Tiax you are ignoring the fact that men in those situations have historically been viewed as being disposable in life or death situations while women and children have not, by society. Yes, they have been grouped together, but grouped together as being more valuable than men in those situations. I would argue that is good for women and children but not for the men who end up dead.
Have they really been historically viewed as being disposable, or is that a myth you've bought into? The facts don't bear it out. There are no "men who end up dead" because of it - the facts show that men survive at a much higher rate than women in these sorts of disasters. It is clearly not the case that women are being saved while men are left to die.
You're missing the point, the narrative of feminist theory relies on the assumption that society is inherently misogynistic and that we live in a patriarchy. If that were true, such a policy would not even exist in the first place. How it actually plays out is not relevant, the fact that it actually exists at all flies in direct opposition to what feminists say.
I disagree - such a policy is perfectly understandable as misogynistic. Women are painted as weak and frail and in need of men's protection. Note that the policy is "women and children FIRST" not "women and children ONLY". The implication is that men are strong and able to fend for themselves while waiting for the women and children to be rescued. When you put the oxygen mask on your child first in an airplane, it's not because you're going to save the child while you die, it's that you're going to assist the person who needs help.
If the airline policy was "assist any women or children with their oxygen mask" would that strike you as a policy that reflects a respect for women?
Yes, there are two real examples of maritime disasters in which women are actually saved before men. The Brikenhead and the Titanic, 150 and 100 years ago respectively. Your other example is one in which no one appears to have been in even the remotest danger of death or injury. They were simply sitting on a barge. No one was being "disposed" of.
Show me a modern maritime disaster in which men are left to drown while women are rescued. One in which men are actually treated as disposable.
Note that the policy is "women and children FIRST" not "women and children ONLY". The implication is that men are strong and able to fend for themselves while waiting for the women and children to be rescued. When you put the oxygen mask on your child first in an airplane, it's not because you're going to save the child while you die, it's that you're going to assist the person who needs help.
There are enough oxygen masks for everyone. There were not enough lifeboats. That completely changes the meaning of "women and children first" from a matter of mere assistance to one of resource allocation.
If the airline policy was "assist any women or children with their oxygen mask" would that strike you as a policy that reflects a respect for women?
You're treating this as a zero-sum game, but it isn't. Women don't automatically "win" when men "lose", or vice versa. Nobody here is saying that the policy respects women. It merely disrespects men and women in different ways.
Show me a modern maritime disaster in which men are left to drown while women are rescued.
I think you're fixating a bit on the maritime disaster element, but the issue of the "disposable male" is much broader than that. Again and again in culture, men are expected to play the "game" of violence and risk, while women are excluded from it. And again, women don't "win" by being excluded any more than men "win" by being expected to play. Prime example: conscription. Historically, and even today in almost every country that still has laws for it, it's been dudes-only. This is certainly based on some unflattering assumptions about women. But it is also based on some assumptions about men. You may say that it's making negative assumptions about women and positive assumptions about men, and you'd be right. I'm not saying the problems are parallel, I'm saying they are different, but both problems. After all, in the end, the men are the ones catching the bullets and the dysentery. It doesn't really matter to the dead whether they were assumed by society to be the stronger sex or the weaker one. If a positive assumption about women had a negative end result for them - if, say, their assumed nurturing nature meant they were sent in to plague zones to care for the sick and get sick themselves - you can be damn sure that feminists would be in an uproar about this, and they'd be right to do so. Again, this is different than making a negative assumption, but it's still bad.
There are enough oxygen masks for everyone. There were not enough lifeboats. That completely changes the meaning of "women and children first" from a matter of mere assistance to one of resource allocation.
Foxblade seems to disagree. He offers an instance where the only issue was ordering of "rescue" from a stationary barge as a prime example of this policy.
You're treating this as a zero-sum game, but it isn't. Women don't automatically "win" when men "lose", or vice versa. Nobody here is saying that the policy respects women. It merely disrespects men and women in different ways.
Foxblade seems to be suggesting that this policy proves that misogyny doesn't exist, because a misogynistic society could have such a rule. This to me implies that he believes the policy respects and benefits women.
I don't disagree that such a policy disrespects both men and women.
I think you're fixating a bit on the maritime disaster element, but the issue of the "disposable male" is much broader than that. Again and again in culture, men are expected to play the "game" of violence and risk, while women are excluded from it. And again, women don't "win" by being excluded any more than men "win" by being expected to play. Prime example: conscription. Historically, and even today in almost every country that still has laws for it, it's been dudes-only. This is certainly based on some unflattering assumptions about women. But it is also based on some assumptions about men. Both male and female stereotypes are at play here, and deviating from either stereotype - whether a woman seeking to fight or a man seeking to avoid the draft - traditionally results in scorn (and in the latter case a firing squad).
I don't disagree. I'm "fixating" on the maritime disaster element because I believe it, unlike your examples, is fundamentally false.
I didn't say that.
What I said was that OP comes from a background that gave him the ability to have the education required to write his post, an economic background stable enough to allow the internet access required to post and conduct research, and a life situation easy enough to allow him the time required to to give him enough free time to do all this. However despite all the above he was unable to understand their value and his advantage in having them over people who didn't.
So are you saying that only white male people have such things? If not, where does privilege enter into this?
The phrase "women and children first" is certainly interesting. Why is it that women are grouped with children as needing special protection? It's a form of paternalism that relegates women to the status of defenseless child-like beings. This is a form of misogyny, not evidence that misogyny doesn't exist.
Prioritizing a woman's life over one's own is misogyny?
Do you often find yourself showing your hatred and dislike of others by placing yourself in harm's way in order that they may live, Tiax?
Foxblade seems to disagree. He offers an instance where the only issue was ordering of "rescue" from a stationary barge as a prime example of this policy/
Then I am talking past you. The argument from feminism is that society is inherently misogynistic, my example as I have said, flies in the face of this assumption. If society were inherently misogynistic, why would that same society construct a policy that favors women's lives over men at all and not a policy that says men and children first?
Whether or not the facts support how the policy plays out is irrelevant to this point.
Quote from Tiax »
Foxblade seems to be suggesting that this policy proves that misogyny doesn't exist, because a misogynistic society could have such a rule. This to me implies that he believes the policy respects and benefits women.
No, I am talking past you. I am not suggesting that misogyny doesn't exist, I am suggesting that society is not inherently misogynistic.
I recommend usage (1), since we already have the word "sexism" for (2).
Well I agree with that for that reason, but also because (2) is most certainly not what misogyny means, even if it were amended to "any sort of sexist assumption about women." A female supremacist makes sexist assumptions about women, but it would be inaccurate to say a female supremacist hates women.
Then I am talking past you. The argument from feminism is that society is inherently misogynistic, my example as I have said, flies in the face of this assumption. If society were inherently misogynistic, why would that same society construct a policy that favors women's lives over men at all and not a policy that says men and children first?
Whether or not the facts support how the policy plays out is irrelevant to this point.
Because the policy is not motivated by a consideration of the value of lives. It's motivated by a consideration of who is seen as capable of fending for themselves and who is seen as too weak to do. Children are not assisted first because children are more valuable, they're assisted first because they can't do it for themselves. In the historic instances of this policy, it was motivated by a similar view of women - that they could not save themselves and thus were in need of first priority.
No, I am talking past you. I am not suggesting that misogyny doesn't exist, I am suggesting that society is not inherently misogynistic.
Because the policy is not motivated by a consideration of the value of lives. It's motivated by a consideration of who is seen as capable of fending for themselves and who is seen as too weak to do. Children are not assisted first because children are more valuable, they're assisted first because they can't do it for themselves. In the historic instances of this policy, it was motivated by a similar view of women - that they could not save themselves and thus were in need of first priority.
That doesn't make any sense. In the case of the titanic, those men who stayed on the ship did not stay because it was thought that they could fend for themselves, they stayed knowing that they were going to die. The women and children were put onto life boats and had to fend for themselves, without males to help them, with the hope that they would be the ones to survive.
Why would men who are misogynistic put women and children on life boats with no man to fend for them, since as you put it, women were/are viewed as being unable to fend for themselves?
Again what you are suggesting doesn't make any sense and seems to run contrary to reality.
Quote from Tiax »
And your example surely does not prove that.
Actually, I think it does and it certainly wasn't the only example that I gave in my OP and even those aren't the only examples that I can think of either, I can cite many more. Still why does the feminist view point get a free pass when we should question how they got that view point in the first place?
There are multiple view points to an experience, feminism doesn't have a monopoly on deciding which view point is the most accurate depiction of reality, especially because how it gets that view point is questionable at best. Feminism simply concludes that society is misogynistic and then looks for evidence that this is true.
He had already allowed several married couples and single men to board lifeboats in order to calm the ladies and to move the evacuation along.
You were saying?
Its composition was not, however, a departure from Murdoch's interpretation of the "women and children first" directive. He had already allowed several married couples and single men to board lifeboats in order to calm the ladies and to move the evacuation along.
Quote from FoxBlade »
The argument from feminism is that society is inherently misogynistic, my example as I have said, flies in the face of this assumption. If society were inherently misogynistic, why would that same society construct a policy that favors women's lives over men at all and not a policy that says men and children first?
Whether or not the facts support how the policy plays out is irrelevant to this point.
He had already allowed several married couples and single men to board lifeboats in order to calm the ladies and to move the evacuation along.
You were saying?
Its composition was not, however, a departure from Murdoch's interpretation of the "women and children first" directive. He had already allowed several married couples and single men to board lifeboats in order to calm the ladies and to move the evacuation along.
Quote from FoxBlade »
The argument from feminism is that society is inherently misogynistic, my example as I have said, flies in the face of this assumption. If society were inherently misogynistic, why would that same society construct a policy that favors women's lives over men at all and not a policy that says men and children first?
Whether or not the facts support how the policy plays out is irrelevant to this point.
Can you answer my questions now? It seems as though you are cherry picking a point I've made and then making a point that doesn't actually address the one that I've made. We can't continue on with me talking past you.
Because the policy is not motivated by a consideration of the value of lives. It's motivated by a consideration of who is seen as capable of fending for themselves and who is seen as too weak to do. Children are not assisted first because children are more valuable, they're assisted first because they can't do it for themselves. In the historic instances of this policy, it was motivated by a similar view of women - that they could not save themselves and thus were in need of first priority.
You countered that you felt this explanation did not match the behavior of those on the Titanic. You correctly point out that if they felt that women were unable to fend for themselves it would make little sense to set a boat of them adrift. No more sense than it would make to set a boat of children adrift. As it turns out, the actions of the Titanic crew do match my explanation - husbands, crewmen and other men were placed on boats to look after the women and children.
Even on the other side of the ship, where Lightoller interpreted the order to mean "women and children only", intending to pick up the men later, he put crewmen and stewards on his boats as oarsmen and guides.
None of this behaviour is explained by your proposal that the policy reflects a judgment of the relative moral value of the lives of men and women. Rather, it suggests an equal valuation, with the caveat that women needed special treatment to ensure their survival because of their frailty.
Tiax, you are missing the entire point. It doesn't matter how the practice of said policy plays out, what matters is that the policy EXISTS in the first place.
The sentence you have posted does not support your assertion that society views or viewed women as weak little children, you are only making an assumption that this is the case and it's flimsy at best.
I understand your point, I just don't agree with it. The policy is not "women and children are valuable while men are disposable, therefore women and children should be saved while men are left to die". The policy is "women and children are feeble, while men are strong, therefore women and children must board first if they are to be saved." You argue that a policy which would result in saving more women than men indicates that society cannot be inherently misogynistic. I counter that the policy is itself misogynistic - it is motivated by a prejudiced view of the capabilities of women, not of a higher value placed on the life of women.
This is also why women have historically been excluded from many combat roles. Not because everyone thinks women are more valuable than men and therefore it falls to men to toss away their lives, but because women are viewed as incapable of being effective combat troops.
Those are assumptions and very flimsy ones at that. You can't start with a conclusion and then look for evidence to support the conclusion.
And no that isn't what I am arguing. I am arguing that we can't conclude that a society is misogynistic if the society in question creates, several policies, instutions, political groups, etc. that benefit women and only women. This does not point to a society that is misogynist, it points to one that isn't.
And your theory that the policy derives from a view that males are disposable is not an assumption? It seems to me that you are the one who is looking for evidence to support his predecided conclusion. Your characterization of "women and children first" has been at odds with the facts at every turn, and has been so in a way designed to lend support to your theory.
A policy which benefits women is not necessarily not misogynistic. If I say that women are too weak to be soldiers, that benefits women in times of draft. That fact doesn't negate the misogyny of that statement.
And your theory that the policy derives from a view that males are disposable is not an assumption? It seems to me that you are the one who is looking for evidence to support his predecided conclusion.
I didn't start with the conclusion and then look for evidence for it (you are again, making an assumption), that's just what it looks like to me after looking at the evidence and I can always change my mind about it later. From my first post:
Quote from FoxBlade »
I remember sometime last year speaking a bit with Crashing00 about the concept of privilege and I told him I hadn’t really made up my mind yet and decided to look more deeply into feminist theory and its claims more.
Quote from Tiax »
Your characterization of "women and children first" has been at odds with the facts at every turn, and has been so in a way designed to lend support to your theory.
The fact that you are saying this tells me that despite you saying that you understood my point, you seem to be misunderstanding it entirely. Tiax, we can't continue like this if you don't understand the point that I am making in the first place, because I'm just talking past you.
My point doesn't rely on how the policy actually plays out, my point relies on the fact that the policy exists at all.
Remember, society is supposed to be patriarchal and inherently misogynistic - so why would that same society create policy that benefit women at all? What's more, create a policy that benefits women at the expense of men?
Quote from Tiax »
A policy which benefits women is not necessarily not misogynistic. If I say that women are too weak to be soldiers, that benefits women in times of draft. That fact doesn't negate the misogyny of that statement.
Yes, but the default isn't to assume that societal views come from misogyny. I said that it doesn't point to a society that is misogynistic, it points to one that isn't.
You've cherry picked one thing when I've given you a list of things that benefit women and only women, sometimes at the expense of men.
The "women and children first" policy as you envision it simply does not exist. It has never been a part of maritime law, it has, at best, been the personal policy of a few captains over a century ago. Even in those cases, the policy was understood in a much different way than you assert.
You ask, "why would that same society create policy that benefit women at all? What's more, create a policy that benefits women at the expense of men?" and then IMMEDIATELY quoted me giving an example of how a misogynistic society could create a policy that sometimes benefits women at the expense of men...
Misogyny does not mean wanting women to suffer or die. It does not mean wanting men to always benefit at the expense of women. A policy that benefits women in some way is not contradictory with the hypothesis of a misogynistic society.
:Let's jsut accept the fact that I'm not going to engage you utilizing intentionally deceptive, orwellian, terms designed to promote one sid e as being inherently correct, unless those terms actually get engrained in culture sufficiently that they have taken on secondary meaning.
Suffice to say "the patriarchy" has not.
Another example would be pro-choice/pro-life (admittedly orwellian terms that are sufficiently established to have secondary meaning) and anti-choice (an orwellian term that is *not* ingrained in culture and language and has not acquried secondary meaning). "The patriarchy" as a term is analogous to anti-choice, not to pro-choice/pro-life.
If women aren't prevented from reaching positions of power, how are the dismally small proportions of women in positions of power reached?
Out of curiousity (and I don't know the answer to this) what percentage of women that ran for office (in a legit race) won? On that note, it's hardly intellectually honest to cite the presidential statistics when there was (and is) a legitimate contender for the office that is a women. If she had beaten Obama in the prelims, odds are extremely good that she would have been president.
This is _your_ definition of patriarchy: "a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it." Given the numbers I've already cited, it's pretty clear that men hold the power. Are you going to argue that 20% representation for women (and that's a record high) isn't "largely excluded"?
Be that as it may, the statistics strongly suggest that the gender proportions of the federal government are biased towards males. Given that bias against women has been shown still to exist in other areas (c.f. the recent resume-name-swapping study in which male names on identical resumes were offered, on average, a salary $4,000 higher), it's not too great a leap to suggest that those attitudes could also affect voting habits and candidate selection. I'm certainly open to other explanations; at this point, I'm merely observing that there's a significant, unexplained, discrepancy, that bothers (at the least) some people of the gender being excluded.
Also, you can stow the accusations of intellectual dishonesty until you actually have a female President and I claim you've had zero. I'm not going to say "Number of female presidents: almost one".
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Quote from MD »
I am willing to bet my collection that Frozen and Solid are not on the same card. For example, Frozen Tomb and Solid Wall.
If Frozen Solid is not reprinted, you are aware that I'm quoting you in my sig for eternity?
Misogyny does not mean wanting women to suffer or die.
That's exactly what it means. The word does not mean unfairness towards or underestimation of women. It means hatred of women. Lumping all forms of sexism together as "misogyny" erases some important distinctions that affect the best approach to the problem. There are huge differences between violent attacks on women, paternalistic sheltering of women, and reduced pay for women. It is not safe to assume that these problems are all the same at root; that's like trying to point a finger at one single cause of poverty. It makes for good rhetoric but lousy theory.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
None of the people who FoxBlade is disagreeing with mean that. The OED definition is: "Hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women." Clearly the second part is what is intended.
And of course if they just said "prejudice against women" or "sexism" or something else sensible like that, they'd be depriving themselves of a handy smart-sounding word to use as a rhetorical blunt instrument.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
"Women and children first": I believe this is an old holdover from when women literally were worth more than men. When "tribes" of people could be wiped out when waring with each other the women were more valuable because it took many less men than women to in essence re-populate the tribe. Heck, it could be evolved into human behavior for men to be inclined to try to protect women as those tribes that did would have had a better chance of long term survival versus tribes that let their women members die in large numbers.
On women in power... Nothing is preventing a female president other than a capable woman running for the position that meets the requirements of the voters. Hilary was close. How many hundreds of men have tried and failed to become president? When you compare that to the tiny number of females that have tried to run I don't see how anyone can expect a different result. You can't expect everyone to just push any female candidate forward because we need to satisfy some social requirement of having a female leader. This reminds me of the outcry last year when no black head coaches were hired in the NFL for that year(There were black head coaches but no new ones were hired!). Sometimes it just works out that way. I'd be curious to know the percentage of success for females running for congress versus males running for congress... I have a feeling that the success rate of women running for office is not in some horrible state that requires attention.
Have they really been historically viewed as being disposable, or is that a myth you've bought into? The facts don't bear it out. There are no "men who end up dead" because of it - the facts show that men survive at a much higher rate than women in these sorts of disasters. It is clearly not the case that women are being saved while men are left to die.
I disagree - such a policy is perfectly understandable as misogynistic. Women are painted as weak and frail and in need of men's protection. Note that the policy is "women and children FIRST" not "women and children ONLY". The implication is that men are strong and able to fend for themselves while waiting for the women and children to be rescued. When you put the oxygen mask on your child first in an airplane, it's not because you're going to save the child while you die, it's that you're going to assist the person who needs help.
If the airline policy was "assist any women or children with their oxygen mask" would that strike you as a policy that reflects a respect for women?
Yes, there are two real examples of maritime disasters in which women are actually saved before men. The Brikenhead and the Titanic, 150 and 100 years ago respectively. Your other example is one in which no one appears to have been in even the remotest danger of death or injury. They were simply sitting on a barge. No one was being "disposed" of.
Show me a modern maritime disaster in which men are left to drown while women are rescued. One in which men are actually treated as disposable.
You're treating this as a zero-sum game, but it isn't. Women don't automatically "win" when men "lose", or vice versa. Nobody here is saying that the policy respects women. It merely disrespects men and women in different ways.
I think you're fixating a bit on the maritime disaster element, but the issue of the "disposable male" is much broader than that. Again and again in culture, men are expected to play the "game" of violence and risk, while women are excluded from it. And again, women don't "win" by being excluded any more than men "win" by being expected to play. Prime example: conscription. Historically, and even today in almost every country that still has laws for it, it's been dudes-only. This is certainly based on some unflattering assumptions about women. But it is also based on some assumptions about men. You may say that it's making negative assumptions about women and positive assumptions about men, and you'd be right. I'm not saying the problems are parallel, I'm saying they are different, but both problems. After all, in the end, the men are the ones catching the bullets and the dysentery. It doesn't really matter to the dead whether they were assumed by society to be the stronger sex or the weaker one. If a positive assumption about women had a negative end result for them - if, say, their assumed nurturing nature meant they were sent in to plague zones to care for the sick and get sick themselves - you can be damn sure that feminists would be in an uproar about this, and they'd be right to do so. Again, this is different than making a negative assumption, but it's still bad.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Foxblade seems to disagree. He offers an instance where the only issue was ordering of "rescue" from a stationary barge as a prime example of this policy.
Foxblade seems to be suggesting that this policy proves that misogyny doesn't exist, because a misogynistic society could have such a rule. This to me implies that he believes the policy respects and benefits women.
I don't disagree that such a policy disrespects both men and women.
I don't disagree. I'm "fixating" on the maritime disaster element because I believe it, unlike your examples, is fundamentally false.
Prioritizing a woman's life over one's own is misogyny?
Do you often find yourself showing your hatred and dislike of others by placing yourself in harm's way in order that they may live, Tiax?
There are two definitions of "misogyny":
(1) Hostility towards women, often with an undercurrent of sexual/romantic frustration.
(2) Any sort of sexist assumption.
I recommend usage (1), since we already have the word "sexism" for (2).
(On a related note, I know too much Greek to be comfortable with the broad contemporary usage of "homophobia".)
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Then I am talking past you. The argument from feminism is that society is inherently misogynistic, my example as I have said, flies in the face of this assumption. If society were inherently misogynistic, why would that same society construct a policy that favors women's lives over men at all and not a policy that says men and children first?
Whether or not the facts support how the policy plays out is irrelevant to this point.
No, I am talking past you. I am not suggesting that misogyny doesn't exist, I am suggesting that society is not inherently misogynistic.
Because the policy is not motivated by a consideration of the value of lives. It's motivated by a consideration of who is seen as capable of fending for themselves and who is seen as too weak to do. Children are not assisted first because children are more valuable, they're assisted first because they can't do it for themselves. In the historic instances of this policy, it was motivated by a similar view of women - that they could not save themselves and thus were in need of first priority.
And your example surely does not prove that.
That doesn't make any sense. In the case of the titanic, those men who stayed on the ship did not stay because it was thought that they could fend for themselves, they stayed knowing that they were going to die. The women and children were put onto life boats and had to fend for themselves, without males to help them, with the hope that they would be the ones to survive.
Why would men who are misogynistic put women and children on life boats with no man to fend for them, since as you put it, women were/are viewed as being unable to fend for themselves?
Again what you are suggesting doesn't make any sense and seems to run contrary to reality.
Actually, I think it does and it certainly wasn't the only example that I gave in my OP and even those aren't the only examples that I can think of either, I can cite many more. Still why does the feminist view point get a free pass when we should question how they got that view point in the first place?
There are multiple view points to an experience, feminism doesn't have a monopoly on deciding which view point is the most accurate depiction of reality, especially because how it gets that view point is questionable at best. Feminism simply concludes that society is misogynistic and then looks for evidence that this is true.
You were saying?
Its composition was not, however, a departure from Murdoch's interpretation of the "women and children first" directive. He had already allowed several married couples and single men to board lifeboats in order to calm the ladies and to move the evacuation along.
Can you answer the question now?
Its composition was not, however, a departure from Murdoch's interpretation of the "women and children first" directive. He had already allowed several married couples and single men to board lifeboats in order to calm the ladies and to move the evacuation along.
Can you answer my questions now? It seems as though you are cherry picking a point I've made and then making a point that doesn't actually address the one that I've made. We can't continue on with me talking past you.
You countered that you felt this explanation did not match the behavior of those on the Titanic. You correctly point out that if they felt that women were unable to fend for themselves it would make little sense to set a boat of them adrift. No more sense than it would make to set a boat of children adrift. As it turns out, the actions of the Titanic crew do match my explanation - husbands, crewmen and other men were placed on boats to look after the women and children.
Even on the other side of the ship, where Lightoller interpreted the order to mean "women and children only", intending to pick up the men later, he put crewmen and stewards on his boats as oarsmen and guides.
None of this behaviour is explained by your proposal that the policy reflects a judgment of the relative moral value of the lives of men and women. Rather, it suggests an equal valuation, with the caveat that women needed special treatment to ensure their survival because of their frailty.
The sentence you have posted does not support your assertion that society views or viewed women as weak little children, you are only making an assumption that this is the case and it's flimsy at best.
This is also why women have historically been excluded from many combat roles. Not because everyone thinks women are more valuable than men and therefore it falls to men to toss away their lives, but because women are viewed as incapable of being effective combat troops.
And no that isn't what I am arguing. I am arguing that we can't conclude that a society is misogynistic if the society in question creates, several policies, instutions, political groups, etc. that benefit women and only women. This does not point to a society that is misogynist, it points to one that isn't.
A policy which benefits women is not necessarily not misogynistic. If I say that women are too weak to be soldiers, that benefits women in times of draft. That fact doesn't negate the misogyny of that statement.
I didn't start with the conclusion and then look for evidence for it (you are again, making an assumption), that's just what it looks like to me after looking at the evidence and I can always change my mind about it later. From my first post:
The fact that you are saying this tells me that despite you saying that you understood my point, you seem to be misunderstanding it entirely. Tiax, we can't continue like this if you don't understand the point that I am making in the first place, because I'm just talking past you.
My point doesn't rely on how the policy actually plays out, my point relies on the fact that the policy exists at all.
Remember, society is supposed to be patriarchal and inherently misogynistic - so why would that same society create policy that benefit women at all? What's more, create a policy that benefits women at the expense of men?
Yes, but the default isn't to assume that societal views come from misogyny. I said that it doesn't point to a society that is misogynistic, it points to one that isn't.
You've cherry picked one thing when I've given you a list of things that benefit women and only women, sometimes at the expense of men.
You ask, "why would that same society create policy that benefit women at all? What's more, create a policy that benefits women at the expense of men?" and then IMMEDIATELY quoted me giving an example of how a misogynistic society could create a policy that sometimes benefits women at the expense of men...
Misogyny does not mean wanting women to suffer or die. It does not mean wanting men to always benefit at the expense of women. A policy that benefits women in some way is not contradictory with the hypothesis of a misogynistic society.
This is _your_ definition of patriarchy: "a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it." Given the numbers I've already cited, it's pretty clear that men hold the power. Are you going to argue that 20% representation for women (and that's a record high) isn't "largely excluded"?
Be that as it may, the statistics strongly suggest that the gender proportions of the federal government are biased towards males. Given that bias against women has been shown still to exist in other areas (c.f. the recent resume-name-swapping study in which male names on identical resumes were offered, on average, a salary $4,000 higher), it's not too great a leap to suggest that those attitudes could also affect voting habits and candidate selection. I'm certainly open to other explanations; at this point, I'm merely observing that there's a significant, unexplained, discrepancy, that bothers (at the least) some people of the gender being excluded.
Also, you can stow the accusations of intellectual dishonesty until you actually have a female President and I claim you've had zero. I'm not going to say "Number of female presidents: almost one".
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
On women in power... Nothing is preventing a female president other than a capable woman running for the position that meets the requirements of the voters. Hilary was close. How many hundreds of men have tried and failed to become president? When you compare that to the tiny number of females that have tried to run I don't see how anyone can expect a different result. You can't expect everyone to just push any female candidate forward because we need to satisfy some social requirement of having a female leader. This reminds me of the outcry last year when no black head coaches were hired in the NFL for that year(There were black head coaches but no new ones were hired!). Sometimes it just works out that way. I'd be curious to know the percentage of success for females running for congress versus males running for congress... I have a feeling that the success rate of women running for office is not in some horrible state that requires attention.