Feminism

Well. I didn't realize anecdotal evidence was necessary for everything. Valuable, sometimes, without doubt. But I didn't think always integral. Interesting. I suppose empathy has its limits. Particularly if you're talking about dudes.

It's not about evidence. It's about lack of perspective. Even with all the evidence in the world, you'll be coming at the whole problem from the angles you learned as a male child, and developped as a male teenager, and often strengthened as a male adult, and interpreting the evidence within that framework. But with the kind of social discrimination, the framework itself is often the problem, and if the framework is the problem, then any interpretation of data you make based on that framework is going to be a problem in and of itself.

Empathy does exist, and some people can emphathize past the framework (and even use empathy to spot the flaws in their own frame of reference). But it's a very difficult thing to do, stepping outside a framework that's been ingrained into you since childhood.

Oda Nobunaga said:

A reasonable discussion?

A reasonable discussion on whether we ned feminism by its very nature must include a reasonable number of women. Which you certainly don't have in this thread. Without that, it's just men imagining that they can understand issues facing women, and that therefore they can determine whether or not feminism is still needed - ie men imagining that they can determine what women need.

Quoting questionable studies and using approximations of logic does not a reasonable discussion make.

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Whether or not you think certain people should even be having a discussion, doesn't mean that discussion can't be reasonable in and of itself. Are you saying this is some sort of sacred cow that men can't even discuss without women being present? It's not as if this is a men-only forum anyway.

And instead of phrasing it as "men imagining that they can determine what women need", how about "some people ona forum imagining that they can determine what society needs"? The latter should be what it's about (even if it is equally futile).

And anyway, a flawed discussion is far from rampant chauvinism.

Oda Nobunaga said:

It's not about evidence. It's about lack of perspective. Even with all the evidence in the world, you'll be coming at the whole problem from the angles you learned as a male child, and developped as a male teenager, and often strengthened as a male adult, and interpreting the evidence within that framework. But with the kind of social discrimination, the framework itself is often the problem, and if the framework is the problem, then any interpretation of data you make based on that framework is going to be a problem in and of itself.

Empathy does exist, and some people can emphathize past the framework (and even use empathy to spot the flaws in their own frame of reference). But it's a very difficult thing to do, stepping outside a framework that's been ingrained into you since childhood.

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So assume better of us. The worst that can happen is that we fail to learn anything. And the best that can is that we do.

Male arrogance in thinking they know better than women what society need (and whether it needs feminism) is male chauvinism.

Farm Boy - How are you going to learn anything without the women present in the discussion? You can learn by experience, but learning the female point of view by experience isn't a result of discussing women issue with other men. You can learn from teaching, but that require teacher who know and understand what they teach, ie women.

A blind person cannot teach another one what a cat looks like.

Oda Nobunaga said:

There are a lot of issues which can be understood regardless of gender or whatnot. Health issues and the like fall easily in that category.

But when it comes to social issues, especially social issues related to long-standing discriminatory practice (hereafter "minority", even though in the case of women they're not a minority in sheer numbers, just in term of their historical place in society), it's extremely difficult to learn to put yourself in someone's shoes. The assumption that you can have a serious reasonable discussion of the right and needs of a minority without members of that minority present to share and explain the difficulties they face is ludicrous, and smack of arrogance.

If you're not part of a minority, you don't know discrimination. Even if you're part of *a* minority, if it's another minority you don't know what discrimination *they* face.

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you seem to presume that any opinions voiced in this thread come out of a vacuum, as if no-one here has ever spoken to a woman or listened to or read the words of a feminist (or various feminists). Just because there isn't a woman in here right now watching over us doesn't mean we're suddenly clueless.

Also, women clearly aren't in a minority and it's a bit manipulative to redefine the meaning of the word. Especially when it isn't even needed. You can just as easily say that you can't understand the issues affecting "a group" unless you're part of that group, there's no need for that group to be subjugated or in a minority in order for that to hold true (or at least AS true).

Historically, women have been relegated to a minority position (outside the public view, outside the public sphere, outside power) throughout history. In the spheres of power, where the decisiosn are made, they are still a minority.

That in terms of sheer number they aren't doesn't make a significant distinction in terms of how they were treated historically. Claiming otherwise is clueles.

And why are you assuming that talking with a woman or reading a feminist text suddenly enables you to understand the issues? If you read those text, and then immediately parsed them through the frame of reference that you formed as a male, then likely you got entirely the wrong conclusions.

Oda Nobunaga said:

Male arrogance in thinking they know better than women what society need (and whether it needs feminism) is male chauvinism.

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What on Earth does this even mean? Either you're implying that women know better than men what society needs, which is surely just as much nonsense, or you're bringing gender into an issue that doesn't depend on it for no reason whatsoever. People, whether male or female, can have a discussion about issues or movements that affect society as a whole, without being desciminatory s. Assuming that they are discriminatory s just because they have a penis is just stupid.

This isn't chauvinism at all.

Claiming the issue is just "what society needs" is disingenuous. The issue is specifically about women: what place society "needs" women to take, and what place they currently have in it. Thus, it is primarily an issue about women. That's dumbfoundedly obvious. It takes a great deal of verbal wrangling to claim otherwise.

It's arrogant to think that males can have this discussion without females.

Manfred Belheim said:

Firstly, in terms of domsetic violence it pretty much is men and women trading blows in equal numbers.

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That isn't actually true.

Secondly, even if you were right, so what? Men can't be considered victims of other men, because they're all men so all equally to blame?! If I get mugged and stabbed and left for dead with my face beaten in, it's only an atrocity if a woman did it to me?

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Two more things: one, some in the thread have pointed out that "well men and women are different, men are bigger, men don't have babies," etc. etc. In justification, I am assuming, for some of the perceived inequities of the sexes in society. One of the biggest problems with domestic violence against men, however, is the shame and stigma attached to a man being the "victim" of physical assault by a woman, since it is generally accepted that men should be able to defend themselves and be "manly" about it. So to me if you want to recognize one of the biggest problems in dealing with violence against men in domestic situations you have to implicitly recognize that assumptions about traditional male and female roles, or a sort of "biological determinism", may impede the social policies needed to ameliorate these problems.

Second thing (yes my first thing was a little long, sorry): as far as discussing social policy, domestic violence and sexual assault have a variety of very different ramifications, root causes, and solutions versus random violence like burglary. It's why a man robbing a woman's purse on the street and does not get lumped in with domestic violence stats, and is considered a different crime. Even though in my opinion domestic violence breeds violent people, I think bringing random street crime into a discussion about domestic violence or sexual assault is more of a red herring than anything else; where is the connection between the two?

Oda Nobunaga said:

Historically, women have been relegated to a minority position (outside the public view, outside the public sphere, outside power) throughout history. In the spheres of power, where the decisiosn are made, they are still a minority.

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This is nonsense. Women are not and never have been a "minority". They have occupied a different place and role in society compared to men, but it has always been fully integrated within that society and open to many priveliges as well as restrictions, just as men have (different) priveliges and restrictions.

Women have always been highly valued and protected. Men might have been at the business end of things, and been in positions of overall power (a tiny minority of men that is), but they've also been at the gutter end, taking all the most dangerous and undesireable jobs, used as cannon fodder in the wars of the elites, expected to lay down their lives for any women and children in the vicinity, expected to entirely support families financially etc. Women may well have been historically kept away from the highest positions of authority (that only a tiny minority of priveliged men ever had a hope of attaining themselves remember), and have been treated with the "don't you worry your pretty head about it darling" kid gloves, but they have also always had a greater level of societal protection given to them. They hold all the cards in social situations, they will have things paid for them, they will always get the comfy bed, be shielded from "unladylike" language etc.

There's positives and negatives in all of that for both sexes, and the negatives should be addressed for both sexes (and largely have been for women), but let's not pretend that they were ever a "minority". It's not like women were forced to live separate from men in slums, worked to death in chain gangs, spat on in the street and forced to drink from separate water fountains. To call them a "minority" in that sense is entirely false, the true situation is much more complicated than that and always have been.

But regardless of all that, feminisn doesn't just affect women, it affects society, and therefore men have just as much of a right to discuss the implications of it as women do, regardless of whether women are in the discussion or not. It's not about what decor to have in the ladies rooms, or other such things that have no impact on men whatsoever, it has inpacts on laws and societal norms, the spending of public money etc. I don't need permission to have opinions on such matters.

illram said:

Second thing (yes my first thing was a little long, sorry): as far as discussing social policy, domestic violence and sexual assault have a variety of very different ramifications, root causes, and solutions versus random violence like burglary. It's why a man robbing a woman's purse on the street and does not get lumped in with domestic violence stats, and is considered a different crime. Even though in my opinion domestic violence breeds violent people, I think bringing random street crime into a discussion about domestic violence or sexual assault is more of a red herring than anything else; where is the connection between the two?

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I'm not saying there is a connection between the two, but likewise I didn't know it was JUST a discussion about domestic violence and sexual assault. I was just pointing out that saying something must be done about forms of violence/assault where women make up the larger proportion of victims, whilst simultaneously dismissing forms of violence where men OVERWHELMINGLY make up the larger proportion of victims, just on some arbitrary technicality that they share genitalia with their attackers, is not a rational or fair stance to be taking.

Who is saying we should dismiss all other types of violence? Is that an argument anyone is really advancing?

This is nonsense. Women are not and never have been a "minority". They have occupied a different place and role in society compared to men, but it has always been fully integrated within that society and open to many priveliges as well as restrictions, just as men have (different) priveliges and restrictions.

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...are you for real?

Fully integrated? Do you even have an idea what you're talking about? Not having the right to vote, not having the right to own property, being treated as equivalent to children and mentally disabled people? THAT'S your definition of fully integrated? Being easy to divorce with for the husband, but having little to no right to initiate divorce themselves? Because THAT is women's historical place.

By that standard, slaves were fully integrated, too! What kind of idiotic talk is this?

Oda Nobunaga said:

And I think with that simple sentence you just lost all right to claim you're not a male chauvinist.

Fully integrated? Do you even have an idea what you're talking about? Not having the right to vote, not having the right to own property, being treated as equivalent to children and mentally incapable people? THAT'S your definition of fully integrated?

By that standard, slaves were fully integrated, too! What kind of idiotic talk is this?

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His point was that historically, most men didn't vote either. Or held any meaningful power. And while women had even less power than men, they were also spared the worst of the terrible fate that awaited most men throughout history, like being used as cannon fodder in wars or toiling under back breaking conditions.

After the male cannon fodder were dead and their side had lost what do you suppose happened to their women?

I also quibble with your history of female employment. Women have traditionally toiled in the fields, factories and coal mines along with their male counterparts.

illram said:

After the male cannon fodder were dead and their side had lost what do you suppose happened to their women?

I also quibble with your history of female employment. Women have traditionally toiled in the fields, factories and coal mines along with their male counterparts.

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Sometimes they remarried, sometimes they moved back with their parents, sometimes they ended up in deep misery. All are still superior to being brutally killed in wars you didn't event understand fought for kings and nobles who couldn't care less about you.

And don't forget the "women and children first" rule. Male life has historically been considered less worth protecting than that of women.

And I know women also toiled under awful conditions, but men got the worst of the worst, which is why they die younger and are more likely to suffer work injuries.

luiz said:

His point was that historically, most men didn't vote either. Or held any meaningful power. And while women had even less power than men, they were also spared the worst of the terrible fate that awaited most men throughout history, like being used as cannon fodder in wars or toiling under back breaking conditions.

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Historically, most men got the right to vote long before women (on the scale of WHEN people got voting rights). And women DID in fact toil under back-breaking condition for most of history.

Arguing women were "fully integrated" historically, especially the last few centuries of human history, is a display of either ignorance or lying.

illram said:

After the male cannon fodder were dead and their side had lost what do you suppose happened to their women?

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Is it a particularly productive argument to try and determine if it is better to be murdered with a chance of enslavement or enslaved with a chance of being murdered?

I think it reduces the whole "historical cannon fodder" argument to the idiocy it is. Both side had high odds of suffering from warfare. End of story.