Amanda Marcotte writes The Creepy Misogynist Movement That's Making Conservatives Even More Sexist:
Denying that sexism is a real problem is a standard talking point on the right these days. But recently, it seems that simply denying the existence of sexism is not enough. Instead, conservatives on Fox News and other right-wing outlets seem to want to take it a step further, arguing that, in 21st-century America, women are actually oppressing men. It’s similar to the long-standing habit of many on the right to declare themselves victims of “reverse racism.”
In this case, many of the tropes and obsessions come directly from a fringe, online movement that calls itself “men’s rights activism." MRA rhetoric is notable for being intensely paranoid, seeing women as a subversive group that is out to get men. They argue that feminism--particularly feminism that addresses the problem of violence against women--is not an egalitarian movement as advertised, but a darkly evil movement that invents the problems of sexism, rape and domestic violence in order to gain power over men. It’s all very silly and hard to take seriously, except that some of the rhetorical gambits of MRAs are actually being trotted out by supposedly mainstream conservatives. The result is that the already misogynist right is getting even more misogynist.
The influence of MRA thinking was all over the recent story of Missouri state legislator Rick Brattin, who introduced a bill that would require women to get permission from the man who impregnated them in order to get an abortion. The story was notable not just because this runs counter to what the mainstream anti-choice movement prefers to do--their line now is that they want to restrict abortion to “protect” women--but also because Brattin’s explanations of his thinking were pure MRA paranoia and misogyny.
Brattin argued that men are the real victims of reproductive oppression and that his bill was just evening the score, by claiming men in Missouri are not allowed to get vasectomies without their wives permission. (Never mind that his bill would go well beyond that, giving a man the power to force a woman to give birth even if she had only had sex with him once.) There is no such law in Missouri, and it’s possible that Brattin confused his doctor’s personal choice to ask for wives to sign off, with an actual law. But regardless of how cognizant he is of what actually happened to him, his argument was crystal-clear: Women are oppressing men and taking away their basic bodily autonomy, and so it’s only “fair” for men to get to do the same to women. […]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Falling off the unemployment insurance cliff:
Thanks to congressional inaction, emergency unemployment insurance for people who've been unemployed longer than six months expired today with long-term unemployment at double the level it's been when such benefits expired after past recessions. That's a very big deal to 1.3 million people who will now not have the jobless benefits that are in many cases what's standing between them and the loss of a home or other basic necessities.
The lapse in emergency unemployment insurance will hit middle-class—or formerly middle-class—people hard:
Unlike food stamps—another safety net program that Congress likes to kick around—Americans don't qualify for unemployment insurance by being poor. In fact, you can only qualify for unemployment benefits if you had a solid work history prior to being laid off. And you can only remain eligible by continuing to search for work.
Roughly 40 percent of Americans who've received long-term unemployment benefits since 2008 had previously earned between $30,000 and $75,000, according to an analysis of Census data by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Earlier research by the Congressional Budget Office has shown that more than two-thirds of recipients had annual incomes more than twice the poverty level and that such households received 70 percent of all unemployment payments.
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Still, they're not rich, so Republicans are all too willing to screw them.
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