Feminism

[Ajidica]

And unlike some obscure State Rep. from Arkansas, this dude became an icon and idol for millions of left-wingers worldwide, and also a best-selling t-shirt logo.

Perhaps I'm blind, but I'm not seeing how Guevara's well known racist opinion of Angolans has any bearing on the belief by some today that slavery was a good for some blacks.

 

[luiz]

These threads always say so much more about many of the participants than the ostensible subject.

Expand!

Perhaps I'm blind, but I'm not seeing how Guevara's well known racist opinion of Angolans has any bearing on the belief by some today that slavery was a good for some blacks.

It doesn't. But TF's point was merely "the right is racist hahaha", so I replied with "the left is racist hahaha".

 

[Senethro]

Luiz, you forgot about the Catholic church, the overwhelming majority of which was male and wielded considerable political power. Also wealth come to think of it. Following that thought, I guess most wealth was held by men whether lands or money. Men were able to receive and education and so dominated the social, artistic and scholarly ranks too, leading to most of our recorded viewpoints being male for centuries.

Maybe there are other gaps in addition to political rights?

 

[luiz]

Luiz, you forgot about the Catholic church, the overwhelming majority of which was male and wielded considerable political power. Also wealth come to think of it. Following that thought, I guess most wealth was held by men whether lands or money. Men were able to receive and education and so dominated the social, artistic and scholarly ranks too, leading to most of our recorded viewpoints being male for centuries.

Maybe there are other gaps in addition to political rights?

And which percentage of the overall male population was composed of bishops, cardinals and the pope [1 single man at a time*]? Parish priests were pretty insignificant and powerless.

You're quite right that most wealth and land were held by men. That's a fact. My point was that the overwhelming majority of both females and males had no political power whatsoever. That the pope was a male didn't make your average Italian or French peasant of the middle ages any more empowered. So really it wasn't about "men oppressing women", it was about "all power being concentrated at the hands of a tiny elite". And that tiny elite did include females.

As for "most of our recorded viewpoints being male for centuries"... OK. But again, there are reliable sources and unreliable sources. I don't believe there is a "male history" and a "female history", merely history.

*Except when there was an anti-pope, but I digress.

 

[Zack]

My point was that the overwhelming majority of both females and males had no political power whatsoever.

So what? There were plenty of poor free whites in US history, but that doesn't mean it's okay to trivialize the oppression of blacks.

 

[luiz]

So what? There were plenty of poor free whites in US history, but that doesn't mean it's okay to trivialize the oppression of blacks.

Nobody said it is OK to trivialize whatever oppression. Merely that the condition of women was not comparable to, say, the condition of slaves. And yet this comparison keeps being made...

 

[Senethro]

Hmmmm. Interesting. Is this leading to a supreme zing that if it doesn't matter that the elite of society has been male for centuries, it doesn't matter that the elite is still mostly male now?

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't think so? I think he's mostly been trying to argue for the fact that both male and female privilege exist, and those privileges change over time? Of course, he could surprise me.

 

[luiz]

Hmmmm. Interesting. Is this leading to a supreme zing that if it doesn't matter that the elite of society has been male for centuries, it doesn't matter that the elite is still mostly male now?

Correction, the elite of society has been mostly male for centuries, and females have been gaining ground for the last several decades.

And today whatever gap exists (in modern Western countries) is hardly the product of oppression. There still are traces of wokplace discrimination, and it's good that we eliminate them, though.

 

[Zack]

Nobody said it is OK to trivialize whatever oppression. Merely that the condition of women was not comparable to, say, the condition of slaves. And yet this comparison keeps being made...

It's an analogy, which should be painfully obvious. And you ARE trivializing it, by saying "well it doesn't matter since some men had it bad too." How in the world is that not trivializing it?

 

[Senethro]

You're pretty much in the reality-blind position of a creationist here. If you can look at the extreme injustices of history and its endless parade of white faces with beards and say "not sexist", what is the point of discussing modern issues with you?

 

[Phrossack]

You're pretty much in the reality-blind position of a creationist here. If you can look at the extreme injustices of history and its endless parade of white faces with beards and say "not sexist", what is the point of discussing modern issues with you?

If anything, there's been a fairly alarming lack of beards among modern leaders. They're rare among women, which can be forgiven, but the United States has not had a president graced with facial hair while in office in over a century. This cannot stand.

 

[Farm Boy]

I get the suspicion you all are dogging each other for refusal to phrase specific statements in the the dogmatic frame desired, rather than assessing what's actually being said.

 

[luiz]

It's an analogy, which should be painfully obvious. And you ARE trivializing it, by saying "well it doesn't matter since some men had it bad too." How in the world is that not trivializing it?

If anything you're the one trivializing the suffering of the human race by saying that "some men had it bad too". How about "the overwhelming majority of both men and women had it bad?"

Unlike your trivializing statement, that one is actually accurate.

You're pretty much in the reality-blind position of a creationist here. If you can look at the extreme injustices of history and its endless parade of white faces with beards and say "not sexist", what is the point of discussing modern issues with you?

And that's exactly what I'm talking about, the cartoonish version of history.

Throughout history the vast majority of bearded faces were powerless. And if we're discussing the Western world it's obvious they were virtually all white, both the powerful few and powerless many.

Women were not oppressed in the sense that slaves were oppressed, and men were not oppressors. Only in the cartoon version of history, which has nothing to do with how the world actually was, or is.

 

[CaptainF]

I know, I'm just a man, so I shouldn't have an opinion on this, but here goes:

I agree with many of the espoused "feminist" values. Equal pay, equal rights, equal representation. These are all great! People are people are people. It has done much in the last 50 years to help women achieve parity with men in many spheres of society.

What really gets me, however, is when feminists claim to also fight for men's issues and rights as well. The common feminist refrain that I keep hearing is that "feminism is for everyone, and will liberate men just as it has for women". I believe this to be incredibly wrong.

“All men are rapists and that’s all they are” — Marilyn French

“To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.” -– Valerie Solanas

“I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.” — Andrea Dworkin

“In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.” — Catherine MacKinnon

“Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience.” – Catherine Comins

Then, we have this gem of an article, arguing that paternity tests should be illegal.

Spoiler quote from article :

By contrast, the old situation, in which women presented men with a child, and the man either did the decent thing and offered support, or made a run for it, allowed women a certain leeway. The courtesan in Balzac who, on becoming pregnant, unhesitatingly sought, and got, maintenance from two of her men friends, can’t have been the only one. Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them.

The point is that paternity was ambiguous and it was effectively up to the mother to name her child’s father, or not. (That eminently sensible Jewish custom, whereby Jewishness is passed through the mother, was based on the fact that we only really knew who our mothers are.) Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter? You can feel quite as much tenderness for a child you mistakenly think to be yours as for one who is. Piers Paul Read’s interesting new novel, The Misogynist, touches on just this issue.

A.C. Grayling, the philosopher, has written with feeling on this question this week, in an article for the Evening Standard. Noting that 4 per cent of men are, all unknowing, raising children who are not genetically theirs, according to a report in the Journal of Epidemiology and Human Health, he ponders the impact a DNA paternity test can have: ‘The result can be shattering, leading to divorce, marital violence, mental health difficulties for all parties including the children.’ Well, yes. Scientific certainty has produced clarity all right, and relieved any number of men of their moral obligations, but at God knows what cost in misery, recrimination and guilt.

Our generation sets a good deal of store by certain knowledge. And DNA tests have obvious advantages when it comes to identifying less happy elements of our heredity: congenital disease, for instance. But in making paternity conditional on a test rather than the say-so of the mother, it has removed from women a powerful instrument of choice. I’m not sure that many people are much happier for it.

Unbelievable. I guess a man is supposed to be happy having a cheating whore wife and whatever other man's kids she chooses to bring him, because that is "best for the woman".

Also, it appears Swedish feminists are so afraid of men, they even want to control how they sit in public places.

But what really pisses me off, is when feminists excuse abuse of men because "it's not as bad as when it happens to women". Like what prominent German feminist Alice Schwarzer says in this article promoting male genital mutilation while excusing the female variety.

I too am as Terre des Femmes, believes that religious arguments should not be a reason for the violation of the physical integrity of a child. And circumcision is undoubtedly such an injury. But: She [it] is a very, very low [small] - and it speak for me especially hygienic reasons, regardless of religion and culture.

I hate this woman so, so much. How dare she excuse the genital mutilation of infants, simply because they are male and she is a misandrist. How dare she tell me how I should feel about having the most erogenous part of my body cut off without my consent.

So, in conclusion, I agree with many, even most of the arguments feminists present. Equal rights, equal pay, equal representation. Hell yes! However, I simply can't call myself a feminist and associate myself with a group of people who see me as inherently inferior.

 

[useless]

Sure some men have had it bad, but then again most of the ones committing said bad were men.

See: War

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I thought I'd make a little Venn diagram of what luiz has been saying in case it helps:

Discuss.

 

[Farm Boy]

Sure some men have had it bad, but then again most of the ones committing said bad were men.

See: War

An associative form of guilt? Is that parsed correctly?

 

[Senethro]

If anything you're the one trivializing the suffering of the human race by saying that "some men had it bad too". How about "the overwhelming majority of both men and women had it bad?"

Unlike your trivializing statement, that one is actually accurate.



And that's exactly what I'm talking about, the cartoonish version of history.

Throughout history the vast majority of bearded faces were powerless. And if we're discussing the Western world it's obvious they were virtually all white, both the powerful few and powerless many.

Women were not oppressed in the sense that slaves were oppressed, and men were not oppressors. Only in the cartoon version of history, which has nothing to do with how the world actually was, or is.

This is why the analogy with racism is used. Racism is very visible and so easy to find examples of. It is easy to say that a person in historical or modern times has been oppressed in this situation or that one because of the colour of their skin.

Sexism is thousands of years old rather than mere hundreds and you are unable to see it in the same way fish are unable to see water. You have been brought up in the water and have internalized the water. Analogies have to be used in an attempt to get you to see the water. This is why you can look back at the massed ranks of men in history and get no error messages.

Aristocratic and class based oppression feature largely in history and in some situations were the primary cause of oppression. But you are most definitely trivializing the role sexism, thus continuing it.

I don't believe there is a "male history" and a "female history", merely history.

This is exactly where you're wrong. This is why a black history month is necessary. You think history is history but it is most definitely white history for the most part. European recorded history is male history because of the paucity of female viewpoints.

 

[Senethro]

I thought I'd make a little Venn diagram of what luiz has been saying in case it helps:

Discuss.

We're not disputing the fact, we're disputing his conclusion of sexism not existing in history.