Feminism and Gender

Kevin_Lowe said:
This seems to me a lot like saying "I don't find myself believing that slaves were ever 'property' except by assent. I know I've never once met an owned slave. Maybe it was so, once, but does that matter? I bet those slaves were secretly getting together for witty conversations where they effectively exercised a 50% power share in society because hey, the work wouldn't get done without them."

As to whether it matters, well, no, not really. Women aren't slaves now. They were back then, or close to it, but the relevance to modern issues is negligible.
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And your post seems to me a lot like saying "You know who else disagreed with things? Hitler, that's who." The feminism that arose in the late 60s and flourished in the 70s did so on the back of the racial equality movement. But to compare the status of women to the status of black african slaves is offensive to the slaves. To suggest I might argue that there had been no slavery is offensive and unnecessary. The two are not analogous, nor was the position of women 'close to' slavery during the years of the slave trade to the Americas (I'm picking a period at random, you use 'back then', which is not terribly specific, but then you're not really attempting a rigorous argument, you're attempting to hang a sign on a poster who doesn't share your ideology, in the hope that others won't question an orthodoxy).
 
jiggeryqua said:
And your post seems to me a lot like saying "You know who else disagreed with things? Hitler, that's who." The feminism that arose in the late 60s and flourished in the 70s did so on the back of the racial equality movement. But to compare the status of women to the status of black african slaves is offensive to the slaves. To suggest I might argue that there had been no slavery is offensive and unnecessary. The two are not analogous, nor was the position of women 'close to' slavery during the years of the slave trade to the Americas (I'm picking a period at random, you use 'back then', which is not terribly specific, but then you're not really attempting a rigorous argument, you're attempting to hang a sign on a poster who doesn't share your ideology, in the hope that others won't question an orthodoxy).
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Nothing in your post in any way resembles a response to my actual point.

My actual point was that your argument against the fact that women were treated as property with very few rights of their own in some times and places in the past, specifically the argument from personal incredulity you presented, was a very stupid argument.

You didn't specify any particular time period in the post in question. You stated that you didn't believe women were ever property. Click on the link and check if you don't believe that's what you wrote.

Therefore trying to do a switcheroo and pretend that you were talking about the status of (white) women during the slave-trading period of the USA's history is not debating honestly. If that's what you really meant by "ever", then you should have said so at the time, but "ever" is a curious way to say "during the slave-trading period of the USA's history."
 
Morrigan said:
I got like -20 on the first test, and 50 on the male scale on the BBC test.

I'm female. :(
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[Rather a huge derail; sorry]

I don't think it's something to be sad about, necessarily, nor does it make you less of a woman, whatever that's supposed to mean. ;)

I ran across this article (but bear in mind, I've not had time to vet it, just to read it):
Male brain vs. female brain I: Why do men try to figure out their relationships? Why do women talk to their cars?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...-female-brain-i-why-do-men-try-figure-out-t-0

It's interesting in itself, but at the end of the page, there's a link in the final word, "post":

Male Brain vs. Female Brain II: What Is an “Extreme Male Brain”? What Is an “Extreme Female Brain”?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...-female-brain-ii-what-is-extreme-male-brain-w

Simon Baron-Cohen revolutionized the study of autism and autism-spectrum disorders (such as Asperger’s syndrome) by suggesting that autism is a manifestation of an “extreme male brain.” The male brain tends toward systemizing and mechanistic thinking, treating other people as if they were logical systems or machines. If you take this tendency to an extreme, you would treat everyone as if they were machines without minds or feelings. That, according to Baron-Cohen, is the essence of autism, which he calls “mindblindness.” Mindblind people (autistics) are blind to other people’s minds or emotions. In fact, they don’t even know that other people have minds separate from their own; autistics tend to assume that other people know and think exactly what they do. Baron-Cohen’s notion of autism as the extreme male brain explains why an overwhelming majority of autistics (four out of five) are men and there are relatively few female autistics (although, once again, there are exceptions to the general pattern; there is an occasional “girl with a boy’s brain.”)
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Again, there is yet another link in the final quoted phrase:

An Aspie in the City
Kiriana Cowansage can run complex neuroscience experiments and sketch beautiful portraits. She melts at the sight of an animal, but she balks at the concept of love. Such paradoxes define women with Asperger's syndrome.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200611/aspie-in-the-city


Hmmmmm. I've long suspected, but have been unable to confirm, I may have an autism spectrum disorder. If there's any validity to these articles, I may have discovered why.

[/huge derail]
 
With the women using their power to withhold sex, it's important to remember that until very, very recently within a marriage men were legally allowed to take that which they were trying to withhold. It wasn't until 1991 that marital rape was criminalised in the UK and countries such as Thailand and Jamaica didn't criminalise it until the latter half of the 2000s.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Nothing in your post in any way resembles a response to my actual point.

My actual point was that your argument against the fact that women were treated as property with very few rights of their own in some times and places in the past, specifically the argument from personal incredulity you presented, was a very stupid argument.

You didn't specify any particular time period in the post in question. You stated that you didn't believe women were ever property. Click on the link and check if you don't believe that's what you wrote.

Therefore trying to do a switcheroo and pretend that you were talking about the status of (white) women during the slave-trading period of the USA's history is not debating honestly. If that's what you really meant by "ever", then you should have said so at the time, but "ever" is a curious way to say "during the slave-trading period of the USA's history."
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Oh shush now. I made no argument that women were never treated as property. I said I found myself not believing that assertion (that they were) to be true - check your helpful link to my post if you don't believe that's what I wrote. You responded by repeating the assertion. I would have thought the thing to do round here would be to link to evidence, and yet here you are failing to present an argument again. If this fact is so commonplace, how difficult would it be to demonstrate it? I can assure you, I'm quite prepared to believe your assertion if you care to show me rather than attack me. Showing me would be sensiible. What you did (including calling my argument "stupid") was....well, it was stupid, wasn't it?

I did not specify any time period, and neither did you. It was not a 'switcheroo' to later select the time of the slave trade to the americas - slavery is ownership of property, I was hoping it would help you see the difference. I wasn't, by the way, talking about "(white)" women - there were plenty of black men and women who were not slaves, some indeed who were slavers (and if you've been following my rejection of the false binary 'man/woman', guess how I feel about the false binary 'black/white'). That you had to put "(white)" in parentheses should have clued you in to your own dishonesty.

Now, let's see if you can "debate honestly", because you've rapidly dragged this down into the kind of ideological warfare that I warned about earlier. If you have an assertion, then back it up and be prepared to debate it honestly, but if you're only here to attack those who don't adhere to your orthodoxy then let me know in your next post and I can act accordingly.
 
jiggeryqua said:
We should be informed by history. It's probably optimistic to imagine that we might expect a significant proportion of the population to learn not to repeat the mistakes of previous generations, but nevertheless, a record of past mistakes must be maintained in the hope that future generations won't repeat them. But building an ideology that is actually an enduring feud is probably one of the mistakes that we ought to be educated out of by now.

I don't find myself believing that women were ever 'property', except by assent (or perhaps socio-biology). I know that in my lifetime I've never met an owned woman, or a woman who might accept being owned. Maybe it was so, once. Does that matter? I know that the witch trials burned men and women, at the accusations of women and men, but that's not how some feminists (the Not True Feminists that we're not allowed to reference) view them.

It's history and geography, I find, for the activists. In some parts of the world, some cultures do have specific, limiting, binary definitions of gender. That they limit and bind both genders, and that there is no clear evidence that the gender with the greater power to enforce is also the gender calling the shots, is neither here nor there. In a small village in scotland, I watched a group of women use their considerable power against men with the rationale that we hadn't yet invaded the middle east and imposed proper concepts on them. It doesn't matter what's happening here and now, for them, so long as they can find a single woman 'suffering', all men are the enemy.

f1: Men are the enemy? Why?
f2: Because they oppress us and have all the power.
f1: What shall we do?!
f2: Why, we shall force our view upon them.
f1: But why would they listen? They have all the power?
f2: Are you kidding? They all need to get laid, we have our own power.
f1: So, they don't have all the power?
f2: Shh! Don't tell them that. They know they have all their own power, no need to mention we have our own. They're dumb enough to fall for this, trust me.
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If property is equivalent to slaves, then there are people who are still sold in to slavery today.

All too often it is sex slavery, which is predominantly women.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/slavery/default.stm
 
Tatyana said:
If property is equivalent to slaves, then there are people who are still sold in to slavery today.

All too often it is sex slavery, which is predominantly women.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/slavery/default.stm
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I would have phrased it 'slaves equivalent to property', because none of my property is equivalent to slaves, but even allowing for that I can't be sure whether you're trying to suggest I have denied the existence, in the past or in the present, of slavery. Yes, of course, there are still slaves, and bonded workers little better than slaves, and migrant workers trapped in slave-like 'jobs' in various parts of the world.

I'm already bored of pointing out that I don't subscribe to a binary gender model, but again, even allowing that for that, what is it with 'predominantly women'? The implication always seems to be that we care less about men, or perhaps just that we should care because many of them are women. Men and women are enslaved, men and women are abused, men and women...well, wouldn't it be simpler (and bolster the idea that (good) feminism is about equality) just to say 'people', and tackle the idea of slavery, sex slavery and any other issue that affects people on the basis that they are bad for people, regardless of their genitalia, chromosomes, dress sense, nurturing skills, map reading abilities or any other indicator of 'gender'.
 
a.) Feminism is a womens interest ideology (it has nothing to do with equality)
b.) A feminist can also be for gender equality (ie working for the removal of any actual discriminatory laws and cultural behaviour), this does not mean that b.) is feminism, only that at times the goals may be the same or similar.
c.) Feminism is inherently discriminatory, a feminist need not be.
d.) Many are....
 
I used to think patriarchy hurt everyone. Women had to conform to a series of social expectations, but men were also limited by a different set of rules. Some of my most important early formative experiences had to do with being bullied for being weak/not manly enough. Even today, identifying as poly goes right against what a Man is supposed to be - because my brand of polyamory is less about having a lot of sex with a lot different women and more about adopting an ethics of non-coercion. It's not cool to think your partner is an autonomous individual who can do anything she wants with her body, including sex with other people.

I still think patriarchy hurts everyone. BUT, overall, it still privileges men. Unless you naturally conform to the role assigned to your gender, you are oppressed - but the design of this oppression is such that it gives men an advantage, both economically and in personal conflicts with women. A 19th century man could well feel constrained by social obligations in relation to marriage - it's certainly a type of life I would hate to live - but there's no doubt he still held a lot of power over his wife. Nowadays, as much as there are still unduly expectations on both men and women, men still have the upper hand. Men earn more, men spend fewer hours on housework, etc. I don't think you can handwave this difference away by claiming patriarchy hurts men too. That's why feminism is still aptly named.
 
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Rairun said:
I used to think patriarchy hurt everyone. Women had to conform to a series of social expectations, but men were also limited by a different set of rules. Some of my most important early formative experiences had to do with being bullied for being weak/not manly enough. Even today, identifying as poly goes right against what a Man is supposed to be - because my brand of polyamory is less about having a lot of sex with a lot different women and more about adopting an ethics of non-coercion. It's not cool to think your partner is an autonomous individual who can do anything she wants with her body, including sex with other people.

I still think patriarchy hurts everyone. BUT, overall, it still privileges men. Unless you naturally conform to the role assigned to your gender, you are oppressed - but the design of this oppression is such that it gives men an advantage, both economically and in personal conflicts with women. A 19th century man could well feel constrained by social obligations in relation to marriage - it's certainly a type of life I would hate to live - but there's no doubt he still held a lot of power over his wife. Nowadays, as much as there are still unduly expectations on both men and women, men still have the upper hand. Men earn more, men spend fewer hours on housework, etc. I don't think you can handwave this difference away by claiming patriarchy hurts men too. That's why feminism is still aptly named.
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Uh, sweetie, patriarchy hurts gay men immensely. But seeing as gay men aren't really men, I can see how that comment is completely appropriate in overlooking us.:p
 
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jiggeryqua said:
Well, it's been a while, and he was never my favourite author, but what's your problem with the quote? Which story are you using as 'context'? You can't be saying Charlie D was "so far off base', I'm sure, so perhaps you mean I was very far 'off base' by including that quote in that post (the 'story' presumably being the anecdote about the scottish misandrists).

Perhaps if you actually made the point, rather than hinting that you had one and hoping people didn't look past our respective genders or social standings, I'd be able to respond more adequately. At any rate, while I don't suppose I was making a particularly earth-shattering point it wasn't a joke. Hope that helps.
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Mr. Bumble runs the workhouse and is brutal to his charges. He himself is brutalized by a woman he married only for her money who turned out to be a psycho. He is touched by sentiment at one point but unlike Scrooge (Scrooge! The "are there no workhouses" guy) this doesn't change the way he treats the children. Mr. Bumble is one of those heartless villains that Mr. Dickens used to create empathy for the wretched and poor. He's the embodiment of apathy and cruelty within a broken system.

ETA: Why did you think it was a good idea to challenge the liberal book dealer on Dickens?
 
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bookitty said:
Mr. Bumble runs the workhouse and is brutal to his charges. He himself is brutalized by a woman he married only for her money who turned out to be a psycho. He is touched by sentiment at one point but unlike Scrooge (Scrooge! The "are there no workhouses" guy) this doesn't change the way he treats the children. Mr. Bumble is one of those heartless villains that Mr. Dickens used to create empathy for the wretched and poor. He's the embodiment of apathy and cruelty within a broken system.

ETA: Why did you think it was a good idea to challenge the liberal book dealer on Dickens?
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I don't believe I challenged you at all. Indeed, I try to avoid engaging with you, because you can get aggressively ideological around gender issues. That said, wtf are you on about? I quoted Bumble saying the law is an ass if it imagines a man is responsible for his wife's opinions and actions, and you took exception to that. And now here you are telling me who bumble is and I'm struggling to make sense of what you think you're trying to say or prove or demonstrate - except that you like a fight with those who don't share your ideology, because you know the casual observer will side with the woman (oh the oppression!). For the record, we're on the interwebs, and it aint even live. I could look up enough information to 'challenge the liberal book dealer' if that was what I wanted to do. Why add 'liberal', by the way? They're the only party who ever got a vote from me. Or should I hand in my party card because I don't agree with one element of what you have decided defines liberalism? I expected to get treated as a nazi for not being a feminist, to be fair - that's how it works - but really, as I've said, I'm not here for entrenched warfare, it's dull and counter-productive.
 
slingblade said:
[Rather a huge derail; sorry]

I don't think it's something to be sad about, necessarily, nor does it make you less of a woman, whatever that's supposed to mean. ;)

I ran across this article (but bear in mind, I've not had time to vet it, just to read it):
Male brain vs. female brain I: Why do men try to figure out their relationships? Why do women talk to their cars?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...-female-brain-i-why-do-men-try-figure-out-t-0

It's interesting in itself, but at the end of the page, there's a link in the final word, "post":

Male Brain vs. Female Brain II: What Is an “Extreme Male Brain”? What Is an “Extreme Female Brain”?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...-female-brain-ii-what-is-extreme-male-brain-w



Again, there is yet another link in the final quoted phrase:

An Aspie in the City
Kiriana Cowansage can run complex neuroscience experiments and sketch beautiful portraits. She melts at the sight of an animal, but she balks at the concept of love. Such paradoxes define women with Asperger's syndrome.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200611/aspie-in-the-city


Hmmmmm. I've long suspected, but have been unable to confirm, I may have an autism spectrum disorder. If there's any validity to these articles, I may have discovered why.

[/huge derail]
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See, this is a big problem I have. Because men average 11.4 and women average 12.4 words, we somehow have distinct male and female minds? Why not simply say that women tend to have a higher average for X trait? Otherwise we have cisgender women with distinctly male minds! The naming conventions make no sense.
 
What about the way religions treat women, some treat 'em good, some treat 'em bad, which one is right?
 
Johnny Brant said:
What about the way religions treat women, some treat 'em good, some treat 'em bad, which one is right?
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They are all wrong.

it's kinda like saying which psychic is wrong, the one who charges $1000 an hr to lie about dead relatives or they one who charges $10 an hr to do the same thing. Sure the 2nd one isn't as big a jackwagon for charging less , but they are both lying to people and taking their money.
 
jiggeryqua said:
I don't believe I challenged you at all. Indeed, I try to avoid engaging with you, because you can get aggressively ideological around gender issues. That said, wtf are you on about? I quoted Bumble saying the law is an ass if it imagines a man is responsible for his wife's opinions and actions, and you took exception to that. And now here you are telling me who bumble is and I'm struggling to make sense of what you think you're trying to say or prove or demonstrate - except that you like a fight with those who don't share your ideology, because you know the casual observer will side with the woman (oh the oppression!). For the record, we're on the interwebs, and it aint even live. I could look up enough information to 'challenge the liberal book dealer' if that was what I wanted to do. Why add 'liberal', by the way? They're the only party who ever got a vote from me. Or should I hand in my party card because I don't agree with one element of what you have decided defines liberalism? I expected to get treated as a nazi for not being a feminist, to be fair - that's how it works - but really, as I've said, I'm not here for entrenched warfare, it's dull and counter-productive.
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BRAVO! I love when people act like online posting is real time dialogue. LMAO. And I think you are correct in your observation and avoidance of hmmmm what shall I call it

Fishing for Penis? A more nefarious version of Secret Socrates. How to? Well bait the discussion with a worm filled with robust generalizations about men. When a man bites, the raging feminist will smash them over the head with a frying pan and take a picture for show, and then toss em back over the side as if they've done something meaningful. To the applause of their fellow raging feminists. No real discussion wanted or needed. LOL
 
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Johnny Brant quote- What about the way religions treat women, some treat 'em good, some treat 'em bad, which one is right?

BravesFan said:
..They are all wrong..
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The bible says "Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love", that don't sound wrong to me..
 
Johnny Brant said:
Johnny Brant quote- What about the way religions treat women, some treat 'em good, some treat 'em bad, which one is right?




The bible says "Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love", that don't sound wrong to me..
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Cherry-picking.

Try 1 Corinthians.

You know, you can't say you've ever really lived until you've been forced to your knees by your husband, and beaten in the head with a bible while he screams at you to "Submit, submit!"


Yeah...good times.
 
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