EPTWell, a common example would be athletics. It is abundantly clear that, from a physiological perspective, women and men have different body compositions that make different sorts of movements easier or harder for each. For the longest time, these differences were used as a reason to exclude women from athletics at large, when in reality they simply indicate that head-on female vs male competition is likely a bad idea in most circumstances.
Feminism - Page 12
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farvacola
United States18813 Posts
Well, a common example would be athletics. It is abundantly clear that, from a physiological perspective, women and men have different body compositions that make different sorts of movements easier or harder for each. For the longest time, these differences were used as a reason to exclude women from athletics at large, when in reality they simply indicate that head-on female vs male competition is likely a bad idea in most circumstances. | ||
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JadeFist
United States1225 Posts
On April 16 2013 04:11 farvacola wrote: Well, a common example would be athletics. It is abundantly clear that, from a physiological perspective, women and men have different body compositions that make different sorts of movements easier or harder for each. For the longest time, these differences were used as a reason to exclude women from athletics at large, when in reality they simply indicate that head-on female vs male competition is likely a bad idea in most circumstances. Okay I agree with you there. I agree with the notion of equal opportunity. The problem that arises with that notion however is people seem to think equal opportunity means men=women. | ||
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r.Evo
Germany14054 Posts
On April 16 2013 04:18 JadeFist wrote: Okay I agree with you there. I agree with the notion of equal opportunity. The problem that arises with that notion however is people seem to think equal opportunity means men=women. That reminds me of how in countries with arguably the most equal opportunities for men and women (think e.g. Norway) they have less women who want to work in e.g. Engineering than in countries where womens rights are almost unheard of. If differences in job choices exist because people have the freedom of choice or if differences in school exclusively boil down to the parents intelligence those are results of systems that work incredibly well, not the contrary - which the die-hard supporters seem to try and suggest. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23017 Posts
Rape culture seems to be a hot-button issue at present. I am entirely aware of some of the debates within, but quite confused as to why it is coming to a boil now. If anything, I see an increasing understanding of issues of consent, of the pitfalls of victim-blaming and the acknowledgement of the terrible suffering that rape victims suffer. Does 'perpetuating a rape culture' refer to not actively working against it, as opposed to merely say, not raping/condoning rape? In the same way I don't know, you could perhaps say that people 'perpetuate capitalism' by not entering a commune and removing themself from the environment entirely? I may be entirely wrong on this, or people will have alternative viewpoints on what I'm getting at. Would be interested to hear thoughts on it either way. | ||
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
Regarding the idea of perpetuating rape culture, basically yeah unless you learn what it is and stop perpetuating it you are perpetuating it because, well, that's just our culture right now. We all exist within culture and it informs how we think and how we act. Perpetuating rape culture doesn't mean "oh this guy is a bad person" any more than like having racist thoughts because you've never seen an asian person before because you live in the middle of nowhere, Montana, makes you a bad person. We are products of our environment. And yes, of course we perpetuate capitalism by living in capitalistic societies, but it's not like there's a better alternative (imo). I also perpetuate the english language by speaking it around my nephew who is learning to talk and using it as my primary mode of communication online. In any case, the fact of the matter is, by living "passively" we're just living within the status quo. There's also a difference in terms of degree and type for how someone perpetuates rape culture. Really though, the idea of people perpetuating rape culture isn't solved by calling people bad or evil or whatever. When people take sexist or ignorant actions, I view it as my responsibility to inform then and critique the actions. This often goes poorly because people have this idea of a person as "a sexist" or "a racist" when really there's no such thing-- there's just sexist and racist actions. We're all sexists, we're all racists, because we all live in societies of racist and sexist culture. That doesn't make us bad people, we're only human. We just do our best to be critical of our own actions and those of others and to do better. EDIT: I remember this excellent article about separating your ideas from your identity, definitely useful when trying to talk about sexism or racism: http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2010/06/07/i-am-not-my-ideas/ | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23017 Posts
I do largely agree with your post, albeit I would say that the current focus on rape culture perhaps may not have the desired effect of altering discourse and behaviour around the topic for the better. I am saying this as someone who agrees, but who has observed a backlash of sorts from the kinds of people that ostensibly are to be educated/affected by such campaigns. It seems to me being counter-intuitive in certain ways because it disregards that people do not take kindly to having an inference made as to their culpability in a culture of rape. Again, I see this as a problem with both feminism is presented by adherents, and received by others brought about by the term itself and other cultural connotations that go with it. For example small-scale radical feminist activism in the 1960s, despite it being very much a minority of the overall 'movement', for various reasons such as disproportionate media attention has become in many peoples eyes what feminism actually is, which is rather saddening. | ||
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23017 Posts
Again, feminism has a lot of validity when it comes to cultural critique, and a lot of people in that field really know their shit. I am rather confused, with the aforementioned expertise in mind, that less is made of how the term itself is actually perceived by the societies that it is used to critique. | ||
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[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
First off, there's a matter of respect. Or a lack of it. I don't care how good her point is (I'll get to it in a second though, it's definitely worth discussing), if I was on the street and this woman opened her thoughts by screaming for everyone to shut the fuck up so she could read her list, that's the sign for me to turn my back on any reasoning because I'm obviously not going to get much of it. Even if the guys she was talking to kept blabbering for five minutes, it's understandable to get them to listen, but going full aggro-mode is lowering herself past their level, further into the abyss. Basically you can't convince people that you're the good guy when you're the one assaulting them. As for her argument. She begins by blaming everything on patriarchy, and then pointing out how the MRA's are the evil ones here: About 2 minutes in, she says "You hate sexism but you're an MRA". Now I'm not 100% knowledgeable of this issue, but the MRA's in question, the ones at the lecture, are supported by the Canadian Association For Equality, who seem to be a very tolerable bunch from both sides of the debate and seem to be the least biased gender-issue group I've seen to date. The lecture was actually on misogyny and misandry, analyzing both sides of the coin, and I guess is part of the reason there were so many women at a men's rights lecture. My point here is that the women's rights protesters pulling the fire alarm to disrupt the men's rights lecture has a far different context than counter-protesting a group like the Westboro Baptist Church. However, on the large scale of things, I find both the Men's Rights Association and the modern-day feminist movement both to be useless movements. If anyone has the right idea it's CAFE, because instead of focusing on women's rights or men's rights, they focus on human rights. Now we're getting into more rational discussion after three minutes in. The main problem with this next section is that the red-haired lady and her short-haired friend are blaming the MRA's for the same things that the MRA's are blaming women. The reason I don't support either side is because no matter who you talk to, they make it sound like there's some sort of evil force in this debate, and both the red-haired lady and I guess the MRA members she personally talked to are saying "we're the good guys here, we're trying to get stuff done, the other side is obstructionist and is setting back equality." And by realizing that the other side actually has some valid points, both masculists and feminists would realize that by working together through compromise, the only direction they can go is forward. But only through working together. "If they cared about the issues they say that they do, then they'd be our biggest fucking allies." Going back to my original point that respect is a two-way street. Five minutes in. Rape culture is part of patriarchy. Prison rape has nothing to do with rape culture, it's simply the fact that if you keep a bunch of men around with nothing to do for almost all of the day, with only breaks for eating and one hour of recreation, they're going to get bored. And the best way to alleviate that boredom is by sticking their dicks into something. In fact, her points from five minutes in all make sense. They're reasonable except for the whole "patriarchy" horseshit. She's implying through her whole argument that this society is rigged so that men make rules for other men that benefit men and treat women as second-class citizens. This point would've been definitely valid 100 years ago because although the system was in place, women going on to high-esteemed jobs would have been a joke. This would've been valid 50 years ago, and maybe even 30 years ago. But we have had Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and Hillary Clinton since the 90's. Both were very headstrong women who are seen as the oriflamme of their respective party. Both got shit done, and both proved that women can be taken, and should be taken, just as seriously as men in public office. And you can see the changing tides by looking at probably the biggest masculist of the modern era, Warren Farrell, who was a strong feminist in the 1970's and switched to masculism around the 90's. There are 20 senators in Congress who are women and 78 representatives who are women. This number should be higher because if Congress truly represented the people, it would match its demographics more closely. But this is more of being behind the times and Congress being a gerontocracy - see how many Congressmen support legalization of weed, know how to use the Internet with moderate fluency, or are Hispanic - the elected demographics and opinions seem to match the 70s or early 80s time period more than 2013. But I digress. The argument goes over to the older woman who is more rational here than the red-haired woman. I do agree with her points, and I do agree with the fact that the number of people who didn't get raped and say they did is far lower than the number people who did get raped and say they didn't, or in most cases say nothing. I don't like how the young Asian man and his friends on the left side of the screen begin arguing that it's less of a problem because it's not portrayed in the media. Take the italics out and it's a very excellent point. But the media just reports what people want it to report. It's the reason why school shootings and public shootings make breaking news stories, whereas the cop who pulls out a gun of her own and shoots the shooter before it happens is barely mentioned and rarely spread from the source. And the end of the video brings up an excellent point about media coverage. The masculist guy sees more fraudulent rape in prevalence because that is what he studies and that is what he focuses on. The feminist guy doesn't see it nearly as much because he isn't focused on that. This could be copied and/or reversed for many different issues, and it's a matter of looking at two sides of the same coin. Even if both the feminist and the masculist are using the same source, Google. And that's the video. And as a side note, the sound in 10:07 - 10:13 in the video made my day  Lastly, I would like to reaffirm my claim that while the crowd of people the cameraman went to in the end was a tolerable bunch, even though I don't agree with them 70% of the time, the red-haired woman is a hatemongering cunt. I haven't used that word to describe anyone except for a fraction of a dozen people. That woman is definitely one of them. Out of all the characters in the video, she's the least enthusiastic about convincing people of her side's truthfulness. All she does for feminism-at-large is read her list. The rest of her breath is devoted to telling the bearded man and the offscreen man just behind the camera about how evil their side is. No discussion. No exploration. Just silencing, rage, and thinly veiled intolerance. There's certainly both men and women like her behind their respective movements and really behind any cause in existence, although I don't really have a word in my lexicon that describes the spite these men have like I do for her. | ||
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[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
I understand that you think your use of the words are justified, and you have your reasons for using them. I disagree strongly with your justifications, and I would absolutely like engage you on this issue and hope to persuade you, if you are interested in a dialogue on this. Furthermore, I will do my best to keep an open mind and be persuaded if I find your evidence convincing. As a skeptic and a rationalist it is my will be my ultimate goal not to convince you, but for both of us to come out of this with true beliefs. Currently I think my beliefs are true, so my proximal goal is to convince you, but also to listen. Would you be interested in engaging in such a dialogue with me? I propose we do so in this thread, so that others who agree with you or I can read and be convinced or offer their own opinions. That being said, it's entirely reasonable to not want to get into a long discussion about feminism on the internet, and I get it if you have said your bit and are done. Since we have played mafia together and are friends though I hope that we can have a lively discussion and come away from it with the same viewpoint. Two rational people with the same set of knowledge should always come to the same conclusion. Also, I was a bit harsh in my initial condemnation of you, perhaps just out of surprise that you disagree with me on this issue and used language in a way that I find distasteful. I would like to apologize for that. Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to debate, I'll respond to the post you've written above. | ||
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[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23017 Posts
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
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