Da Feminism Thread

[Subotan]

I just firmly believe that this is an issue that divides people who would otherwise work together on bigger issues. As this argument goes on, some of you are trying (and suceeding) to paint my posts as anti-woman or anti-feminism, and I don't want that to be the case.

I don't think you're anti-woman or anti-feminist (For one thing, you're definitely not an MRA. )I mentioned the term Kyriarchy earlier, and I think it's particularly relevant to answer the problems you have with feminism.

I find this thread depressing, like most discussion on gender and the stereotyping that always comes with it. And I didn't even read half the posts due to a lack of time.

A lot of these things are in the eye of the beholder, are shaped by experience, surroundings and what we learned, coming to a common understanding is almost impossible.

I could give you my view but some of you would think I'm an inexperienced idiot so I won't.

No, go on, speak your mind!

I meant what I wrote, word by word according to common meanings of these specific words.

...Sex is biological, gender is mental.

No person lives in all cultures at once. Feminism claims validity and relevance in every contemporary society. Furthermore, if the degree of which females within the same culture feel treated badly because of their gender varies greatly (from rape and murder on one end, to simply being laughed at in certain situations at the other end), then feminism also becomes weak, because gender becomes only one factor out of many. Seemingly the one factor that has the least to say when you remember that the physical gender necessarily will play a great role when it comes to how people are treated, simply because the physical properties of a person put limits on which roles are possible (example: a female in a former society was not likely to be treated like a melee warrior, because she was not likely to be a relevantly useful one).

gender becomes only one factor out of many - Not in all cases.A rich white woman who is raped is just as oppressed for her gender as a poor black woman, to vastly oversimplify. Also, see what I said about kyriarchy.

Everything is not an ideology. That would make the word meaningless. An ideology is something comprehensive, a big body of thought and ideas to explain the world or society; or at least considerable parts of it. An ideology is not something you create for a cause. Rather it is something that decides which causes are worthy.

Will expand on this later - remind me.

[Dagonet]

An absurd argument, if you don't mind my saying so.

Men, historically were (reasonably) the ones with more 'free' time, women make (in the main) naturally better carers, add to this their (in the main) relative incapacity during the later months of child-rearing, massively high historical mother & infant mortality rates it makes sense for men to be the ones that engage in any activities that are non-domestic. Women of child-bearing age have always been simply the highest value 'commodity' in any society. This naturally leads to a system where non-essential or non-domestic work is devolved to males, it's not a matter of prejudice, subjugation or anything of the sort

Now, when people talk of this commoditization of women, they tend to ignore, completely, the fact that throughout history in almost all societies the majority of men were also 'owned' by one leader, house, government or another. The suffragette movement is still talked about, but the fact that just a few decades earlier most men in the country (UK) had no right to vote. Conscription migt not have been a legislated fact until modern history, but that's because it didn't need to be, the number of mobile fremen in any remotely centralised society was minimal.

Feminism is just another term for the social liberalism movement which attempts to deny biological & sociological reality, however many freedoms and toys you give a man or woman, one man will always seek and gain power over another man: this is the natural order and no amount of trying to obfuscate it will stop it showing through. What is left is to order the enactment to the betterment of individuals and societies. 'Permissivism' has gone hand in hand with technological progress to keep murder & violent crime rising, drug usage increasing, feral & mal-educated children persisting in huge quantities despite a vast educational and support system. Alcoholism & alcohol related injury increasing despite the billions spent on remedying it.

Feminism's 'contribution' to society is purely economic it hasn't been so much a matter of bringing women into public life as about bringing what were traditionally women's spheres into public life, demanding that women be involved in the non-essential work of society just the same as men are. Demanding that they be involved in the economic system in a more direct fashion, which imo does nobody a favour, doubling the labour pool and enabling central government to tax work that was previously done beyond government's scope to control.

The theft of freedom. Beyond those directly economic and private domestic industry related encroachments of the public sphere, families now give up such rights as would be considered slavery looked at objectively. The rights governments now have over offspring are inalienable - where those of the parents are not.

I'll post this before I decide it's insane and delete it =)

Enjoy.

[Syl]

Thats all about making common cause with the oppressed though. Everybody who has been disadvantaged by the "Old white men".

Plenty of people may have been stung by the ole' WASPs in our history, but I don't think it's an issue of making common cause at all. A lot of the convictions and principles in feminism do transfer over into those other issues, so I think it's a natural extension for the movement. Branching into them simply for common cause would be disingenuous.

The "Matriarchy" exists in every society, just like the "Patriarchy", because of the way that the elder generation interacts with it's own sex/gender and the younger generation. Up until the 19th century the majority of women were happy enough to live in a society which was, politically speaking, male-dominated. Once they stopped being happy with that they started agitating for change. It is simply impossible that women could be actively oppressed by men for thousands of years because their wives would slit their throats while they slept, or wash their jumpers in boiling water to make them shrink, refuse to do the ironing... etc.

I'm sure many women of those era's were happy, but not knowing anything different doesn't mean the quality of their life was high. They (like the majority of people back then) had to work within the only option of life offered to them. Most people in the old days were peasants bound to feudal land, heavily taxed, with a single pair of clothes, and no crops stored for a harsh winter. That wasn't a very easy existance for anyone really. The difference is that women's station were still even lower and more powerless than their male peers in all divisions of life.

The reality of human relationships is that abusive marriages are still miserable one for all involved. If a man feels like a king it can only be because his wife lets him. I'm not a fan of polygamy, for exactly the reasons you mentioned - but then easy divorce (popular among many early feminists) has all the same problems. A man can select a young and economically dependant bride, and later trade her in for a younger one.

I agree that the core quality of any relationship is the result of the two people within it and their love for each other (or lack of it), we're certainly not debating that. I have no doubt that there were men who treated their wives extremely well in all earlier era's, and they had a mutually had a happy life together. And similarly, there were, are, and will always be horrible people as well. We can just hope to make a framework that can make as most people live as happy and healthy a life as possible. If you can't divorce, you're endlessly at the mercy of a scumbag. If your society has divorce though, although it's not perfect, it does offer the option to change the circumstance for everyone involved. To me that's why the second is superior, even though we'll never have a system that's perfect.

On the other hand, in a society where the exercise of violence is a key criterion of power a man's life is both valuable and unstable. You only have to look at Icelandic chieftans, a relatively equitable society btw, to see how precarious the life of a warlord is. If you are a disenfranchised woman you are well out of that, and so are your children. Being weak is to be nonthreatening, and being an object of desire gives you societal value without the attached danger of being a warrior.

You do have a point that it's the tallest tree in a forest that tends get cut down first, and in a violent society men do see other men as a threat and so most of their violence is on each other in terms of power struggle. There are benefits to that, like the influence Emma of Normandy from your example was able to hold behind the scenes. However, to be weak and nonthreatening is also to be simple prey, and there's nothing to protect you from be exploited and abused in other ways. And in terms of Emma, it was only a small small fraction of people in those eras who had access to political power to dictate or even influence it. Unquestionably women in nobility and royalty have had significant influence over our history as well, but they and their stories are a very privileged exception to the life of most people. To be able to influence your husband also does not make you his equal in that system. Your presence and ideas are his to welcome, tolerate, or shut out at his own discretion.

Actually, testosterone is linked directly to high competitiveness, not so much aggression. Men are much more competetive, especially the successful ones, not that this is always a good thing. The recent financial crisis is an example of male competitiveness run amok, as most traders are still men.

That's an excellent example and I agree completely. Being competitive has benefits but also flaws like you pointed out. That's why I think that if some women in the UK Parliament are doing that, then it's not simply in regard for an innate advantage. The degree that you consider competitiveness (and to what amount) as a benefit could result in a lot of different opinions. Why then would they feel the need to do something as drastic as take male hormones for political office? My speculation would be that those specific women may feel they need to exaggerate those qualities to be accepted in such a male dominated arena, and turn to such an extreme and unnecessary method.

Well, the problem is the bible is full of contradictory statements, and it's up to which one you focus on in terms of how you can make your arguement. It also says the opposite.
Ephesians 5:22-24
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Corinthians 11:9
Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

That's one man's opinion, that other men later agreed with. Patriarchal society produces Patriarchal religion, it's not surprising.

Well, I would argue more the reverse of that situation, that a patriarchal religion influenced its society (and spread to most of the world to influence them in a similar way) to a similar patriarchal structure. I think a lot of people don't follow a religion innately because they agree with it's teaching. Certainly they agree with much of it, but it's often because they perceive it as the will of an omnipotent god and that disobedience leads to damnation and condemnation in your community. I think most people don't think sacrificing a sheep in a ritual is a great idea or a good use of that resource. There's a reason they call it God-fearing.

The second aspect to that is that a patriarchal religion is less flexible. Where changes of a society in time would naturally lead to changes of the dynamics within them, religion says that this is the way things are and always must be. That's more inherently damaging.

I don't agree with this, your sex and your gender are not seperable. We have a discourse in our society that almsot anything you want to do or be is psychologically healthy, and I don't quite buy it.

Seperating sex and gender isn't my personal distinction, it's two seperate terms in its relation to sociology. Sex is your inherent genetic make up (XX or XY). Gender are the roles and attitude a society places on and expects of men and women within it. I think what you're getting at is along the lines of "Isn't there an obvious connection between them?"

There is a significant impact, but not as drastic as its made to be. Like we've touched on earlier, men and women are influenced by different hormones that affects them and their development. At the earliest stages of development, even in those of us with an XY chromosome, female is the default and original marker in our gestation. At an early point though our Y chromosome causes our body to secrete different levels of testosterone among other things that triggers the development of testes and the beginning of other masculine traits. Of course we come away with a different effect from that.

I will concede that men are in general naturally more aggressive, competitive, etc. than women. Enough that there is a connotation all over the world with that. However, there are also many competitive and aggressive women. And less competitive men. It is a spectrum, like you acknowledged, and there's not a clear cut off on what is masculine or feminine, but there is a general connotation of what is.

Where my no comes into play is that there is a significant artificial exaggeration by society on them. One example is a boy playing with dolls, toy ponies, or a cooking set. Most parents get uncomfortable and would take them away or direct them to more typically boy toys. I know there are studies that males are more likely to drift towards masculine toys, but there's always variation, and the point here isn't the child choice, it's the parents reaction.

The father might fear that the dolls are emasculating him, and that he needs to reinforce masculine behavior. After all, he needs to grow up to be a man, and that's not the behavior of a man (at least as he sees it). In the child's perspective he's simply playing a game.

The mother may be concerned for the same reasons, or maybe even if it doesn't bother her, she's concerned about how his peers will perceive him and that he'll be teased. In the end the result is the same, the boy is told that dolls and ponies are for girls (as are the things associated with them), and trucks and for boys. It's the same with pink toys. Pink on a toy isn't changing that much about it, but there's a gendered perception of pink that makes such an incredible impact in our society. These type of aspects are present through the entirety of our lives.

I think you get the idea of what I'm trying to say. Men may be more innately leaning towards one behavior and women another, but we're not aliens from mars and venus. However, the gendered perception of our society teaches us what traits are to define us. On the boys don't cry subject, it's not because men don't cry, or are significantly less inclined to. It's because it's perceived as a weakness, and that to cry in public is to lower your own standing and respect. Does crying do that? Not innately, it does nothing innately in that context other than express your sadness. It's what we make of it and interpret it as in our society that marks how we define it.

It's a common and simple way to live our lives, but I think it's limiting and cuts the potential and talent of ourselves as individuals. One example that might stick out to people particularly on this forum are the onna bugeisha, or the women of the samurai nobility. They were trained in combat and weapons to protect their household, family, and honor. They weren't just the wives and daughter of samurai, they were part of the Bushi class as well. They did enter actual battle and at the side of men. This wasn't their primary role, they had family responsibilities that they focused on, but they were part of a warrior tradition, so they received the training and were expected to fight if needed. And they did.

Traditional society all over the world often says that women cannot and should not fight. That women are simply passive and soft. Women may not be on average as aggressive as men or physically as strong, but that does not mean they are the polar opposite. The onna bugeisha did fight, and they fought well. But it also wasn't the defining aspect of who they were. It was a part of the life that they lived among their other duties. To gender war as exclusively masculine is our own construction.

My point is, we create the perception of what a gender is meant to be in our society, and we limit ourselves into something that isn't just emotionally damaging, but limits our potential as well.

I had an argument with my parents the other week when they said that so long as gay people were unobtrusive nobaby cared that they were gay, even though everybody knew. I don't agree with that way of treating people, but it's worth noting that there used to other ways of accomodating difference that didn't involve labeling it.

I agree that we don't have to try and label everything, and I do think that's a big part of the problem. However, as a male who's attracted to other men, I can tell you that to live your life hidden away and in silence is not the same in fulfillment or respect than people who can be themselves openly. It's not just a matter of leaving people alone in the privacy of their own homes, we should be so lucky if humans were like that. There's a trail of discrimination throughout the ages for pretty much anything that's not in the mainstream of the majority, and laws against homosexuals was no different. It's not accommodation by any means.

I hide traits society dissaproves of until I am powerful enough to not care. Sound silly? Sure is. True? Yup.

Just call me a level 70 unsatisfied citizen.

I couldn't help but picture a level 70 Gelatinous Cube. One the size of a pyramid with a castle floating around inside and distressed little soldiers. The horror.

[Hax]

Then in cases of unknown gender, why should people say "His posts" opposed to having some other term to simply refer to a person as simply that, a person.

Its posts.

[Beskar]

Its posts.

"It" is impersonal, "it" refers to an object and not a person.

Admittedly, at least we don't have the weird female-chairs and male-tables in English which our European cousins have.

[Nowake]

Much as one used this sub-forum extensively in the past few months as a pretext to keep an active presence at our fading .Org (not that one switched to similar websites now) the large portions of inane argumentation going on in almost all these Backroom threads at once really makes one roll one's eyes and ignore it whole after a while - especially when browsing through it after a copious, bigot-free vacation.

So, the correct response to - unsure who I am quoting now, the first page of this thread bored one too much to actually search through the rest - this assertion:

Then in cases of unknown gender, why should people say "His posts" opposed to having some other term to simply refer to a person as simply that, a person.

Is that normal, educated people use "One" when one's gender is not yet established, and that the use of "He" is merely the appanage of those with severe handicaps when it comes to mentally laying out a phrase and producing speech simultaneously. The category is also very prone to stumble into all sorts of cacophonies and use the same nouns in adjoining or even single sentences, for lack of employable brainpower in finding synonyms or an underdeveloped "ear" for the displeasing turn of phrase.

[Nowake]

*places oneself with one's back to the wall* The magnanimity overwhelms me!

[ajaxfetish]

Then there is the issues in the name itself. If you read feminist literature, then you clearly see the objections of "man-kind" where the discursive influence of suggesting men the dominant force behind it and not women (Even the term women is discursively suggesting they are a sub-set of men).

The Anglo-Saxons didn't have this problem. Maybe we should go back to distinguishing wife-men and weapon-men?

Much as one used this sub-forum extensively in the past few months as a pretext to keep an active presence at our fading .Org (not that one switched to similar websites now) the large portions of inane argumentation going on in almost all these Backroom threads at once really makes one roll one's eyes and ignore it whole after a while - especially when browsing through it after a copious, bigot-free vacation.

So, the correct response to - unsure who I am quoting now, the first page of this thread bored one too much to actually search through the rest - this assertion:


Is that normal, educated people use "One" when one's gender is not yet established, and that the use of "He" is merely the appanage of those with severe handicaps when it comes to mentally laying out a phrase and producing speech simultaneously. The category is also very prone to stumble into all sorts of cacophonies and use the same nouns in adjoining or even single sentences, for lack of employable brainpower in finding synonyms or an underdeveloped "ear" for the displeasing turn of phrase.

One has its own problems. To many English speakers (including mois) it sounds decidedly stiff and formal. While appropriate for some contexts, it not universally acceptable for the gender-neutral role. It, as already noted, has the problem that it is generally reserved for inanimate referents, though it does seem natural to me to use it to refer to a baby whose gender is unknown. On principle, I take issue with generic he, though I'm sure I use it frequently without thinking about it. Singular they is my preferred gender-neutral term, though I think it may be tied more strongly to non-specificity than to gender-neutrality. "No mother should have their child taken from them" feels acceptable to me, even though the referent is necessarily female, and "Secura's chocolate cake is their specialty" feels like it would be just as awkward even if I didn't know Secura's gender.

Ajax

[CountArach]

Much as one used this sub-forum extensively in the past few months as a pretext to keep an active presence at our fading .Org (not that one switched to similar websites now) the large portions of inane argumentation going on in almost all these Backroom threads at once really makes one roll one's eyes and ignore it whole after a while - especially when browsing through it after a copious, bigot-free vacation.

This use of one, that is to refer to oneself in the third person (or a generalised person undergoing a task or somesuch), is commonly accepted and less formal than the gender-neutral third person singular usage of it, where it is rare to hear the term applied to a third party due to sounding rather too formal.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Plenty of people may have been stung by the ole' WASPs in our history, but I don't think it's an issue of making common cause at all. A lot of the convictions and principles in feminism do transfer over into those other issues, so I think it's a natural extension for the movement. Branching into them simply for common cause would be disingenuous.

Who's? The "WASP" doesn't exist outside the US, and inside its some kind of wierd congealing of everyone's fears of oppression. Look at the name, wierd, wierd, because all Anglo-Saxons are white. Glib statements like that go some way to proving my point. There's a shared sense of victimhood there and that's not healthy.

Egalitarianism can cover all the same issues, without any of the same sense of bias of victimhood.

I'm sure many women of those era's were happy, but not knowing anything different doesn't mean the quality of their life was high.

That's a somewhat glib dismissal. It DID become intollerable and then women DID rebel. The logical conclusion is that prior to that it was at least tollerable.

They (like the majority of people back then) had to work within the only option of life offered to them. Most people in the old days were peasants bound to feudal land, heavily taxed, with a single pair of clothes, and no crops stored for a harsh winter. That wasn't a very easy existance for anyone really. The difference is that women's station were still even lower and more powerless than their male peers in all divisions of life.

None of this is really true, certainly not after 1300, there were plently of women who were the wives of knights, merchants, Franklins. Read Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".

I agree that the core quality of any relationship is the result of the two people within it and their love for each other (or lack of it), we're certainly not debating that. I have no doubt that there were men who treated their wives extremely well in all earlier era's, and they had a mutually had a happy life together. And similarly, there were, are, and will always be horrible people as well. We can just hope to make a framework that can make as most people live as happy and healthy a life as possible. If you can't divorce, you're endlessly at the mercy of a scumbag. If your society has divorce though, although it's not perfect, it does offer the option to change the circumstance for everyone involved. To me that's why the second is superior, even though we'll never have a system that's perfect.

I see your point, really I do, but when you think that today women have multiple failed relationships (as do men) as opposed to one (or two) marriages and many more people spend larger periods of their lives not only unmarried, but actually alone: It's not that much better is it. On top of that, lots of "battered women" stay in abusive relationships, so I'm not convinced that easy access to divorce has benefitted those who are most vulnerable. That's before we even get to people who get divorced and then decide it was a stupid thing to do, only to discover it's too late.

You do have a point that it's the tallest tree in a forest that tends get cut down first, and in a violent society men do see other men as a threat and so most of their violence is on each other in terms of power struggle. There are benefits to that, like the influence Emma of Normandy from your example was able to hold behind the scenes. However, to be weak and nonthreatening is also to be simple prey, and there's nothing to protect you from be exploited and abused in other ways. And in terms of Emma, it was only a small small fraction of people in those eras who had access to political power to dictate or even influence it. Unquestionably women in nobility and royalty have had significant influence over our history as well, but they and their stories are a very privileged exception to the life of most people. To be able to influence your husband also does not make you his equal in that system. Your presence and ideas are his to welcome, tolerate, or shut out at his own discretion.

Yes, there is a lack of practical political power - but that's offset by not being killed and, frankly, men are easily persuaded to listen to women. It's not a great system, but I would argue very seriously that the men felt like they were in charge because the women let them think it.

That's an excellent example and I agree completely. Being competitive has benefits but also flaws like you pointed out. That's why I think that if some women in the UK Parliament are doing that, then it's not simply in regard for an innate advantage. The degree that you consider competitiveness (and to what amount) as a benefit could result in a lot of different opinions. Why then would they feel the need to do something as drastic as take male hormones for political office? My speculation would be that those specific women may feel they need to exaggerate those qualities to be accepted in such a male dominated arena, and turn to such an extreme and unnecessary method.

Here's an alternative idea - democratic politics was invented by men and it flatters typically male traits.

Well, I would argue more the reverse of that situation, that a patriarchal religion influenced its society (and spread to most of the world to influence them in a similar way) to a similar patriarchal structure. I think a lot of people don't follow a religion innately because they agree with it's teaching. Certainly they agree with much of it, but it's often because they perceive it as the will of an omnipotent god and that disobedience leads to damnation and condemnation in your community. I think most people don't think sacrificing a sheep in a ritual is a great idea or a good use of that resource. There's a reason they call it God-fearing.

The second aspect to that is that a patriarchal religion is less flexible. Where changes of a society in time would naturally lead to changes of the dynamics within them, religion says that this is the way things are and always must be. That's more inherently damaging.

Flexability has nothing to do with it, and that's wrong anyway because Christian doctrine has changed and evolved over the centuries, and there are specific theological systems for weighing particular Counciliar decisions against each other.

In any case, you quoted Paul who was a Jewish Christian missionary who was successful at converting Jews, Romans, Greeks, Syrians... His success had a lot to do with radical theological doctrine combined with conservative social teaching. Subsequent generations of converts found that teaching equally palatable until at the Council of Carthage the African Bishops canonised (most of) his writings. The key mover there was Augustine, who was a Roman-educated North African with a Christian mother and a pagan father. Augustine flirted with pretty much every religion and secular philosophy before settling on Paul interpretation of christianity.

Seperating sex and gender isn't my personal distinction, it's two seperate terms in its relation to sociology. Sex is your inherent genetic make up (XX or XY). Gender are the roles and attitude a society places on and expects of men and women within it. I think what you're getting at is along the lines of "Isn't there an obvious connection between them?"

I think sociology is wrong, I don't believe that "gender" is a social construct, that implies artificiality, I think its an expression of natural difference.

There is a significant impact, but not as drastic as its made to be. Like we've touched on earlier, men and women are influenced by different hormones that affects them and their development. At the earliest stages of development, even in those of us with an XY chromosome, female is the default and original marker in our gestation. At an early point though our Y chromosome causes our body to secrete different levels of testosterone among other things that triggers the development of testes and the beginning of other masculine traits. Of course we come away with a different effect from that.

I will concede that men are in general naturally more aggressive, competitive, etc. than women. Enough that there is a connotation all over the world with that. However, there are also many competitive and aggressive women. And less competitive men. It is a spectrum, like you acknowledged, and there's not a clear cut off on what is masculine or feminine, but there is a general connotation of what is.

I think, when you consider how men and women relate to each other it's a big difference, and that's what we're really talking about. Relations between the sexes and relative suitability for certain social roles (like mothering children).

Where my no comes into play is that there is a significant artificial exaggeration by society on them. One example is a boy playing with dolls, toy ponies, or a cooking set. Most parents get uncomfortable and would take them away or direct them to more typically boy toys. I know there are studies that males are more likely to drift towards masculine toys, but there's always variation, and the point here isn't the child choice, it's the parents reaction.

The father might fear that the dolls are emasculating him, and that he needs to reinforce masculine behavior. After all, he needs to grow up to be a man, and that's not the behavior of a man (at least as he sees it). In the child's perspective he's simply playing a game.

The mother may be concerned for the same reasons, or maybe even if it doesn't bother her, she's concerned about how his peers will perceive him and that he'll be teased. In the end the result is the same, the boy is told that dolls and ponies are for girls (as are the things associated with them), and trucks and for boys. It's the same with pink toys. Pink on a toy isn't changing that much about it, but there's a gendered perception of pink that makes such an incredible impact in our society. These type of aspects are present through the entirety of our lives.

I think you get the idea of what I'm trying to say. Men may be more innately leaning towards one behavior and women another, but we're not aliens from mars and venus. However, the gendered perception of our society teaches us what traits are to define us. On the boys don't cry subject, it's not because men don't cry, or are significantly less inclined to. It's because it's perceived as a weakness, and that to cry in public is to lower your own standing and respect. Does crying do that? Not innately, it does nothing innately in that context other than express your sadness. It's what we make of it and interpret it as in our society that marks how we define it.

I do get the idea, and I sypathise with the desire to see men and women as more similar than different - but my experience of dealing with women is that understanding only comes with accepting that you don't understand. By contrast, men are an open book. Thinking about it a little more deeply though, implying that there is some form of coercive conditioning into gender roles implies that it started at some point. Almost like someone decided to seperate "masculine" and "feminine" when in reality I think social gender roles are about competition within your own sex. Looking at men, rare is the woman who wants a highly sensitive man, more often she wants a man just sensitive enough to empathise, but not one as sensetive as she is - someone who'll cut the throat of the dear he just ran over to stop it from suffering, but won't expect her to watch.

It's a common and simple way to live our lives, but I think it's limiting and cuts the potential and talent of ourselves as individuals. One example that might stick out to people particularly on this forum are the onna bugeisha, or the women of the samurai nobility. They were trained in combat and weapons to protect their household, family, and honor. They weren't just the wives and daughter of samurai, they were part of the Bushi class as well. They did enter actual battle and at the side of men. This wasn't their primary role, they had family responsibilities that they focused on, but they were part of a warrior tradition, so they received the training and were expected to fight if needed. And they did.

I'd wager they weren't allowed if they had suckling babes or were recently married, while their husbands were expected to go out and meet the enemy. Defending the home is very different to the contest of arms in the field, one is basically competition and the other is survival. Pre-Roman Celtic culture functioned in the same way viz women's potential battlefield role.

Traditional society all over the world often says that women cannot and should not fight. That women are simply passive and soft. Women may not be on average as aggressive as men or physically as strong, but that does not mean they are the polar opposite. The onna bugeisha did fight, and they fought well. But it also wasn't the defining aspect of who they were. It was a part of the life that they lived among their other duties. To gender war as exclusively masculine is our own construction.

There's a very good reason for this, three actually. Aside from actual childbearing and feeding there's the breadth of a woman's hips and the narrowness of her shoulders (and to a lesser extent her bust. A woman's bust can interfere with wearing armour, and using a bow, her narrower shoulders reduce her ability to deliver powerful blows and the wider circel of her hips slows down her movements. As a secondary issue, woman have a slightly different elbow joint to men which reduces their ability to throw or strike downwards, taken together all this alters a woman's centre of gravity relative to a amn, which makes certain gymnastic movements. All else, including hight and fat/muscle ratio, the man makes a better warrior, hands down.

My point is, we create the perception of what a gender is meant to be in our society, and we limit ourselves into something that isn't just emotionally damaging, but limits our potential as well.

I don't believe its emotionally damaging, more emotionally damaging would be to have no structure to form your own identity around.

I agree that we don't have to try and label everything, and I do think that's a big part of the problem. However, as a male who's attracted to other men, I can tell you that to live your life hidden away and in silence is not the same in fulfillment or respect than people who can be themselves openly. It's not just a matter of leaving people alone in the privacy of their own homes, we should be so lucky if humans were like that. There's a trail of discrimination throughout the ages for pretty much anything that's not in the mainstream of the majority, and laws against homosexuals was no different. It's not accommodation by any means.

I don't believe that private accomodation excuses making a certain lifestyle illegal - that was why we had the argument - but I was just offering it up as an example of life being more complicated in the past than you might expect. As far as discrimination against homosexuals, it should be noted that such discrimination was, until very recently, aimed purely at male-male relations in the vast majority of cases. This comes back to the idea of sex as power, and the unnaceptablility of men being subservient to other men. Back to rape as an expression of power too. Even more important, the idea that your sexual preference was an important part of your identity is very, very, modern "homosexual" as a word only appears in the 19th century. Prior to that your identity was male or female, and regardless of preference you married someone of the opposite sex and produced children, or you didn't.

As a man, your responsibility would be to marry well and carry on your family name, your preferences did not come into it. That's to say, if she was well dowered and healthy as well as being good at running a household and of tollerable character she was a good catch. Likewise, he was a good catch if he had good holdings, a good head for his business, was healthy, and not a brute.

Against this backdrop, I consider the modern obession, and it's definately an obsession, with classifying everyone according to their accumulation of particular traits and sexual preference as rather quaint. Not only does it lead to decidedly odd debates about whether a man should be allowed to "marry" another man (we are lucky to be able to have such a debate, being so economically secure that we can allow non-reproductive pairings to be enshrined in law in any way) but I have become suspicious that there is now the same pressure on an "out" gay man to behave in a certain fashion in excatly the same way as you described men being expected to be "masculine", but instead because of one particular difference we now seem to expect these men to behave in a way which obviously sets them apart from everyone else.

Whether this is a lazy society, or an attempt to remove these men from the male competative sphere, I'm not sure.

There is no necessary need to really identify as such and it just causes a whole range of issues when you start bringing transgender debate in the arena. The biological differences are separate from the society contributions attributed to such terms. There is so much masculine attachment into the usage of "him" and similar with the feminine attachment into the usage of "her". As a society, simply making that divide salient, you begin to construct differences such as what separates "him" from "her".

If you read the article, it is mostly about allowing children to be children, for them to explore and enjoy themselves. Allowing the girl to play with the lego and let the boy play with the barbie, why should lego's belong to "him" and why should "barbies" belong to her, it is all about removing that social barrier and admittedly would love such things to be adopted on a grander scale.

Then in cases of unknown gender, why should people say "His posts" opposed to having some other term to simply refer to a person as simply that, a person.

The "other term" would be their name. Manners strike again.

Also, I have to point out, my sister played with my lego and turned all my castles into stables or hotels.

An absurd argument, if you don't mind my saying so.

Men, historically were (reasonably) the ones with more 'free' time, women make (in the main) naturally better carers, add to this their (in the main) relative incapacity during the later months of child-rearing, massively high historical mother & infant mortality rates it makes sense for men to be the ones that engage in any activities that are non-domestic. Women of child-bearing age have always been simply the highest value 'commodity' in any society. This naturally leads to a system where non-essential or non-domestic work is devolved to males, it's not a matter of prejudice, subjugation or anything of the sort

Now, when people talk of this commoditization of women, they tend to ignore, completely, the fact that throughout history in almost all societies the majority of men were also 'owned' by one leader, house, government or another. The suffragette movement is still talked about, but the fact that just a few decades earlier most men in the country (UK) had no right to vote. Conscription migt not have been a legislated fact until modern history, but that's because it didn't need to be, the number of mobile fremen in any remotely centralised society was minimal.

Feminism is just another term for the social liberalism movement which attempts to deny biological & sociological reality, however many freedoms and toys you give a man or woman, one man will always seek and gain power over another man: this is the natural order and no amount of trying to obfuscate it will stop it showing through. What is left is to order the enactment to the betterment of individuals and societies. 'Permissivism' has gone hand in hand with technological progress to keep murder & violent crime rising, drug usage increasing, feral & mal-educated children persisting in huge quantities despite a vast educational and support system. Alcoholism & alcohol related injury increasing despite the billions spent on remedying it.

Feminism's 'contribution' to society is purely economic it hasn't been so much a matter of bringing women into public life as about bringing what were traditionally women's spheres into public life, demanding that women be involved in the non-essential work of society just the same as men are. Demanding that they be involved in the economic system in a more direct fashion, which imo does nobody a favour, doubling the labour pool and enabling central government to tax work that was previously done beyond government's scope to control.

The theft of freedom. Beyond those directly economic and private domestic industry related encroachments of the public sphere, families now give up such rights as would be considered slavery looked at objectively. The rights governments now have over offspring are inalienable - where those of the parents are not.

I'll post this before I decide it's insane and delete it =)

Enjoy.

I quotes this in entirity because you threatened to delete it and I think it bears reading. One point is obviously true, sexual equality has reduced social mobility, because people tend to marry their own class, and these days that means that two high earners tend to marry and devote all their earnings to making their children successful, which cuts off access to high earning jobs to clever people who want to move up, because we now have double the workforce for the same size population as we did two hundred years ago.

[Ironside]

Well, guess what, it works both ways. Far from undermining an an oppressive mesh of structural factors that maintains an artificial divide between the sexes and returning them to a more natural state of equality, I think feminism does the opposite. What is does is create its own artificial ideal of what a woman should be, and what she should do, and how she should live her life. In fact it attempts to make women into a copy of what is essentially the classic male rolemodel.

I mean, feminists complain at how society pressures women into a certain lifestyle. How, until at least very recently, women might be expected to be housekeepers, and many probably will still be encouraged in that direction by their parents or spouses or whoever. Well, the feminist system has created its own pressures. The successful, modern woman is now expected to have her own career and successes independent of her husband, to work her own 9-5 job and maintain herself even when married. And for things like having kids to be put off until her 40's... I've heard a lot about how feminism seeks to deconstruct artificial societal norms and return to a more natural and fairer state... well what on earth is natural about putting off having kids until the absolute maximum end of your fertile years (creating health risks for parent and child), just so that you can life the idealised life of a man in the 1950's?!

First rule of induvidualism is economic independence. So any induvidialistic solution needs to resolve this first.

The aging matter is also based on increased education and applies to both genders.

The "Matriarchy" exists in every society, just like the "Patriarchy", because of the way that the elder generation interacts with it's own sex/gender and the younger generation. Up until the 19th century the majority of women were happy enough to live in a society which was, politically speaking, male-dominated. Once they stopped being happy with that they started agitating for change. It is simply impossible that women could be actively oppressed by men for thousands of years because their wives would slit their throats while they slept, or wash their jumpers in boiling water to make them shrink, refuse to do the ironing... etc.

It's simply impossible that North-Koreans are being oppressed by their goverment. Or slaves to be oppressed by thier masters.

And to be picky, the big boost in woman rights was because during the 19th century, thier rich fathers suddenly ended up with daughters impossible to marry off properly (due to lack of men with proper status in the cities). Ergo, they had to do something.

The reality of human relationships is that abusive marriages are still miserable one for all involved. If a man feels like a king it can only be because his wife lets him. I'm not a fan of polygamy, for exactly the reasons you mentioned - but then easy divorce (popular among many early feminists) has all the same problems. A man can select a young and economically dependant bride, and later trade her in for a younger one.

Instead of all optional brides being economically dependable and cheat with the maid later on?

Really? We're arguing about the evils of modern grammar now?

What next, the Moon is secretly plotting against women?

This is the sort of thing that makes certain portions of the population very skeptical of ALL Feminist causes, whether that's fair or not.

While "his story" is going way into overdrive, the dominant male form does have influence in the thinking and a gender neutral pronoun should be quite practical sometimes (dear sir/madame).
Gelatinous Cude didn't get pregnant with an elephant by a French soldier, nor is he a bigotic idiot who flies naked from his backroof during the weekend. Thanks to the mind ignoring the word "not", you'll probably feel a bit insulted reeding the statement above even if it's true.

[QUOTE=Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla;2053410503]
I see your point, really I do, but when you think that today women have multiple failed relationships (as do men) as opposed to one (or two) marriages and many more people spend larger periods of their lives not only unmarried, but actually alone: It's not that much better is it. On top of that, lots of "battered women" stay in abusive relationships, so I'm not convinced that easy access to divorce has benefitted those who are most vulnerable. That's before we even get to people who get divorced and then decide it was a stupid thing to do, only to discover it's too late.



Yes, there is a lack of practical political power - but that's offset by not being killed and, frankly, men are easily persuaded to listen to women. It's not a great system, but I would argue very seriously that the men felt like they were in charge because the women let them think it.

I think sociology is wrong, I don't believe that "gender" is a social construct, that implies artificiality, I think its an expression of natural difference.

Gender is used to describe the social construct on top of the sex. Of course it's going to be artifical.

I quotes this in entirity because you threatened to delete it and I think it bears reading. One point is obviously true, sexual equality has reduced social mobility, because people tend to marry their own class, and these days that means that two high earners tend to marry and devote all their earnings to making their children successful, which cuts off access to high earning jobs to clever people who want to move up, because we now have double the workforce for the same size population as we did two hundred years ago.

Source please. Obviously, it suddenly made it possible for the woman to move up by their own accord, as the starting point.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It's simply impossible that North-Koreans are being oppressed by their goverment. Or slaves to be oppressed by thier masters.

North Korea is one country, under despotic rule for less than three quarters of a century. The proposition under consideration is that all women were (are) oppressed and have been for thousands of years, accross all classes, racial groups, religions and historical epochs.

THAT is impossible without majority consent.

As to slavery, the Altantic slave trade is atypical of historical slave owning and it flourished only from about 1600 to 1800, so again we are talking about relatively short period of time and (before 1700) a relatively small percentage of Africans taken from Africa to the Americas.

And to be picky, the big boost in woman rights was because during the 19th century, thier rich fathers suddenly ended up with daughters impossible to marry off properly (due to lack of men with proper status in the cities). Ergo, they had to do something.

Agitation from women sufferage in the 19th Century also coincided with an era of increasing legal and social restriction of women's roles and freedoms in the previous hundred years, including (for example) banning women from voting and serving as midwives (both of these were made legally impossible for women in the UK only after 1800).

Instead of all optional brides being economically dependable and cheat with the maid later on?

Compared with today? In some countries the failure of marriages is 1:2, I don't figures for modern infidenlity, but I'd guess in cases of divorce it is quite high. Anyway, a man couldn't divorce his wife if she was unfaithful, either. Further, the couple still had to be compatable because they had to produce children.

Gender is used to describe the social construct on top of the sex. Of course it's going to be artifical.

At best, it is an expression of natural difference - that's not "artificial", it is not "created" by deliberate act of man.

Source please. Obviously, it suddenly made it possible for the woman to move up by their own accord, as the starting point.

I read it in one of the papers. Have a think though before you dismiss it. The pool of university students has grown by 50% in the last 150 years, have the colleges of Oxford grown at the same rate? The would need to grow faster than 50% in that period in order to widen access. In fact, they would need to grow by 200% in order to be 50% larger in relative terms, and all that is before accounting for population increase.

[Syl]

Who's? The "WASP" doesn't exist outside the US, and inside its some kind of wierd congealing of everyone's fears of oppression. Look at the name, wierd, wierd, because all Anglo-Saxons are white. Glib statements like that go some way to proving my point. There's a shared sense of victimhood there and that's not healthy.

Egalitarianism can cover all the same issues, without any of the same sense of bias of victimhood.

I'm sorry, I wasn't meaning to come across all that serious with the WASP thing, especially with how modern and focused a term it is. You mentioned "Everybody who has been disadvantaged by the 'Old white men'" and I couldn't help myself from trying to be witty with the word WASP, which your sentence reminded me of. My background is white and Anglo-Saxon as well, I don't intend to mean anything disparaging by that.

I'm also sorry if you think the rest is glib though. To me it seems obvious that a movement founded on the principle that someone shouldn't be judged or restricted simply for a characteristic you're born with, like gender, would tend to agree with things relating to the same principle, like regarding race and orientation.

That's a somewhat glib dismissal. It DID become intollerable and then women DID rebel. The logical conclusion is that prior to that it was at least tollerable.

Being forced to accept a way of life and finding that way of life tolerable aren't exactly the same thing. I think Ironside's example of North Korea fits in well here. Speaking of which...

North Korea is one country, under despotic rule for less than three quarters of a century. The proposition under consideration is that all women were (are) oppressed and have been for thousands of years, accross all classes, racial groups, religions and historical epochs.

I don't think anyone is saying the degree of oppression against women has been identical across all cultures, classes, time periods, etc over those thousands of years, but I don't think you can deny that across history men have had a significant institutionalized advantage.

I see your point, really I do, but when you think that today women have multiple failed relationships (as do men) as opposed to one (or two) marriages and many more people spend larger periods of their lives not only unmarried, but actually alone: It's not that much better is it. On top of that, lots of "battered women" stay in abusive relationships, so I'm not convinced that easy access to divorce has benefitted those who are most vulnerable. That's before we even get to people who get divorced and then decide it was a stupid thing to do, only to discover it's too late.

There were plenty of unhappy and broken marriages in those days as well. The difference is the option of being divorced wasn't the same. Till death do us part was the oath made before God and your community and you were expected to honor that. Even when you divorced, you were still largely percieved as being sinning against the will of God and were looked down on by your community.

What I think you're arguing is the sake that the marriage as a social and familial construct at least was more stable. That doesn't mean they were healthy marriages and families.

Here's an alternative idea - democratic politics was invented by men and it flatters typically male traits.

Pure democracy is based on all adult citizens having an equal say in all aspects of their lives. The Representative Democracies we more commonly live under are based on being more efficient by filtering the will of a greater segment of the population through fewer vessels so that things can actually be done much faster without having to poll absolutely everyone. The principle is meant to be the same in theory.

That these limited representative roles would then become seats of a certain amount of power, and that men would come to hold the majority of them at the exclusion of almost all other minorities at the time (at least initially), isn't inherent to it.

When you say it flatters typically male traits, then, I don't see how it can apply to the principle of democracy itself, so I can only assume you mean the methods used to gain those offices. That doesn't make them inherent to democracy either.

Flexability has nothing to do with it, and that's wrong anyway because Christian doctrine has changed and evolved over the centuries, and there are specific theological systems for weighing particular Counciliar decisions against each other.

Well, I think we're taking advantage of the fact we can make this obvious argument. The word of God for Christianity is meant to be the literal word of God through man, unchangeable, and not man's interpretation of God's will. Obviously this wasn't the case and there are hundreds of splinters and divisions among the religion. However, if you are someone under the authority of the church, it was a fixed set of principles. Key priests in history, like Augustine, had the position of power and the timing to be able to select his best perceived interpretation to move it forward. The rest of society was generally stuck with what they percieved was the unchallengeable word until gradually theologians said otherwise. And then that became the new standard that a lay person wasn't meant to question.

I think, when you consider how men and women relate to each other it's a big difference, and that's what we're really talking about. Relations between the sexes and relative suitability for certain social roles (like mothering children).

I'm sorry, but I think there's just a disconnect here about how we percieve this. Gender roles set the standard of how men and women are to relate to each other.

I do get the idea, and I sypathise with the desire to see men and women as more similar than different - but my experience of dealing with women is that understanding only comes with accepting that you don't understand. By contrast, men are an open book.
Thinking about it a little more deeply though, implying that there is some form of coercive conditioning into gender roles implies that it started at some point. Almost like someone decided to seperate "masculine" and "feminine" when in reality I think social gender roles are about competition within your own sex. Looking at men, rare is the woman who wants a highly sensitive man, more often she wants a man just sensitive enough to empathise, but not one as sensetive as she is - someone who'll cut the throat of the dear he just ran over to stop it from suffering, but won't expect her to watch.

As for the first part of what you said, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree again. My experience of dealing with women is that by treating them as a regular human beings, and not as some mystery, and striving to treat everyone you meet the way you would want to be treated leads to a level of communication that makes things pretty understandable all around.

As for the second, I guess you already know my argument. Gender, by extension of what it is related to your biological sex, is artificial. Do you have a problem with women wearing pants? I doubt it. In a period of the past it was an issue, as it was against their view of what it was to be a woman at that time.

Wearing pants or anything else isn't an inherent part to being of a female (or male) sex. We're born without clothes and they're an artifical construct we've adopted for various benefits. Now factor this into a billion other things in our lives and here we are.

I don't believe its emotionally damaging, more emotionally damaging would be to have no structure to form your own identity around.

I'd argue that's because as a man conditioned all his life with an idea of masculinity, and who seems to fit well within that paradigm, you don't have a particular reason to feel it's damaging. That's not the case for everyone.

As for the lack of any structure to form your identity around, I think the structure of being an honest and contributing member of society is the only foundation we should be worrying about. Why does that structure have to involve genitals you have between your legs?

I don't believe that private accomodation excuses making a certain lifestyle illegal - that was why we had the argument - but I was just offering it up as an example of life being more complicated in the past than you might expect.

I know you weren't and I appreciate that. I didn't take that any other way ^^.

Against this backdrop, I consider the modern obession, and it's definately an obsession, with classifying everyone according to their accumulation of particular traits and sexual preference as rather quaint. Not only does it lead to decidedly odd debates about whether a man should be allowed to "marry" another man (we are lucky to be able to have such a debate, being so economically secure that we can allow non-reproductive pairings to be enshrined in law in any way) but I have become suspicious that there is now the same pressure on an "out" gay man to behave in a certain fashion in excatly the same way as you described men being expected to be "masculine", but instead because of one particular difference we now seem to expect these men to behave in a way which obviously sets them apart from everyone else.

If we should expect those types of rights to be governed by the importance of reproductivity or not, then by that line of thinking, with the rapidly over-population of many countries and our planet, you'd think in the future it would be a privilege to BE in a traditional relationship and expect those rights. The one child regulation in China comes to mind.

As for the last part, stereotypes, like any assumption stretched across an entire group of people, are a pretty horrible indicator of them. I know you're not saying otherwise, but to even assume that anyone should actually expect people to act a certain way is silly to me, but that's a pet peeve that's not unique to me.

Yes, there are men who behave in what you'd call a stereotypical way, but the majority do not. I am feminine enough in manner and appearance that I've been mistaken for a woman many times in my life by both men and women, yet none of my traits reflect the stereotype what you'd assume a feminine gay male to be: (ie: campy.) And I obviously don't match the stereotype of how you'd act a man to act either.

------

One last thing here, I am going to be winding down my responses in this thread if I haven't finished already. I appreciate and have enjoyed our discussion, and I thank you for your time in responding to me. I do feel though that I've made most of the points I wanted to share when I first wrote in the thread, and I think it's time for me to bow out so other people can share their ideas more as well without me taking up a big chunk of every other page myself. I'll read your reply and points to what I've said here though, of course ^^.

[Viking]

...Sex is biological, gender is mental.

The English language is not completely with you on this one.

gender becomes only one factor out of many - Not in all cases.A rich white woman who is raped is just as oppressed for her gender as a poor black woman, to vastly oversimplify. Also, see what I said about kyriarchy.

That is a very shallow analysis. First, who is most likely to be a rapist if you randomley chose a case? Looking at strength alone, this would be a male person. Who is most likely to be a victim? Again, looking only at strength, this would be a female.

Now of course, men can be stronger than other men by a lot (and women stronger than men). But since most men happen not to be interested in sexual activity with other men, a man-on-man rape should not be expected to be very common; looking at no other parameters. And indeed, this is the case for the real world.

So if a woman is raped merely for being a woman, then this would have to imply for this to be relevant; that she was assaulted for a hatred of her gender. That is to say that a rich man would be robbed not because he is a good target because of his wealth (gain for the robbers), but because he belonged to a group of people that is labeled as 'rich'.

A hatred of a gender should be distributed relatively evenly within a society through culture. Thus, if a woman is treated pretty badly by a man, this is much more likely to be an isolated incidence if women generally are treated well in this society, rather than stemming from a particular point/side of this culture.

For feminism, the cultural aspect is the most important one, so it wants bad treatment to stem from the culture, in one form or the other.