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On June 21 2013 07:50 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 03:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Most rape victims, in the west, are raped by people they know.
This statistic shows that when you zoom out from the west and include the rest of the world, 80% of the rapes comes from people women know.
That tells me that women aren't stupid and are more often raped by people they trust instead of some boogieman out there in the world who hides in back alleys waiting for stupid horror movie bimbos to walk to them. While I haven't clicked on your link and I kinda wanted the discussion to get back on point, it clearly isn't. When people talk about rape, they clearly don't have spousal rape in mind (although it is apparently a far larger problem than the kind of rape that they do have in mind). When you ask a girl on the street "are you afraid of being raped?" and she answers yes, I will bet you anything you like that if you then ask her "are you afraid of being raped by your boyfriend/husband?", the answer will be no in almost all cases, statistics about who is actually more likely to rape her be damned. So when people talk about rape, they think about a subset of rape cases, namely those committed by strangers. I know I do. Spousal rape is a specific case of domestic violence, imho, and treated differently (not taken more lightly, but it is clearly a different class of crimes).
Because the west is a culture that turns a blind eye to the majority of rape that happens in its region. There's that rape culture again.
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On June 21 2013 07:52 Reason wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 07:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 21 2013 07:42 Reason wrote:On June 21 2013 07:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 21 2013 07:24 Reason wrote:
What you've failed to realise with all this statistic quoting and redirection to spousal rape is that there's a very good reason people are warned about walking home late at night on their own; they're making themselves vulnerable.
I walk home alone late at night all the time and I accept the fact that if something happens very likely nobody will be there to help or even see it happen. I definitely feel a lot less safe then compared to walking down the main street on a sunny day, though thankfully I've made it home every time so far. Sometimes people don't.
Would you be happy with your young daughter walking home alone late at night? Would you use your statistics to comfort yourself knowing that it's more likely that you'll rape your own child when she gets home than some boogeyman waiting in a bush for her to come past? I think you'd still worry, but maybe I'm just afraid of the dark.
If you are even remotely realistic about this you will recognise immediately why police advise women to walk home with a friend or get a taxi rather than walk home alone; not because they don't understand rape statistics but because they understand the risks involved and that precautions are advisable. There's a good chance you'll be mugged. A good chance you'll be robbed at gun point. I've even had a friend who was robbed at gun point down the street from where he was living (he was dropping mail off at the time). I would definitely tell my daughter not to walk alone at night. But not because of rape. I'd advise her to keep sharp and stay with friends because there are dangerous people out there and I would tell my son to do the same thing. I do not believe in that rape monster in the darkness who's only there to rape young girls. I do believe in thieves, I believe in pickpockets. I believe in drunk drivers who might swerve to the side when tired at night, I believe in gang violence that spreads too far (I've had two friends shot in a shoot out, one survived, one died) But no, statistics tells me that I should be more worried about her male friends wanting to hang out alone with her too often than I am in the boogieman. I was just reading in the paper the other day about some woman in Glasgow who got raped walking home alone late at night. It's not the first time I've read such a story and it won't be the last. I don't really care if you accept the danger or not, it's present and warning against it isn't victim blaming. Not sure what you're really trying to prove here with your ignorant attitude, it doesn't matter if your getting shanked for your wallet, beaten up for your hairstyle or violently raped, warning any victim against any possible risk does not constitute victim blaming. What you've done there is just listed a bunch of stuff that happens and acknowledged that you would tell your daughter not to walk home alone at night for those reasons, but you're refusing to acknowledge that rape should be added to that list. It's actually irrelevant, you've admitted that it's obviously the right thing to do and that's all that's in question here. Statistics don't matter at all here, I don't know why you keep mentioning them as they've got nothing to do with anything that's been mentioned. I would not tell my daughter to not go out at night or she'll be raped. I will tell my kids that going out alone is dangerous. I will tell my male friends, and my female friends. The warning is not for rape, the warning is for gang violence, extremist victims of poverty, its a warning of a desperate lower class who can only lash out at the middle class. But I will not tell them that horror movies are real and that the only thing people want is to fuck them, that when a starving homeless man shows up with a knife, that he is only doing it to get into her pants because that's apparently the only thing she can offer to her attackers--because it isn't. I will not raise her to be defined by who she fucks and when she fucks. You sound like you're disagreeing with me on the finer details, but all I'm talking about is the fundamental principle, which we clearly agree upon. Personally, I would tell my daughter not to go out at night because it's dangerous. I'm not going to go into gory details because the specific reasons why she should avoid doing so are irrelevant.
And hence why it is irrelevant to tell them to be afraid of rape or to question why they were walking home at night after they are raped. hence why it is completely retarded to walk up to a woman and tell her, be careful when walking home tonight, or you'll be raped.
Being raped and walking home at night is unrelated because the dangers of walking home at night does not hinge on rape.
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On June 21 2013 07:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 07:52 Reason wrote:On June 21 2013 07:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 21 2013 07:42 Reason wrote:On June 21 2013 07:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 21 2013 07:24 Reason wrote:
What you've failed to realise with all this statistic quoting and redirection to spousal rape is that there's a very good reason people are warned about walking home late at night on their own; they're making themselves vulnerable.
I walk home alone late at night all the time and I accept the fact that if something happens very likely nobody will be there to help or even see it happen. I definitely feel a lot less safe then compared to walking down the main street on a sunny day, though thankfully I've made it home every time so far. Sometimes people don't.
Would you be happy with your young daughter walking home alone late at night? Would you use your statistics to comfort yourself knowing that it's more likely that you'll rape your own child when she gets home than some boogeyman waiting in a bush for her to come past? I think you'd still worry, but maybe I'm just afraid of the dark.
If you are even remotely realistic about this you will recognise immediately why police advise women to walk home with a friend or get a taxi rather than walk home alone; not because they don't understand rape statistics but because they understand the risks involved and that precautions are advisable. There's a good chance you'll be mugged. A good chance you'll be robbed at gun point. I've even had a friend who was robbed at gun point down the street from where he was living (he was dropping mail off at the time). I would definitely tell my daughter not to walk alone at night. But not because of rape. I'd advise her to keep sharp and stay with friends because there are dangerous people out there and I would tell my son to do the same thing. I do not believe in that rape monster in the darkness who's only there to rape young girls. I do believe in thieves, I believe in pickpockets. I believe in drunk drivers who might swerve to the side when tired at night, I believe in gang violence that spreads too far (I've had two friends shot in a shoot out, one survived, one died) But no, statistics tells me that I should be more worried about her male friends wanting to hang out alone with her too often than I am in the boogieman. I was just reading in the paper the other day about some woman in Glasgow who got raped walking home alone late at night. It's not the first time I've read such a story and it won't be the last. I don't really care if you accept the danger or not, it's present and warning against it isn't victim blaming. Not sure what you're really trying to prove here with your ignorant attitude, it doesn't matter if your getting shanked for your wallet, beaten up for your hairstyle or violently raped, warning any victim against any possible risk does not constitute victim blaming. What you've done there is just listed a bunch of stuff that happens and acknowledged that you would tell your daughter not to walk home alone at night for those reasons, but you're refusing to acknowledge that rape should be added to that list. It's actually irrelevant, you've admitted that it's obviously the right thing to do and that's all that's in question here. Statistics don't matter at all here, I don't know why you keep mentioning them as they've got nothing to do with anything that's been mentioned. I would not tell my daughter to not go out at night or she'll be raped. I will tell my kids that going out alone is dangerous. I will tell my male friends, and my female friends. The warning is not for rape, the warning is for gang violence, extremist victims of poverty, its a warning of a desperate lower class who can only lash out at the middle class. But I will not tell them that horror movies are real and that the only thing people want is to fuck them, that when a starving homeless man shows up with a knife, that he is only doing it to get into her pants because that's apparently the only thing she can offer to her attackers--because it isn't. I will not raise her to be defined by who she fucks and when she fucks. You sound like you're disagreeing with me on the finer details, but all I'm talking about is the fundamental principle, which we clearly agree upon. Personally, I would tell my daughter not to go out at night because it's dangerous. I'm not going to go into gory details because the specific reasons why she should avoid doing so are irrelevant. And hence why it is irrelevant to tell them to be afraid of rape or to question why they were walking home at night after they are raped. hence why it is completely retarded to walk up to a woman and tell her, be careful when walking home tonight, or you'll be raped. Being raped and walking home at night is unrelated because the dangers of walking home at night does not hinge on rape.
Okay you're stuck on the whole refusing to believe you're more at risk (within the subset Acrofales is referring to) of rape when you're alone at night than during the day with loads of people around. Until you educate this misconception out of your head there's nothing more to be said.
As I edited previous after you quoted: You may be more likely to have an accident at home than anywhere else but it doesn't mean health and safety rules/warnings aren't rammed down your throat constantly, and rightfully so, the statistical deviation between likelihood and/or severity of injury are not taken into account. It's simply warning: danger!
If you ask a guy what he's afraid of walking home, it's getting robbed or beaten up, either could result in death.
Ask a girl and she will tell you all of those things, but also add rape to the list. It doesn't matter if she's 10 or even 100 times more likely to be robbed/beaten up than raped, it's still a very serious concern considering the consequences if it actually happens and definitely one of the reasons to be careful alone at night.
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On June 20 2013 10:30 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 09:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 06:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 06:08 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 06:04 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 05:52 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 05:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 05:29 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 05:17 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 05:12 sunprince wrote:
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Strawman more bro. Still, I'll entertain your bullshit argument:
"You're not telling them to lock their doors, you're just telling them they'll get robbed if they practice free will".
Can you spot the logic error with the above? Should someone not lock their door and be robbed, most people would say "well, you're an idiot for not locking your door". What they don't usually say is "you deserved to be robbed for not locking your door".
Continuing to argue that offering advice to limit one's risk of being victim is something to be discouraged because it's sometimes unpleasant, and labeling it something as negatively-charged as victim-blaming, will discourage people from not managing their risks properly, and actually does a disservice to people, putting them more at risk of being a victim out of ignorance. It's illegal to rob someone whether their door is locked or not... them leaving it unlocked =/= mean they're asking to be robbed. Many neighborhoods don't lock their doors. Many people have accidentally left their doors unlocked. Many lock their doors, but not their windows. None of them ask to be robbed/raped. But it's funny that you think they are. Nowhere did I say they were asked to be robbed, and nowhere did I say that it was okay to rob them. Saying that they could improve their chances of staying safe is not the same thing as excusing the criminal or blaming the victim. Apparently, all you can do is falsely accuse others of saying things they didn't, instead of actually owning up to the fact that you have no argument. When you are robbed/rape the state of the how locked/dressed you are has no bearing on whether or not you were robbed/raped. It is irrelevant to the person you are talking to whether what state their outfit/locks were during the time of the attack. You asking them that is placing burden on the event on that one aspect of the circumstance instead of the totality of the circumstance. People don't rob *because* doors are unlocked much like people don't rape *because* the dress was short. Women dress in short skirts all the time--not everyone is raped. Telling the victim that she shouldn't do what she likes doing does not address the issue in any way shape or form. Not everyone who leaves their car doors unlocked is robbed, but that doesn't mean leaving your car door unlocked is a good idea. You're deliberately ignoring the concept of probability in order to pretend as if <100% safety = 0% safety. On June 20 2013 05:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:
For example, if you got robbed and I asked you "do you live in east side oakland CA?" (an area of higher crime rate than the rest of oakland CA) You would respond that it doesn't fucking matter where you live--you shouldn't have been robbed and asking you that question is completely nonsense.
Telling someone to stop being themselves or else something bad happens to them is not, as you call it, "giving helpful advice." It is showing that in the subject of Rape/Robbery, you'd rather talk about what the victim should fix instead of what society should fix. Hence why it is called Victim Blaming. You're reshaping the contexts to suit your argument. Nowhere is it implied by any of my posts that you should go around telling robbery victims that they should live elsewhere. However, this doesn't change the fact that it is objectively true that living in a better neighborhood reduces your chances of being robbed. Stating this objective fact is not victim blaming. Reshaping the context? Robbery was your fucking example! When someone has just been robbed/raped asking them about how locked their door is means absolutely shit. When someone who has not been robbed/raped yet lives in a neighborhood where everyone leaves their door locked/dresses nice for the club--do you walk up to them and tell them to stop doing what they are doing or else someone will rob/rape them? You're reshaping the context of how the information is stated. When you take an objective fact and shove it in the face of someone who was just victimized, then of course a reasonable person may get the impression you are blaming them. However, that's not what we're talking about here. People generally say that you should lock your doors. They sometimes give cautionary advice to others to learn from someone else's mistakes. They don't generally go around rubbing it in the faces of recent robbery victims. On June 20 2013 06:04 Thieving Magpie wrote:
At no point is it relevant before they are robbed/raped and at no point is it relevant after they are robbed/raped. TIL that locking your doors does not decrease your chances of being robbed. /sarcasm There is no reshaping involved. If a community doesn't lock their doors--it's their business. If a person locks his door--it's his business. I was sick for two weeks once, never left the apartment. You know how often people tried opening the door? 0. You know why? Because, for the most part, you're not going to get robbed by whether or not you lock the door. I do tell people what I practice. Such as "I don't like leaving *my* door unlocked because I don't trust *this* neighborhood that *I* am living in and *if* you move into *this* neighborhood I would suggest you do the same as *me*." Could you imagine telling a girl that? "I never wear short skirts, every time I do I get raped. Oh right! I don't actually wear short skirts because I'm a man, I simply assume that if someone is wearing a short skirt that they'll be raped without realizing that women have been raped while wearing pants but I'm choosing to ignore that fact because I'm a male and I assume skirt equals fuck me. but don't worry, at least I'm not victim blaming." Your entire line of reasoning is based on ignoring that increased safety ≠ perfect safety. Just because locking your car door does not perfect theft 100% of the time, does not mean locking your car door is useless. You are deliberately conflating the two. Locking your car door decreases the odds of theft. Do you disagree, yes or no? I have no idea how this discussion became so incredibly stupid, but I blame you. Firstly, if you're arguing that girls shouldn't wear short skirts because it increases the chance of being raped, I will say: [citation needed]. However, even if it is does, I fail to see how it is relevant. Rape is illegal, regardless of what clothes the girl was wearing when she was raped. Just as theft is illegal regardless of whether you locked your door or not. So I don't see how this is in any way relevant to the discussion AT ALL?
Blame me as much as you like, but the victim blaming line of discussion was begun by Thieving Magpie, who made a false accusation of victim blaming as a strawman to hide from discussing the real issues.
I'm not arguing that girls shouldn't wear short skirts, since I'm well aware that this has little to no effect on rape victimization rates. However, I am arguing that feminists like Thieving Magpie are quick to scream "victim blaming" when no such thing is taking place.
And you're right, it's not relevant, so I have no idea why Thieving Magpie brought it up except as a personal attack and thought-terminating cliché.
On June 21 2013 00:05 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 23:33 NovaTheFeared wrote:
I agree of course, but it does seem to bolster sunprince's point. If it wasn't that women weren't capable of social change, what was it that prevented them from doing so? Sunprince suggests choice. What do you suggest? Matrilineal societies were extremely rare, generally short-lived, and, as far as I can recall from history, pretty isolated. They are obviously exceptions rather than the rule, and it's worth noting that no major, long-lasting civilization was matrilineal.
Quite possibly because matrilineal societies tend to be outcompeted when pitted against patrilineal societies. Whether you agree or disagree with the arrangement, men as disposable breadwinners/soldiers/cannon fodder + women as birth machines/homemakers is simply a more efficient means of both outcompeting and winning wars than the other way around. This is also why the arrangement is no longer necessary today, because (a) technology has utterly changed the equation, and (b) the world is a much safer, less competitive place.
On June 21 2013 04:17 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 04:09 ComaDose wrote:On June 21 2013 04:05 Hryul wrote:On June 21 2013 03:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Most rape victims, in the west, are raped by people they know.
This statistic shows that when you zoom out from the west and include the rest of the world, 80% of the rapes comes from people women know.
That tells me that women aren't stupid and are more often raped by people they trust instead of some boogieman out there in the world who hides in back alleys waiting for stupid horror movie bimbos to walk to them. Now this is the problem: in some countries women opting for divorce can't cite "rape" as divorce reason and are stigmatized for divorce. This leads to a situation where women can't realistically avoid the rape because they are legally tied to the rapist. And as your number originally came from the discussion of "how women can avoid being raped - don't walk down a dark road" this shows nothing. well other than the fact that women are still being unwillfully oppressed. Well, sunprince would disagree with that.
I would say citation needed, because people are very quick to scream "oppression" while manipulating the definition, exaggerating or flat-out making up "facts", and elevating feelings over reality.
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Backtracking on what you're saying 
I love these sunprince-isms
Let's go back to when I joined this discussion.
On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 04:31 kwizach wrote:
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The rest of your post contained absolutely zero evidence to support the idea that women willingly chose to subject themselves to having less rights and liberties. Zero. Hence the "citation needed". Arguing that it "seems logic" from your point of view does not make it true. In fact, both history and the contemporary world are full of examples of the exact opposite.
Your last paragraph is you essentially combining a strawman and a false premise. First, the strawman: arguing that women have historically not been the holders of the social power and authority that would have been needed to collectively change the very social structures that prevented them from being the equals of men in terms of rights and liberties (and obligations) certainly does not equate to objectifying them. Despite several examples of struggles of African Americans towards that end, slavery was not abolished in the United States until the Civil War - and it took half of the country fighting for that to achieve it. Does this mean we objectify African Americans? No, it means we recognize that, in their struggle for emancipation and recognition as perfectly equal human beings, alone they did not have sufficient power/authority to achieve the said change as early as they would have wanted (...from the start). The historical treatment of women does not even remotely approach the historical treatment of African-Americans. And yet, in spite of that, African-Americans achieved emancipation in a few centuries despite being a small minority of the population. Nobody tried to argue that the historical treatment of women was equal to the historical treatment of African Americans. The analogy was there to highlight that pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group. The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data. What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
Your argument rests on the assumption that women are so weak and helpless that they were unable to prevail in far easier conditions despite having millennia to do so and being slightly more than half of the population. I refuse to buy this misogynistic assumption. I pointed out why that was a strawman and I responded to it. Try answering my argument instead of repeating yours. On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 04:31 kwizach wrote:
Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level. My argument is that you consider women non-agents because they weren't actually restrained in the choices they made, they were easily capable of subverting and overthrowing the social order but chose not to do so. You are again repeating your initial argument, which I debunked, instead of addressing my (lengthy) reply to you (you're in particular leaving out the second part of my argument in quoting me). Citation also still needed for your claim that women "chose" not to overthrow the social order. The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 04:31 kwizach wrote:For example, when you write that women's suffrage came about when "a majority of women wanted it" (emphasis mine), you're conveniently not mentioning that the women which already wanted to vote previously could not - i.e. they could not translate their choice of wanting to vote into actual votes.) Actually, I was referring to polls here. When the women's suffrage movement began, many of the people opposed to it were women. The biggest battle for women was convincing other women, while men stood by to accept whatever they decided. As soon as a majority of women supported women's suffrage, lawmakers quickly enacted it into law. Compare this with the violent resistance against black suffrage. Yes, I know you were referring to polls. That remark was there to point out that you are only speaking of choice at the aggregate level for women, instead of the choice granted to women as individuals. Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified.
Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression.
"If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt."
Or, in more common terms
"They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it."
You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up.
Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt."
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On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The historical treatment of women does not even remotely approach the historical treatment of African-Americans. And yet, in spite of that, African-Americans achieved emancipation in a few centuries despite being a small minority of the population. Nobody tried to argue that the historical treatment of women was equal to the historical treatment of African Americans. The analogy was there to highlight that pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group. The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data. What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
Your argument rests on the assumption that women are so weak and helpless that they were unable to prevail in far easier conditions despite having millennia to do so and being slightly more than half of the population. I refuse to buy this misogynistic assumption. I pointed out why that was a strawman and I responded to it. Try answering my argument instead of repeating yours. On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
My argument is that you consider women non-agents because they weren't actually restrained in the choices they made, they were easily capable of subverting and overthrowing the social order but chose not to do so. You are again repeating your initial argument, which I debunked, instead of addressing my (lengthy) reply to you (you're in particular leaving out the second part of my argument in quoting me). Citation also still needed for your claim that women "chose" not to overthrow the social order. The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
Actually, I was referring to polls here. When the women's suffrage movement began, many of the people opposed to it were women. The biggest battle for women was convincing other women, while men stood by to accept whatever they decided. As soon as a majority of women supported women's suffrage, lawmakers quickly enacted it into law. Compare this with the violent resistance against black suffrage. Yes, I know you were referring to polls. That remark was there to point out that you are only speaking of choice at the aggregate level for women, instead of the choice granted to women as individuals. Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt."
While I intuitively disagree with what Sunprince claims, the question is really whether someone can be said to be oppressed if they don't even realize they are being oppressed and are leading an otherwise healthy (relatively) and happy life.
And does it, by any standard you choose, matter?
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On June 21 2013 08:42 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Nobody tried to argue that the historical treatment of women was equal to the historical treatment of African Americans. The analogy was there to highlight that pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group. The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data. What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
I pointed out why that was a strawman and I responded to it. Try answering my argument instead of repeating yours.
[quote]
You are again repeating your initial argument, which I debunked, instead of addressing my (lengthy) reply to you (you're in particular leaving out the second part of my argument in quoting me). Citation also still needed for your claim that women "chose" not to overthrow the social order. The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Yes, I know you were referring to polls. That remark was there to point out that you are only speaking of choice at the aggregate level for women, instead of the choice granted to women as individuals. Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." While I intuitively disagree with what Sunprince claims, the question is really whether someone can be said to be oppressed if they don't even realize they are being oppressed and are leading an otherwise healthy (relatively) and happy life. And does it, by any standard you choose, matter?
The fact that women chose to perpetuate and reinforce (primarily via shaming) every society rather than revolting despite being capable, is just one of my arguments that they were not oppressed in the way that feminists often claim.
I've additionally argued that objective metrics do not in fact corroborate the notion that they were oppressed. If we look at oppressed groups such as slaves in any culture, the slaves are horribly disadvantaged on every single metric for quality of life. Yet, when we compare women to men of the same class in every society present and historical, women do better in terms of life expectancy, treatment by the legal system, crime victimization rates, workplace death rate (in societies where women worked, of course), suicide rate, homelessness rates, government/charitable aid, and conscription rates. If "oppression" is doing better on every single quality of life metric, then sign me up.
My third argument is that the sociology of so-called patriarchies is inaccurately represented by feminist depictions. To illustrate how men can enjoy higher status while women have easier and less burdensome lives, let's look at an extreme case of a severely patriarchal society: the Inuit. Inuit men not only brought in more than 95% of all the food, but did so with horrendous rates of injury and premature death. Do you think those women would have been better off--you know, less oppressed--by being seen as equal to their men--equal and therefore in no need of men's provision or protection? Has is ever occurred to feminists that the most extreme patriarchies occur in the harshest living conditions? That patriarchy isn't merely a way to force women to become slaves who provide child-bearing and domestic services to men, but also a way to force men to become slaves who provide provisioning, protection, and child support to women?
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On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The historical treatment of women does not even remotely approach the historical treatment of African-Americans. And yet, in spite of that, African-Americans achieved emancipation in a few centuries despite being a small minority of the population. Nobody tried to argue that the historical treatment of women was equal to the historical treatment of African Americans. The analogy was there to highlight that pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group. The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data. What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
Your argument rests on the assumption that women are so weak and helpless that they were unable to prevail in far easier conditions despite having millennia to do so and being slightly more than half of the population. I refuse to buy this misogynistic assumption. I pointed out why that was a strawman and I responded to it. Try answering my argument instead of repeating yours. On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
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My argument is that you consider women non-agents because they weren't actually restrained in the choices they made, they were easily capable of subverting and overthrowing the social order but chose not to do so. You are again repeating your initial argument, which I debunked, instead of addressing my (lengthy) reply to you (you're in particular leaving out the second part of my argument in quoting me). Citation also still needed for your claim that women "chose" not to overthrow the social order. The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 05:10 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
Actually, I was referring to polls here. When the women's suffrage movement began, many of the people opposed to it were women. The biggest battle for women was convincing other women, while men stood by to accept whatever they decided. As soon as a majority of women supported women's suffrage, lawmakers quickly enacted it into law. Compare this with the violent resistance against black suffrage. Yes, I know you were referring to polls. That remark was there to point out that you are only speaking of choice at the aggregate level for women, instead of the choice granted to women as individuals. Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt."
My argument is that women were not oppressed. Your claim of "victim blaming" is strawmanning my argument as "women are to blame for being oppressed". Women were not oppressed ≠ women are to blame for being oppressed.
In other words, you made a false accusation using a strawman, which is exactly as I described. Your actions in this thread are perfect proof of my point that the false accusation of "victim blaming" is often thrown around by feminists as a thought-terminating cliché to censor and derail any opinions they disagree with.
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On June 21 2013 08:42 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Nobody tried to argue that the historical treatment of women was equal to the historical treatment of African Americans. The analogy was there to highlight that pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group. The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data. What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
I pointed out why that was a strawman and I responded to it. Try answering my argument instead of repeating yours.
[quote]
You are again repeating your initial argument, which I debunked, instead of addressing my (lengthy) reply to you (you're in particular leaving out the second part of my argument in quoting me). Citation also still needed for your claim that women "chose" not to overthrow the social order. The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Yes, I know you were referring to polls. That remark was there to point out that you are only speaking of choice at the aggregate level for women, instead of the choice granted to women as individuals. Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." While I intuitively disagree with what Sunprince claims, the question is really whether someone can be said to be oppressed if they don't even realize they are being oppressed and are leading an otherwise healthy (relatively) and happy life. And does it, by any standard you choose, matter?
I'm of the belief that oppression is oppression. People being unaware of the oppression does not make it any less oppression.
For example, the steubenville case where the girl was passed out and only after the fact did she realize she was raped.
Does the fact that she didn't resist mean that she was okay with it? Of course not, because rape is rape and oppression is oppression.
He also enjoyed using relative comparisons to falsify things.
"Slaves were whipped, women were not, so that means women were not oppressed!"
He then used dishonest comparisons to suggests causative correlations.
Most of his examples had a suggestion that it was a male or masculine revolution. Slaves, disenfranchised, etc... when the truth is that it was a hand and hand effort between men and women of those social groups. It wasn't male slaves who revolted, it was slaves (both sexes) who revolted. It wasn't male jews that were burned in the camps, it was both. Etc...
The problem with his examples was that his proof that women don't resist is that racial and social groups resisted--and he made the assumption that those revolts were purely male.
Women have been part of revolts and revolutions all the time. The reason there hasn't been a "women's revolution" is because women is not a singular race of beings with a networked zeitgheist. Each group does what they can to help their own local problems. Some groups are more liberal than others, some more conservative than others. Some suffer more than others, some are more complicit than others.
As we as a planet become more globalized, previously broken up social groups become more and more connected to each other. Better able to connect, better able to communicate. This recent trend of globalization creates the illusion that women have always been one voice when that could be further from the truth. 12th century peasants in spain did not know the plights of 12th century peasants in japan--and vice versa. How could "women" as a group revolt when they did not realize that they were even a group.
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On June 16 2013 01:52 cloneThorN wrote:
IMO, both are no-brainers with the same answer: Yes, they are legitimate exceptions.
Rape obvious, as it's againstthe womans will, and the child will live a life hating his father while at the same time riscs being hated by his/hers mother.
Incests is only bad for the child, however the child riscs severe defects, both mental and physical.
Getting a child through incest is no more humane, than beating a newborn baby half to death.
Pertaining to rape, the child's death from abortion/prevention of life through conscious action is against his/her will as well.
If there is a risk that the child's life will be bad for any reason, we shouldn't resort to such drastic measures before we are sure. We should wait for him/her to grow up until we can see for ourselves that the child will have a bad enough life (by our standards) to merit ending his life.
Alternatively, we can ask the child himself (when he can speak) if he'd like to die because of his home life.
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On June 21 2013 09:06 sunprince wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Nobody tried to argue that the historical treatment of women was equal to the historical treatment of African Americans. The analogy was there to highlight that pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group. The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data. What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
I pointed out why that was a strawman and I responded to it. Try answering my argument instead of repeating yours.
[quote]
You are again repeating your initial argument, which I debunked, instead of addressing my (lengthy) reply to you (you're in particular leaving out the second part of my argument in quoting me). Citation also still needed for your claim that women "chose" not to overthrow the social order. The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Yes, I know you were referring to polls. That remark was there to point out that you are only speaking of choice at the aggregate level for women, instead of the choice granted to women as individuals. Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." My argument is that women were not oppressed. Your claim of "victim blaming" is strawmanning my argument as "women are to blame for being oppressed". Women were not oppressed ≠ women are to blame for being oppressed. In other words, you made a false accusation using a strawman, which is exactly as I described. Your actions in this thread are perfect proof of my point that the false accusation of "victim blaming" is often thrown around by feminists as a thought-terminating cliché to censor and derail any opinions they disagree with.
Let me quote you your conclusion since you seem to have a hard time remembering.
"If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. "
Which you feel, as you said,
"My argument is that women were not oppressed"
In other words...
"women chose not to revolt" equals "women were not oppressed"
If you don't hear no then they must mean yes right? That's what sickening about the conclusion you wrote.
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On June 21 2013 09:24 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 08:42 Acrofales wrote:On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data.
What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." While I intuitively disagree with what Sunprince claims, the question is really whether someone can be said to be oppressed if they don't even realize they are being oppressed and are leading an otherwise healthy (relatively) and happy life. And does it, by any standard you choose, matter? I'm of the belief that oppression is oppression. People being unaware of the oppression does not make it any less oppression.
First of all, how do you define oppression? How do you objectively measure it?
You're making an affirmative claim that women were oppressed, that means the burden is on you to both define what you mean, and provide evidence for your case.
The fact that you're constantly going off in odd directions suggests to me that we may by using differing definitions, so please provide your definition so we effectively discuss the topic.
On June 21 2013 09:24 Thieving Magpie wrote:
He also enjoyed using relative comparisons to falsify things.
"Slaves were whipped, women were not, so that means women were not oppressed!"
He then used dishonest comparisons to suggests causative correlations.
More strawmanning. I've specified that women have done better than men of the same class in virtually all quality of life metrics in virtually all societies. My argument is that doing better in life is not what is commonly understood to be 'oppression".
On June 21 2013 09:24 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Most of his examples had a suggestion that it was a male or masculine revolution. Slaves, disenfranchised, etc... when the truth is that it was a hand and hand effort between men and women of those social groups. It wasn't male slaves who revolted, it was slaves (both sexes) who revolted. It wasn't male jews that were burned in the camps, it was both. Etc...
The problem with his examples was that his proof that women don't resist is that racial and social groups resisted--and he made the assumption that those revolts were purely male.
Women have been part of revolts and revolutions all the time. The reason there hasn't been a "women's revolution" is because women is not a singular race of beings with a networked zeitgheist. Each group does what they can to help their own local problems. Some groups are more liberal than others, some more conservative than others. Some suffer more than others, some are more complicit than others.
As we as a planet become more globalized, previously broken up social groups become more and more connected to each other. Better able to connect, better able to communicate. This recent trend of globalization creates the illusion that women have always been one voice when that could be further from the truth. 12th century peasants in spain did not know the plights of 12th century peasants in japan--and vice versa. How could "women" as a group revolt when they did not realize that they were even a group.
My argument is not that women have not been a part of revolutions. My argument is that women have not revolted against gender roles until very recently, until they stood to actually gain from revolting. My argument is that gender roles historically benefitted women, so they reinforced and perpetuated them until technological developments changed life sufficiently that it was actually preferable to change their roles.
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On June 21 2013 09:27 Excalibursin-X wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2013 01:52 cloneThorN wrote:
IMO, both are no-brainers with the same answer: Yes, they are legitimate exceptions.
Rape obvious, as it's againstthe womans will, and the child will live a life hating his father while at the same time riscs being hated by his/hers mother.
Incests is only bad for the child, however the child riscs severe defects, both mental and physical.
Getting a child through incest is no more humane, than beating a newborn baby half to death. Pertaining to rape, the child's death from abortion/prevention of life through conscious action is against his/her will as well. If there is a risk that the child's life will be bad for any reason, we shouldn't resort to such drastic measures before we are sure. We should wait for him/her to grow up until we can see for ourselves that the child will have a bad enough life (by our standards) to merit ending his life. Alternatively, we can ask the child himself (when he can speak) if he'd like to die because of his home life.
You have got be trolling or being sarcastic or something. lol
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On June 21 2013 09:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 09:06 sunprince wrote:On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data.
What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." My argument is that women were not oppressed. Your claim of "victim blaming" is strawmanning my argument as "women are to blame for being oppressed". Women were not oppressed ≠ women are to blame for being oppressed. In other words, you made a false accusation using a strawman, which is exactly as I described. Your actions in this thread are perfect proof of my point that the false accusation of "victim blaming" is often thrown around by feminists as a thought-terminating cliché to censor and derail any opinions they disagree with. Let me quote you your conclusion since you seem to have a hard time remembering. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. " Which you feel, as you said, "My argument is that women were not oppressed" In other words... "women chose not to revolt" equals "women were not oppressed" If you don't hear no then they must mean yes right? That's what sickening about the conclusion you wrote.
I've actually given multiple arguments for why women were not oppressed. The specific one of "women did not revolt against gender roles" is to point out that it is the tendency of virtually all oppressed groups to eventually revolt, and that women did not follow that tendency. In other words, this is one indicator (among others) that they should not be categorized along with oppressed groups.
Further, I argued that women not only failed to revolt against gender roles, but they perpetuated and reinforced them (typically via gender role shaming). My argument is that if we assume that women are just as capable and competent agents as men, then they could only be doing this because gender roles were beneficial to them.
By contrast, your argument requires the sickening assumption that women are such weak, helpless victims that they couldn't do anything about gender roles, rather than being intelligent individuals who perpetuated a system that helped them. It's clear that you're a misogynist who thinks quite poorly of women.
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On June 21 2013 09:24 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 08:42 Acrofales wrote:On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data.
What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." While I intuitively disagree with what Sunprince claims, the question is really whether someone can be said to be oppressed if they don't even realize they are being oppressed and are leading an otherwise healthy (relatively) and happy life. And does it, by any standard you choose, matter? I'm of the belief that oppression is oppression. People being unaware of the oppression does not make it any less oppression. For example, the steubenville case where the girl was passed out and only after the fact did she realize she was raped. Does the fact that she didn't resist mean that she was okay with it? Of course not, because rape is rape and oppression is oppression. He also enjoyed using relative comparisons to falsify things. "Slaves were whipped, women were not, so that means women were not oppressed!" He then used dishonest comparisons to suggests causative correlations. Most of his examples had a suggestion that it was a male or masculine revolution. Slaves, disenfranchised, etc... when the truth is that it was a hand and hand effort between men and women of those social groups. It wasn't male slaves who revolted, it was slaves (both sexes) who revolted. It wasn't male jews that were burned in the camps, it was both. Etc... The problem with his examples was that his proof that women don't resist is that racial and social groups resisted--and he made the assumption that those revolts were purely male. Women have been part of revolts and revolutions all the time. The reason there hasn't been a "women's revolution" is because women is not a singular race of beings with a networked zeitgheist. Each group does what they can to help their own local problems. Some groups are more liberal than others, some more conservative than others. Some suffer more than others, some are more complicit than others. As we as a planet become more globalized, previously broken up social groups become more and more connected to each other. Better able to connect, better able to communicate. This recent trend of globalization creates the illusion that women have always been one voice when that could be further from the truth. 12th century peasants in spain did not know the plights of 12th century peasants in japan--and vice versa. How could "women" as a group revolt when they did not realize that they were even a group.
And... that has absolutely nothing to do with the point I made. The only bit which even starts to address it is the first bit, and it spirals directly into a straw man.
Oppression is oppression because rape is rape. No. Not the case.
Rape is non-consensual sex. You actually have to be conscious to consent. So yes, having sex with an unconscious girl is of course rape.
There are two, very different, kinds of oppression. The first is a group of people who realize they are being oppressed. Examples of these are slaves (throughout history), jews (in the second world war, as well as other times throughout history), etc.
And then there are groups of people who outsiders look at and say "those people were being oppressed", but at the time there was no mention of it, nor did anybody seem to care at the time. For instance, you could say the citizens of Singapore are oppressed. They live in a dictatorship, with quite limited rights. Yet as far as I know, Singapore is one of the most attractive places to live, at the moment (and especially in SE Asia). Another example is women in various civilizations throughout history.
People in this thread have argued that the definition of oppression, the "unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power" means the second form is oppression, because it is an UNJUST exercise of power. But is it really unjust? When, exactly, does the exercise of power go from just to unjust? There is nothing inherent that gives one human being more power than another, it is a cultural thing. And who has what power is socio-culturally determined, as well as whether that power is just or not.
Why do we get to look back through history and say "the men of renaissance britain (to pick a random time and place) oppressed women", when at the time, it was NOT seen as an unjust exercise of power to deny women education, inheritance rights (except in cases where there were no male heirs) and a bunch of other stuff that was given to men, but not women.
EDIT: and while revolting is only part of it, and not revolting is not immediately evidence that they weren't being oppressed (people in North Korea aren't revolting, but if I had to take a stance I would say that they are being oppressed). However, the lack of ANY evidence from that time lamenting the fate of women seems to indicate that women were largely okay with the distribution of power.
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My argument is that if we assume that women are just as capable and competent agents as men, then they could only be doing this because gender roles were beneficial to them. The sickening conclusion that you have made is that women are such weak, helpless victims that they couldn't do anything about gender roles, rather than being intelligent individuals who perpetuated a system that helped them. It's clear that you're a misogynist who thinks quite poorly of women.
Even an idiot can see that's a ridiculous conclusion. Men perpetuate gender roles that harm men. Homosexuals perpetuate homophobia. If you actually think people always act in their best interests then you need to come back to reality, because you are a few worlds away.
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On June 21 2013 09:45 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +My argument is that if we assume that women are just as capable and competent agents as men, then they could only be doing this because gender roles were beneficial to them. The sickening conclusion that you have made is that women are such weak, helpless victims that they couldn't do anything about gender roles, rather than being intelligent individuals who perpetuated a system that helped them. It's clear that you're a misogynist who thinks quite poorly of women. Even an idiot can see that's a ridiculous conclusion. Men perpetuate gender roles that harm men.
Gender roles are a package. Men as a group perpetuate gender roles like male disposability because it comes with gender roles like male status. Likewise, women as a group perpetuate gender roles like fewer female rights because it comes with gender roles like fewer female responsibilities and female protection. In other words, putting women on a pedestal is simultaneously advantageous in some regards and disadvantageous in others, so depending on the situation, women as a group might very well prefer that.
On June 21 2013 09:45 DoubleReed wrote:
Homosexuals perpetuate homophobia.
Homosexuals as a group do not perpetuate homophobia, the way that men and women as groups perpetuate their own gender roles.
On June 21 2013 09:45 DoubleReed wrote:
If you actually think people always act in their best interests then you need to come back to reality, because you are a few worlds away.
What I actually think is that when people don't like their overall treatment, they tend to do something about it, as evidenced by revolutions (violent as well as social) throughout history. When they prefer their overall treatment compared to the alternatives, they then revolt.
When we apply that to gender roles throughout history, my argument is that women preferred to allow men to have political power and social status, because that also meant that men would be the ones killing each other and sacrificing themselves to the benefit of women.
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On June 21 2013 08:42 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Nobody tried to argue that the historical treatment of women was equal to the historical treatment of African Americans. The analogy was there to highlight that pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group. The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data. What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
I pointed out why that was a strawman and I responded to it. Try answering my argument instead of repeating yours.
[quote]
You are again repeating your initial argument, which I debunked, instead of addressing my (lengthy) reply to you (you're in particular leaving out the second part of my argument in quoting me). Citation also still needed for your claim that women "chose" not to overthrow the social order. The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 05:42 kwizach wrote:
[quote]
Yes, I know you were referring to polls. That remark was there to point out that you are only speaking of choice at the aggregate level for women, instead of the choice granted to women as individuals. Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." While I intuitively disagree with what Sunprince claims, the question is really whether someone can be said to be oppressed if they don't even realize they are being oppressed and are leading an otherwise healthy (relatively) and happy life. And does it, by any standard you choose, matter?
The answer to your question is undeniably yes, and large swaths of the psychological community and the philosophical community agree, although there is more disagreement on it in the latter than the former.
If you are conditioned to accept something that isn't good for you/just/fair/whatever word you want to use, it is wrong. The question that is interesting, however, is who is to do something about it. The answer to that question is definitely a different answer than to the question, "Who does something about explicit oppression?".
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On June 21 2013 08:31 sunprince wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 10:30 Acrofales wrote:On June 20 2013 09:32 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 06:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 06:08 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 06:04 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 05:52 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 05:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 05:29 sunprince wrote:On June 20 2013 05:17 Thieving Magpie wrote:
[quote]
It's illegal to rob someone whether their door is locked or not... them leaving it unlocked =/= mean they're asking to be robbed. Many neighborhoods don't lock their doors. Many people have accidentally left their doors unlocked. Many lock their doors, but not their windows. None of them ask to be robbed/raped. But it's funny that you think they are. Nowhere did I say they were asked to be robbed, and nowhere did I say that it was okay to rob them. Saying that they could improve their chances of staying safe is not the same thing as excusing the criminal or blaming the victim. Apparently, all you can do is falsely accuse others of saying things they didn't, instead of actually owning up to the fact that you have no argument. When you are robbed/rape the state of the how locked/dressed you are has no bearing on whether or not you were robbed/raped. It is irrelevant to the person you are talking to whether what state their outfit/locks were during the time of the attack. You asking them that is placing burden on the event on that one aspect of the circumstance instead of the totality of the circumstance. People don't rob *because* doors are unlocked much like people don't rape *because* the dress was short. Women dress in short skirts all the time--not everyone is raped. Telling the victim that she shouldn't do what she likes doing does not address the issue in any way shape or form. Not everyone who leaves their car doors unlocked is robbed, but that doesn't mean leaving your car door unlocked is a good idea. You're deliberately ignoring the concept of probability in order to pretend as if <100% safety = 0% safety. On June 20 2013 05:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:
For example, if you got robbed and I asked you "do you live in east side oakland CA?" (an area of higher crime rate than the rest of oakland CA) You would respond that it doesn't fucking matter where you live--you shouldn't have been robbed and asking you that question is completely nonsense.
Telling someone to stop being themselves or else something bad happens to them is not, as you call it, "giving helpful advice." It is showing that in the subject of Rape/Robbery, you'd rather talk about what the victim should fix instead of what society should fix. Hence why it is called Victim Blaming. You're reshaping the contexts to suit your argument. Nowhere is it implied by any of my posts that you should go around telling robbery victims that they should live elsewhere. However, this doesn't change the fact that it is objectively true that living in a better neighborhood reduces your chances of being robbed. Stating this objective fact is not victim blaming. Reshaping the context? Robbery was your fucking example! When someone has just been robbed/raped asking them about how locked their door is means absolutely shit. When someone who has not been robbed/raped yet lives in a neighborhood where everyone leaves their door locked/dresses nice for the club--do you walk up to them and tell them to stop doing what they are doing or else someone will rob/rape them? You're reshaping the context of how the information is stated. When you take an objective fact and shove it in the face of someone who was just victimized, then of course a reasonable person may get the impression you are blaming them. However, that's not what we're talking about here. People generally say that you should lock your doors. They sometimes give cautionary advice to others to learn from someone else's mistakes. They don't generally go around rubbing it in the faces of recent robbery victims. On June 20 2013 06:04 Thieving Magpie wrote:
At no point is it relevant before they are robbed/raped and at no point is it relevant after they are robbed/raped. TIL that locking your doors does not decrease your chances of being robbed. /sarcasm There is no reshaping involved. If a community doesn't lock their doors--it's their business. If a person locks his door--it's his business. I was sick for two weeks once, never left the apartment. You know how often people tried opening the door? 0. You know why? Because, for the most part, you're not going to get robbed by whether or not you lock the door. I do tell people what I practice. Such as "I don't like leaving *my* door unlocked because I don't trust *this* neighborhood that *I* am living in and *if* you move into *this* neighborhood I would suggest you do the same as *me*." Could you imagine telling a girl that? "I never wear short skirts, every time I do I get raped. Oh right! I don't actually wear short skirts because I'm a man, I simply assume that if someone is wearing a short skirt that they'll be raped without realizing that women have been raped while wearing pants but I'm choosing to ignore that fact because I'm a male and I assume skirt equals fuck me. but don't worry, at least I'm not victim blaming." Your entire line of reasoning is based on ignoring that increased safety ≠ perfect safety. Just because locking your car door does not perfect theft 100% of the time, does not mean locking your car door is useless. You are deliberately conflating the two. Locking your car door decreases the odds of theft. Do you disagree, yes or no? I have no idea how this discussion became so incredibly stupid, but I blame you. Firstly, if you're arguing that girls shouldn't wear short skirts because it increases the chance of being raped, I will say: [citation needed]. However, even if it is does, I fail to see how it is relevant. Rape is illegal, regardless of what clothes the girl was wearing when she was raped. Just as theft is illegal regardless of whether you locked your door or not. So I don't see how this is in any way relevant to the discussion AT ALL? Blame me as much as you like, but the victim blaming line of discussion was begun by Thieving Magpie, who made a false accusation of victim blaming as a strawman to hide from discussing the real issues. I'm not arguing that girls shouldn't wear short skirts, since I'm well aware that this has little to no effect on rape victimization rates. However, I am arguing that feminists like Thieving Magpie are quick to scream "victim blaming" when no such thing is taking place. And you're right, it's not relevant, so I have no idea why Thieving Magpie brought it up except as a personal attack and thought-terminating cliché. Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 00:05 Shiori wrote:On June 20 2013 23:33 NovaTheFeared wrote:
I agree of course, but it does seem to bolster sunprince's point. If it wasn't that women weren't capable of social change, what was it that prevented them from doing so? Sunprince suggests choice. What do you suggest? Matrilineal societies were extremely rare, generally short-lived, and, as far as I can recall from history, pretty isolated. They are obviously exceptions rather than the rule, and it's worth noting that no major, long-lasting civilization was matrilineal. Quite possibly because matrilineal societies tend to be outcompeted when pitted against patrilineal societies. Whether you agree or disagree with the arrangement, men as disposable breadwinners/soldiers/cannon fodder + women as birth machines/homemakers is simply a more efficient means of both outcompeting and winning wars than the other way around. This is also why the arrangement is no longer necessary today, because (a) technology has utterly changed the equation, and (b) the world is a much safer, less competitive place. Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 04:17 DoubleReed wrote:On June 21 2013 04:09 ComaDose wrote:On June 21 2013 04:05 Hryul wrote:On June 21 2013 03:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Most rape victims, in the west, are raped by people they know.
This statistic shows that when you zoom out from the west and include the rest of the world, 80% of the rapes comes from people women know.
That tells me that women aren't stupid and are more often raped by people they trust instead of some boogieman out there in the world who hides in back alleys waiting for stupid horror movie bimbos to walk to them. Now this is the problem: in some countries women opting for divorce can't cite "rape" as divorce reason and are stigmatized for divorce. This leads to a situation where women can't realistically avoid the rape because they are legally tied to the rapist. And as your number originally came from the discussion of "how women can avoid being raped - don't walk down a dark road" this shows nothing. well other than the fact that women are still being unwillfully oppressed. Well, sunprince would disagree with that. I would say citation needed, because people are very quick to scream "oppression" while manipulating the definition, exaggerating or flat-out making up "facts", and elevating feelings over reality.
The arrangement was never "necessary" for the vast majority of modern history. You're presenting a false dilemma between patrilineal and matrilineal societies. Actually, the correct terms would be matriachal and patriarchal, but whatever. There's no reason it needed to be one versus the other. Besides, the discussion is centered around many things other than the barebones "men as 'breadwinners'*" vs women as babymakers, as if men did nothing other than win bread for their family and women had no time on their hands except to make babies.
tl;dr yes, it's true that societies that operated under certain sexual divisions of labour (i.e. men as hunters/soldiers in place of women, though I'd dispute that women are innately any better at caring for children than men, frankly speaking) were more successful than those that pursued a suboptimal division of labour, but none of these necessitate of imply division of rights or responsibilities beyond the bare basics of men doing things that required long periods of brute strength.
History has numerous examples of women having less rights or more rights and civilization functioning just fine regardless. Clearly, whether or not women are allowed to do things has very little bearing on the success of a society. If your hypothesis were true, we'd observe threshold changes even below the optimal level of rights granted to women (i.e. even though all ancient civilizations oppressed women (more or less) the ancient Romans gave them more rights than, say, pre-Roman Italian tribes, the Roman Republic/Empire functioned quite well and was able to flourish for hundreds of years).
*- it is actually not really true that men were breadwinners and women sat on their hands in pre-modern society. While it is true that men were generally the ones tasked with hunting and other such things while women were left to manage the settlements (talking about pre-empires here) pretending as if the women weren't engaged in difficult physical labour is pretty disingenuous. Settlements don't maintain themselves, and we know even from relatively modern history that agricultural families expected all family members to contribute to maintaining the farm, even if that meant a boy spent all day baling hay while a girl spent the same amount of time churning butter.
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On June 21 2013 11:01 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2013 08:42 Acrofales wrote:On June 21 2013 08:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Backtracking on what you're saying I love these sunprince-isms Let's go back to when I joined this discussion. On June 20 2013 04:54 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 20 2013 04:25 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 20:24 marvellosity wrote:On June 19 2013 08:57 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The problem is that you've started your argument with the assumption that women were oppressed, instead of concluding this after providing evidence. In reality, virtually all of the objective metrics that we use to conclude that African Americans are oppressed and discriminated against such as the sentencing gap, the prosecution gap, the likelihood of violent crime victimization, the percentage of workplace deaths, the suicide rate, the homelessness percentage, the amount of federal aid given, etc. are all reversed when it comes to women, and have been historically as far as we have data.
What objective metric do you have to conclude that women are or were oppressed in the first place, when all of the common measures used to determine quality of life show that women are and have been ahead? No, the problem is that you're refusing to address the points I'm making, in this case going as far as completely changing the topic. The analogy was there to respond to your assertion that we were demeaning women. My reply to you was that "pointing out that a group does not hold the social/political power and authority to achieve structural change at a given point does not equate to demeaning/objectifying that group". Except that your argument is that women never had the power to achieve structural change, when the reality is that they did. [Citation again needed] On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:
You're demeaning them by calling them incapable, when in fact they were capable, but chose not to. No, I'm not demeaning them, because I just explained to you why remarking a group has limited power to achieve structural change, and is affected by social norms that make it harder to challenge its inferior place in society, is not the same as demeaning that group. Regarding "choice", see below (again). On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
The fact that they didn't, when they could (given that they were in better circumstances than other groups that did) means that they chose not to. Why are you even replying to me if all you're going to do is repeat your initial statement which I thoroughly debunked? Here, let me copy/paste the entire relevant section of my initial post: Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. Feel free to reply when you have actual counter-arguments to put forward. There is nothing to answer here, because you are once again arguing with the assumption that women were powerless in the first place. I disagree with that fundamental assumption, so there is no point in arguing further down the line of reasoning when it's broken near the beginning. No, see, that's you reducing my argument to a caricature and calling it an "assumption" to avoid having to discuss the actual argument. It's also not even a matter of "arguing further down the line" since I directly replied to your assertion that they had a choice and chose willingly to have an inferior place in society. You, on the other hand, have been shutting your ears and repeating that they had a choice without ever providing any evidence (or even logic) to support that claim. Again, here is my response to you : Next, the false premise: you assume that agents necessarily can "exercise their own choices". This is false on two levels, with regards to resources and ideas. First, like we've seen, agents do not necessarily have the material, social or political resources to exercise their own choices. This doesn't mean that they're not "competent agents"; it simply means that agents are not omnipotent and are restrained in the choices that they can actually translate into action/change, in particular at the societal level.
Second, you are assuming that agents necessarily prevail over, and more precisely are completely independent of, structure. I dispute that assumption, and so do plenty of social science scholars. As a constructivist, I consider agent and structure to be co-constitutive, meaning that structure plays a role in shaping the decisions, and even identity, of agents, but that agents can also shape their own identity and in turn bring about structural change (to make it quick). More concretely and to come back to the issue at hand, you'll find plenty of examples of people who have internalized social norms that do not necessarily benefit them and do not attempt (or even think about attempting) to challenge them, precisely because that internalization "prevents them" from reaching the kind of costs/benefits calculation you speak of, or makes them discard such calculation as inappropriate. Of course, this certainly does not mean that personal reflections, external events, interactions with others, acquisition of new knowledge and plenty of other mechanisms cannot bring about a questioning and possibly a rejection of these norms, and you'll again find plenty of such examples throughout history. The point, however, is that you can't simply assert an agent is completely independent in the choices he considers, or even in the bringing about of a consideration of choice in the first place, as if this was necessarily true. If you're going to defend that position (namely that certain accepted social norms play no role in determining in part the position and decisions of certain agents, in this case women with regards to their place in society), you're again going to need to provide evidence.
To sum up, your idea of an agent free to exercise his "own choices" is flawed with regards to the debate at hand both in terms of the various types of resources (or lack thereof) at the disposition of the agent in question and in terms of your assertion of how agents necessarily have access to, and can exercise, choice on an ideational level. If you have no counter-argument, no need to reply. You've already stated your position several times. On June 19 2013 07:05 sunprince wrote:On June 19 2013 06:54 kwizach wrote:On June 19 2013 06:19 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
Gender roles, including rights and responsibilities, are determined at the aggregate level by societies. Exceptions exist, but for those people there are also exceptions to gender roles too. Yes, and socially-accepted gender roles can prevent individuals from exercising their choices the way they would want to - for example by voting. Thank you for agreeing with me. Except that this doesn't support your argument that women as a group were oppressed. Except that I already told you that's not what I was discussing with you - I was discussing access to choice and possibility to act upon choice. You just agreed with me that individual women could not act upon their choices, thanks! sunprince, you'd do well to actually directly address his points that he's bringing up, because kwizach is right, you keep skirting around them without directly addressing what he's actually written. Otherwise this (interesting) conversation will keep going round in pointless circles. Edit: for example, you tell kwizach "you're demeaning them by saying they're incapable" - this simply is nowhere near the thrust of his argument, yet you keep repeating it. It's not what he's saying. Alright, let's see if I can clarify my argument: Premise: Every other (read: actually) oppressed groups throughout history successfully revolted within a few centuries. Premise: Unlike those oppressed groups, women were unable to achieve "freedom" for nearly all of human history. Conclusion #1: There must be some reason that, unlike all other marginalized groups, women did not revolt. Premise: Women are just as capable of revolting and achieving freedom when they want to. Premise: Women as a group have had substantially better treatment than the aforementioned oppressed groups. Premise: When women did eventually revolt, they faced minimal resistance, especially compared to oppressed groups. Conclusion #2: Women did not fail to revolt because they were too oppressed, nor because there was too much resistance. In other words, they did not lack resources, as kwizach argues, since other groups demonstrated you need less than what women had. If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt. kwizach's argument on agency is that women didn't actually have a free choice because they were too oppressed or something (or, in his words, too constrained in their choices), but we know that other marginalized groups, who were treated substantially worse, apparently had a free choice. In light of the fact that women are just as capable as those other marginalized groups, and that they had easier circumstances and eventually faced less resistance when they did revolt, one can only conclude that it is because they made the choice not to. Furthermore, attempts to deny these women their agency by arguing that they didn't have a free choice is perpetuating a misogynistic view of gender issues, in which the poor wittle wimminz are merely helpless objects without choice since they are so oppressed by the big, bad menz. TL;DR: Women either perpetuated gender roles because they were too oppressed to do anything about it, or because they chose not to (most likely because it benefitted them). kwizach is arguing that they had no choice, therefore he is arguing for the former. This is not only incorrect (because groups who were treated worse than women managed), but misogynistic (because he's implicitly considering women helpless objects). I just watched someone go from victim blaming to gender blaming in one single post. I never realized people would actually argue that "since women didn't complain as a gender, they obviously must like what we're doing to them." I'd be impressed if I wasn't horrified. Wherein I was horrified at your conclusion about women's oppression. "If we put those all together, we can see that women chose not to revolt." Or, in more common terms "They wanted to be oppressed, they didn't say anything about it, and hey, she got wet, so its not like they don't enjoy it." You then responded by talking about how victim blaming is this imaginary thing that people are just making up. Which makes sense to someone who believes that women's problems over the centuries could be solved in the phrase "we can see that women chose not to revolt." While I intuitively disagree with what Sunprince claims, the question is really whether someone can be said to be oppressed if they don't even realize they are being oppressed and are leading an otherwise healthy (relatively) and happy life. And does it, by any standard you choose, matter? The answer to your question is undeniably yes, and large swaths of the psychological community and the philosophical community agree, although there is more disagreement on it in the latter than the former. If you are conditioned to accept something that isn't good for you/just/fair/whatever word you want to use, it is wrong. The question that is interesting, however, is who is to do something about it. The answer to that question is definitely a different answer than to the question, "Who does something about explicit oppression?".
How arrogant of you to decide for other people that they are oppressed.
How misogynistic of you to tell women that you know what's best for them, and that they're just too "conditioned' to know what's good for them.
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