Well, such people are feminists in the same way members of the British National Party (or any other racist national front) are only "pro-British". While they are feminists, their agenda is less about gaining equal rights for women and more about persecuting men or affecting change that solely benefits them. Every movement has its bigots, but it's not the core idea of feminism that's at fault.
I'm well aware of how women are treated in other cultures, as my earlier post ought to indicate. Those countries, for various reasons lack the cultural evolution western society has embarked on which has slowly eroded the idea that some subsets of people are inferior and owe fealty to others.
That's great and all, but the "core ideas" of a political or social philosophy are hardly indicative of how they are in practice. The core ideas of Marxism are good, in theory. We all know how it panned out in practice. I imagine Objectivism would follow the same pattern. Granted, these are more political than social, but you get my point.
It's not that I am against equal rights for women. I think it's safe to say that nobody on this thread is arguing against that. My contention is that some pretty reprehensible people are allowed to carry the title of feminism; to speak on its behalf. Not only that, but these people have a large influence over the cultural attitudes of our societies, so much of their fallacies and half-truths are quoted ad nauseam by the media. Your average person might be a feminist with the best of intentions, but they are often ignorant of popular feminist schema such as standpoint theory and patriarchy. It's not equality I'm opposed to. It's the entire framework and lens in which modern feminist theory views the world and how it has infected society and rule of law that I take issue with.
I must have missed your post where you mentioned women in the third world. I'm sorry I didn't catch that, but I was also highlighting a point that a lot of these "academic" feminists in the first world make. A lot of them see no difference in severity between **** shaming and Sharia Law. These well educated, middle to upper class women are convinced that they are an oppressed class in a Neo-Marxist dynamic where the men hold all of the power and the women hold none. It's a complete delusion at best.
In short, you can say these people don't represent the core idea of feminism all you like, but they do represent feminism and they do have great influence over people who label themselves feminist. It's not hard to understand how figureheads and leaders have this kind of power. I don't support feminism not because I don't envision an egalitarian society. I don't support feminism because its rhetoric and worldview is not, to me, indicative of egalitarian ideals. Not when it's primary focus seems to be the demonization of an entire half of the species.
Not my words, but given that I agree with bell hooks here: "Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression"
Well it's great when feminism does that. The problem is it doesn't always do that. When women are on the rise in High School and College graduation and men are on the decline or when men are the only ones recquired to register for slective service and feminists don't see a problem with that, I fail to see how it "is a movement to end sexism."
Feminism is just that. FEMIN-ism. It's not about ending sexism. It's about the advancement of women. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. I just wish people would call it for what it is instead of pretending that it's some equal opportunity adjudicator.
That's right. So just because you're a doctor, if you happen to be male as well , you're mansplaining when you talk about the female reproductive system. Likewise when you talk about the capacity for physical strain between the genders, you're mansplaining. You don't know what it's like, so your opinion doesn't matter. If you're a sociologist, and you happen to be a male, what your statistics say about what women want or how women vote is mansplaining. If you're a male evolutionary biologist and you have a gender-related opinion having to do with natural selection, you're mansplaining. Particularly if you're a religious leader, if you happen to be a man, your opinion on the social roles of women in what your religion views as the ideal society is mansplaining. Being a man disqualifies you from making any authoritative statement about women. Only women have a right to talk.
The subjective, emotionally-backed intuition of a woman is being held to such a degree of authority that it defies all logic.
Strawman noted. If we're talking about an OBGYN, then the OBGYN's opinion is relevant. But when we're talking about a man with no medical degree, or an MD who is willing to dx via satellite, then it starts to feel very condescending.
Both sides will have extremes, but the thing to realize is that a few bad apples don't spoil the bunch, and there is intentional inequality it appears with pay, birth control and what appears to be an entire political party, just in the US. Elsewhere in religious societies, there's definitely social inequalities with usually men having advantages, but occasionally you have a matriarchal society as well. Although, there does seem to be some evidence to suggest woman are better at learning languages and men are better at spacial reasoning, but that's about it as far as real stereotypical differences go, other than the physical differences like hormone balance and physical structure.
Do note, however, @Chenjesu, that gender equality and "She's a whore because she won't sleep with me!" aren't both extremes.
Wait, matriarchal societies? What matriarchal societies? (Do note that the interplay of gender is far more complex than just "amazons or the rest of the world". Many cultures have more than two genders. At least one culture in China doesn't have marriage, while back here in the States, Pawnee men were traditionally in a polyandrous marriage with their mother's brother and his wife, after which she arranged his marriage, but if you're not Pawnee, Pawnee women won't treat you well at all, since in the old days, their god needed a new bride every year.)
Really? I thought it was more specific then that - in particular, it is the act of talking about how someone else thinks or feels, in direct contradiction to how the person in question has stated they think/feel. Mansplaining is not a man saying "I think abortion is wrong"; a better example would be a man telling a woman "All women think abortion is wrong" after she claims she's pro-choice. Alternatively, when a woman claims she was raped and others claim that she secretly enjoyed it because all raped victims are secretly just ****s. The first is stating a personal opinion, which everyone has the right to. The second is Person A trying to invalidate the Person B's opinion through a generalization about a group B belongs to but A does not.
Don't forget a man with no medical qualifications whatsoever saying you can't get pregnant from rape. Or a man saying all rape is by force, when obviously date rape drugs exist, to give one obvious example. And until recently, marital rape wasn't really a thing in American law. Questioning the victim's virginity prior to the rape.
In addition feminism IS MANSPLAINING (by your definition) to any man who has tried to correct their absurd assertions about how easy men have it or what problems men face.
I do correct my feminist friends when they assume that men will never be (for instance) sexually assaulted. (Ahem. Though I'm fully aware of the origin of the double standard against male victims, and it has to do with virginity.) Or that men never get PTSD. (Yeah, we used to call it shell shock.)
But far more often are men like Todd Akin, who clearly live in a different reality and have no desire to enter ours.
Interestingly enough, the VA is now offering therapies developed for rape victims for soldiers with PTSD.
So now that a small number of women are getting the same treatment as men in divorce it's a feminist issue that needs to be "solved". In FL feminist groups fought to overturn lifetime alimony due to some women getting stuck with having to pay lifetime maintenance to their former spouses. They got a hell of a lot further then any Mens rights group ever got with the bill making it all the way to Jeb Bush's desk.
Oh, is this the same Daily Mail that's all over my friends' skeptic blogs? I'll try to Google an appropriate debunking later, or it could just be an isolated incident.
Though most divorces are more about shared time these days, e.g. 5-2-2-5 schedules. (Alice gets Mon-Fri and Bob gets the weekend; then Bob gets Mon-Fri while Alice gets the weekend.)
It's taken hundreds and hundreds of years for women to not get things done to them like being stoned to death in Christianity and general monotheistic religions just because they cheated on someone.
Women? I thought women were oppressed for the last 5,000 years, don't you mean MEN decided to create the modern age and move us past superstition and such?
How can it be both that women brought about sweeping change over the last few hundred years and yet were completely powerless.
That's a WAC argument. "Nobody realized slavery was evil until White American Christians(tm) did so and fought a civil war over it." I'm certain the slaves would disagree, and many countries had already abolished slavery in 1865.
Your argument that equality is "given" is just plain WAC!
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():
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Do note, however, @Chenjesu, that gender equality and "She's a whore because she won't sleep with me!" aren't both extremes.
Wait, matriarchal societies? What matriarchal societies? (Do note that the interplay of gender is far more complex than just "amazons or the rest of the world". Many cultures have more than two genders. At least one culture in China doesn't have marriage, while back here in the States, Pawnee men were traditionally in a polyandrous marriage with their mother's brother and his wife, after which she arranged his marriage, but if you're not Pawnee, Pawnee women won't treat you well at all, since in the old days, their god needed a new bride every year.)
But saying "all women must be limited to this" or saying "all men must be limited to that" is gender inequality, ether way. Throughout various tribes there have been matriarchal societies like as you mentioned in the Amazon, but multiple tribes in the Amazon as n more than one as well as Musuo near Tibet and in Indonesia there's New Guinea and in Western Sumatra that have matriarchal societies. Either way, saying "more rights for women" is different than saying "equal rights among women and men" which is why people like Amachi get thousands of various followers who are't of any extreme and volunteer to help those in need with assassination attempts on her yet very few tarnishes meanwhile feminist groups get a bad name of alienating an entire gender and become more like extremists and so aren't taken as seriously, and I think that's because of the difference I mentioned.
Why is it you believe referencing one nutjob constitutes a counter argument? Why is it you think ad hominem is the alpha-and-omega of debate?
Strawman noted
I could bring you a six-inch trout to debunk your belief that trout never grow over five inches and you would call it a strawman. Justice1337 provided a source to more then back up his claims.
Do note, however, @Chenjesu, that gender equality and "She's a whore because she won't sleep with me!" aren't both extremes.
Now that's a strawman! To pretend that anti-feminism has anything to do with that is the MOTHER OF ALL Strawmen!
That's a WAC argument. "Nobody realized slavery was evil until White American Christians(tm) did so and fought a civil war over it." I'm certain the slaves would disagree, and many countries had already abolished slavery in 1865.
Your argument that equality is "given" is just plain WAC!
Wow here's another whopper of a strawman and while gender roles restricted men and women, and women had legitimate rights issues in the west, to compare that to slavery is pretty desperate. Men were also forced into loveless marriages, demands were placed on them to perform their gender roles (conscription, today-child support), and they were also subject to many indiginities to be "good men".
Gender roles evolved out of necessity to ensure human survival the evidence for this is not weak or purely theoretical it's pretty ironclad actually. For example societies that move away from more traditional gender roles are seeing population growth go below the replacement rate. The variations in those roles are to be expected, there is variation in all things shaped by evolution (see pirahna and sturgeon). It was a division of labor that allowed society to exploit both men and women in the most efficient manner in a primitive society.
Lastly your analysis of my statement REEAAAAALLLLLLYYYYY shows your not getting it. I don't believe that women were as powerless as feminists claim then or now.
My great grandmother lived to be quite old I believe over a hundred. She told me about her two brothers who both died of skin cancer in their thirties. They would go out day after day and work long hours coming back bright red, often about to pass out, and often vomiting. This was expected of them because they were the male members of the family and thus viewed it as their responsibility to provide (FYI-This may blow your mind but I suspect they were motivated by love not a desire to dominate). The fact you can turn them into slave masters is well sociopathic and shows a real disconnect from basic compassion and understanding. Frankly privileged is just a slur and its use to dismiss men's issues shows a basic level of bigotry and hatred.
At least one culture in China doesn't have marriage
I believe your talking about the Na of China. Its interesting that this structure was designed by a man. An emperor who was tired of rebellions believed that he could put an end to any resistance to his tyranny by removing fathers from the family unit. Mothers became the head of the household and uncles took on the traditionally male duties and it worked resistance ended. Feminists claimed this was a matriarchy until their queen while laughing said "How can we be a matriarchy when our leaders are the buddhist monks and they are all male". It is interesting that as time goes by more and more Na homes become patrilineal or patrilineal/matrilineal homes. In fact when they were first studied the ratio of matrilineal to patrilineal was very close to what exists in the US, funny ehh. I can see why feminists dropped the "See finally a matriarchy and it's peaceful like we always said it would be" stuff like a hot potato. It also makes me wonder how long until the imposed system ceases all together.
That's great and all, but the "core ideas" of a political or social philosophy are hardly indicative of how they are in practice. The core ideas of Marxism are good, in theory. We all know how it panned out in practice. I imagine Objectivism would follow the same pattern. Granted, these are more political than social, but you get my point.
It's not that I am against equal rights for women. I think it's safe to say that nobody on this thread is arguing against that. My contention is that some pretty reprehensible people are allowed to carry the title of feminism; to speak on its behalf. Not only that, but these people have a large influence over the cultural attitudes of our societies, so much of their fallacies and half-truths are quoted ad nauseam by the media. Your average person might be a feminist with the best of intentions, but they are often ignorant of popular feminist schema such as standpoint theory and patriarchy. It's not equality I'm opposed to. It's the entire framework and lens in which modern feminist theory views the world and how it has infected society and rule of law that I take issue with.
I must have missed your post where you mentioned women in the third world. I'm sorry I didn't catch that, but I was also highlighting a point that a lot of these "academic" feminists in the first world make. A lot of them see no difference in severity between **** shaming and Sharia Law. These well educated, middle to upper class women are convinced that they are an oppressed class in a Neo-Marxist dynamic where the men hold all of the power and the women hold none. It's a complete delusion at best.
In short, you can say these people don't represent the core idea of feminism all you like, but they do represent feminism and they do have great influence over people who label themselves feminist. It's not hard to understand how figureheads and leaders have this kind of power. I don't support feminism not because I don't envision an egalitarian society. I don't support feminism because its rhetoric and worldview is not, to me, indicative of egalitarian ideals. Not when it's primary focus seems to be the demonization of an entire half of the species.
Well it's great when feminism does that. The problem is it doesn't always do that. When women are on the rise in High School and College graduation and men are on the decline or when men are the only ones recquired to register for slective service and feminists don't see a problem with that, I fail to see how it "is a movement to end sexism."
Feminism is just that. FEMIN-ism. It's not about ending sexism. It's about the advancement of women. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. I just wish people would call it for what it is instead of pretending that it's some equal opportunity adjudicator.
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BMarrow-Gnawer, Crime Lord of ComboB
WBRTariel, Hellraiser StaxWBR
Annul is really good in EDH
Strawman noted. If we're talking about an OBGYN, then the OBGYN's opinion is relevant. But when we're talking about a man with no medical degree, or an MD who is willing to dx via satellite, then it starts to feel very condescending.
Do note, however, @Chenjesu, that gender equality and "She's a whore because she won't sleep with me!" aren't both extremes.
Wait, matriarchal societies? What matriarchal societies? (Do note that the interplay of gender is far more complex than just "amazons or the rest of the world". Many cultures have more than two genders. At least one culture in China doesn't have marriage, while back here in the States, Pawnee men were traditionally in a polyandrous marriage with their mother's brother and his wife, after which she arranged his marriage, but if you're not Pawnee, Pawnee women won't treat you well at all, since in the old days, their god needed a new bride every year.)
Don't forget a man with no medical qualifications whatsoever saying you can't get pregnant from rape. Or a man saying all rape is by force, when obviously date rape drugs exist, to give one obvious example. And until recently, marital rape wasn't really a thing in American law. Questioning the victim's virginity prior to the rape.
I do correct my feminist friends when they assume that men will never be (for instance) sexually assaulted. (Ahem. Though I'm fully aware of the origin of the double standard against male victims, and it has to do with virginity.) Or that men never get PTSD. (Yeah, we used to call it shell shock.)
But far more often are men like Todd Akin, who clearly live in a different reality and have no desire to enter ours.
Interestingly enough, the VA is now offering therapies developed for rape victims for soldiers with PTSD.
Oh, is this the same Daily Mail that's all over my friends' skeptic blogs? I'll try to Google an appropriate debunking later, or it could just be an isolated incident.
Though most divorces are more about shared time these days, e.g. 5-2-2-5 schedules. (Alice gets Mon-Fri and Bob gets the weekend; then Bob gets Mon-Fri while Alice gets the weekend.)
That's a WAC argument. "Nobody realized slavery was evil until White American Christians(tm) did so and fought a civil war over it." I'm certain the slaves would disagree, and many countries had already abolished slavery in 1865.
Your argument that equality is "given" is just plain WAC!
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Spam/troll warning. - Blinking Spirit
Wow that's some rock solid logic right there. Good debate. GG
Seriously though. Nice ad hominem, bro.
UAzami, Locus of All KnowledgeU
BMarrow-Gnawer, Crime Lord of ComboB
WBRTariel, Hellraiser StaxWBR
Annul is really good in EDH
But saying "all women must be limited to this" or saying "all men must be limited to that" is gender inequality, ether way. Throughout various tribes there have been matriarchal societies like as you mentioned in the Amazon, but multiple tribes in the Amazon as n more than one as well as Musuo near Tibet and in Indonesia there's New Guinea and in Western Sumatra that have matriarchal societies. Either way, saying "more rights for women" is different than saying "equal rights among women and men" which is why people like Amachi get thousands of various followers who are't of any extreme and volunteer to help those in need with assassination attempts on her yet very few tarnishes meanwhile feminist groups get a bad name of alienating an entire gender and become more like extremists and so aren't taken as seriously, and I think that's because of the difference I mentioned.
Why is it you believe referencing one nutjob constitutes a counter argument? Why is it you think ad hominem is the alpha-and-omega of debate?
I could bring you a six-inch trout to debunk your belief that trout never grow over five inches and you would call it a strawman. Justice1337 provided a source to more then back up his claims.
Now that's a strawman! To pretend that anti-feminism has anything to do with that is the MOTHER OF ALL Strawmen!
Wow here's another whopper of a strawman and while gender roles restricted men and women, and women had legitimate rights issues in the west, to compare that to slavery is pretty desperate. Men were also forced into loveless marriages, demands were placed on them to perform their gender roles (conscription, today-child support), and they were also subject to many indiginities to be "good men".
Gender roles evolved out of necessity to ensure human survival the evidence for this is not weak or purely theoretical it's pretty ironclad actually. For example societies that move away from more traditional gender roles are seeing population growth go below the replacement rate. The variations in those roles are to be expected, there is variation in all things shaped by evolution (see pirahna and sturgeon). It was a division of labor that allowed society to exploit both men and women in the most efficient manner in a primitive society.
Lastly your analysis of my statement REEAAAAALLLLLLYYYYY shows your not getting it. I don't believe that women were as powerless as feminists claim then or now.
My great grandmother lived to be quite old I believe over a hundred. She told me about her two brothers who both died of skin cancer in their thirties. They would go out day after day and work long hours coming back bright red, often about to pass out, and often vomiting. This was expected of them because they were the male members of the family and thus viewed it as their responsibility to provide (FYI-This may blow your mind but I suspect they were motivated by love not a desire to dominate). The fact you can turn them into slave masters is well sociopathic and shows a real disconnect from basic compassion and understanding. Frankly privileged is just a slur and its use to dismiss men's issues shows a basic level of bigotry and hatred.
I believe your talking about the Na of China. Its interesting that this structure was designed by a man. An emperor who was tired of rebellions believed that he could put an end to any resistance to his tyranny by removing fathers from the family unit. Mothers became the head of the household and uncles took on the traditionally male duties and it worked resistance ended. Feminists claimed this was a matriarchy until their queen while laughing said "How can we be a matriarchy when our leaders are the buddhist monks and they are all male". It is interesting that as time goes by more and more Na homes become patrilineal or patrilineal/matrilineal homes. In fact when they were first studied the ratio of matrilineal to patrilineal was very close to what exists in the US, funny ehh. I can see why feminists dropped the "See finally a matriarchy and it's peaceful like we always said it would be" stuff like a hot potato. It also makes me wonder how long until the imposed system ceases all together.