Ansar
Détente avec l'été
That's what she said!I'm only a feminist in bed
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Do you consider yourself a feminist?
- Thread starter Neomega
- Start date
philippe
FYI, I chase trains.
Ansar
Détente avec l'été
Is that a typo I see?
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
Problem: everyone has a different working definition of feminism.
By my definition of (warning: nutshell) empower women as best we can but not at anyone's expense, damn right I'm a feminist, and just about everyone worth any respect is also a feminist.
By the fake red-herring definition of OMG ENSLAVE TEH MENS AND WE WILL RULE TEH PLANET WOOO, nobody worth any respect is a feminist.
Anyone that says they're not a feminist either has a crappy definition or is a crappy person. (Some people that say they are also have crappy definitions or are crappy people.)
By my definition of (warning: nutshell) empower women as best we can but not at anyone's expense, damn right I'm a feminist, and just about everyone worth any respect is also a feminist.
By the fake red-herring definition of OMG ENSLAVE TEH MENS AND WE WILL RULE TEH PLANET WOOO, nobody worth any respect is a feminist.
Anyone that says they're not a feminist either has a crappy definition or is a crappy person. (Some people that say they are also have crappy definitions or are crappy people.)
Men are from Mars and Women from Venus - and somewhere in between a struggle as old as the Human race takes place. Learning to navigate the Gender Wars isn't that hard. Put yourself in the other persons shoes and treat them as a human being FIRST and someone of specific gender second.
And btw Neomega why would you want a relationship with someone who exhibited such narrow mindedness and dogmatism - unless your hormones were driving you to it?
Voted NO.
And btw Neomega why would you want a relationship with someone who exhibited such narrow mindedness and dogmatism - unless your hormones were driving you to it?
Voted NO.
Feminism is sexist.
No other way to put it, its sexist, just think about it.
IMHO Feminism is just as sexist as Males attempting to be superior over females.
And nope im not a feminist and although i agree with the concept, many women take it too far.
No other way to put it, its sexist, just think about it.
IMHO Feminism is just as sexist as Males attempting to be superior over females.
And nope im not a feminist and although i agree with the concept, many women take it too far.
silver 2039
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
- Messages
- 16,208
The whole problem with the ridiculous equality thing is that men and women are not equal either physically or intellectually. Women are less able at things like being police officers, soldiers, construction workers, and things like that. Why do you think in sports men and women tennis, and basketball are seperate? Because women cannot compete with men physically.
Also with regards to intellect men are shown to have a large logical component aiding them at math and sciences and such things. Thats why there are largely men who go into things like engineering while those classes have practically no women.
Also with regards to intellect men are shown to have a large logical component aiding them at math and sciences and such things. Thats why there are largely men who go into things like engineering while those classes have practically no women.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
I'd say I am anti-feminist.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Touché. It's not sexist to say that differences between men and women exist. Just to add something, women are naturally better than men when it comes to talking, teaching, communicating, counseling etc. They are also much better secreataries, because they can think about and do more things at the same time, while men can only focus on one.
Even if we accept that false binarism, you've gotta ask yourself, why is it that all the "female" qualities are disdained and considered inferior to male ones in society? Why "female" occupations are lower status, why we want "male" qualities in our leaders, and so forth. Could it be because of.... tah dah... gender based discrimination!
The point isn't that there's no differences, that's as much of a red herring as OMG WOMEN WANT TO RULE and such. The point is the way those differences are manifested and distributed throughout society, and the way slight biological differences are held up to be massive, inescapable dichotmous differences which are used to organise and justify an unequal social order. Sex differences shouldn't be used as an organising principle as much as they are... gender should be much less important than it is.
Sex differences are innate and biological, but gender differences are largely constructed. Even if we accept that there are, on average, significant biological differences in capability in some specialised brain functions such as spatial awareness or language skills*, that in no way justifies the level of inequality and discrimination that exists in society. This is the total non sequitor at the heart of the essentialist and binarist arguments... I mean, what, cos women can't read maps or used to gather berries instead of hunting mammoths, they can't be chosen for prestigious executive jobs or control their own uteruses? Because female athletes cover the 100 metres a second slower they can't get paid maternity leave or see justice carried out in 90% of rapes?
*That "women talk more" is a hoary old chestnut and not actually true. What actually happens in linguistic or psychological study after study is that when women and men talk the same amount of time in a conversation, women are percieved to have been talking more.
The point isn't that there's no differences, that's as much of a red herring as OMG WOMEN WANT TO RULE and such. The point is the way those differences are manifested and distributed throughout society, and the way slight biological differences are held up to be massive, inescapable dichotmous differences which are used to organise and justify an unequal social order. Sex differences shouldn't be used as an organising principle as much as they are... gender should be much less important than it is.
Sex differences are innate and biological, but gender differences are largely constructed. Even if we accept that there are, on average, significant biological differences in capability in some specialised brain functions such as spatial awareness or language skills*, that in no way justifies the level of inequality and discrimination that exists in society. This is the total non sequitor at the heart of the essentialist and binarist arguments... I mean, what, cos women can't read maps or used to gather berries instead of hunting mammoths, they can't be chosen for prestigious executive jobs or control their own uteruses? Because female athletes cover the 100 metres a second slower they can't get paid maternity leave or see justice carried out in 90% of rapes?
*That "women talk more" is a hoary old chestnut and not actually true. What actually happens in linguistic or psychological study after study is that when women and men talk the same amount of time in a conversation, women are percieved to have been talking more.
We might live in different societies (I live in Finland. While there is problems in female equality (and naturally some problems in male equality)), I could not say that as a society female qualities are considered inferior more or less than male qualities.
There are ofcourse individual opinions. Someone likes soccer, someone football. Someone thinks good leader is <one with so called male qualities> one thinks <one with so called female qualities> and someone is all confused up about why stereotyping like that, quality is a quality without a gender.
There is also ofcourse a minority of "redneck society", that doesn't represent the whole society, that thinks women are inequal to male (those might also think that other races or basicly all kinds of different peole are inequal to them ("OMG those rolepayers, what are them, somekind of satan worshippers?)). But thats their thing, and those kind of people should be dropped down if they are in high places of society (such person should not use personal opinions in his/hers work).
But as said, for me that problem lies in individual people, not in society as a whole. If society should somehow punish these individuals, then we should throw the equality to the trashcan; if all are to have equal right and equal voice, also those whom think differently (nazis, schauvinists) must alteast have their say as any other people (as long as it doens't break the law or discriminate in obivious way).
But as said, I do aknowledge that there are different kind of societies in different coutries, it can be easily seen that worldvide the status of women is not equal at all (atleast in the way the western society sees it).
Winner
Diverse in Unity
False? Prove that there are no biological differences between men and women or take it back.
For most of our history, "male" qualities were seemingly more important. It's all fina and good that cavewomen kept the home warm and took care about the children, but the cavemen were hunting and protecting them. They were in the position of power.
I for one would say that the modern world favours female qualities more than the other. Today, it is more important to be able to communicate and avoid conflict, than to hunt animals and brutalize your opponents.
The fact is that men have natural advantage in certain fields, like math and most natural sciences. The have it because their brain works differently, and that's a fact, not some sexist propaganda.
Blah, blah, blah.
Nobody is saying that evident bilogical differences justify different treatment or discrimination. Or at least I am not saying that and most other so-called patriarchal men are neither.
Feminism has already achieved everything it wanted, now it's just looking for more enemies and for absurd non-existing inequality to justify its further existence.
Ah, the usual gender-studies bullcrap.
1) Women are underrepresented in politics and high profile jobs not because the evil men would prevent them from reaching the top, but because they usually don't want them, or are not willing to sacrifice as much as their male rivals. Any ambitious women willing to make sacrifices can reach the same position as any male, that's a fact.
2) Please don't even start with that nonsense about biased justice. If it is biased, it favour women as the so-called "weaker sex".
No. Women are proved to say more words a day than the men. It's an average, particular isolated conversations are irrelevant.
Nope. Urban legend. Oft-repeated factoid with no actual support. Both genders cluster around the same median with large individual differences - turns out talkative people talk more than non talkative people.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5834/82
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5834/82
All you really have to do is look at the status of secretaries or teachers or nurses versus other professions. Or, even the fact that child care and taking care of the home isn't even considered "work" deserving compensation. This is something fairly deep-rooted, though obviously Northern Europe has gone the furtherest in redressing gender inequality generally.
So why do we continue to seek "tough" and "decisive" leaders and not leaders with more valuable womanly attributes?
This is somewhat true for some men, but the problem is that this gets overblown and held to be deterministic. You raise people thinking this, tell them it constantly, it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling thing. I'd suggest you do a bit of reading about stereotype threat. - This study was a pretty interesting evaluation of it. Essentially, two groups of women are given maths tests. One group is told, beforehand, about how women are inferior at mathematics, don't have the brains for it, yatta yatta yatta. The other isn't, or was lied to and told women are actually better at maths than men (I forget which). The "gender-priming" made a difference in results.
Again, the problem isn't just objective and rational "natural" factors in a vacuum, it's the way they're interpreted, distributed and constructed in society.
Isn't this actually (on more upper level) a stereotyping problem, not gender stereotyping problem? There are also such stereotypes of men that are negative. And of races, and of interests groups and societies and...
(that are not real in reality).
Shouldn't we fight stereotyping in general, not just gender stereotyping, to fix that issue? Because that would seem more logical, to fix the real cause (stereotyping in general), not make bubblegum fix to one of the symptoms (gender stereotyping).
Mirc
Not mIRC!!!
Those are my thoughts too.
Of course Fronx. Nobody ever said feminism was exclusive with fighting racism or anything else, in fact recognising the factors in play around racial prejudice often helps make one aware of gender prejudice, and the contrary. Nobody needs to play the Oppression Olympics game.
That said, this is a thread about feminism. You're not doing it here, but changing the subject with "but what about this and this and this" type statments can be assholish and an effort to silence. Which is why it's so frustrating that, for example, practically every thread on the internet which talks about rape and sexual abuse ends up talking about false rape accusations and how men get hurt by them. It's not hard to see the power and privilege dynamics behind that constant shift. It's the OH GOD WHAT ABOUT THE MEN defence every feminist or pro-feminist man runs into, and kinda why most of them get annoyed when dudes do it... it's constant to the point of cliche.
That said, this is a thread about feminism. You're not doing it here, but changing the subject with "but what about this and this and this" type statments can be assholish and an effort to silence. Which is why it's so frustrating that, for example, practically every thread on the internet which talks about rape and sexual abuse ends up talking about false rape accusations and how men get hurt by them. It's not hard to see the power and privilege dynamics behind that constant shift. It's the OH GOD WHAT ABOUT THE MEN defence every feminist or pro-feminist man runs into, and kinda why most of them get annoyed when dudes do it... it's constant to the point of cliche.
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