villages, do something about it, but I bet that even in your villages you will find in the order of two elderly women for every elderly man who survived the much larger risks facing men throughout their lives on account of the attitudes of people like you who look at things through the female-friendly gender lens and who are totally blind to all of the contributions made and the most-often far greater suffering experienced by men. (See Grandma’s Apron, and what Grandpa had to do with it)

Give me objective facts, not your unsubstantiated, propagandistic opinions, and give equitable credit to whom equitable credit is due.

I submit that your 68-year-old mother-in-law has a much more realistic opinion of women’s plight than the indoctrination you have been subjected to allows you to have. However, that your views of feminism and its role in bringing about severe discrimination against men and families will have changed substantially by the time you reach the present age of your mother-in-law will neither surprise you nor anyone else. Mine did during the 33 years that passed since I was 37 years of age. After all, anyone who is not a conservative by the time he is in his mid-forties is a liberal who never smartened up.

About your sentiments regarding freedom of speech, why does it bother you that, after many decades during which the feminists slandered and vilified all men, fathers, mothers and families without encountering much opposition, men and their supporters now dare to exercise that right and to speak up? Yes, you are correct in stating that all extremists are problematic, but the most severe problems of all caused by extremists are, because they are so all-pervasive, those caused by feminist extremists. Intolerance of the objective truth and of straight-forward honesty is one of those feminist problems.

Regards,

Walter
http://fathersforlife.org

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