To look at the world in a feminist perspective is not necessarily to find something to criticize. At its root, a feminist view is to observe the way things are and perceive some way in which patriarchy has made them that way.
The problem here is that patriarchy the way feminists imagine it has never existed. "Patriarchy" wasn't a system to explicitly benefit men at the expense of women - that's more what modern feminism is, actually, in reverse. Patriarchy was a system to allow men to compete with other men, or people to compete with people.. it just happens that competition benefits men more than women, because men are innately more competitive (or successful men are). It's also why men are often the highest payed in their profession, and at the top of any field that allows competition.
It's also why traditionally male occupation lose a lot of their status when they become "colonized" by women -- because men don't gain anything from competing with women, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, and women aren't as interested in competing hard or valuing their occupation higher than having children, etc. This is what is causing the wage gap currently, which isn't even a real gap anymore, because newly educated women make on average 8% more than newly educated men. It's just that they fall behind as soon as they start having children, which is natural, because that demands a lot of your time if you're going to do it right. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
Men are not innately more competitive than women. They are (still) educated to be so. I mean educated in a very broad sense, not just first or second socialization through family and school, but through your everyday life. You will (and have) probably see more ads/stories/newspaper or things like these about men being successfull or striving for success than women. Even though the share has changed favourably for women in the last decade (in terms of exposition). Moreover, as an example, if you read about politics, you primarily read about men competing against men. Yet again, it is changing, but the way women are exposed is hardly not reproducing a "patriarchal" society.
For the same matter, patriarchy is to be understood as a system that was produced by excluding women (not directly to the profit of men). This is why women had to wait decades before getting the right to vote. Or that is why women were not able to open a bank account without the autorization of their husband. That is also why, for example in India (non western society) women, when their husband died, were literally excluded from the society and treated as garbage (close enough) and sometime women decided die instead of living under the shame of a loss of their husband. They were not to live as individuals, but defined by the fact of being married, by the fact of having a husband, thus the patriarchal society In many way, the western society was designed in excluding the freedom of act and will of women. And in that sense, the system was patriarchal. For the same reason, men expected a lot from men, they would be educated to mathematics, latin and "highly intellectuel" stuffs, therefore providing them the best spot and reproducing the scheme. All while women were left literally "in the Kitchen". And this expression is still true vigourously used, especially on the internet. The labour market still has issue to incorporate women who decided to leave the market for a few years because, as a family, they wanted a child. And even though she is being compensated, it is hard for women to value the time they spent with the child on the market.
When you label a girl that's just want to freely use her body (whore/bitch w/e) as she wants, you are committing a patriarchal act as "it is not the normal way for a girl to be". The normal way being exclusive to one man. Being the propriety of the man, and therefore not being definied as a free individual. Insulting girls for their behavior (Slut Shaming anyone?) is patriarchal, sexist (therefore racist). It is also the same scheme when a girl plays video games and she is being labelled "an attention whore" or anything. She is being denied the one fact that a girl could want to play videogames, that she only does that to have the attention of geeks/nerds that are lacking the presence of women. While it may be true in some instances, it clearly reproduces a patriarchal (exclusion of women, remember!) scheme in videogames.
I disagree with your post to such a degree that I find no need to go into it at any level of detail. I talked about competitiveness, which research and simple observation suggests is biologically ingrained in male homo-sapiens, just like it is in many other species and not a socially conditioned behavior. You talk about "slut shaming" ..wtf?
Could you provide a link to the research ? Simple observation is not a valid argument. I did observe only white fucking duck, does it mean there is only white fucking duck on earth, hardly think so.
Still, how do you make such concept of "competitivness" operationalizable when driving a study, especially when leading a biological study ? I would be delighted to read that.
Slut shaming was there to illustrate the fact that women are denied freedom of act and will: this is how the society works: a girl is not allowed to do whatever she wants of her body. When she does so (i.e: sleeping with many men/women etc...) she is being pointed at as a deviant and ensue slut-shaming: "You should be ashamed to sleep with many men/women, to be a slut". Which implicitly means, you should be ashamed to have the liberty to use the body to your will. Which leads to : your body belongs to one person, and that person is not you but your boyfriend/husband (traditionnal couple is a man and a woman whom belong to the man through marriage, both are supposedly exclusive to each others).
And this is a patriarchal act, anchored in a patriarcal system.
Why are you so angry? Women aren't barred from promiscuity, they are discourage and not limited. Man suffers from similar outlooks as well though in smaller degrees. The difference in treatment of promiscuity is present because promiscuity has different implications. A woman has an advantage in knowing who an offspring may belong to. A loyal female partner makes it less likely a man, traditionally the provider, is raising someone else's child. With contraception and DNA testing this is less of an issue, and social attitudes toward such things are changing as well, albeit at a slower rate. Nevertheless, marital laws are still far from fair. If you want to stop difference in treatment of the sexes, then you may wish to start with the equality in the legal system so there is one less talking point for the patriarchy.
Are you arguing for the propagation of slut shaming or trying to justify it? At least your not denying it exists.
It is very hateful toward women to imply that they should not have freedom to express themselves sexually becuase they cannot be trusted to not steal child support.
It's good to hear your concerned about equality of the sexes in the legal system. What improvements would you suggest for martial law?
EDIT: I also wouldn't go so far as to call bearing children an advantage... >.< sounds uncomfortable
On April 09 2013 12:08 Wombat_NI wrote: Feminists are often right, but their cause has a major, major image problem because the term itself is far too broad and ill-defined. A breakdown into say, I don't what terms I'd use, but ones with more specificity could be prudent.
I agree with what they say regarding games sometimes, but equally I feel it is rather like fussing over a cigarette that you drop on the floor when your house is already burning to the ground around you.
Feminists also far too often give women a pass in perpetuating the gender roles that exist today, in my experience.
I agree. Let the radical feminists stay feminists and rename everybody to humanists. I mean most of us agree that gender roles are a big problem, but most rational people also agree that the hiarchy is bullshit.
To look at the world in a feminist perspective is not necessarily to find something to criticize. At its root, a feminist view is to observe the way things are and perceive some way in which patriarchy has made them that way.
The problem here is that patriarchy the way feminists imagine it has never existed. "Patriarchy" wasn't a system to explicitly benefit men at the expense of women - that's more what modern feminism is, actually, in reverse. Patriarchy was a system to allow men to compete with other men, or people to compete with people.. it just happens that competition benefits men more than women, because men are innately more competitive (or successful men are). It's also why men are often the highest payed in their profession, and at the top of any field that allows competition.
It's also why traditionally male occupation lose a lot of their status when they become "colonized" by women -- because men don't gain anything from competing with women, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, and women aren't as interested in competing hard or valuing their occupation higher than having children, etc. This is what is causing the wage gap currently, which isn't even a real gap anymore, because newly educated women make on average 8% more than newly educated men. It's just that they fall behind as soon as they start having children, which is natural, because that demands a lot of your time if you're going to do it right. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
Check out girlwriteswhat on youtube. Although her "style" is a bit too polemic for my tastes, her points are usually well researched, and it's also refreshing to see feminism criticized from a women's perspective
Of course it existed. Men were allowed to compete and women were/are being stuck with the households. The ideas of statuses of occupations are seriously flawed nowadays, I hope this changes soon. The work connected with the upbringing of children can be done by the father as well as soon as they are out of the womb, so this argument is invalid as well. Women can have an as competitive mindset as men.
Women CAN be as competitive as men, generally they aren't. This is more likely biological than anything else. Evolutionary speaking, a woman gained no where near as much from competing as men did.
I didn't say patriarchy didn't exist - I said it didn't exist in the form that feminists historically have understood it to exist. Some aspects of what we think of as patriarchy was a way to consolidate power, and it punished lower standing men just as much as women. Girlwriteswhat goes into more depth on this than I ever could - taking a look at a few of her videos is definitely worth the time, imo.
To look at the world in a feminist perspective is not necessarily to find something to criticize. At its root, a feminist view is to observe the way things are and perceive some way in which patriarchy has made them that way.
The problem here is that patriarchy the way feminists imagine it has never existed. "Patriarchy" wasn't a system to explicitly benefit men at the expense of women - that's more what modern feminism is, actually, in reverse. Patriarchy was a system to allow men to compete with other men, or people to compete with people.. it just happens that competition benefits men more than women, because men are innately more competitive (or successful men are). It's also why men are often the highest payed in their profession, and at the top of any field that allows competition.
It's also why traditionally male occupation lose a lot of their status when they become "colonized" by women -- because men don't gain anything from competing with women, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, and women aren't as interested in competing hard or valuing their occupation higher than having children, etc. This is what is causing the wage gap currently, which isn't even a real gap anymore, because newly educated women make on average 8% more than newly educated men. It's just that they fall behind as soon as they start having children, which is natural, because that demands a lot of your time if you're going to do it right. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
Men are not innately more competitive than women. They are (still) educated to be so. I mean educated in a very broad sense, not just first or second socialization through family and school, but through your everyday life. You will (and have) probably see more ads/stories/newspaper or things like these about men being successfull or striving for success than women. Even though the share has changed favourably for women in the last decade (in terms of exposition). Moreover, as an example, if you read about politics, you primarily read about men competing against men. Yet again, it is changing, but the way women are exposed is hardly not reproducing a "patriarchal" society.
For the same matter, patriarchy is to be understood as a system that was produced by excluding women (not directly to the profit of men). This is why women had to wait decades before getting the right to vote. Or that is why women were not able to open a bank account without the autorization of their husband. That is also why, for example in India (non western society) women, when their husband died, were literally excluded from the society and treated as garbage (close enough) and sometime women decided die instead of living under the shame of a loss of their husband. They were not to live as individuals, but defined by the fact of being married, by the fact of having a husband, thus the patriarchal society In many way, the western society was designed in excluding the freedom of act and will of women. And in that sense, the system was patriarchal. For the same reason, men expected a lot from men, they would be educated to mathematics, latin and "highly intellectuel" stuffs, therefore providing them the best spot and reproducing the scheme. All while women were left literally "in the Kitchen". And this expression is still true vigourously used, especially on the internet. The labour market still has issue to incorporate women who decided to leave the market for a few years because, as a family, they wanted a child. And even though she is being compensated, it is hard for women to value the time they spent with the child on the market.
When you label a girl that's just want to freely use her body (whore/bitch w/e) as she wants, you are committing a patriarchal act as "it is not the normal way for a girl to be". The normal way being exclusive to one man. Being the propriety of the man, and therefore not being definied as a free individual. Insulting girls for their behavior (Slut Shaming anyone?) is patriarchal, sexist (therefore racist). It is also the same scheme when a girl plays video games and she is being labelled "an attention whore" or anything. She is being denied the one fact that a girl could want to play videogames, that she only does that to have the attention of geeks/nerds that are lacking the presence of women. While it may be true in some instances, it clearly reproduces a patriarchal (exclusion of women, remember!) scheme in videogames.
I disagree with your post to such a degree that I find no need to go into it at any level of detail. I talked about competitiveness, which research and simple observation suggests is biologically ingrained in male homo-sapiens, just like it is in many other species and not a socially conditioned behavior. You talk about "slut shaming" ..wtf?
Could you provide a link to the research ? Simple observation is not a valid argument. I did observe only white fucking duck, does it mean there is only white fucking duck on earth, hardly think so.
Still, how do you make such concept of "competitivness" operationalizable when driving a study, especially when leading a biological study ? I would be delighted to read that.
Slut shaming was there to illustrate the fact that women are denied freedom of act and will: this is how the society works: a girl is not allowed to do whatever she wants of her body. When she does so (i.e: sleeping with many men/women etc...) she is being pointed at as a deviant and ensue slut-shaming: "You should be ashamed to sleep with many men/women, to be a slut". Which implicitly means, you should be ashamed to have the liberty to use the body to your will. Which leads to : your body belongs to one person, and that person is not you but your boyfriend/husband (traditionnal couple is a man and a woman whom belong to the man through marriage, both are supposedly exclusive to each others).
And this is a patriarchal act, anchored in a patriarcal system.
For both jobs, more females replied to both job listings than males. Of the applicants to the sports assistant position, 53.5% of those interested were women. The generic job listing was split 80-20 females to male. Here’s the interesting part: for both jobs, when the element of the bonus was added, males were far more likely to actually send in their application than females. Or worded the other way around, females were more likely to pass on the job once they found out part of their pay would be based on their performance versus a co-worker. In the most competitive salary structure, where the base pay was $12 an hour and the bonus $6, List determined that men were 55.5% more likely to apply for the job than women. The conclusion: Women don’t like competition.
How does this relate to the gender gap? List says, anecdotally at least, it appears the industries and positions with the most competitive work environments tend to pay the most.
When it comes to "slut shaming," I don't think you automatically can or necessarily have to attribute that to "patriarchy." It could have some other function -- and often women are the ones who engage in this kind of behavior the most. I'd say it could just as well be a tribal impulse. In a smaller society, "loose" women with many children when there father(s) isn't engaged in providing for the children can become a liability for the tribe itself. And if the male in this instance is from a competing tribe, the mother and child would probably be driven off or worse. This could happen in a "matriarchal" tribe too, patriarchy doesn't necessarily figure into it. This could also explain why an extremely tribal religion like Islam is so sexist.
Relatively speaking, it is very recent that we could have sex for the pleasure of it, with impunity. Of course our biological minds are lagging behind.. it still thinks we're living in caves and being hunted by giant bears after all.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
On April 10 2013 03:48 anatase wrote: What makes me angry is people trying to emphasis social differences based on undocmented biological differences. This is no different from racism from the past centuries yet it seems acceptable because it's only women, eh. Nobody denies the difference between men and women but to build social exclusion/inclusion on these criteria is far from being legitimate.
well, actually there are quite some studies showing biological differences between men and women, e.g. in the brain, and you can find a lot of these in the most important scientific journals, like http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v7/n6/full/nrn1909.html. Take it for what its worth, but i guess any serious scientist cannot deny that there is a _very_ high propability that certain differences between men and women have biological origins. in any case, i do believe this should not be used to justify inequalities regarding rights or whatever.
on another note, i find it very strange that a movement that is meant to fight gender inequality would do so under the name of 'feminism' which itsel implies a certain inequality.
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
Lots of people do identify as egalitarians with regards to other issues, feminists just think women were particularly historically and presently discriminated against and that that requires special attention.
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
How.
By making video games where people save princess'? This isn't 1910, we live in a very equalized world. I think for true egalitarianism we need to accept some hard facts. The hard facts are that yes, we men do have a lot of benefits or "perks" per se that women do not have. However, on the flip side, women also have many benefits/perks in our society that men do not have the luxury of having, this goes double for United States culture which I assume is the primary focus of this discussion.
Let me just give a personal example. I've worked in retail most of my life. I have the most experience with Publix. Want to know where almost every single guy works? In the back. We are cleaning the dishes, we are collecting the plates in terms of the restaurant I worked at (which are even worse in this regard), we are cooking the food in the hot ass kitchen, we are forced to go outside and collect the grocery carts in the hot ass heat, we have to stack the shelves, we have to COLLECT THE FUCKING GROCERY CARTS IN 100 DEGREE WEATHER GOD DAMN, so on and so forth. Want to know where I've never seen a woman assigned to? Those above jobs. Want to know what they do do? They sit in the nice air conditioned front area where the customers are checking out groceries or working the deli area making subs for people, also a very chilled and pleasant place to work. In fact I think the only time I ever saw a male working a cashier counter in the 3 Publix's I've worked at was when it was super busy and one of the suits had to step in and help. No girls were required to ask customers if they'd like help with their groceries, guys were.
Let me make this clear though -- I'm not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY or some shit. I'm being paid a salary and I do the job I'm assigned and I love where I work regardless. I just want to emphasize this isn't a one way street. It's a give and take and let me make it clear I don't feel privileged at all that I have to sign up for the draft and women don't despite now being able to fight in combat or that since 1976 the Department of Justice has shown that men are ten times more likely to be executed than a woman for the same crime, or that until late 2010 British Airways would not allow an unrelated adult to sit next to an unaccompanied child on any flight (note: this policy only applied to males). I don't feel privileged that in Canada fathers can not apply for Federal Child Benefits without getting a signed note from the childs mother or that in Massachusetts the likelihood of a female being imprisoned for not paying child support is 1/8th the rate of that of a male.
Again, not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY. We all have privileges. We need to stop pretending it's a one way street.
EDIT: I feel obligated to put a source list for that last tangent there:
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support - Consumer Income, Issued December 2011, P60-240. Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce,
British Airways:
BA says men cannot sit with lone children. The Times. Smith, Lewis (16 March 2001).
Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? Forbes. Hans, Joshua (14 August 2012)
To look at the world in a feminist perspective is not necessarily to find something to criticize. At its root, a feminist view is to observe the way things are and perceive some way in which patriarchy has made them that way.
The problem here is that patriarchy the way feminists imagine it has never existed. "Patriarchy" wasn't a system to explicitly benefit men at the expense of women - that's more what modern feminism is, actually, in reverse. Patriarchy was a system to allow men to compete with other men, or people to compete with people.. it just happens that competition benefits men more than women, because men are innately more competitive (or successful men are). It's also why men are often the highest payed in their profession, and at the top of any field that allows competition.
It's also why traditionally male occupation lose a lot of their status when they become "colonized" by women -- because men don't gain anything from competing with women, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, and women aren't as interested in competing hard or valuing their occupation higher than having children, etc. This is what is causing the wage gap currently, which isn't even a real gap anymore, because newly educated women make on average 8% more than newly educated men. It's just that they fall behind as soon as they start having children, which is natural, because that demands a lot of your time if you're going to do it right. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
Check out girlwriteswhat on youtube. Although her "style" is a bit too polemic for my tastes, her points are usually well researched, and it's also refreshing to see feminism criticized from a women's perspective
Of course it existed. Men were allowed to compete and women were/are being stuck with the households. The ideas of statuses of occupations are seriously flawed nowadays, I hope this changes soon. The work connected with the upbringing of children can be done by the father as well as soon as they are out of the womb, so this argument is invalid as well. Women can have an as competitive mindset as men.
Women CAN be as competitive as men, generally they aren't. This is more likely biological than anything else. Evolutionary speaking, a woman gained no where near as much from competing as men did.
I didn't say patriarchy didn't exist - I said it didn't exist in the form that feminists historically have understood it to exist. Some aspects of what we think of as patriarchy was a way to consolidate power, and it punished lower standing men just as much as women. Girlwriteswhat goes into more depth on this than I ever could - taking a look at a few of her videos is definitely worth the time, imo.
To look at the world in a feminist perspective is not necessarily to find something to criticize. At its root, a feminist view is to observe the way things are and perceive some way in which patriarchy has made them that way.
The problem here is that patriarchy the way feminists imagine it has never existed. "Patriarchy" wasn't a system to explicitly benefit men at the expense of women - that's more what modern feminism is, actually, in reverse. Patriarchy was a system to allow men to compete with other men, or people to compete with people.. it just happens that competition benefits men more than women, because men are innately more competitive (or successful men are). It's also why men are often the highest payed in their profession, and at the top of any field that allows competition.
It's also why traditionally male occupation lose a lot of their status when they become "colonized" by women -- because men don't gain anything from competing with women, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, and women aren't as interested in competing hard or valuing their occupation higher than having children, etc. This is what is causing the wage gap currently, which isn't even a real gap anymore, because newly educated women make on average 8% more than newly educated men. It's just that they fall behind as soon as they start having children, which is natural, because that demands a lot of your time if you're going to do it right. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
Men are not innately more competitive than women. They are (still) educated to be so. I mean educated in a very broad sense, not just first or second socialization through family and school, but through your everyday life. You will (and have) probably see more ads/stories/newspaper or things like these about men being successfull or striving for success than women. Even though the share has changed favourably for women in the last decade (in terms of exposition). Moreover, as an example, if you read about politics, you primarily read about men competing against men. Yet again, it is changing, but the way women are exposed is hardly not reproducing a "patriarchal" society.
For the same matter, patriarchy is to be understood as a system that was produced by excluding women (not directly to the profit of men). This is why women had to wait decades before getting the right to vote. Or that is why women were not able to open a bank account without the autorization of their husband. That is also why, for example in India (non western society) women, when their husband died, were literally excluded from the society and treated as garbage (close enough) and sometime women decided die instead of living under the shame of a loss of their husband. They were not to live as individuals, but defined by the fact of being married, by the fact of having a husband, thus the patriarchal society In many way, the western society was designed in excluding the freedom of act and will of women. And in that sense, the system was patriarchal. For the same reason, men expected a lot from men, they would be educated to mathematics, latin and "highly intellectuel" stuffs, therefore providing them the best spot and reproducing the scheme. All while women were left literally "in the Kitchen". And this expression is still true vigourously used, especially on the internet. The labour market still has issue to incorporate women who decided to leave the market for a few years because, as a family, they wanted a child. And even though she is being compensated, it is hard for women to value the time they spent with the child on the market.
When you label a girl that's just want to freely use her body (whore/bitch w/e) as she wants, you are committing a patriarchal act as "it is not the normal way for a girl to be". The normal way being exclusive to one man. Being the propriety of the man, and therefore not being definied as a free individual. Insulting girls for their behavior (Slut Shaming anyone?) is patriarchal, sexist (therefore racist). It is also the same scheme when a girl plays video games and she is being labelled "an attention whore" or anything. She is being denied the one fact that a girl could want to play videogames, that she only does that to have the attention of geeks/nerds that are lacking the presence of women. While it may be true in some instances, it clearly reproduces a patriarchal (exclusion of women, remember!) scheme in videogames.
I disagree with your post to such a degree that I find no need to go into it at any level of detail. I talked about competitiveness, which research and simple observation suggests is biologically ingrained in male homo-sapiens, just like it is in many other species and not a socially conditioned behavior. You talk about "slut shaming" ..wtf?
Could you provide a link to the research ? Simple observation is not a valid argument. I did observe only white fucking duck, does it mean there is only white fucking duck on earth, hardly think so.
Still, how do you make such concept of "competitivness" operationalizable when driving a study, especially when leading a biological study ? I would be delighted to read that.
Slut shaming was there to illustrate the fact that women are denied freedom of act and will: this is how the society works: a girl is not allowed to do whatever she wants of her body. When she does so (i.e: sleeping with many men/women etc...) she is being pointed at as a deviant and ensue slut-shaming: "You should be ashamed to sleep with many men/women, to be a slut". Which implicitly means, you should be ashamed to have the liberty to use the body to your will. Which leads to : your body belongs to one person, and that person is not you but your boyfriend/husband (traditionnal couple is a man and a woman whom belong to the man through marriage, both are supposedly exclusive to each others).
And this is a patriarchal act, anchored in a patriarcal system.
For both jobs, more females replied to both job listings than males. Of the applicants to the sports assistant position, 53.5% of those interested were women. The generic job listing was split 80-20 females to male. Here’s the interesting part: for both jobs, when the element of the bonus was added, males were far more likely to actually send in their application than females. Or worded the other way around, females were more likely to pass on the job once they found out part of their pay would be based on their performance versus a co-worker. In the most competitive salary structure, where the base pay was $12 an hour and the bonus $6, List determined that men were 55.5% more likely to apply for the job than women. The conclusion: Women don’t like competition.
How does this relate to the gender gap? List says, anecdotally at least, it appears the industries and positions with the most competitive work environments tend to pay the most.
When it comes to "slut shaming," I don't think you automatically can or necessarily have to attribute that to "patriarchy." It could have some other function -- and often women are the ones who engage in this kind of behavior the most. I'd say it could just as well be a tribal impulse. In a smaller society, "loose" women with many children when there father(s) isn't engaged in providing for the children can become a liability for the tribe itself. And if the male in this instance is from a competing tribe, the mother and child would probably be driven off or worse. This could happen in a "matriarchal" tribe too, patriarchy doesn't necessarily figure into it. This could also explain why an extremely tribal religion like Islam is so sexist.
Relatively speaking, it is very recent that we could have sex for the pleasure of it, with impunity. Of course our biological minds are lagging behind.. it still thinks we're living in caves and being hunted by giant bears after all.
The article is interesting, but it doesn't seem to provide a biological explanation for the competition gap, maybe the scientific article does, but not the Time's one.
What I understand from it, is that women are less likely to risk a smaller pay despite an uncertain bonus than men. This could relate to risk aversion, and while some argue, like you, that this kind of risk aversion might be due to cave age (not everyone agrees at all with the prehistoric conception of men and women) it may be due to other things too.
Once again, it is socially constructed that boys are usually encouraged to take risk and be competitive since their childhood, so it was, so it is (even though less). The competition gap might be induced solely on the base that (1) women (girls) are not taught when child to take risk but to secure. Why ? Maybe because we see them as fragile, or because we vehiculate an image of the strong man and the weak woman (2) women (girls) are not taught to be competitive, because competition is display, display is the public sphere, and the public sphere for very long was a men space. While women remain in the private sphere (household, housewives) and are facing no competition because they are alone
Does it mean they are less competitive, in the sense they have been taught to be, then yes of course it does. In the sense it is biologically embedded in their brain, I really don't think so and once again I feel the article does not provide biological evidence for this.(it is a psychological study, not a biological one, lead by economic professors, not biologists)
It just says there is a gap, they shy away from competition, they don't know where that shyness is from.
Now yes, i was agressive, I explained why in my last post, my apologies.
I'd just like to address the "men are biologically or intrinsically more competitive" claim. I don't think that's true, or at least that evidence doesn't properly suggest that.
This study uses a controlled experiment to explore whether there are gender differences in selecting into competitive environments across two distinct societies: the Maasai in Tanzania and the Khasi in India. One unique aspect of these societies is that the Maasai represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society whereas the Khasi are matrilineal. Similar to the extant evidence drawn from experiments executed in Western cultures, Maasai men opt to compete at roughly twice the rate as Maasai women. Interestingly, this result is reversed amongst the Khasi, where women choose the competitive environment more often than Khasi men, and even choose to compete weakly more often than Maasai men.
@sc2superfan, I completely disagree with your assessment of why readers tend to dislike Sansa though you make a lot of valid points, but I don't think that discussion is appropriate here
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
How.
By making video games where people save princess'? This isn't 1910, we live in a very equalized world. I think for true egalitarianism we need to accept some hard facts. The hard facts are that yes, we men do have a lot of benefits or "perks" per se that women do not have. However, on the flip side, women also have many benefits/perks in our society that men do not have the luxury of having, this goes double for United States culture which I assume is the primary focus of this discussion.
Let me just give a personal example. I've worked in retail most of my life. I have the most experience with Publix. Want to know where almost every single guy works? In the back. We are cleaning the dishes, we are collecting the plates in terms of the restaurant I worked at (which are even worse in this regard), we are cooking the food in the hot ass kitchen, we are forced to go outside and collect the grocery carts in the hot ass heat, we have to stack the shelves, we have to COLLECT THE FUCKING GROCERY CARTS IN 100 DEGREE WEATHER GOD DAMN, so on and so forth. Want to know where I've never seen a woman assigned to? Those above jobs. Want to know what they do do? They sit in the nice air conditioned front area where the customers are checking out groceries or working the deli area making subs for people, also a very chilled and pleasant place to work. In fact I think the only time I ever saw a male working a cashier counter in the 3 Publix's I've worked at was when it was super busy and one of the suits had to step in and help. No girls were required to ask customers if they'd like help with their groceries, guys were.
Let me make this clear though -- I'm not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY or some shit. I'm being paid a salary and I do the job I'm assigned and I love where I work regardless. I just want to emphasize this isn't a one way street. It's a give and take and let me make it clear I don't feel privileged at all that I have to sign up for the draft and women don't despite now being able to fight in combat or that since 1976 the Department of Justice has shown that men are ten times more likely to be executed than a woman for the same crime, or that until late 2010 British Airways would not allow an unrelated adult to sit next to an unaccompanied child on any flight (note: this policy only applied to males). I don't feel privileged that in Canada fathers can not apply for Federal Child Benefits without getting a signed note from the childs mother or that in Massachusetts the likelihood of a female being imprisoned for not paying child support is 1/8th the rate of that of a male.
Again, not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY. We all have privileges. We need to stop pretending it's a one way street.
EDIT: I feel obligated to put a source list for that last tangent there:
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support - Consumer Income, Issued December 2011, P60-240. Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce,
British Airways:
BA says men cannot sit with lone children. The Times. Smith, Lewis (16 March 2001).
Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? Forbes. Hans, Joshua (14 August 2012)
Your correct. There are examples of men being the victim of prejudice based on sex. There is no argument whether or not globally there are cultures that oppress women. right? There are a few obvious ones.
So then we want to talk about north american culture. If I understand you correctly you are saying that men and women face equal amount of prejudice everyday. I disagree. I feel that the insecurity created by how heavily society weighs a womans worth by her looks, significantly outweighs any prejudice men face. Over archingly, I dont believe its uncomon to have encountred more casual woman bashing than man bashing. Additionally there are not a group of activities which are labeled "manly" which have a negative conotation associated with them such as those associated with "girly". I feel that it is concretely true to say that our society views women with a measureable amount of negative prejudice.
I personally strongly believe in equality, and I also think that a vast, vast majority of feminists are reasonable and most of their concerns are valid. However, it's sometimes hard to know how to deal with some of the stuff brought forward by some of the more "hardcore" feminists.
It has probably been mentioned in this thread, recently Obama made a speech during a fundraiser where he made a speech in which he complimented the attorney general of California on her competence and her strong character, before saying she's also "the best-looking attorney general" as a pleasantry. She's a beautiful woman and he was just being nice... We all do it, it's part of being human, we compliment others.
Yet feminists thought it was good to call it sexist, even though Obama compliments men on their looks also. At some point, it becomes ridiculous.
I believe that feminism is still necessary today because there are problems that need to be worked on, but some of the BS issues are manufactured by pissed off extremists and they're at a risk of making feminism look bad...
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
How.
By making video games where people save princess'? This isn't 1910, we live in a very equalized world. I think for true egalitarianism we need to accept some hard facts. The hard facts are that yes, we men do have a lot of benefits or "perks" per se that women do not have. However, on the flip side, women also have many benefits/perks in our society that men do not have the luxury of having, this goes double for United States culture which I assume is the primary focus of this discussion.
Let me just give a personal example. I've worked in retail most of my life. I have the most experience with Publix. Want to know where almost every single guy works? In the back. We are cleaning the dishes, we are collecting the plates in terms of the restaurant I worked at (which are even worse in this regard), we are cooking the food in the hot ass kitchen, we are forced to go outside and collect the grocery carts in the hot ass heat, we have to stack the shelves, we have to COLLECT THE FUCKING GROCERY CARTS IN 100 DEGREE WEATHER GOD DAMN, so on and so forth. Want to know where I've never seen a woman assigned to? Those above jobs. Want to know what they do do? They sit in the nice air conditioned front area where the customers are checking out groceries or working the deli area making subs for people, also a very chilled and pleasant place to work. In fact I think the only time I ever saw a male working a cashier counter in the 3 Publix's I've worked at was when it was super busy and one of the suits had to step in and help. No girls were required to ask customers if they'd like help with their groceries, guys were.
Let me make this clear though -- I'm not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY or some shit. I'm being paid a salary and I do the job I'm assigned and I love where I work regardless. I just want to emphasize this isn't a one way street. It's a give and take and let me make it clear I don't feel privileged at all that I have to sign up for the draft and women don't despite now being able to fight in combat or that since 1976 the Department of Justice has shown that men are ten times more likely to be executed than a woman for the same crime, or that until late 2010 British Airways would not allow an unrelated adult to sit next to an unaccompanied child on any flight (note: this policy only applied to males). I don't feel privileged that in Canada fathers can not apply for Federal Child Benefits without getting a signed note from the childs mother or that in Massachusetts the likelihood of a female being imprisoned for not paying child support is 1/8th the rate of that of a male.
Again, not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY. We all have privileges. We need to stop pretending it's a one way street.
EDIT: I feel obligated to put a source list for that last tangent there:
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support - Consumer Income, Issued December 2011, P60-240. Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce,
British Airways:
BA says men cannot sit with lone children. The Times. Smith, Lewis (16 March 2001).
Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? Forbes. Hans, Joshua (14 August 2012)
Your correct. There are examples of men being the victim of prejudice based on sex. There is no argument whether or not globally there are cultures that oppress women. right? There are a few obvious ones.
So then we want to talk about north american culture. If I understand you correctly you are saying that men and women face equal amount of prejudice everyday. I disagree. I feel that the insecurity created by how heavily society weighs a womans worth by her looks, significantly outweighs any prejudice men face. Over archingly, I dont believe its uncomon to have encountred more casual woman bashing than man bashing. Additionally there are not a group of activities which are labeled "manly" which have a negative conotation associated with them such as those associated with "girly". I feel that it is concretely true to say that our society views women with a measureable amount of negative prejudice.
I think trying to quantify who gets marginalized the most when it exists in large amounts on both sides is beyond petty.
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
How.
By making video games where people save princess'? This isn't 1910, we live in a very equalized world. I think for true egalitarianism we need to accept some hard facts. The hard facts are that yes, we men do have a lot of benefits or "perks" per se that women do not have. However, on the flip side, women also have many benefits/perks in our society that men do not have the luxury of having, this goes double for United States culture which I assume is the primary focus of this discussion.
Let me just give a personal example. I've worked in retail most of my life. I have the most experience with Publix. Want to know where almost every single guy works? In the back. We are cleaning the dishes, we are collecting the plates in terms of the restaurant I worked at (which are even worse in this regard), we are cooking the food in the hot ass kitchen, we are forced to go outside and collect the grocery carts in the hot ass heat, we have to stack the shelves, we have to COLLECT THE FUCKING GROCERY CARTS IN 100 DEGREE WEATHER GOD DAMN, so on and so forth. Want to know where I've never seen a woman assigned to? Those above jobs. Want to know what they do do? They sit in the nice air conditioned front area where the customers are checking out groceries or working the deli area making subs for people, also a very chilled and pleasant place to work. In fact I think the only time I ever saw a male working a cashier counter in the 3 Publix's I've worked at was when it was super busy and one of the suits had to step in and help. No girls were required to ask customers if they'd like help with their groceries, guys were.
Let me make this clear though -- I'm not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY or some shit. I'm being paid a salary and I do the job I'm assigned and I love where I work regardless. I just want to emphasize this isn't a one way street. It's a give and take and let me make it clear I don't feel privileged at all that I have to sign up for the draft and women don't despite now being able to fight in combat or that since 1976 the Department of Justice has shown that men are ten times more likely to be executed than a woman for the same crime, or that until late 2010 British Airways would not allow an unrelated adult to sit next to an unaccompanied child on any flight (note: this policy only applied to males). I don't feel privileged that in Canada fathers can not apply for Federal Child Benefits without getting a signed note from the childs mother or that in Massachusetts the likelihood of a female being imprisoned for not paying child support is 1/8th the rate of that of a male.
Again, not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY. We all have privileges. We need to stop pretending it's a one way street.
EDIT: I feel obligated to put a source list for that last tangent there:
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support - Consumer Income, Issued December 2011, P60-240. Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce,
British Airways:
BA says men cannot sit with lone children. The Times. Smith, Lewis (16 March 2001).
Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? Forbes. Hans, Joshua (14 August 2012)
Your correct. There are examples of men being the victim of prejudice based on sex. There is no argument whether or not globally there are cultures that oppress women. right? There are a few obvious ones.
So then we want to talk about north american culture. If I understand you correctly you are saying that men and women face equal amount of prejudice everyday. I disagree. I feel that the insecurity created by how heavily society weighs a womans worth by her looks, significantly outweighs any prejudice men face. Over archingly, I dont believe its uncomon to have encountred more casual woman bashing than man bashing. Additionally there are not a group of activities which are labeled "manly" which have a negative conotation associated with them such as those associated with "girly". I feel that it is concretely true to say that our society views women with a measureable amount of negative prejudice.
I think trying to quantify who gets marginalized the most when it exists in large amounts on both sides is beyond petty.
I think it exists so much more on one side than the other that using the existance of the other side as justification is a weak arguement.
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
How.
By making video games where people save princess'? This isn't 1910, we live in a very equalized world. I think for true egalitarianism we need to accept some hard facts. The hard facts are that yes, we men do have a lot of benefits or "perks" per se that women do not have. However, on the flip side, women also have many benefits/perks in our society that men do not have the luxury of having, this goes double for United States culture which I assume is the primary focus of this discussion.
Let me just give a personal example. I've worked in retail most of my life. I have the most experience with Publix. Want to know where almost every single guy works? In the back. We are cleaning the dishes, we are collecting the plates in terms of the restaurant I worked at (which are even worse in this regard), we are cooking the food in the hot ass kitchen, we are forced to go outside and collect the grocery carts in the hot ass heat, we have to stack the shelves, we have to COLLECT THE FUCKING GROCERY CARTS IN 100 DEGREE WEATHER GOD DAMN, so on and so forth. Want to know where I've never seen a woman assigned to? Those above jobs. Want to know what they do do? They sit in the nice air conditioned front area where the customers are checking out groceries or working the deli area making subs for people, also a very chilled and pleasant place to work. In fact I think the only time I ever saw a male working a cashier counter in the 3 Publix's I've worked at was when it was super busy and one of the suits had to step in and help. No girls were required to ask customers if they'd like help with their groceries, guys were.
Let me make this clear though -- I'm not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY or some shit. I'm being paid a salary and I do the job I'm assigned and I love where I work regardless. I just want to emphasize this isn't a one way street. It's a give and take and let me make it clear I don't feel privileged at all that I have to sign up for the draft and women don't despite now being able to fight in combat or that since 1976 the Department of Justice has shown that men are ten times more likely to be executed than a woman for the same crime, or that until late 2010 British Airways would not allow an unrelated adult to sit next to an unaccompanied child on any flight (note: this policy only applied to males). I don't feel privileged that in Canada fathers can not apply for Federal Child Benefits without getting a signed note from the childs mother or that in Massachusetts the likelihood of a female being imprisoned for not paying child support is 1/8th the rate of that of a male.
Again, not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY. We all have privileges. We need to stop pretending it's a one way street.
EDIT: I feel obligated to put a source list for that last tangent there:
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support - Consumer Income, Issued December 2011, P60-240. Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce,
British Airways:
BA says men cannot sit with lone children. The Times. Smith, Lewis (16 March 2001).
Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? Forbes. Hans, Joshua (14 August 2012)
Your correct. There are examples of men being the victim of prejudice based on sex. There is no argument whether or not globally there are cultures that oppress women. right? There are a few obvious ones.
So then we want to talk about north american culture. If I understand you correctly you are saying that men and women face equal amount of prejudice everyday. I disagree. I feel that the insecurity created by how heavily society weighs a womans worth by her looks, significantly outweighs any prejudice men face. Over archingly, I dont believe its uncomon to have encountred more casual woman bashing than man bashing. Additionally there are not a group of activities which are labeled "manly" which have a negative conotation associated with them such as those associated with "girly". I feel that it is concretely true to say that our society views women with a measureable amount of negative prejudice.
I think trying to quantify who gets marginalized the most when it exists in large amounts on both sides is beyond petty.
I think it exists so much more on one side than the other that using the existance of the other side as justification is a weak arguement.
justification
Nice strawman you set up there, where did you get it from if you don't mind me asking?
I never tried to justify anything. I said there's marginalization on both sides and both sides have clear benefits in our culture/society/legal system. I just listed some in my earlier post and I'd be glad to list them again. I have sources for them too, I'm not pulling these out of my ass. It's not about justification or blame, it's, as Anita put it, for simply acknowledging it's there. We can't progress to an egalitarian society without acknowledging it. Ignoring clear sexism against men because there may be "more" (however you deem that is quantifiable) against women is petty.
That is the purpose of my argument. Feminism is ridiculous because we should strive to remove ALL discrimination, not just discrimination against women.
To look at the world in a feminist perspective is not necessarily to find something to criticize. At its root, a feminist view is to observe the way things are and perceive some way in which patriarchy has made them that way.
The problem here is that patriarchy the way feminists imagine it has never existed. "Patriarchy" wasn't a system to explicitly benefit men at the expense of women - that's more what modern feminism is, actually, in reverse. Patriarchy was a system to allow men to compete with other men, or people to compete with people.. it just happens that competition benefits men more than women, because men are innately more competitive (or successful men are). It's also why men are often the highest payed in their profession, and at the top of any field that allows competition.
It's also why traditionally male occupation lose a lot of their status when they become "colonized" by women -- because men don't gain anything from competing with women, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, and women aren't as interested in competing hard or valuing their occupation higher than having children, etc. This is what is causing the wage gap currently, which isn't even a real gap anymore, because newly educated women make on average 8% more than newly educated men. It's just that they fall behind as soon as they start having children, which is natural, because that demands a lot of your time if you're going to do it right. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
Check out girlwriteswhat on youtube. Although her "style" is a bit too polemic for my tastes, her points are usually well researched, and it's also refreshing to see feminism criticized from a women's perspective
Of course it existed. Men were allowed to compete and women were/are being stuck with the households. The ideas of statuses of occupations are seriously flawed nowadays, I hope this changes soon. The work connected with the upbringing of children can be done by the father as well as soon as they are out of the womb, so this argument is invalid as well. Women can have an as competitive mindset as men.
Women CAN be as competitive as men, generally they aren't. This is more likely biological than anything else. Evolutionary speaking, a woman gained no where near as much from competing as men did.
I didn't say patriarchy didn't exist - I said it didn't exist in the form that feminists historically have understood it to exist. Some aspects of what we think of as patriarchy was a way to consolidate power, and it punished lower standing men just as much as women. Girlwriteswhat goes into more depth on this than I ever could - taking a look at a few of her videos is definitely worth the time, imo.
To look at the world in a feminist perspective is not necessarily to find something to criticize. At its root, a feminist view is to observe the way things are and perceive some way in which patriarchy has made them that way.
The problem here is that patriarchy the way feminists imagine it has never existed. "Patriarchy" wasn't a system to explicitly benefit men at the expense of women - that's more what modern feminism is, actually, in reverse. Patriarchy was a system to allow men to compete with other men, or people to compete with people.. it just happens that competition benefits men more than women, because men are innately more competitive (or successful men are). It's also why men are often the highest payed in their profession, and at the top of any field that allows competition.
It's also why traditionally male occupation lose a lot of their status when they become "colonized" by women -- because men don't gain anything from competing with women, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, and women aren't as interested in competing hard or valuing their occupation higher than having children, etc. This is what is causing the wage gap currently, which isn't even a real gap anymore, because newly educated women make on average 8% more than newly educated men. It's just that they fall behind as soon as they start having children, which is natural, because that demands a lot of your time if you're going to do it right. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html
Men are not innately more competitive than women. They are (still) educated to be so. I mean educated in a very broad sense, not just first or second socialization through family and school, but through your everyday life. You will (and have) probably see more ads/stories/newspaper or things like these about men being successfull or striving for success than women. Even though the share has changed favourably for women in the last decade (in terms of exposition). Moreover, as an example, if you read about politics, you primarily read about men competing against men. Yet again, it is changing, but the way women are exposed is hardly not reproducing a "patriarchal" society.
For the same matter, patriarchy is to be understood as a system that was produced by excluding women (not directly to the profit of men). This is why women had to wait decades before getting the right to vote. Or that is why women were not able to open a bank account without the autorization of their husband. That is also why, for example in India (non western society) women, when their husband died, were literally excluded from the society and treated as garbage (close enough) and sometime women decided die instead of living under the shame of a loss of their husband. They were not to live as individuals, but defined by the fact of being married, by the fact of having a husband, thus the patriarchal society In many way, the western society was designed in excluding the freedom of act and will of women. And in that sense, the system was patriarchal. For the same reason, men expected a lot from men, they would be educated to mathematics, latin and "highly intellectuel" stuffs, therefore providing them the best spot and reproducing the scheme. All while women were left literally "in the Kitchen". And this expression is still true vigourously used, especially on the internet. The labour market still has issue to incorporate women who decided to leave the market for a few years because, as a family, they wanted a child. And even though she is being compensated, it is hard for women to value the time they spent with the child on the market.
When you label a girl that's just want to freely use her body (whore/bitch w/e) as she wants, you are committing a patriarchal act as "it is not the normal way for a girl to be". The normal way being exclusive to one man. Being the propriety of the man, and therefore not being definied as a free individual. Insulting girls for their behavior (Slut Shaming anyone?) is patriarchal, sexist (therefore racist). It is also the same scheme when a girl plays video games and she is being labelled "an attention whore" or anything. She is being denied the one fact that a girl could want to play videogames, that she only does that to have the attention of geeks/nerds that are lacking the presence of women. While it may be true in some instances, it clearly reproduces a patriarchal (exclusion of women, remember!) scheme in videogames.
I disagree with your post to such a degree that I find no need to go into it at any level of detail. I talked about competitiveness, which research and simple observation suggests is biologically ingrained in male homo-sapiens, just like it is in many other species and not a socially conditioned behavior. You talk about "slut shaming" ..wtf?
Could you provide a link to the research ? Simple observation is not a valid argument. I did observe only white fucking duck, does it mean there is only white fucking duck on earth, hardly think so.
Still, how do you make such concept of "competitivness" operationalizable when driving a study, especially when leading a biological study ? I would be delighted to read that.
Slut shaming was there to illustrate the fact that women are denied freedom of act and will: this is how the society works: a girl is not allowed to do whatever she wants of her body. When she does so (i.e: sleeping with many men/women etc...) she is being pointed at as a deviant and ensue slut-shaming: "You should be ashamed to sleep with many men/women, to be a slut". Which implicitly means, you should be ashamed to have the liberty to use the body to your will. Which leads to : your body belongs to one person, and that person is not you but your boyfriend/husband (traditionnal couple is a man and a woman whom belong to the man through marriage, both are supposedly exclusive to each others).
And this is a patriarchal act, anchored in a patriarcal system.
For both jobs, more females replied to both job listings than males. Of the applicants to the sports assistant position, 53.5% of those interested were women. The generic job listing was split 80-20 females to male. Here’s the interesting part: for both jobs, when the element of the bonus was added, males were far more likely to actually send in their application than females. Or worded the other way around, females were more likely to pass on the job once they found out part of their pay would be based on their performance versus a co-worker. In the most competitive salary structure, where the base pay was $12 an hour and the bonus $6, List determined that men were 55.5% more likely to apply for the job than women. The conclusion: Women don’t like competition.
How does this relate to the gender gap? List says, anecdotally at least, it appears the industries and positions with the most competitive work environments tend to pay the most.
When it comes to "slut shaming," I don't think you automatically can or necessarily have to attribute that to "patriarchy." It could have some other function -- and often women are the ones who engage in this kind of behavior the most. I'd say it could just as well be a tribal impulse. In a smaller society, "loose" women with many children when there father(s) isn't engaged in providing for the children can become a liability for the tribe itself. And if the male in this instance is from a competing tribe, the mother and child would probably be driven off or worse. This could happen in a "matriarchal" tribe too, patriarchy doesn't necessarily figure into it. This could also explain why an extremely tribal religion like Islam is so sexist.
Relatively speaking, it is very recent that we could have sex for the pleasure of it, with impunity. Of course our biological minds are lagging behind.. it still thinks we're living in caves and being hunted by giant bears after all.
The article is interesting, but it doesn't seem to provide a biological explanation for the competition gap, maybe the scientific article does, but not the Time's one.
What I understand from it, is that women are less likely to risk a smaller pay despite an uncertain bonus than men. This could relate to risk aversion, and while some argue, like you, that this kind of risk aversion might be due to cave age (not everyone agrees at all with the prehistoric conception of men and women) it may be due to other things too.
Once again, it is socially constructed that boys are usually encouraged to take risk and be competitive since their childhood, so it was, so it is (even though less). The competition gap might be induced solely on the base that (1) women (girls) are not taught when child to take risk but to secure. Why ? Maybe because we see them as fragile, or because we vehiculate an image of the strong man and the weak woman (2) women (girls) are not taught to be competitive, because competition is display, display is the public sphere, and the public sphere for very long was a men space. While women remain in the private sphere (household, housewives) and are facing no competition because they are alone
Does it mean they are less competitive, in the sense they have been taught to be, then yes of course it does. In the sense it is biologically embedded in their brain, I really don't think so and once again I feel the article does not provide biological evidence for this.(it is a psychological study, not a biological one, lead by economic professors, not biologists)
It just says there is a gap, they shy away from competition, they don't know where that shyness is from.
Now yes, i was agressive, I explained why in my last post, my apologies.
The notion that men and women are basically the same and that gender is a social construction and not something that arises from biological factors is more or less a by-product of the political climate of the 60s and 70s. There are so many differences between the male and female brain that there has to be more to it than just social conditioning/social expectations.. and certainly the entire field of evolutionary biology and a lot of observable behavior in animals (like our closest relatives) suggest that men and women behave differently according to their biology. Here's an example:
Scientists at Harvard University and Bates College say female chimpanzees appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have offspring of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently. [...] The two researchers say their work adds to a growing body of evidence that human children are probably born with their own ideas of how they want to behave, rather than simply mirroring other girls who play with dolls and boys who play with trucks.
Anybody who knows a few women in their 30s can attest to biology affects them. I know several women who had no interest in children, and no desire to have them, and then suddenly they have an intense need to procreate. Some also describe it not as a logical want or need, but as an extremely physical, bodily sensation.
On April 09 2013 21:08 r.Evo wrote: If those fantasy books play in a universe where men and women live in medieval times and are equal, those storylines are fine. If they play in a parallel universe of ours and try to be historical accurate, they'd be bullshit.
200 or more year old "save the princess"-stories inherently can't be sexist or discriminating because they're historically accurate. In general stereotyping isn't as evil as you might belief. Our world is defined by binary oppositions, it is not wrong to like a woman because she is more feminine or because she's more masculine. Just like it's not wrong to love men or to love women. What is wrong however is to tell people that they should feel bad for preferring one over the other or that it's not normal to prefer one. Stereotyping != discriminating.
Without stereotypes we couldn't call women women, books books or children children.
That's usually a scary trap I believe people who like to say "it's all equal stereotypes are bad" tend to fall into.
So yeah, the biggest issue is, that there's lack of choice, mostly when it comes to women who want to see strong hero characters, in not so "feminine" (goodness, I hate that definition) way, they are simply at loss. Maybe that is partially why people are upset at characters like Sansa in Game of Thrones, because they are always there, while the other one is not, and therefore, the Salsa-type character is preferred, which of course people like me will not like, because we like having the choice & don't want these characters to depict who we are in general..
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you don't read or watch much fantasy or fiction. I can't even begin to count the amount of female characters who are masculine (in the sense that they fight physically, are adventurous, bold, etc.) Probably more than the other side: female characters who are very feminine (would never fight physically, don't want adventure, passive). And universally, the feminine characters are shown as weak (except for their masculine traits) and the masculine characters are shown as strong (because of their masculine traits). The "tough chick" is so overused nowadays that it's one of the biggest cliches in the arts of storytelling. Can you name one character that you've seen in fantasy who is a strong feminine character? Strong in her femininity? I can name hundreds that are strong in their masculinity. Shit, the only real female character in LotR is Eowyn; and what is her storyline? That she wants to be (and succeeds in being) a warrior.
I see nothing wrong with preferring masculine female characters, but don't pretend like they don't exist.
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
How.
By making video games where people save princess'? This isn't 1910, we live in a very equalized world. I think for true egalitarianism we need to accept some hard facts. The hard facts are that yes, we men do have a lot of benefits or "perks" per se that women do not have. However, on the flip side, women also have many benefits/perks in our society that men do not have the luxury of having, this goes double for United States culture which I assume is the primary focus of this discussion.
Let me just give a personal example. I've worked in retail most of my life. I have the most experience with Publix. Want to know where almost every single guy works? In the back. We are cleaning the dishes, we are collecting the plates in terms of the restaurant I worked at (which are even worse in this regard), we are cooking the food in the hot ass kitchen, we are forced to go outside and collect the grocery carts in the hot ass heat, we have to stack the shelves, we have to COLLECT THE FUCKING GROCERY CARTS IN 100 DEGREE WEATHER GOD DAMN, so on and so forth. Want to know where I've never seen a woman assigned to? Those above jobs. Want to know what they do do? They sit in the nice air conditioned front area where the customers are checking out groceries or working the deli area making subs for people, also a very chilled and pleasant place to work. In fact I think the only time I ever saw a male working a cashier counter in the 3 Publix's I've worked at was when it was super busy and one of the suits had to step in and help. No girls were required to ask customers if they'd like help with their groceries, guys were.
Let me make this clear though -- I'm not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY or some shit. I'm being paid a salary and I do the job I'm assigned and I love where I work regardless. I just want to emphasize this isn't a one way street. It's a give and take and let me make it clear I don't feel privileged at all that I have to sign up for the draft and women don't despite now being able to fight in combat or that since 1976 the Department of Justice has shown that men are ten times more likely to be executed than a woman for the same crime, or that until late 2010 British Airways would not allow an unrelated adult to sit next to an unaccompanied child on any flight (note: this policy only applied to males). I don't feel privileged that in Canada fathers can not apply for Federal Child Benefits without getting a signed note from the childs mother or that in Massachusetts the likelihood of a female being imprisoned for not paying child support is 1/8th the rate of that of a male.
Again, not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY. We all have privileges. We need to stop pretending it's a one way street.
EDIT: I feel obligated to put a source list for that last tangent there:
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support - Consumer Income, Issued December 2011, P60-240. Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce,
British Airways:
BA says men cannot sit with lone children. The Times. Smith, Lewis (16 March 2001).
Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? Forbes. Hans, Joshua (14 August 2012)
Your correct. There are examples of men being the victim of prejudice based on sex. There is no argument whether or not globally there are cultures that oppress women. right? There are a few obvious ones.
So then we want to talk about north american culture. If I understand you correctly you are saying that men and women face equal amount of prejudice everyday. I disagree. I feel that the insecurity created by how heavily society weighs a womans worth by her looks, significantly outweighs any prejudice men face. Over archingly, I dont believe its uncomon to have encountred more casual woman bashing than man bashing. Additionally there are not a group of activities which are labeled "manly" which have a negative conotation associated with them such as those associated with "girly". I feel that it is concretely true to say that our society views women with a measureable amount of negative prejudice.
I think trying to quantify who gets marginalized the most when it exists in large amounts on both sides is beyond petty.
I think it exists so much more on one side than the other that using the existance of the other side as justification is a weak arguement.
Nice strawman you set up there, where did you get it from if you don't mind me asking?
I never tried to justify anything. I said there's marginalization on both sides and both sides have clear benefits in our culture/society/legal system. I just listed some in my earlier post and I'd be glad to list them again. I have sources for them too, I'm not pulling these out of my ass. It's not about justification or blame, it's, as Anita put it, for simply acknowledging it's there. We can't progress to an egalitarian society without acknowledging it. Ignoring clear sexism against men because there may be "more" (however you deem that is quantifiable) against women is petty.
That is the purpose of my argument. Feminism is ridiculous because we should strive to remove ALL discrimination, not just discrimination against women.
I awknowledged it. Its funny you used the "Feminism is ridiculous" line this blog is about not using.
So the purpose of your post is don't ignore sexism against men? Im not sure why you responded to me saying cultres oppress women by saying dont forget about the men...
Who do you think is ignoring clear sexism against men?
On April 10 2013 04:41 Fruscainte wrote: I like arguing semantics.
I just don't understand why we can't call it egalitarianism, because that's what we should be striving for. Feminism implies something, at least to me, something far different than egalitarianism does.
Also, egalitarianism doesn't mean making everyone a bunch of equal grey blobs. There are clear differences between the mental, emotional, and physical characteristics of men and women. Let's celebrate that and embrace that and use that to our advantage instead of trying to make our relationship with each other something it isn't. I think we should strive for true legal egalitarianism and true political egalitarianism and them leave it alone. Let the culture define itself.
I think a big problem with letting the culture define itself is that a lot of culture is currently oppressing the rights of women.
How.
By making video games where people save princess'? This isn't 1910, we live in a very equalized world. I think for true egalitarianism we need to accept some hard facts. The hard facts are that yes, we men do have a lot of benefits or "perks" per se that women do not have. However, on the flip side, women also have many benefits/perks in our society that men do not have the luxury of having, this goes double for United States culture which I assume is the primary focus of this discussion.
Let me just give a personal example. I've worked in retail most of my life. I have the most experience with Publix. Want to know where almost every single guy works? In the back. We are cleaning the dishes, we are collecting the plates in terms of the restaurant I worked at (which are even worse in this regard), we are cooking the food in the hot ass kitchen, we are forced to go outside and collect the grocery carts in the hot ass heat, we have to stack the shelves, we have to COLLECT THE FUCKING GROCERY CARTS IN 100 DEGREE WEATHER GOD DAMN, so on and so forth. Want to know where I've never seen a woman assigned to? Those above jobs. Want to know what they do do? They sit in the nice air conditioned front area where the customers are checking out groceries or working the deli area making subs for people, also a very chilled and pleasant place to work. In fact I think the only time I ever saw a male working a cashier counter in the 3 Publix's I've worked at was when it was super busy and one of the suits had to step in and help. No girls were required to ask customers if they'd like help with their groceries, guys were.
Let me make this clear though -- I'm not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY or some shit. I'm being paid a salary and I do the job I'm assigned and I love where I work regardless. I just want to emphasize this isn't a one way street. It's a give and take and let me make it clear I don't feel privileged at all that I have to sign up for the draft and women don't despite now being able to fight in combat or that since 1976 the Department of Justice has shown that men are ten times more likely to be executed than a woman for the same crime, or that until late 2010 British Airways would not allow an unrelated adult to sit next to an unaccompanied child on any flight (note: this policy only applied to males). I don't feel privileged that in Canada fathers can not apply for Federal Child Benefits without getting a signed note from the childs mother or that in Massachusetts the likelihood of a female being imprisoned for not paying child support is 1/8th the rate of that of a male.
Again, not saying FUCK THE MATRIARCHY. We all have privileges. We need to stop pretending it's a one way street.
EDIT: I feel obligated to put a source list for that last tangent there:
Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support - Consumer Income, Issued December 2011, P60-240. Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce,
British Airways:
BA says men cannot sit with lone children. The Times. Smith, Lewis (16 March 2001).
Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? Forbes. Hans, Joshua (14 August 2012)
Your correct. There are examples of men being the victim of prejudice based on sex. There is no argument whether or not globally there are cultures that oppress women. right? There are a few obvious ones.
So then we want to talk about north american culture. If I understand you correctly you are saying that men and women face equal amount of prejudice everyday. I disagree. I feel that the insecurity created by how heavily society weighs a womans worth by her looks, significantly outweighs any prejudice men face. Over archingly, I dont believe its uncomon to have encountred more casual woman bashing than man bashing. Additionally there are not a group of activities which are labeled "manly" which have a negative conotation associated with them such as those associated with "girly". I feel that it is concretely true to say that our society views women with a measureable amount of negative prejudice.
I think trying to quantify who gets marginalized the most when it exists in large amounts on both sides is beyond petty.
I think it exists so much more on one side than the other that using the existance of the other side as justification is a weak arguement.
justification
Nice strawman you set up there, where did you get it from if you don't mind me asking?
I never tried to justify anything. I said there's marginalization on both sides and both sides have clear benefits in our culture/society/legal system. I just listed some in my earlier post and I'd be glad to list them again. I have sources for them too, I'm not pulling these out of my ass. It's not about justification or blame, it's, as Anita put it, for simply acknowledging it's there. We can't progress to an egalitarian society without acknowledging it. Ignoring clear sexism against men because there may be "more" (however you deem that is quantifiable) against women is petty.
That is the purpose of my argument. Feminism is ridiculous because we should strive to remove ALL discrimination, not just discrimination against women.
Im not sure why you responded to me saying cultres oppress women by saying dont forget about the men...
I'm not sure why you responded to my post about Western culture and sexism by talking about Middle Eastern countries as if I don't recognize that it exists. Of course there's a legitimate need for increased women rights in countries where they get battery acid thrown in their eyes for the "crime" of learning to read. I made out an entire post dedicated to the discussion of marginalization of men in Western culture and why equality isn't a one way street with a specific anecdotal example and legal examples ranging from the UK, to the U.S., to Canada. Yet you respond with a tangent about how there's discrimination elsewhere in the world.
I understand that. I think it's a given that places like Iran and shit need to have a wake up call. Hence why I have clearly stated, multiple times, we need to push for complete and utter global equality in the political and legal spheres. However, going on rants about how the "patriarchy" because of cultural tropes such as the damsel in distress in Mario or some shit is pedantic at best. Which is what I was originally posting about. That in terms of the Western world, in terms of legal/political/etc. discrimination, both men AND women are getting short ends of the stick in their own ways and we need to stop looking at this as a "feminism" or "patriarchy" issue but an "equality" issue, and to do that, we need to look at discrimination on both sides.
And yes, I do find the notion of feminism ridiculous which this blog is about not using. I respectfully disagree with OP.
EPT
