Comments Elsewhere

‘And yes, I do understand that some women find themselves in difficult situations, but “coercion” has to mean the use force or the threat of force. I don’t see any other libertarian definition.’

Libertarianism is a theory of political justice, not of lexicography. If people sometimes (as they do) use the word “coercion” to refer to circumstances in which a man’s or woman’s range of choices is constrained by human-created conditions other than the use or threat of violence, then it seems to me that the best thing to do is to acknowledge the usage and to make the distinction between coercion in this broader sense and coercion in the narrower sense of constraint of choices by use of violence or threats. We can recognize that cases of constraint in the broader sense have some important things in common with cases of constraint in the narrower sense well enough while still arguing that only coercion in the narrow sense can legitimately be met with defensive force.

“And btw, most victims of violent crime are men despite what feminists would have you believe.”

I’m not aware of any feminists who disagree with this. However, what has this got to do with anything? The overwhelming majority of male victims of violence are attacked by other men, not by women. Further, the nature of the violence is different; most violence committed against men consists of one-off assaults committed by strangers; the overwhelming majority of violence against women consists of assaults committed by a man that the victim knows, often by a man that she lives with, and is frequently part of a persistent pattern of violence. And both violence against men—overwhelmingly committed by men—and violence against women—overwhelmingly committed by men—are horrifyingly common in our society (about 60% of men and a bit more than 50% of women are the victims of a violent assault in their lifetime, according to the CDC’s conservative estimates). If you think that these facts pose a challenge to the radical feminist understanding of men and women’s respective places in American society, I don’t quite know what to say.

As for the rest of Mark’s comments, I quote one of my favorite philosophical anarchists, J.R.R. Tolkien:

‘I have just received a copy of C.S.L.’s latest: Studies in Words. Alas! His ponderous silliness is becoming a fixed manner. I am deeply relieved to find I am not mentioned. . . . I think the best bit is the last chapter, and the only really wise remark is on the last page: “I think we must get it firmly fixed in our minds that the very occasions on which we should most like to write a slashing review are precisely those on which we had much better hold our tongues.” Ergo silebo.’