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Dominance and Entitlement: the Rhetoric and Lies which Feminist "Academics" Use to Control Men and  Propagate their Hatred of Men

© Peter Zohrab 2014

Introduction

This is a critical review of Peter J. Adams, Alison Towns and Nicola Gavey, "Dominance and Entitlement: The Rhetoric Men Use to Discuss their Violence towards Women" Discourse & Society 1995 6: 387.  Alison Towns was recently the sole defence witness in a case where a woman was let off scot-free after having killed her male partner.

 

Grotesque Anti-Male Bias

Below I quote the first, and by far the longest, of the texts quoted and analysed by Adams et al. (1985).  It is an interview (by one of the authors) of a man who allegedly had been recently violent towards one or more women.  I will then discuss the inadequacies of the way that Adams et al. (1985) analyse it.

Deviousness

As the authors state in their Abstract, academic interest in the application of rhetoric to social issues is undergoing a revival.  This is an outgrowth of the Feminist and Leftist domination of universities.  With typical deviousness, Feminists and Leftists have discovered that they can pretend to study discourse, and use this transparent ruse to write what are actually Feminist polemics.  This happens because they choose texts which they want to publicise because of the political commentary they can make on them.  Since they are pretending to write about discourse, they interweave their Feminist critiques between the stylistic comments about how the content of the texts is communicated to the reader/listener. Feminist entitlement, resulting from their domination of universities, allows them to do this and get away with it.

Accordingly, the first thing they state about this passage is the non-stylistic point that "Gavin discusses his understanding of male authority and male superiority," and the first thing the authors state after quoting the passage is that "Gavin's speech here presents multiple and overlaying messages of male authority."  I agree with these two statements, obviously, but there is not much else that they say which is true or undistorted.

 

Two Lies

There are two main, and particularly egregious lies which are perpetrated by Adams et al. (1995):

1. That this article is about rhetoric;

2. That this article is about the rhetoric men use to discuss violence towards women.

Adams et al. (1995) make the most of the political possibilities offered by their discussion of the difference between "the formal aspects of language", on the one hand, and "the use of available rhetorical devices", on the other:

For example, a woman describing an episode of abuse could portray in accurate detail what happened, but it will be the extra features of the communication, the emphasis placed on certain words, the timing, the hints and the use of analogies which will convey the full terror of the experience. (p. 391)

If this was really an article about rhetoric and discourse, the above would be a very strange passage, because:

1. It is not an actual example of rhetoric or discourse, but a mere description of an example;

2. It is not even a description of an actual example, but just a description of a hypothetical, or even imaginary example;

3. This is an article about men's rhetoric, so we would expect an example of men's rhetoric -- not of women's rhetoric;

4. The authors have plenty of texts of men's rhetoric available, so why not choose an example from them?

5. Of all the topics in the universe, why did they choose a (so-called) example of a woman talking about being abused?

Of course, this pseudo-example lifts the lid on what this article is really about: the condemnation of men's violence towards women, as depicted in the Feminist stereotype or myth.  The discussion of discourse and rhetoric is a total sham and confidence-trick.  That is the first lie.  Obviously, any journal that publishes rubbish of this sort is not in the slightest worthy of the description "academic". 

The second lie is that this article is about the rhetoric men use to discuss violence towards women.  In fact, no words such as "violence", "hit", "punch", "push" etc. occur at all in the passage quoted above, which is by far the longest of the texts quoted and analysed by Adams et al. (1985).  Indeed, there are few texts quoted in the article where such words occur.  What this article is really about is exposing and attacking the non-Feminist, patriarchal world view according to which men are entitled to dominate women.

If Adams et al. (1985) were a genuine academic article, it would distinguish this world view from violence, discuss both the rhetoric which related to the world view and also the rhetoric which related to violence, and how this world view was connected through language to violence -- if indeed it was.  A competent academic journal would have insisted on clarity on this issue before the article was accepted for publication.

As with a lot of Feminist writing (see, for example, Feminist Jurisprudence Proves that a Woman's Place is in the Home ), it is hard to know whether the lack of clarity is the result of sheer stupidity or calculated tactics.  There is a total lack of transparency in the Domestic Violence industry, which is driven by media hysteria putting pressure on politicians.  Women's Refuges do not allow men to enter and check up on what is really going on there.  Anti-violence courses probably focus at least as much on teaching Feminism as on preventing violence (i.e. by men).

In Adams et al. (1985) (as in the Domestic Violence industry as a whole, I believe), Feminism is treated as the only possible world view, patriarchy is the enemy, women are expected to resist patriarchal attitudes, and any violence which results from a clash of world views between partners is the fault of the man, because he has the wrong (i.e. patriarchal) attitudes.  I am certain that Women's Refuges teach Feminism, and then send women back home (in many cases) with a determination to enforce Feminism in the household.  That is a recipe for violence, unless the man is taught Feminism at an anti-violence course or the couple splits up peacefully.

This tactic of pretending to combat violence but actually enforcing Feminism and inciting violence provides a context for concluding that the lies perpetrated by Adams et al. (1995) are deliberate, and part of an overall Feminist strategy to reform society along Feminist lines.

 

Detailed Analysis

Now I will give a few examples of the kinds of textual analysis and reasoning that Adams et al. use in this article.  Neither the authors nor the journal Discourse & Society have any scholarly or academic standards at all, as will be seen.  They discuss what they call "reference ambiguity" in relation to the above passage, and draw attention to the following extract:

And that's what we need to get back to, is more family morals, which they misquote as:

And that's what we need to get back to, more family morals.... (missing out the word "is").

However, the main point to make here is that their analysis of this quote takes it ludicrously out of context -- to an exent which entitles any intelligent reader immediately to disregard this article's claim to scholarly status.  The authors state:

The received meaning of his 'we' is likely to be 'we' -- our society....  Had his partner been present, her received meaning could have been 'me and you' or 'us men'.  Either way, she could interpret it as saying 'we men have the authority and know what is required...'  But since his use of 'we' is ambiguous, in the face of any challenge to his assumed authority, his meaning could be taken in the former sense thereby covering up any any suggestion of superiority (page 392).

This passage is patently misleading and contains a blatant lie.  Ambiguity is dependent on linguistic and non-linguistic context.  It is ludicrously elementary Linguistics to point out that the meaning of "we" is dependent not just on the semantics of that English pronoun, but also on the discourse context in which it is embedded, as well as on the pragmatic, extra-linguistic context of the interview in which the word is spoken. 

Gavin's partner was in fact not present, so no potential meaning is present in the word "we" which might have related to the pragmatic relationship between those two people.  It is a blatant lie for Adams et al. (1995) to state that "we" is ambiguous in the way they describe.  They would need to produce evidence that Gavin made such statements when talking to his wife -- and, even then, it would not be clear that this word had anything to do with male authority, since the authors would never accuse a woman of implying "We women have the authority and know what is required..."  if she said "And that's what we need to get back to, more family morals...."

Next the authors turn to what they call "Axiom Markers".  The first example they give is Gavin's statement that:

A man's home is his castle. That's it. Pure and simple (emphasis by the authors).

They explain that expressions such as "That's it. Pure and simple" are "global assertions about the nature of reality as a whole or life in general" and "function as a means of qualifying adjacent statements" (page 394).  Again we find that the authors ignore the importance of linguistic and extralinguistic context in the determination of linguistic meaning. They conclude this section of their article as follows:

They are statements which proclaim omniscience.  When used by a man in conversation with a woman he is violent towards, possible rhetorical effects would be to terminate discussion, silence the woman and signal danger.  Interestingly, we found that the personal experience of the listeners may determine whether or not they are responsive to such effects (page 394).

That passage is pure imagination, fiction and handwaving.  It has no place in an academic journal.  Gavin, in the excerpt quoted, is responding to the interviewer's propaganda about "feminism" (undefined).  The (male) interviewer himself had proclaimed omniscience, in that he mentioned "feminism" and "women moving out of the home" in a manner that proclaimed that these phenomena were both inevitable and good.  Gavin did not agree with this point of view, obviously, and merely stated his beliefs in an appropriate manner.  Gavin was not using these words in conversation with a woman, and the authors produced no evidence that he had done so.  In a typical Feminist manner, the authors totally ignore what words, spoken by a woman, would cause a man to use these words in response, and what female violence a man might be subjected to.

Another topic that Adams et al. (1995) discuss is the so-called "discourse of natural entitlement".  Again, they distort the meaning of what Gavin says in order to prop up a Feminist propaganda line. They define"entitlement" as follows:

In its simplest form it advocates that men are entitled to dominate women because they are designed to be that way. (p. 401)

It is certainly true that the texts quoted by the authors support the claim that some men feel that men are entitled to dominate women.  However, in the text quoted above, the authors claim that Gavin "called on the discourse of natural entitlement" when he said:

It's a fact that only women can have children. Sure if they wanna, if they wanna have a career, have a career. Don't, but it, you get these women that wanna have children and have a career. I don't think they can balance the two. It's not right. It's not right on the husband, it's not right on the children and it's not fair on her.

There is nothing about men's "entitlement" in this passage.  On the contrary, this passage is about women's "entitlement" to "have it all", as they say in television advertisements.  Feminism tries to entitle women to have it all: relationships, children and career.  What Gavin is saying is that he has a full-time job to support the entire family, and he feels that his wife/partner cannot look after his children properly if she is having a career as well.  Gavin is doing his bit in the family economic system by providing most of the income, and he relies on his wife to bring up the children properly.  That is the implicit bargain.  If Feminism entitles women to "have it all", that disentitles men and children, and Gavin says that it is too hard on women as well.

Gavin is being interviewed about his preferred model of the family, which is a non-Feminist one.  Because it is non-Feminist, the authors attack every aspect of it as having something to do with violence or "male entitlement", when in fact it has nothing to do with violence and relatively little to do with male entitlement.  However, coaching a woman to subvert her husband's societal model (as Feminists no doubt do) would probably invite conflict and domestic violence, which the Feminists can then claim to be combatting, when they intervene on the side of the woman.  It is clear from this article that some Feminists do not make a conceptual distinction between men having a non-Feminist point of view, on the one hand, and male violence, on the other.

 

Conclusion

 

The education system in Western countries is a Feminist colony.  The Feminists conquered it some time ago.  One example of Female Academics' Power and Control over Male Academics is mentioned by Professor Richard Gelles, who recounts that, because Professor Murray Straus had mentioned female violence against males, Straus:

1. was unable to complete a presentation because the yells and shouts from members of the audience drove him from the stage;

2. was, in his own words … “excommunicated” from the mainstream Feminist community (he is a Feminist);

3. was rarely invited to speak at conferences on wife abuse;

4. found that many of the speeches he gave were boycotted; and

5. has received threats, including death threats.

I myself have been shouted down by Feminazi (totalitarian Feminist) students at a Law School.  Note that law students, after they graduate, become the people who run the legal system and are supposed to ensure the rule of law.  Feminism is an ideology which is enforced by assaulting, shouting down, and otherwise intimidating and victimising people who disagree openly with it.

This one-track mind flows on to every other aspect of society which these pseudo-academics influence, such as the rest of the education system, the law, the police, politics, the media, the bureaucracy and random, over-rich businessmen who have more money than sense.  Consequently, in society as a whole, male violence is treated as a serious problem and female violence is largely ignored.

In Feminist domestic violence theory, women are entitled to have their point of view treated as being the sole point of view worthy of consideration.  Since domestic violence is a crime (in the form of "assault", or even "assault on a female"), it is particularly important to point out that this one-sided approach violates the Natural Justice principle: Audi Alteram Partem. Men are disentitled -- deprived of their rights.

Feminist pseudo-academics support female violence.  They support female violence by ignoring it altogether, and focussing on male violence as if female violence just did not exist.  In fact, women commit just as much violence against men as men do towards women.  See: References Examining Assaults by Women on their Spouses or Male Partners: an Annotated Bibliography.

Feminists only seem to see positive aspects of females and negative aspects of males.  It is as if one of their eyes was specialised for positive female characteristics and negative male characteristics and the other eye was specialised for positive male characteristics and negative female characteristics, but the latter eye had suffered a totally disabling traumatic injury at a Lesbian love-in.

See also:

• Incompetence and Unprofessionalism of the American Psychological Association

• Cambridge University is a Women's Kindergarten

• Harvard University President Summers

• Feminist Jurisprudence Proves that a Woman's Place is in the Home.

• Happy Wife; Happy Life: Academic Patriarchs as both Victims and Perpetrators of Female Supremacism

• Hostile Sexist Feminist Psychologist Misinterprets Research to Attack Men

• Female Academics' Power and Control over Male Academics

• Feminist Dumbism in Cherry (1995)

• Feminist Mob Rule at Universities

• Incompetence and Unprofessionalism of the American Psychological Association

• Bruce Arrigo & Stacey Shipley are Incompetents or Liars.

• Is Professor Matthew Palmer incompetent and totalitarian?

• Moronic Women at Oxford University

• Psychologists and Women Don't Have the Brains to Study Intelligence

• Research Sexism

• Send Jan Jordan Back to the Uranium Tower!

• Universities Pass off Left-Wing prejudice as Intelligent Thought

• Vice-President Biden Lies to Chinese Students.

• What Female Politics Lecturers Do Instead of Thinking