Should A Men's Rights Movement Exist?
Disclaimer: this thread is a long-as-fuck text dump I'm hammering out at 1AM. If parts of it are vague or incoherent, I'll happily clarify when my head doesn't feel like a bag of squirrels on meth.
Whenever you hear anything related to men's rights, I bet you automatically think of sad online reactionaries attacking feminism. That's because such is usually the nature of those calling themselves men's rights activists, and those few adherents who genuinely support the "movement's" stated agenda are quickly told that their group is divisive and redundant. After all, others would argue, the few disadvantages men truly do face are best addressed by incorporating them into the feminist - or egalitarian - agenda, because it's all the same cause, right?
I have a problem with this proposition. There's a reason why the intellectual leadership of the women's rights movement has always been exclusively female, even when men express sympathy for the feminist cause; it's because one cannot fully understand and appreciate the experiences of a sex without belonging to that sex. This holds true for men as well as women. Yes, a woman may know in an intellectual sense the challenges men face. She may know that men are the majority of suicides, the majority of work related deaths, the majority of combat deaths, the majority of alcoholics, et cetera et cetera. Doubless you've heard the men's rights spiel before, whether from reactionaries or true supporters.
But does she know what it's like to be unable to express emotions, things as simple as fear and pain, without the possibility of being outcast and labeled weak? Does she know what it's like to have pent up aggression with no way of relieving it, and to be ostracized as dangerous and problematic when that aggression shows? To fear being accused of rape, and labeled a monster even when found innocent?
Does she know what it's like to be expected to face the horrors of war, to die a violent death, or to return, broken, to a home where one no longer belongs? No. She can never know, because either through biology or millennia of social conditioning, those are not her burdens to bear. She does not envy them, just as men do not envy physical vulnerability or the pain of childbirth. Therein lies my key point: the sexes are not the same, the challenges they face are not the same, and treating them the same can only bring about hardship for one, the other, or both.
So, with all that said, should there be a distinct and credible men's rights movement? If not, how can men directly affected by these issues speak out and find support? I'm interested to hear any feedback you may have.
Whenever you hear anything related to men's rights, I bet you automatically think of sad online reactionaries attacking feminism. That's because such is usually the nature of those calling themselves men's rights activists, and those few adherents who genuinely support the "movement's" stated agenda are quickly told that their group is divisive and redundant. After all, others would argue, the few disadvantages men truly do face are best addressed by incorporating them into the feminist - or egalitarian - agenda, because it's all the same cause, right?
I have a problem with this proposition. There's a reason why the intellectual leadership of the women's rights movement has always been exclusively female, even when men express sympathy for the feminist cause; it's because one cannot fully understand and appreciate the experiences of a sex without belonging to that sex. This holds true for men as well as women. Yes, a woman may know in an intellectual sense the challenges men face. She may know that men are the majority of suicides, the majority of work related deaths, the majority of combat deaths, the majority of alcoholics, et cetera et cetera. Doubless you've heard the men's rights spiel before, whether from reactionaries or true supporters.
But does she know what it's like to be unable to express emotions, things as simple as fear and pain, without the possibility of being outcast and labeled weak? Does she know what it's like to have pent up aggression with no way of relieving it, and to be ostracized as dangerous and problematic when that aggression shows? To fear being accused of rape, and labeled a monster even when found innocent?
Does she know what it's like to be expected to face the horrors of war, to die a violent death, or to return, broken, to a home where one no longer belongs? No. She can never know, because either through biology or millennia of social conditioning, those are not her burdens to bear. She does not envy them, just as men do not envy physical vulnerability or the pain of childbirth. Therein lies my key point: the sexes are not the same, the challenges they face are not the same, and treating them the same can only bring about hardship for one, the other, or both.
So, with all that said, should there be a distinct and credible men's rights movement? If not, how can men directly affected by these issues speak out and find support? I'm interested to hear any feedback you may have.
Comments (292)
The problem with men's rights and recently even women's rights is that in the 20th-century or in many developing countries today, women face unambiguous discrimination, lower status by design, they're thought to be less intelligent and capable and so on, many problems which are clearly hurting women. The basis for these beliefs usually don't hold up to scrutiny - the reasoning being either fundamentally incorrect or going against common sense and morality.
More recently, it is not as clear than women's right in the West are actually targetting unambiguously unfair things, quite the opposite. It's hard to understand the current feminist ideology and their views are very controversial.
There are issues which impact men disproportionally or even biases against men such as in education or law. I've made a thread on this forum before discussing why empathy is not a useful tool for understanding, we don't need men who think they can empathise with other men to find solutions for problems. Fact-based decision making, including both nurture AND nature influences and factors, aimed at reducing problems for both men and women wherever they appear doesn't really seem to require a men's rights group.
The concern here is that the social constructionists think men are raised poorly, the feminists think successful men are tyrannical, misogynistic and toxic and society, in general, is more sympathetic to women's problems than men's problems. So what is needed before fact-based decision making is a political movement that calls for more attention to be placed on the various issues that men face.
Tell that to senator Tammy Duckworth.
Quoting Not Steve
I'll tell a little anecdote of my wife.
We had Parliamentary elections here just last sunday. As she is an immigrant and doesn't follow so much Finnish politics, she used these 'election machines' as we call them to find the candidate that shares the most of her political views. The website also gave her the candidate that was the most opposed to her. This candidate, the furthest from her political views, had the least similar views in the category of "values". My wife and this candidate shared only 9% of common ground in questions of values. Yes, you might have guessed it. The candidate was a woman from the Feminist Party. This candidate, as any candidate from the Feminist party, didn't get elected and had one of the lowest amount of votes given in the district, btw.
This shows actually the plight of feminism today. My wife does think the women are oppressed in some way in this society. Many women usually support the traditional objectives of feminism, but hardly see anything relateable in the current wave of feminism. Hence if 'male studies' have anything to with current feminism, it's total nonsense. And 'Male rights' movement is totally absurd.
The big question is just how reasonable is it to crave for male rights? What rights are men missing? What is so wrong with human rights? What is so wrong to talk about humans, men and women, when it comes to the rights of people?
Curious, I browsed one or two of the sites further to see if there was hidden patriarchalism, misogyny, violence or incel-ism. I couldn't find any, or any demanding of 'male rights', but I might just not be very thorough.
Here is the site where I got good info on push mowers and razors. I'd be interested in the opinions of others:
https://www.artofmanliness.com/
FWIW, the way I understand and enact feminism is liberating and empowering for men as well. I know some people get all hung up on the term, but that's besides the point.
I don't agree with your identity politics or standpoint theory here: I think men and women are very much capable (in theory) of understanding each other's struggles. We need to be able to do so, so we can support each other and enact meaningful change. Also, some of your claims about women just don't apply to all women. Women are told to smile and not show frustration or anger, though we are allowed to show sadness. 10% of women experience fertility issues and DO have to watch others than themselves get pregnant. And although women may not fear being accused of rape, they have to fear BEING raped and not believed.
The problem I see with a "men's rights" movement is that it brings out people like Proctor here. Married men are "chained to ageing women" and "fertilizing vast swaths of women people"? It's beyond disgusting. (I certainly hope you're not trying to appeal to such people.)
As I said to Bitter Crank, most "rights" movements now are misnomers. There are few, if any, legal rights possessed by one gender but not the other, at least in developed western countries. If not exactly men's rights, the movement in question would fight for men's self-determination in the same way feminist movements do for women.
As you pointed out, because there are few commonalities within a sex, political movements based on sex are not universally appealing. However, I think there are enough common interests for men to warrant some kind of political attention, or at the least, a social movement that recognizes their struggles and offers support. Community support is something troubled men aren't taught to seek or expect.
I didn't mean to imply that women don't face comparable issues to the ones I described, but they aren't the same. The intention isn't to give close minded people a "defense" again feminism. That entire mindset is the issue; a movement dedicated to helping women is not an attack on men, and a movement dedicated to helping men would not be an attack on women. They should be two sides of the same coin.
The Idea of feminism is pure bbbb... Why do the women think that they need a movement, what was the reason for creating a movement? Where they left out? No they weren't, to me most of the women will always feel that they are being treated the same as men or more than men, but the problem lies in politics...
In God's eyes both gender are same and no one is superior but those who does good, sees good and says good..... Women in today's world are just as active participants as men.....Women are soft and of kind heart while men are somewhat excused from this principle, now there are things that need to be done in the current society that requires a strong mind and heart, am not saying that women doesn't have, but physically and physiologically they cannot all the time and over again and again.... and is proven numerous times by....and for that reason the men will be compensated differently for those jobs....
Everything what we see around us in the current realm is pure political B.S. and nothing more.. Ask a women around you that has family and kids and a normal life, ask them of what they want? Of course they will want a nice and quite life not with all those troubles that men faces,,12 hours job,,,working night shifts,,,,doing weekend jobs,,,,and many more which were noted by several above me,,,,,
It is? Modern feminism seems to be much more gender-neutral and global in scope than you assume:
"They are also rendering philosophical previously un-problematized topics, such as the body, class and work, disability, the family, reproduction, the self, sex work, human trafficking, and sexuality. And they are bringing a particularly feminist lens to issues of science, globalization, human rights, popular culture, and race and racism."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-philosophy/#FemiBeliFemiMove
Quoting RBS
Oh, look, I found a mansplainer! How awesome that we have you to enlighten us on what ALL women want and feel. s/
Also... just disregard the two people above who aren't adding anything to the discussion. They're definitely not on the same page, and I'm getting a moderator for one of them.
Very very untrue,,,,I said look around and ask??? If you don't have a someone like that in your list, then hey welcome to the feminist club.....
I'm open to changing the term to "egalitarianism," even if that is a mouthful. I think people employ the term "feminism" because it did originate from a women's rights movement, and much of the theory is grounded in analysis of women's roles in society.
I also think "feminism" as a term is supposed to be in defiance of "patriarchy," which although it causes a lot of harm to men, on the face of it is supposed to keep men in charge and benefit them.
Personally, I think there should be one movement, or else we have men fighting for men's rights and women fighting for women's rights and nobody is just fighting for HUMAN rights. Men and women are equally needed on both fronts. Mothers are needed who encourage boys to be sensitive and caring, fathers who show girls how to take charge and assert themselves, and vice versa.
Quoting Not Steve
:smile:
This is what the main character in Fight Club is looking for, but he can only find groups that address illness or divorce, so he resorts to pretending that he has a disease in order to fit in at support groups.
The Fight Club evolves out of that situation. I'm not sure what to do about that. Ideas?
Unfortunately in the United States, I am still trying to fight against a system that still sees me as an inferior human being all because my skin pigmentation isn't a reflection of the greater portion of the U.S. Although there are biases against men, I do not feel they are significant enough to formulate a group where there is a substantial enough amount of evidence to support where men have little to no rights. Men's rights groups especially online have been infiltrated by supremacist believers already, so obviously I'm not going to be on board with other men who hold these beliefs, naturally.
Like modern feminism, its a bunch of disgruntled folks who are/were privileged and who wants t continue that privilege.
How do you define emotions when there is a clear question, if people were depending on Encyclopedias then why would they question anything at all.....???
Ask someone? am asking you? if you are running away from the question then say so??? Morality doesn't mean that you can defend a statement by referring to someone else??? or does it?? maybe they have described it wrong in the SEP....
Anyways, got my answer and no need to respond,,,Thanks..a bunch...
I try not to play the race card too often. I'm afraid if I wear it out I won't be able to get another one.
White women and black men both have some privileges and some disadvantages, just of different kinds.
I find myself onboard with your posts, but also find the term “men’s rights” lacking in its description of what you are addressing. To me (and I think to many others) a ‘rights’ movement connotes an intention to ameliorate the lack of rights applicable to a certain cohort.
My initial reaction to the title of this thread was: Is this about wanting to increase men’s rights so that they at last become of equal power to the social, economic, and political rights of women … because the latter have historically been used to oppress the rights of men? Or is this about men’s natural rights / God-given rights (choose as one’s pleases) being oppressed by the opposite sex’s wants. As one possible example of the latter: the oppressing of each man’s right to do as he wants with forty virgins that he owns as property … if not during one’s life on earth than in the afterlife; or, as a similar example: the right of certain skin-toned men (but not others) to impregnate any woman they want (this irrespective of the women's wants) being an unquestionable good that, thereby, should not be oppressed by anyone anywhere.)
Having read your posts, I'll assume you’d agree with the absurdity of these given examples.
How about a “men’s wellbeing or health movement” rather than one addressing rights? This, I’d agree, is direly needed considering all the suicides and such.
A personal observation: men’s wellbeing is most prevalently undermined by other men—rather than by women, though I hold no doubt that exceptions to this do occur. To be more explicit: engaging in very traumatizing unjust wars, the lack of reliance upon empathy or sympathy for one’s ailments, or any number of other male issue that impede men’s mental and physical wellbeing are most often caused by men in the same society ... that goad everyone into unjust wars, that decry affectionate men as [pick your pejorative: fairies, wusses, etc.], and so on.
From this vantage: it is not a lack of men’s rights that is the problem but, instead, the predominant, implicit, societal rights of men in current culture: the societal right to outcast those men who question authority in its decrees of war; the right to demean the human value of a man who sheds tears, even if in private; and so forth. … And yes, some women will sometimes reinforce the same by, I hold, following the social norms of ingrained rights that authoritarian men enforce in our shared culture.
For me, at least, it’s a complex and tough topic to handle. Especially since it, in part, addresses touchy-feely issues … which are, again, a current societal pariah among males. And in part because toughness is still often enough required; though I'd say this is valid for men and women alike, each in their own ways.
But I must object to some parts of your argument. Specifically this:
Quoting Not Steve
It doesn't actually hold true; it mustn't. If we cannot sufficiently understand the ideas, feelings, experiences, and opinions of "others", then we're philosophically fucked up beyond all recognition (PFUBAR). Philosophical exchanges utterly depend on our ability to communicate our ideas, feelings, experiences, opinions, and beliefs, as well as the underlying reasons which have driven us toward them. If it works for other things, why can't it work for identity based suffering?
It's a clever line, to be sure: "How can you disagree with me when you do not share, and therefore cannot comprehend, my suffering?", but it's a classically fallacious appeal to authority (the authority of race or gender, which is racist/sexist).
Meanwhile, in the real world, race and gender demographics do not compose monolithic groups who all share the same set of experiences. For instance, some black individuals experience certain forms of racism, some black individuals experience other forms of racism, and some black individuals experience no racism. Are each of them therefore unable to comprehend or understand the position of the others?
Shared experience can lead to shared understanding, but what of shared experience that leads to mutually exclusive understandings? (doesn't that refute the whole argument?). What of our human ability to empathize and sympathize with the plights of others? What of human imagination?
The back-of-the-line approach (for non-marginalized identities) that too many contemporary social justice movements organize around is just classic and arbitrary segregation based on race or gender. Outrage is king these days, and objecting to the color of someone's skin or the shape of their genitalia is alive and well as a form of political motivation; the pendulum has merely swung in a novel direction.
Is more identity politics really the answer? Where ideas are apparently correct only in proportion to the correctness of the various orifices, sexual preferences, and skin pigments of the great and terrible apes who espouse them?
My avatar is a representation of a snake eating its own tail. Fourth wave intersectional feminism was my inspiration in adopting it: it's a rare and extreme phenomenon where people set out to accomplish something (in this case, to bring about social justice and equality), but the effect of their methods actually winds up subverting and dismantling their founding objective or principle. Intersectional feminism seeks to create justice, but they do it by confusing us with sloppy and fallacious rhetoric (like the "lived-experiences" bull-shit) and then by inherently dividing us into in and out groups (which leads to conflict that can prolong/exacerbate inequality).
It's tragic irony at best, and reprehensible ignorance at worst. We don't need leaders whose immutable features have symbolic and therefore rational value, we need leaders with good ideas. In trying to remedy "bad feelings", we would be remiss to allow "feelings" to replace reason and evidence.
In summary, yes, many men experience the effects of inherent or systemic sexism in ways that most women do not, but it's not so simple. Some men are free or almost entirely from any and all social burdens placed upon them (eg: born rich), but so too are some women, some gays, some blacks, some transsexuals, etc... We have problems, but they aren't rigidly defined along the lines of race or gender. Much more severe are problems that don't see pigments or sexual organs/desires (eg: poverty), and it is in the solving of those more fundamental problems that the social disparities we now decry will actually be solved.
Not being sexist isn't going to change the religious beliefs that see to the mutilation of infant genitalia (it is estimated that more than 100 babies die in America each year due to circumcision related complications), and it isn't going to change the fact that drafting women into an infantry force could never work. It isn't going to change that fact that many women will seek male partners who assume the responsibility of provider, or generally that many men will always look to compete with one another (to the detriment of those males who are more interested in cooperation). I might catch flack for saying this, but women tend to make better care-givers than men. Courts should be giving men a fair hearing when they seek custody (the kid should get the best parent), but that also means women will tend to be the victor in such disputes. The solution to all this is to stop thinking of ourselves as team-oriented groups (we're not), and to start thinking of ourselves, and others, as individuals. To do otherwise is to adopt classically anti-humanist racism. It's anti egalitarian and it's blatantly not allowing us to morally progress as a society.
Well, race does matter when it comes to examining perspectives. When you're looking at disadvantages and things of that nature unfortunately race does play a part in the issues that affect certain people. so when I say "I and a person of color," I'm demonstrating that my opinion comes from the minority perspective as I do see a dichotomy of my civil rights as a person of color, and rights as a man.
True. But what I'm saying is that the grievances proposed by feminism in its original context was not meant for "all women" just as the grievances proposed by men's rights groups is not meant for all men. Furthermore, feminism although was a bedrock for women highlighting social equality, has transformed into a hot bed of fanatical women who for the most part want to take issue of every facet of society. Although their numbers are small, they are extremists and are the most outspoken. Unfortunately, men's rights is the result of that.
That's like saying all Republicans are foaming at the mouth fascists, or that all Jews want to knife Palestinians, or that all men are rapists. Some women have used the platform of feminism to voice their sexist hatred of men. The vast majority of feminists are humanists. And most of them, including me, are frankly tired of people trying to strawperson the movement by saying it's about hating men.
I do think that the knee-jerk impulse to vilify feminists comes from a fear of men's privilege being uprooted.
It's very much like people trying to demonize any black rights movement by pointing to the outlier black racists who talk about killing cops and wreck stores and set fire to cars in protests.
One sexist feminist/racist black does not discredit the entire movement.
None of these are outside of the realm of Feminist issues. Feminists are typically anti-gun in part because guns are commonly used for suicide, as well as domestic violence and homicide. Feminists are also pro-access to healthcare and therapeutic care, and other avenues that can greatly curb suicide. Women are also pro-workplace regulation, which would curb work related deaths, and anti-war which would obviously limit combat deaths. Issues that feminists fight for would benefit men, unless you think that men should have some sort of social-political superiority over women, which of course is nonsense.
Sure. But your message was that white people have nothing to whine about because they're white. That's ridiculous. Everybody has a struggle of some kind. If you want people to shut up and try to understand you, shut up and try to understand them. Right?
That remains to be seen. Considering that there were many women of color who have faced sexism and sexual assault and there haven't been any outspoken feminists on their case. I do recall the famous and late Sandra Bland case to mind on this issue.
Quoting NKBJ
I never said it was about hating men. I specifically said that the original intent of feminism was not to speak for "all women, rather to speak for a category of women." This is why discussing the intersectionality of feminism as well as so-called men's rights is important because of the inequality experienced by people of color we see that women of color historically has been the most outspoken among the female gender:
“The problem, and what [many feminists today] are not saying,” Steinem told the crowd, “is that women of color in general—and especially black women—have always been more likely to be feminist than white women.”
Source:https://www.theroot.com/these-are-the-women-of-color-who-fought-both-sexism-and-1823720002
I find it ironic that most of the outspoken women who've I've discussed regarding #MeToo were more knowledgeable of Alyssa Milano than Tawana Burke the founder of the movement.
The article says further:
"Black women and women of color have actively fought for the rights and livelihoods of women for more than two centuries, yet their stories and contributions are often sidelined in the mainstream narrative of the feminist movement."
This was my position earlier regarding feminism. In total, feminism as it is expressed today as it was expressed in the past did not speak for all women.
Quoting NKBJ
I agree with this.
Quoting NKBJ
I do not see the correlation of racism and killing cops but okay unless you pressupose that the underlying factor of cop murder is racial hatred and even that is hard to play considering the police force is diverse.
Quoting NKBJ
Who says it does?
Can you put up the direct quote where I said that?
Quoting frank
I agree.
Quoting frank
I agree, but the question raised by the original post was "should a men's rights movement exist?"
My thing is why should it exist? If it does exist, like feminism will it speak to a certain group of men or all men? Considering that the male perspective has been at the forefront of society since the beginning of civilization I question at what point am I as a man in need of male rights when in fact historically my country of is just beginning to treat me as a human being, a civilian?
In other words how can I get behind a movement about my gender when I'm still facing a battlefront of what I look like?
The guy said he wanted support groups where men come together. That probably would break down pretty quickly because of the differences in experiences between races. That's kind of a shame, though.
They say the Korean War laid a foundation for the advancement of black rights because for many white men who fought in that war, it was their first experience fighting side by side with blacks. There was a documentary about it where white men who lived through that explained what it was like to discover that things you'd been told were untrue. It was pretty poignant. Is it necessary that we have a war in order to talk to each other?
Very well said sir.
I believe I agree 100%.
It seems that whenever social activism for men is mentioned, people invariably try to make it a universal cause. "That's not a men's issue, that's just a human issue," etc. This is problematic in several ways: firstly, it implies either that there are no challenges unique to men, or that men don't have unique authority to speak out about such challenges. Secondly, it implies that there is something threatening and/or undesirable about a movement for men's issues, presumably that it's "divisve" or an instance of "identity politics."
The double standard here is that none of these arguments are made for feminism. Everyone recognizes the existence of women's issues, which uniquely or disproportionately affect women. Everybody recognizes that, as the ones experiencing these challenges firsthand, women have a unique authority to speak about them. Almost nobody dismisses feminism as identity politics; intellectual circles recognize feminism as a valid movement, not compensation for a lack if individual identity. I'd just like to know what's different between advocacy for men and advocacy for women which makes the former unnecessary and the latter commendable.
No, men aren't a homogeneous group with a uniform set of experiences. Like you pointed out, no demographic is. But there are enough issues which uniquely or disproportionately affect men that I think a dinstinct movement to address them may have merit.
One more thing, I actually really like your last paragraph. I feel that people have a tendency to think only in absolutes; "essentialism has caused issues for people, so essentialism is bad and constructionism is good." The truth is much more nuanced than that. There ARE essential differences between men and women which make it sensible for them to fill different roles, the danger is in letting those roles become rigid expectations. Something that works for most individuals and society as a whole may not work for certain individuals: some men aren't suited to combat, some women aren't suited to family life, etc. I think it would be so much easier to discuss these sorts of topics if people took outliers as a given.
Several of the issues I listed are exclusive to men, and all affect men disproportionately. Being coerced into military service only happens to men; women may join, but there has never been pressure for them to do so. Women are never discouraged from seeking emotional support; they're expected to seek it, and that support is almost always available to them. This should not be a competition for which sex has it worse.
These things aren't mutually exclusive. The point of social advocacy for a certain group is shifting perception of that group is a less restrictive direction. You can simultaneously challenge expectations based on your race and your sex, because the goal of both is the same: making it easier to live as the person you are, and not the person some may see you as.
hahaha. Nicely done. I think that single statement finds a way to offend everyone involved.
And to the OP:
I would suggest that MOVEMENTS are needed when government is NOT representative of the population it governs.
U.S. News and World Report gave the following statistics (related to elected officials in the US):
Despite white men comprising only 31 percent of the population, 97 percent of all Republican elected officials are white and 76 percent are male. Of all Democratic elected officials, 79 percent are white and 65 percent are male, according to the study.
That suggests to me that women and non-whites may be in need of a "movement" (and 97% white is freaking amazing - in a terrible way).
However, if +/- 70% of elected officials in the US are male, won't they ensure that laws are not dramatically unfair to men?
Also, movements are so much effort. Can't all these sensitive men just organize local meet-up groups where they can share their feelings? We are already training teachers to be more sensitive to the needs of little boys (they are not "bad" because they cannot sit still). What else is needed?
Thanks!
The only oppressive force at play here - whether it be for men, women, racial minorities, etc - is social expectations. How are people in this demographic perceived, how are they expected to act, and how do those preconceptions affect them directly? A social movement is concerned with educating the public, bringing problems that may have gone overlooked to light, not exclusively those problems which stem from legal policy.
Social expectations are a twofold threat. Firstly, they impact how a group is treated in day to day life, which is significant enough on its own. Secondly, social expectations can influence those in power when they create policy. A male politician probably won't introduce a law to deny men voting rights, but he may dismiss laws aimed at addressing female-on-male rape.
Jobs, wages, working conditions, and job security are critical issues common to all working people. So is affordable and readily available medical care for both physical and psychological (including chemical dependency) illnesses. Adequate affordable housing, and quality education are basic needs. Permanent, stable, and healthy families are of equal importance to men and women. A healthy environment in which to work, live, and play is equally important to men and women.
These may seem like stale, old, irrelevant problems, but they are at the heart of life for both men and women. There aren't significantly different feminist or masculinist interests here: Both sexes have the same interests.
:roll: By whom? You? I'll alert all feminists to report to you for ideological inspection promptly. s/
Quoting Anaxagoras
I interpret this differently than you. This, to me, means that SOME feminists have not been speaking for or about all women. But women of all colors and backgrounds are (to varying degrees perhaps) drawn to feminism because its core values are humanist no matter how some misguided people have enacted it.
Furthermore, the movement is clearly actively working against that very issue. So you're a bit late to the party to be calling feminists out for this.
I shouldn't have to point this out, but most issues that feminists stand for are human issues that affect women of all colors: abortion rights, equal pay, being able to speak out in cases of assault, protection from domestic violence, and so on. Or do you contend that women of color aren't interested in those things?
Again history has shown otherwise, and I'm 37 I have not seen that in my life time.
Quoting frank
I would have to see that if you can give me the link to that fact....
You want to know real facts, the civil rights movement was the prime catalysts for the rights of all minority people including women and men. It was just that people of a different skin pigmentation had to prompt the people of Congress to observe the U.S. law.
This is fact.
I can be an advocate of something but if I consider the support I'm not going to be a part of the movement closely. If people want a men's rights movement I'm with it, hell, I'm a man. But I choose to not be engaged in discussion considering there are people a part of that movement that don't like me as I've seen it.
Ok...
Quoting NKBJ
Of course, as is everything in history that folks do when black folks have a different perspective...
Quoting NKBJ
That is not what history has shown....
Feminist Rage: 4 Ways White Feminists Continue to Silence Women of Color’s Anger at Racism
"In the words of Pat Parker, in his 1978 poem “For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend”:
“The first thing you do is to forget that I’m black. Second, you must never forget that I’m black.”
Source:https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/feminist-rage-4-ways-white-feminists-continue-to-silence-women-of-colors-anger-at-racism/
Quoting NKBJ
The article I listed above if you check it, is 2018, so I think the problem is perpetual within feminism. I understand you want to argue this point, but there is too much evidence against what you're saying.
Quoting NKBJ
"Because white people aren’t under attack by the structural racism created by a white power structure, they’re able to deny its realities. Casting themselves as the victims in discussions about racism, many white people defensively deflect from the issue, complaining that it’s actually people of color causing racial division (“race-baiting”) by pointing out its existence in the first place....
Making it about us actually upholds racism, because we’re allowing our own emotions to take center stage over the truths of those we’ve negatively impacted."
If that's going to be your attitude, then there's no reason to continue this discussion.
No, incorrect.
Citizens of the US don't have a social obligation to serve in the military. In my country we do, there's obligatory conscription. You can choose unarmed Service of civil duty, but opting to do neither basically you would go to jail. Our constitution says: "Every Finnish citizen is obligated to participate or assist in national defence"
In my view women in the military are evidence that war and military aren't a phenomenon because of the tyrannical patriarchy, but something that relates to human kind.
Quoting Not Steve
Yet to mimic the women's movement or any human rights movement would be whimsical. Playing the victimhood and greivance politcs would be simply awful and laughable. Because with arguing that men are victims you obviously have to have the oppressor. Well, who would that be? Women? [i[Really?[/i]
The simple fact is that you should be far more exact on just what is the problem and what you want to be done. Let's say that too many men are taking their lives or using alcohol and drugs or ending up on their couch watching TV and playing video games. Well, fight then that by perhaps embracing manhood (or something). Start to change those views that make men difficult to seek help with programs and methods that don't carry a stigma, but would be contrary to that. How can you avoid burn out, PTSD or other mental problems before you have them in a high stress environment. How to help your friend. That would sound totally different. But don't assert that it's some human rights issue and men are the victims.
This perfectly characterizes "grievance politics". That singular assumption (that there must be an agent oppressor) is basically the fundamental source of everything that's wrong with contemporary 4th wave "intersectional" (radical) feminism.
Quoting ssu
"Men's rights groups", or at least the ones I'm familiar with, are indeed seeking to address the problems you have mentioned (and like their counter parts, have become obsessed with the virtue of victim-hood). It's almost impossible for them to not frame men as a victim because that's the format that sells (because it induces rage).
Sex sells, but rage sells in the new new world like sex never could. From an evolutionary perspective, it's inevitable that all of these movements will become dominated by the most outrageous denominators. Calm and collected perspectives get crowded out of the online marketplace by the more loud and the rationally obnoxious; and on top of that we're all being fed from (in)conveniently segregated digital troughs which are meant to reinforce our disparate biases (and all the while intentionally pissing us off as a means of attention-getting).
In the era of identity politics, I don't blame the "men's rights activists" for making the same mistakes, but I do resent those mistakes. It's just that I don't see any group as currently capable of doing any better (not until we learn to digest new media more responsibly, (or maybe start holding new media corps accountable for their detrimental bull-shit, but it's not entirely their fault either)).
Ultimately I think a sufficient grasp of the complex dynamics that lead to social disparities is currently above the level that our collective consciousness is capable of comprehending. More than half of us still seem to be stuck in and with old world norms and superstition. We can scarcely agree (as a group) about gender and sexuality (facts and norms alike), and the economics of it all is beyond our best economists. All this identify politics coming out the other end is a direct byproduct of bad science.
The thing is, a lot of these problems may very well be eliminated if we were to transition away from patriarchy, which is exactly what feminism strives for (especially the second-wavers).
Feminist analysis has provided us with a convincing picture that the repression of emotions in males, the obsession with power and domination, warfare, etc are things found in patriarchies. Consider how basically all of the major conflicts of the world have been waged by men. Consider how the repression of emotions in men is generally an expectation put on men by other men.
Being falsely accused of rape (and being labeled a monster) is a byproduct of rape culture. If rape were not so prevalent, and if men were more respectful of women, then the reputation of the defendant might not be so easily tarnished. Ironically, the fact that a man's reputation is immediately tarnished for being accused of rape implicitly means that everyone believes that men are untrustworthy in sexual matters. It is no surprise when a man is accused of rape, because everyone already knows that men are basically the only ones who rape.
This is an example of a BIG problem for a men's movement (my opinion). I think everyone (maybe almost everyone?) would agree that males raping females is still a MUCH bigger problem than vice versa. So if we are discussing where limited resources should go, it seems obvious.
Are there any men's problems, that are ONLY men's problems, that men suffer from far more than ANYONE else? Oh, and we can't celebrate male traits that are NOT good traits anymore. Just because being big and violent was good for caveman, does NOT mean we should be celebrating {or even excusing if the male is over 20} that behavior - humans have all sort of natural negative traits that we go through efforts to reduce.
If it does not check all of these boxes, there will be pushback (and I mean justified rational pushback, not just "all men are bad" nonsense).
lol this is extremely rare, might as well make lightening strikes an "issue". That you manage to attempt to twist reproductive rights into a men's issue too demonstrates a profound thoughtlessness.
Quoting Not Steve
Literally none of those issues listed are exclusive to men. Conscription ended in the US in 1973 and I can't think of a single developed country that requires compulsory conscription outside of Israel, which requires both men and women to serve anyway.
This is the reason why it won't work. For victimhood to be successfull there has to be a common feeling of guilt and wrongdoing, the need for others to prove that they are supportive of the victim. Then the 'victim' is listened to and his/her/they(?) demands can be taken seriously.
Civil Rights movement and the Suffragists/Suffragettes had an obvious objective. We are now universally against segregation by race and for women to have the ability to vote. Anybody arguing for open segregation by race and that women shouldn't have the right to vote would not be taken seriously. Hence actually in both cases the "White guilt" and perhaps "Male guilt" in the case of universal suffrage was a way to achieve those goals by using the victimhood card. Yet to argue that males are victims is hilarious. Just who will feel guilty about men?
Simply put it, identity politics is a dead end in this issue. But as I said, these problems that modern males have can be dealt in totally different ways.
Oh, and also, Frank has demonstrated highly questionable judgement on this subject, so I wouldn't give too much credence to whatever he has said here. He is of the sort that thinks that if a woman is being emotional, then you can't say that she's being emotional, because she's a woman, and women need to be treated patronisingly as an exception which we must be super sensitive around. Apparently, even if a woman is literally and furiously screaming in your face, for example, you can't say that she's being emotional (even though that would obviously be true in this example) because she's a she and not a he, and because some idiot might jump to a conclusion about a stereotype. He automatically assumes that, in this situation, the man is sexist and the woman needs defending, which is itself horribly sexist.
Fortunately enough, most people (both men and women) reject feminism and have never heard of 'men's right movement'. It is a niche debate, only held by a group with little to no power.
It is obvious that, looking at it globally, women face greater problems than men, so it is reasonable that women's issues require greater attention and resources. For example, the Muslim-world doesn't really treat women that well and could call our attention, more than it does now.
Plenty of folks feel sympathy for men's issues (grass-roots grievance politics is already a multi-million dollar industry). There may be no coherent agent-oppressor to throw blame at, but men can still be victims of circumstance, and this is why plenty of men's rights movements are already off to the races.
The men's right's groups which focus on blaming people, rather than addressing or solving issues directly, are not surprisingly part of the alt-right movement (they blame women, minorities, progressive values, and pine for a return to traditionalism).
There's only subtle difference in their ideological starting points, but there's an ocean of difference between their political conclusions objectives. When we tell young men that the problems they face are laughable and that they should stop being whiny problems, we're setting them up to feel ostracized, insignificant, and unintentionally pushing them toward identitarian movements that happen to favor and emotionally console them.
This Frankenstein-esque obsession with race, gender, orientation, or identity, regardless of the cause in question, has created a monster. People rightly reject identity politics once it turns on them, but in the ensuing confusion they become the useful idiots of the diametrically opposed.
Quoting ssu
I think history begs to differ. "White guilt" or "male guilt" was never a cogent concept in the days of the suffragettes. The earliest leaders of pre-feminist movements didn't actually try to guilt men into granting them social equality, they argued and petitioned for equality on the basis of female merit. Men tended to believe women weren't capable of complex rational thought, that they were governed by their hystera (uterus), should be seen and not heard, were forbade from speaking openly in public, and should be gently-brutalized if they stray from virtue. They needed to be more than victims if they wanted to see progress.
Rather than trying to establish male guilt (as a means of motivating men into fixing the problems), they actually did focus more on the problems themselves, and motivating everyone on the basis of what is right rather than on the basis of "who is guilty and wrong". Rather than blaming men as evil, they blamed, but more importantly, challenged, our cultural understandings and institutions themselves.
Here's a kind of long but wonderfully representative speech delivered by Angelina Grimké (one of the earliest American feminist reformers) in 1838 on the subject of slavery and the power of men. It was delivered to a racially mixed crowd of abolitionists at Pennsylvania Hall, while just outside a mob of violent protestors did everything they could to shut it down (by the next day, the whole building had been burnt to the ground). She incorporates "outrage" into her rhetoric, but she does not use it to instigate hatred or resentment or inherent blame, she uses it as an appeal to action in the pursuit of justice. The precision and eloquence of her words, and the relevance and persuasive power of her arguments were her main tools. She helped to found a movement that sought to empower the dis-empowered, not a movement seeking to guilt the powerful into giving up (because obviously that never works).
[hide="Reveal"]"Men, brethren and fathers -- mothers, daughters and sisters, what came ye out for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? Is it curiosity merely, or a deep sympathy with the perishing slave, that has brought this large audience together? [A yell from the mob without the building.] Those voices without ought to awaken and call out our warmest sympathies. Deluded beings! "they know not what they do." They know not that they are undermining their own rights and their own happiness, temporal and eternal. Do you ask, "what has the North to do with slavery?" Hear it -- hear it. Those voices without tell us that the spirit of slavery is here, and has been roused to wrath by our abolition speeches and conventions: for surely liberty would not foam and tear herself with rage, because her friends are multiplied daily, and meetings are held in quick succession to set forth her virtues and extend her peaceful kingdom. This opposition shows that slavery has done its deadliest work in the hearts of our citizens. Do you ask, then, "what has the North to do?" I answer, cast out first the spirit of slavery from your own hearts, and then lend your aid to convert the South. Each one present has a work to do, be his or her situation what it may, however limited their means, or insignificant their supposed influence. The great men of this country will not do this work; the church will never do it. A desire to please the world, to keep the favor of all parties and of all conditions, makes them dumb on this and every other unpopular subject. They have become worldly-wise, and therefore God, in his wisdom, employs them not to carry on his plans of reformation and salvation. He hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak to overcome the mighty.
As a Southerner I feel tbrt it is my duty to stand up here to-night and bear testimony against slavery. I have seen it -- I have seen it. I know it has horrors that can never be described. I was brought up under its wing: I witnessed for many years its demoralizing influences, and its destructiveness to human happiness. It is admitted by some that the slave is not happy under the worst forms of slavery. But I have never seen a happy slave. I have seen him dance in his chains, it is true; but he was not happy. There is a wide difference between happiness and mirth. Man cannot enjoy the former while his manhood is destroyed, and that part of the being which is necessary to the making, and to the enjoyment of happiness, is completely blotted out. The slaves, however, may be, and sometimes are, mirthful. When hope is extinguished, they say, "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." [Just then stones were thrown at the windows, -- a great noise without, and commotion within.] What is a mob? What would the breaking of every window be? What would the levelling of this Hall be? Any evidence that we are wrong, or that slavery is a good and wholesome institution ? What if the mob should now burst in upon us, break up our meeting and commit violence upon our persons -- would this be any thing compared with what the slaves endure? No, no: and we do not remember them "as bound with them," if we shrink in the time of peril, or feel unwilling to sacrifice ourselves, if need be, for their sake. [Great noise.] I thank the Lord that there is yet life left enough to feel the truth, even though it rages at it -- that conscience is not so completely seared as to be unmoved by the truth of the living God.
Many persons go to the South for a season, and are hospitably entertained in the parlor and at the table of the slave-holder. They never enter the huts of the slaves; they know nothing of the dark side of the picture, and they return home with praises on their lips of the generous character of those with whom they had tarried. Or if they have witnessed the cruelties of slavery, by remaining silent spectators they have naturally become callous -- an insensibility has ensued which prepares them to apologize even for barbarity. Nothing but the corrupting influence of slavery on the hearts of the Northern people can induce them to apologize for it; and much will have been done for the destruction of Southern slavery when we have so reformed the North that no one here will be willing to risk his reputation by advocating or even excusing the holding of men as property. The South know it, and acknowledge that as fast as our principles prevail, the hold of the master must be relaxed. [Another outbreak of mobocratic spirit, and some confusion in the house.]
How wonderfully constituted is the human mind! How it resists, as long as it can, all efforts made to reclaim from error! I feel that all this disturbance is but an evidence that our efforts are the best that could have been adopted, or else the friends of slavery would not care for what we say and do. The South know what we do. I am thankful that they are reached by our efforts. Many times have I wept in the land of my birth, over the system of slavery. I knew of none who sympathized in my feelings -- I was unaware that any efforts were made to deliver the oppressed -- no voice in the wilderness was heard calling on the people to repent and do works meet for repentance -- and my heart sickened within me. Oh, how should I have rejoiced to know that such efforts as these were being made. I only wonder that I had such feelings. I wonder when I reflect under what influence I was brought up that my heart is not harder than the nether millstone. But in the midst of temptation I was preserved, and my sympathy grew warmer, and my hatred of slavery more inveterate, until at last I have exiled myself from my native land because I could no longer endure to hear the wailing of the slave. I fled to the land of Penn; for here, thought I, sympathy for the slave will surely be found. But I found it not. The people were kind and hospitable, but the slave had no place in their thoughts. Whenever questions were put to me as to his condition, I felt that they were dictated by an idle curiosity, rather than by that deep feeling which would lead to effort for his rescue. I therefore shut up my grief in my own heart. I remembered that I was a Carolinian, from a state which framed this iniquity by law. I knew that throughout her territory was continual suffering, on the one part, and continual brutality and sin on the other. Every Southern breeze wafted to me the discordant tones of weeping and wailing, shrieks and groans, mingled with prayers and blasphemous curses. I thought there was no hope; that the wicked would go on in his wickedness, until he had destroyed both himself and his country. My heart sunk within me at the abominations in the midst of which I had been born and educated. What will it avail, cried I in bitterness of spirit, to expose to the gaze of strangers the horrors and pollutions of slavery, when there is no ear to hear nor heart to feel and pray for the slave. The language of my soul was, "Oh tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon." But how different do I feel now! Animated with hope, nay, with an assurance of the triumph of liberty and good will to man, I will lift up my voice like a trumpet, and show this people their transgression, their sins of omission towards the slave, and what they can do towards affecting Southern mind, and overthrowing Southern oppression.
We may talk of occupying neutral ground, but on this subject, in its present attitude, there is no such thing as neutral ground. He that is not for us is against us, and he that gathereth not with us, scattereth abroad. If you are on what you suppose to be neutral ground, the South look upon you as on the side of the oppressor. And is there one who loves his country willing to give his influence, even indirectly, in favor of slavery -- that curse of nations ? God swept Egypt with the besom of destruction, and punished Judea also with a sore punishment, because of slavery. And have we any reason to believe that he is less just now? -- or that he will be more favorable to us than to his own "peculiar people?" [Shoutings, stones thrown against the windows, &c.]
There is nothing to be feared from those who would stop our mouths, but they themselves should fear and tremble. The current is even now setting fast against them. If the arm of the North had not caused the Bastile of slavery to totter to its foundation, you would not hear those cries. A few years ago, and the South felt secure, and with a contemptuous sneer asked, "Who are the abolitionists? The abolitionists are nothing?" -- Ay, in one sense they were nothing, and they are nothing still. But in this we rejoice, that "God has chosen things that are not to bring to nought things that are." [Mob again disturbed the meeting.]
We often hear the question asked , What shall we do?" Here is an opportunity for doing something now. Every man and every woman present may do soinething by showing that we fear not a mob, and, in the midst of threatenings and revilings, by opening our mouths for the dumb and pleading the cause of those who are ready to perish.
To work as we should in this cause, we must know what Slavery is. Let me urge you then to buy the books which have been written on this subject and read them, and then lend them to your neighbors. Give your money no longer for things which pander to pride and lust, but aid in scattering "the living coals of truth" upon the naked heart of this nation, -- in circulating appeals to the sympathies of Christians in behalf of the outraged and suffering slave. But, it is said by some, our "books and papers do not speak the truth." Why, then, do they not contradict what we say? They cannot. Moreover the South has entreated, nay commanded us to be silent; and what greater evidence of the truth of our publications could be desired?
Women of Philadelphia! allow me as a Southern woman, with much attachment to the land of my birth, to entreat you to come up to this work. Especially let me urge you to petition. Men may settle this and other questions at the ballot-box, but you have no such right; it is only through petitions that you can reach the Legislature. It is therefore peculiarly your duty to petition. Do you say, "It does no good?" The South already turns pale at the number sent. They have read the reports of the proceedings of Congress, and there have seen that among other petitions were very many from the women of the North on the subject of slavery. This fact has called the attention of the South to the subject. How could we expect to have done more as yet? Men who hold the rod over slaves, rule in the councils of the nation: and they deny our right to petition and to remonstrate against abuses of our sex and of our kind. We have these rights, however, from our God. Only let us exercise them: and though often turned away unanswered, let us remember the influence of importunity upon the unjust judge, and act accordingly. The fact that the South look with jealousy upon our measures shows that they are effectual. There is, therefore, no cause for doubting or despair, but rather for rejoicing.
It was remarked in England that women did much to abolish Slavery in her colonies. Nor are they now idle. Numerous petitions from them have recently been presented to the Queen, to abolish the apprenticeship with its cruelties nearly equal to those of the system whose place it supplies. One petition two miles and a quarter long has been presented. And do you think these labors will be in vain ? Let the history of the past answer. When the women of these States send up to Congress such a petition, our legislators will arise as did those of England, and say, "When all the maids and matrons of the land are knocking at our doors we must legislate." Let the zeal and love, the faith and works of our English sisters quicken ours -- that while the slaves continue to suffer, and when they shout deliverance, we may feel the satisfaction of having done what we could."
-Angelina Grimké[/hide]
Quoting ssu
In any democracy, identity politics always was and always will be a dead end. We can't find equitable middle grounds if we self-segregate into fundamentally competing identity groups whose main tool is guilt and hate (nor might individuals have much democratic freedom under such a paradigm). While the civil rights movements of old did champion causes affecting particular identity groups, they didn't centralize around blame, guilt, and resentment of entire other groups as a cause or a solution, they focused on equality, unity, and an end to injustice. When and where the issue of "guilt" has surfaced as a central issue, it caused schisms and divisions in civil rights movements.
You can't remedy physical segregation with ideological segregation.
So be it.
Perhaps the reason is just that few will get a lofty academic position to study "male studies". And the university leadership will think: "Well, we have a woman studies department, so we cannot be intolerant and not have a "male studies" or "men's studies", so let's give them some financing. And to get their voices heard (and funding), perhaps some "male study" people will start talking about 'male rights'. Some of them will likely be deemed as misogynists and accised to be some kind of counter movement to feminism. Perhaps they get their funding from right-wing groups.
Anyway, in the academia they don't have to speak in any way at all to the ordinary man. It's just this hustle in the academia.
They don't treat gay men that well, either. Or gay women. Or Christians. Or atheists. Or Westerners.
A misnomer then.
To all of those questions, no. And yet feminism focusses on the position into which women have been forced by men. Masculinism (if I may call it that) is not a position that women, or any other minority, have forced upon men. Finally, the things you complain about are the crimes that men commit against women, and (like all other crimes) the innocent might be accused. If our courts work properly (???), the innocent will be released. If men have problems, they need to learn to live with them, to control them and themselves. As a human, you are required not to murder any/all other humans. As a man, you are required not to rape women. In both cases, you are required to practise restraint. Do you see a problem with this? I don't...
It is worth considering that although we consider the masculine as male and the feminine as female, this is not strictly the case how these terms are defined.
I don’t see the point in a “Men’s Rights Movement” as I cannot honestly see how it would benefit human society. I’m already skeptical about the how far any rights movement should push once their main aims are met. I do worry that “feminism” has perhaps started to overreach a little - that said young women should be encouraged to knowledge and perhaps even be given financial help with education once they’ve had children (this I feel to be of gar greater importance outside of the west for numerous reasons concerning the environment and population control).
The double edged sword with the possible “overreaching” in western societies is that it both send a message to women in other countries that they can fight back and it may also belittle their views of “feminism” if they see some of the more delusional claims of the extreme end of the scale (which undoubtedly get the headlines more due to sensationalism.)
Well the problem with that is academics especially female academics will perhaps argue from the philosophical position that we have learned for so long about the world through men, and that history has spoken about the human accomplishments through men, it would seem rhetorical academically to set up a class to learn about men when we do already in general study. Men are so over represented by academia it wouldn't make sense.
The same would be said about "Caucasian studies" some students have argued why we don't have one at my previous university at one point while I attended. Of course the idea was shot down but the traditional argument is that Caucasians in the U.S. are so over represented and that historically all systems had represented the Caucasian and given the historical account of the civil rights movement and its evolution, it wouldn't make sense academically to talk about the white male perspective in America when we already study that anyway in general study.
Currently I don't see a benefit to both to humanity. Unless we come from a position of intersectionality, which we don't which is a problem I don't see both as a benefit to humanity.
Yes, it does seem kind of dumb, I agree. That's probably most people's initial reaction. It was certainly mine. But then I began to really think about it. Is this reaction a good thing? If there's an injustice which needs redressing, isn't it a good thing to call attention to it?
But really, I agree with others who have made the point that identity politics is not the best approach. If equality is the goal, then let's approach this with that aim, and with the method of looking at [i]all[/I] issues, not women's issues over others, not men's issues over others. Let's be fair. Let's turn the spotlight where it's needed, and not discriminate unfairly.
And "feminism" really isn't the best name for this seeking of equality. It also has now gained a bad reputation, and has become something of a dirty word. The excesses of modern far left politics have fucked things up and given the opposition plenty of ammunition. People like Ben Shapiro then come along and exploit this quite effectively. He has wide appeal.
Nope that is the conditioned answer. I'm an egalitarian, and quite frankly as well as technically that is NOT feminism.
Is this an insinuation or you know?
But women still face issues in the West. Women are still vilified online, at work place, in the occupational setting etc. Our issues concerning men's rights and women's rights are what I would call "first world" problems. You label the Muslim world as if all 50 Muslim countries deny women rights. I think we all forget Islam when it came to social rights among the Abrahamic faiths spearheaded these issues long before Middle Age Christianity began to address them.
Neither does the west. Just because we aren't actively throwing gay people off buildings or performing public executions does not mean the west is significantly better. Excuse my French, but there are gay men/women trans men/women still getting their ass whooped on the streets for their orientation. There are still Christians shooting at Jews and Muslims and are attacking black churches.
Given what I known about feminism at large, that’s a very astute summative statement.
All the same, most self-labeled “true/real men” associate most everything regarding femininity to a weakness of mind and body. As in, “women are emotional” and such. Thereby detesting this “–ism” that gets attached to “feminine” and which seeks to be of equal importance to masculinity. To these men feminism is, or at least symbolizes, a direct affront to their social power of superiority relative to women. So addressing their interests via feminism is rather mute.
That aside, even when not addressing those who view male superiority over women to be a natural/god-given right (plenty of these worldwide), there’s still an oddness to addressing men’s issues via the label of feminism:
To try to make my point, I’ll use myself as one honest example: I’d love to find a lifelong mate that at least in part personifies Elizabeth Stanton’s spirit; and so she would be quite proud and dignified in calling herself a feminist—despite all the spin-mongering against feminism that our present culture offers. I’d share her sentiments and ethics regarding the issues of feminism. But I’d still feel odd in declaring myself to be a feminist. This is because I’m a male and value those beneficial masculine attributes that typically pertain to the male sex. There is no doubt that feminist women such as Elizabeth Stanton value the same beneficial masculine attributes in men that an equalitarian such as myself does. Feminism, after all, is not anti-masculinity. But, nevertheless, there’s something amiss with labeling a man feminine, this rather than masculine … and this is something which the term “feminism”, as a term (rather than a historic movement), often tends to imply culturally. Especially since our culture is in part composed of those antagonistic to equality between the sexes.
In short, I’m pro-feminism (as per Elizabeth Stanton, who historically epitomizes the movement and its aims … one will notice that it extends beyond the concerns of a particular race of economic class), but can’t feel comfortable labeling myself a feminist.
Just as former liberals are now labeled progressives to stand apart from neo-liberalism, it seems that feminism would be benefited by a new term so as to more easily make its point: an equality of worth between the biological and sometimes psychological differences of the sexes.
All the same, pleasantly humbled to see other males that don't bash feminism. :up:
Quoting Anaxagoras
Here’s the problem with that statement:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
As it happens, I'm no expert on the modern shenanigans of feminism; just now read up a little on this quoted person. But, yea, bathwater gets dirty after awhile, so out it goes ... just as long as it doesn't get confused for the baby. :razz:
Just how far gone are you? You cannot see that throwing people from buildings IS FAR worse than a beating, and the rarity of the occurrence (or any act of bigotry towards gays) in the two cultures are not even close. Instead what do you do? Jump track to the False Equivalence Express. Staggering.
Lol
Just throw out the baby, keep the bathwater.
Hm. How do you find that that could logically work? Throwing out the aim of an equality between sexes while yet preserving its modern-day outcomes within society …
Besides, disposing of babies down the sewer doesn’t sit too well with most people … this as metaphors go.
Is there something lost in interpretation?
No, you are accurate, I was just being facetious and satirical.
I found that funny.
Ah yes Wikipedia the go-to website
I'm going to use the source from a writer and self-declared feminist:
"The movement was given the name ‘feminism’ because it focuses on the gender inequality issues that impact women. Just like any other civil rights category, feminism is a term used to show that one supports women’s equality and wants to address the serious amount of gender discrepancies they face daily. It does not take away from other civil rights matters.
Feminism is not called Humanism or Egalitarianism because Feminism, Humanism and Egalitarianism are three distinct theories."
Also the author later says:
"Feminism was given its name because it began as a socio-political movement to achieve gender equality for females and through its own rhetoric has become a movement to achieve equality for all persons regardless of gender."
Source:https://www.progressivewomensleadership.com/feminism-why-not-egalitarianism-or-humanism/
Any gender-specific form of egalitarianism is not complete humanism because the experiences and oppression of women do not speak in terms of the experiences and oppression I've experienced or any other male. I'm sure modern feminists wouldn't call the men's rights movement a part of egalitarianism due to the historical impact of patriarchy, with good reason and also with bias. The problem more importantly with allocating feminism with egalitarianism is definition and as defined earlier by the feminist writer, it is an equality based philosophy geared at addressing the socio-political, and economic oppression of women. This by definition, and my personal experiences alone does not speak for me.
As one commentator had said in the listed website I cited:
"Gender equality is a step for human equality, not an alternative to it."
White middle aged middle class cis straight able males tend to call themselves egalitarian.
Odd, since we generally do not act as if this were so.
I'm sorry excuse me for reminding people of the exordium of introducing how the pot met the kettle. Of course I think being killed for your sexual orientation, race, religion, disability, gender, or species for extremist views is morally wrong. I want to also apologize further because in addition to that, I work in a hospital and most of my time is done in the emergency department where people of homosexual orientation as well as encountering those in the prostitute profession are assaulted daily. Of course being killed is worse than a beating, but the fact remains that being assaulted for the aforementioned identities period is bad.
Quoting DingoJones
No. I was saying that its a double standard to look at Muslim cultures when it happens all the times here in the States and in other western countries. I think what you're hell bent on is seeing it in the news as proof of a daily occurrence and if that is true then that is another animal to discuss especially when it comes to what the media wants to highlight and doesn't. I'm merely looking at it from a general issue not specifics.
I'm neither white, nor middle aged, nor do I subscribe to the cis label but I am a male. Let me explain my position on egalitarianism:
As far as acting as an egalitarian, I am neither an actor nor subscribe to any form of art school to learn how to act. I'm an egalitarian philosophically because I believe all humans ought to have all rights equally through socio-political and economic opportunities. I'm also an egalitarian because I belonged to a historically oppressed group and I've seen how generational oppression can blind people of said demographic to the point to where blanketed statements and accusations have been made and judgement and sentences have been met. Therefore, in order to mitigate the evolutionary process of going from one extreme to another, I am therefore egalitarian.
Sure, but I am. Mostly.
My point is the simple observation that treating everyone equally serves only to maintain existing inequities.
Depends on the (supposed) injustice, but I don't believe there's any injustice here (obviously).
Can you elaborate? I'm curious about your comment.
Quoting Banno
To supplant humanism or egalitarianism with gender based equality called feminism?
Why? Is there something problematic or unclear here?
And this is for you to judge?
As I said:
Quoting Anaxagoras
How is egalitarianism a form of hypermasculinity?
For a personal question to you as a black man who has lived under the oppression of systemic racism (in the early portion of my life) which benefits white men and women, how does feminism affect my social experiences as a black male? In addition, how does the adoption of feminism address those issues that I have dealt with?
Quoting Anaxagoras
You address a bigger problem by talking about a different, smaller problem. Thats not the pot and the kettle. False equivalence.
You seem to see feminism as antithetical to humanism and egalitarianism.
I don't.
That's not for me to say. I don't know about you.
No, its not a double standard. The standards are different between the two cultures. One is much worse on the gay issue. Clearly, much, much worse. Its not even a part of the culture in the west, its bad actors who are actively condemned by the culture who do it. In many Muslim countries it is supported by the culture, or a blind eye turned. Russian culture too. Sorry if that offends your sensibilities.
Isn't the argument: "the reason why we have persisting inequality is because people are not treated equally"?
Fortunes are not completely static (they rise and fall); you seem to be suggesting that there's no economic mobility whatsoever.
That assumption seems to hold more true when we look at extreme wealth disparity (the super-rich), but then we're inherently not talking about racial demographics.
Under your apparent suggestion, we ought to create a few extra black billionaires, and add more black families to the lower-middle class as opposed to strictly lower-class. Problem is it might not be long before the bulk of the middle class joins the rest of everyone who live paycheck to paycheck.
You seem to be promoting proportional symmetry (an aesthetic value), not equality or an equitable minimum for all.
Nope, I didn't.
I see it as part of the umbrella but not THE umbrella.
Thus is my point about feminism..
Is it?
Dealing in terms of equity seems to me both an over-simplification and a cloud of ambiguity. How would we tell that folk were treated equally?
A more appropriate approach would be to to look at the fulfilment of capabilities.
That's an odd comparison - an individual to a movement.
I don't know what capabilities you have that might have been frustrated; fatherhood, caring, family role, employment...
So I can't judge for you.
And that's rather the point of feminism; that gender ought not frustrate one's options.
And that applies equally to males and females.
And neither is it in all 50 Muslim countries or Muslim dominated countries. All Muslim countries have various laws both from the local governments and federal governments. Although Shari'ah Law embodies most of them, some laws based on for example which province you live, there are laws based on social conduct. Not all laws concerning homosexuality are based on the laws as you see in the news like Saudi Arabia or Iraq or Iran. If you're going to examine and critique the Muslim position regarding homosexuality and the Islamic opinion in relation to its jurisprudence, its better to have a general understanding of the different laws in those Muslim countries because there is no universal consensus.
Quoting DingoJones
Which countries?
Quoting DingoJones
I'm not Muslim, it doesn't offend me. What offends me is people who aren't learned in Islam or Islamic culture have a general consensus of what its like and their only recourse is the news media.
Each to their own? :wink:
I think that the forces keeping poor people poor have more or less managed to spread out evenly across all racial and sexual divides, and at the end of the day this the ultimate problem I would seek to remedy. The system we live in demands us to continuously produce wealth, but most of the profits are now deftly scooped up by a tiny fraction of equity holders. I can see the logic behind compensatory treatment designed to eliminate economic disparities, but once we're all equally poor (and there are a few extra Oprahs), what then?
Poor people will still be poor, we'll just be poor in equal proportions. Therefore, what you're proposing is not an actual solution, it's really just an aesthetic correction in pursuit of equity over equitable minimums. On the other hand, if the average (poor) citizen is given a greater chance at upward economic mobility (and all the other capacities that come along with that), not only will the poorest among us have a better standard of living, economic differences between various demographics caused by our discriminatory past will also fade.
The Capabilities Approach is more about justice than equity. Equal is not fair.
No it's not. Let me help you.
For example I believe any social movement that develops from the oppression of a minority group, that movement is speaking for that group, and any support of that social movement is basically a declaration of alliance of said movement. So when a feminist says "feminism is egalitarianism" it is not. Feminism addresses the social and economic oppression that WOMEN experience. Egalitarianism addresses EVERYONES oppression and experiences and seeks to create a system to rectify oppression of EVERYONE thus addressing everyone's experiences.
This is why I made the point that feminism doesn't address the issues of black Americans or even black people in the diaspora. If you learned the history of feminism it didn't arise from the civil rights movement or from black women, it came from disgruntled, disillusioned, white women who sought to address their social issues in society. Thus is why there is no feminism (per se) there is white and black feminism because the general feminism does not address the double oppression women of color face. This is why I believe egalitarianism prevents the splintering or schism of ideas within feminism. So instead of calling it a black feminism or feminism (which is indirectly white feminism) feminist feminist movement, why not call it a movement that seeks to address the oppression of all women in all facets of society which is why I think naming it egalitarianism ought to solve that.
Quoting Banno
Right, and I can't say the same for a woman or any woman. I can only ally myself with the goals of women which is social equality, but I cannot experience what they've experienced nor do I wish to impart what I think what they experienced and address it with a male mentality, it is wrong in so many ways. This is why I think men's rights and women's rights are two sides on the same coin.
Quoting Banno
Well I just disagree from an academic position, considering being heavily immersed in the writings of Mackinnon and Dworkin. I think on paper and in some lectures it would appear that way, but on the surface and as expressed (from my point of view) publicly, feminism is about achieving equality, but maintaining feminine identity. So long as problems remain feminine and masculine and not a human problem it will never be seen as equality.
No.
What differences are there between the capabilities of men and and women, or straights and gays, or whites and blacks?
Good point.
I must be misunderstanding you.
I'm more impressed by Martha Nussbaum. It better reflects the view of justice over mere equity reflected in the picture I posted.
?? Of course. Why wouldn't it be for me to judge? Which judging individual am I supposed to defer to and why am I supposed to defer to them?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Suppose I make a judgement that there is no injustice here, yet someone else claims the contrary. Is my judgement sufficient?
One of the outstanding characteristics of the privileged is their inherent inability to see their privilege. Folk just do see injustice that does not effect them - until they listen.
"Black Feminism" does affect me because for one I'm black, and two, the sexual oppression that black women have historically as well as currently face affects me indirectly because of society's negative portrayal of the oversexualization of black women (A great example of this is the porn site "Ghetto Gaggers") through pejorative categorizations that I too, am a part of.
Contrast to that when a white woman declares she is a feminist and cites her issues in society although my gender (not me specifically) is a part of the problem, society still sees me in human value as unequal to a white woman--still (the economic gap between a white woman and black male is indicative of this). So the issues I currently face such as systemic racism is at the forefront of the war I continue to fight and until my demographic can achieve absolute full human status in the eyes of the society I live in, so-called feminism (or white feminism) does not greatly affect me.
Quoting Banno
I would have to look her up. Sorry in undergrad in my women's philosophy course my professor was a staunch advocate of the writings of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon. Needless to say, I hated feminism because of them in undergrad.
Sufficient for what?
Quoting Banno
Even if I were to agree with that, aren't I in the demographic in question?
After reading Nussbaum, I find an account based on frustrated human capacities far more useful that an account based on equity.
I agree.
I didn't see that comment but someone would have to explain it to me. It seems contradictory. We can't both maintain inequities yet be treating people equally.
What is achieved by the inequity in the distribution of the boxes in the picture above?
If every individual is equally unique, and we treat them all the same, then that would necessitate the oppression of certain character types, preventing them from realizing their uniqe potential.
The picture of people watching a sporting event? Those folks arent being treated equally re having a view of the game.
So if some people are treated so that they reach their potential and others are not, are they treated equally?
The folks in the nose bleed section are...fuckin animals
I don't know about that. But in the experiment I layed out, to treat unique individuals as equal has an opposite effect. It plays out by preventing some from attaining what is rightly theirs, while it allows others to remain unimpeded. So the question is: how close does oppression equate to inequality?
Thank you sir.
Obviously they're being treated equally re the view of the game (well, or as equally as possible --it's not possible for them to have an identical view)
Which post has the experiment you laid out?
Quoting Terrapin Station
What did the unequal distribution of boxes lead to?
No idea what you're talking about there.
Quoting Banno
Whether it's unequal depends on how you frame it. If we're talking about with respect to the view, it's not unequal. What's going to matter is what people are concerned with.
The one that is considering the relation of unique individuality to equality, and testing whether or not treating unique individualities equal has an opposite effect.
I'm not about to read through the entire thread trying to figure out what post that might be.
The Australian Liberal Party has 74% men in the Australian Parliament.
Their opposition, the Labour Party, has 53% men.
The Liberal narrative is along the lines you are adopting. They claim that the disparity is due to merit.
Should the Liberals do something to redress this imbalance?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-06/fact-check-liberal-women-in-parliament/9796976
One out of three people could see the gamer, despite all three being capable of seeing the game. Two of them had their capabilities frustrated. This frustration was removed by a redistribution of the boxes.
Are you high? It's like your memory bottomed out and you forgot what our discussion was about, a discussion you initiated.
Indeed. So how should it be framed? How would you frame it?
IN the first box they are treated equally. If that situation were maintained, the inability of two-thirds of them to reach their potential would be maintained. Treating everyone equally serves only to maintain existing inequities.
And so an inequity was introduced...
If you're talking about the post I responded to already (I wouldn't at all say that was describing an experiment), I already responded to it. It's not like my view changed in 15 minutes.
Makes sense to me.
What the hell? I already addressed this. In terms of being able to see the game, they're not treated equally there.
Oh, I didn't know I was supposed to be convincing you of anything. I just saw you begging someone to explain Banno's point, and I was approaching it like an experiment of reason.
Btw, don't be so narcissistic, I couldn't give two shits about your opinion
I was a compliment...
It wasn't a compliment
Why would you be asking me questions or responding to me period in that case?
Because I care about you. :kiss:
Who gets the privilege to sit in parliament and represent constituents is something that by definition can only be shared by a very small portion of individuals (it's a privilege specific to individuals, not genders; "men" don't have some kind of necessary privilege-at-large because parliaments are sausage fests). To be frank I'm more concerned with with the state of our laws (whether or not they are fair, equitable, and functional) than the genders of their mere custodians. People should not be voting on the basis of gender (is the imbalance caused by unequal consideration given by voters? If so, wouldn't it be solved if people no longer used gender as a point of discrimination when casting votes?).
It might seem like it, but reaching gender equality in parliament isn't necessarily a victory for equality and equity between the sexes. Unless people like AOC actually follow through on the substance of their rhetoric, the women and minorities of her constituency will continue to face the obstacles they currently do. It matters more that she has good ideas than an inspiring skin tone.
Should the Australian liberal party address the gender imbalance by dismissing 24 percent of their elected representatives (they ARE elected, right?) and replace them with arbitrarily selected women? What changes as a result?
We can encourage more women to run for seats in parliament, but we would be remiss to institute gender quotas. If a man cannot represent the political aspirations of women (and therefore we should institute quotas), then women cannot represent the political aspirations of men. Once we start down this road it just gets worse and worse until we do a 180.
But the individual is lost when it becomes generalized into a collectivity, especially one as broad as race or gender. In fact, I might argue that racism and sexism (as concepts) are directed toward groups rather than individuals. Could that, in some way, indicate that the notion of collectivities is an essential component of racism or sexism? (Add. I'm black...I'm white...I'm male...I'm female...I'm Merkwurdichliebe; what incendiary statements, especially the last.)
Whatever the case, it is the individual that is of primary importance, and we shouldn't sacrifice that by enslaving the individual to a mandate of equality that pertains to groups.
I can see myself taking up an opposing position: The overall impact of racism necessarily comes from the cumulative effects of individual acts of discrimination. A racist act towards one individual might symbolically be a racist act toward an entire race, but it does not actually impact all members of that race. I don't see how the notion of compensating an entire demographic to correct inequality can be effectively and equitably applied in practice. And if all we're doing is correcting the effects of discrimination after the fact (as opposed to arresting the unjust discrimination to begin with), aren't we chasing our own tails?
I agree that the racist individual is the most essential component. But a hate crime that is perpetrated on an individual is, as they say, not personal, its business. A hate crime is not directed at the individual, but at the group to which he belongs, the individual is incidental. Furthermore, the racist identifies herself with what she considers to be a superior race, so that her decisions are made on behalf of her race, and not on behalf of herself as individual.
(Add. If she identified herself as an individual (not belonging to any group identity), she would relate to the victim as an individual, making it not a hate crime, but a personal one.)
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Allow me to argue: Anyone that constitutionally identifies themselves with the victim race would be vicariously affected to the same degree as the actual victim. And then the actual victim, the victimized individual, matters only anecdotally.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Indeed. I don't think that compensating an entire demographic to correct inequality can be effectively and equitably applied either. I predict it would end with something that looks like the Soviet g.u.l.a.g.
Hate crimes are a bit distant from the kind of systemic discrimination that feminism alleges perpetuates inequality. How can we compensate people for hate crimes? You're talking about a fundamentally different problem. Yes the hate-criminal is ostensibly addressing an entire demographic, but they do not represent one (we're not in fact representatives of our respective races).
If we put an end to all future hate-crimes, unequal social outcomes would still persist (assuming hate crime isn't the only perpetuating factor of inequality).
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I find the idea that someone who shares the race of a victim can be vicariously affected to the same degree as the actual victim to be utterly dubious. I recognize that people can be emotionally affected in all kinds of ways, but at some point other people cannot be held accountable for the state of our own emotions (sometimes our emotions are not reasonable). The marginalization of actual victims in exchange for the political monetization of identity is exactly what I'm afraid of.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I don't think we would get that deep into the fever dream, but you never know...
Well first, I wasn't talking about laws in these countries. I specifically said culture. Second, there no need to pick a country, as Im not talking about the countries laws. Third, how do you know where Im getting my information?
Straw-man argument followed by a straw-man argument followed by a gross assumption.
Labour, of course, introduced a preference for preselecting women, and as a result has an equal distribution of gender. Without "dismissing 24 percent of their elected representatives".
Labour has women represented in leadership, while the Liberal party made an utter mess of not selecting the obvious candidate in their most recent leadership spill... of course, not because she was a woman, and despite her being the senior member of parliament and having far more experience than her competitors.
@Terrapin Station, this shows how equity maintains the status quo.
I'm not saying it's the cause. I was just using hate crimes to illustrate a point. Nevertherless, they are a manifestation of that same system in which racism and sexism exist, a system that relegates every individual to a group.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Ever hear of "black lives matter", or "police lives matter"? (Add. And emotionally speaking, why not? In fact emotional damage can have far worse effects than physical damage.)
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I wonder how many Russians were saying that during the Bolshevik revolution.
I agree. We are individual's, who, ideally, represent ourselves. Nevertheless, anyone who constitutionally identifies himself with a race, believes himself to be a representative of that racial demographic.
I cannot help but think that one of the most inferior assumptions an individual can make, is that he is defined by one race or another. In other words, racial identity (as a defining characterictic) is an indication of a primitive mind - or should I say: stupidity.
And? What has changed as a result? More support for Labor among progressives? Is more female butts in parliamentary seats the justice you set out to achieve? Does their increased equity in gender ratios mean they legislate more fairly or effectively?
As bad as I feel for the women who are unfairly passed over for political candidacy (not being sarcastic), disparity among a relatively elite and already advantaged portion of the population is lower on my list of concerns than are the actual laws (and their upholding) which are designed to guarantee equality of opportunity, and the welfare of the masses who live under them. I would vote for an orangutan if I thought they had good ideas and the ability to follow through on them, but not because I feel sorry for orangutans.
If the Labor party had exactly 50% women and 50% men, but you believed their policies did not actually address the obstacles that women face (while the Liberals did), who would you vote for?
'Member when the mostly male U.S Senate called in a woman subsitute to question Dr. Ford? Once you've ensured that equal proportions of genitalia will be present when parliament is in session, and your political opponents have adapted to to the new rules, wont we still be left in the same political debate about which policies we should enact? I thought we started with the idea that we should listen to the experiences of people affected by systemically perpetuated injustice, but somehow we've ended with the idea that someone of a particular identity group can only be fairly represented in political office by a member of that same identity group.
Do you really think that's true?
Quoting Banno
You're saying that based on merit, she should have been next in line. I don't know a lot about Australian politics, but I do take your word for it. But democracy ought to include meritocracy among our elected representatives.
The unequal treatment that she received is what I think helps perpetuate inequality on a grander scale. Eliminate the unequal treatment, and we will eliminate the inequality. Like the early feminists, I do believe in meritocracy, and I want women to have the chance to succeed based on their individual merit. Showing specific favoritism to women in general is an insult to their quality; what they need is a fair chance, not special treatment.
I believe in funniness
A good word to describe it might be "tribalism" (and when the going gets tough, we all tend to get downright tribal). Historically this is what served our ancestors (from an evolutionary perspective), and this makes us vulnerable to it, but it it's a poison in a globalized and multicultural society.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Of course, but I don't see how this might undermine my claim. For example, a black individual can suffer emotional trauma as the result of hearing about a hate crime (hearing about the shooting of an unarmed black civilian by white policemen), but the actual victims are the deceased and the deceased's loved ones, and their immediate community. Through sympathy we can suffer along side individual victims, but not to the same degree as their actual suffering (else we're over-reacting?)...
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
In the early days that kind of thing never entered their mind. Once the new regime had a firm clamp on the levers of power (and demanded more for less) it was something they resorted to. In their minds it was wholly pragmatic and necessary...
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I fully agree. Sadly, defining and categorizing us all into demographic categories for the sake of appeal is almost necessary to be successful under our current incentive structures. And in so doing, we can't help but see "others" as the editorialized caricatures that our established mainlines feeds to us.
Excellent point.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Indeed, nothing measures up to actual existence.
Perhaps I'm using vicariously a bit loosely, but I think we more or less share common ground on this point. But I would say the identification is deeper , so to speak, than sympathy (I can have sympathy for roadkill), it is empathic.
In the present political climate, it's not a far stretch to imagine that certain forms of behavior or speech could be outlawed (I'd be willing to bet that it's already occurred in many countries that are, quote unquote, part of the free world). And that is all that is necessary to incite a landslide of tyranny.
Couldn't have said it better
It seems to me that as equality of opportunity spreads across the globe, as access to information and knowledge abounds, that a certain weight of guilt is felt by many whom know full well that they are not reaching for their full potential and in their cowardice essential resort to a kind of mass hysterical resentment of anyone who has actually ventured out into the world, battle hardened and bruised along the way, not naive about the extent of the wrong doings of human activities in general, nor riddled with guilt about them?
If people believe their potential can be filled by pointing their fingers at the action of others then they give rise to those whom focus their live’s potential on cutting said fingers off surely?
Is “contentment” little more than a drive to self-deprecation? I curse the “contented” and “passive” - they breath empty air and gorge on tasteless viands, their gluttony is of the void in order to avoid the human condition; that is to be human trying to be more than a human!
Well there is.
Are you quoting somebody here? Nobody has "gorged on tasteless viands" for a couple of centuries, at least. In fact, you are the first person to use "viands" in The Philosophy Forum. Congrats on that.
On the other hand, what is "empty air"? No pollen? No dust? A vacuum?
Note : Rereading what I wrote maybe the last line was a little ambiguous? I meant it to say that we should be “human beings trying to be more” not that the “contented” do this - could easily have been misread so just wanted to make that crystal clear :)
I think that's probably right. However it applies to everybody. Men have difficulty perceiving their own privilege, where it occurs. But so do women, where it occurs. Same for white, black, brown, disabled, non-disabled, and so on for all identities.
The converse is also true. People have difficulty perceiving the unprivileges of 'others' (i.e. categories one doesn't apply to oneself). Male babies are unable to unionise and form an anti-circumcision movement, so we don't generally perceive circumcision (with no or inadequate anaesthetic) as the horrific abuse that it is.
Regarding privilege generally, it seems to me the most important example of privilege relates to money, class and power (which are increasingly overlapping categories) rather than the various identities normally referred to.
Regarding the MRM, I think Karen Straughan is perhaps the strongest and most radical anti-feminist (while remaining articulate I hasten to add), well worth a look. Warren Farrell is another persuasive person in the debate, but he is less extreme than Straughan. There's plenty of youtube videos of them both.
The Red Pill documentary by Cassie Jaye is essential viewing for this topic.
What does, what Vagabond said, or what you said about Labour versus the Liberal party?
At any rate, if one feels that x is unequal, then we can't treat x equally is one's opinion while having x remain unequal.
Didn't mean for it to bother you. Let me rephrase in saying that feminism as a stand alone philosophy is of itself valuable to those who see value in it. For those who do not see the value of the general understanding of feminism, like myself their identification with it based on their own experiences may not see the value in relation to themselves.
Quoting Banno
That's fine, but just because you identify with feminism on that basis does not mean its a blueprint for me to identify with it, I thought I made that clear why I choose to not identify with it.
Ok so we're back to culture and not laws even though media wise, Shari'ah Law is to blame for the killings of homosexuals. Ok so you're now saying that Muslim culture is inherently more aggressive towards homosexuals, atheists, etc?
Quoting DingoJones
See my above response...
Quoting DingoJones
Because your information is not academically based, nor is it true from a cultural standpoint and besides, your comment in reference to Muslim society is indicative of a layman's understanding of the Muslim faith. It's armchair scholarship at its best. You're trying to articulate to me about Muslim culture on a global scale to someone who has traveled and has been immersed in it. In other words, what you know or what you've seen in the media is totally different than what is in the real world.
Finally if I'm going to make an assumption how do I know your views are not coinciding with reality?
You have not one thing academic to substantiate your claim. Your dialectical propositions are not precursors to what is plausible. You need to substantiate this with evidence, not conjecture to convince me its truth.
Could you tell me of your experiences please (PM if you wish as we’re veering off track in this thread - or create a new one). I did ask before where so if it isn’t too much bother I’d like to hear as I’m interested in individual experiences as well as academic writings.
Thanks
Tilting at windmills. You continue to argue against a strawman that I’ve already pointed out to you yet here you are. You’re the one framing this through some strange media bias filter, you are the one thats throwing in atheists, you are the one bringing up sharia law...do you have my comments mixed up with someone elses?
Quoting Anaxagoras
Not a single part of any of that answers the question. Instead you ignored the question, and then proceeded to build a strawman as part of that non-answer. Again.
Do you know what it means? Straw-manning?
What an irrelevant comment. It also seems to be an implicit [i]ad hominem[/I].
@Banno confuses the mere aesthetic of dicks in parliament with the overall status quo that feminism should seek to overturn. Because I refuse to to equivocate in this way or assent to the value of gender quotas, he likens me to the problem. He's wrong; identity politics itself remains poisonous. Recent history should be evidence enough (eg: the rise of the reactionary alt-right, the election of Trump, Brexit, nationalism in the EU, etc...):
@Banno
"One of my merits is that I'm a woman"...
But is one of Bernie's merits that he is a man? If not, how does favoring Hillary the individual amount to fairness or equality, or address the "capabilities", of and for the female demographic? A privilege for one is not a privilege for all, and if all you care about is the aesthetic-moral appeal of finally electing someone without a penis, nothing whatsoever might be achieved for women at large through the office itself. In my opinion, Hillary Clinton doesn't actually give a shit about the middle class, female or otherwise, so I don't trust her as a politician. Should people sharing my views have voted for Hillary anyway because she has a vagina?.
I mean, in hindsight, democrats should have chosen Bernie over Hillary on the basis of merit, right? (the merit of being able to defeat Trump, and having a consistent record of adhering to their espoused and desirable ideas). We tried to play the identity politics game, and a bunch of white (and otherwise) people rejected it because it controverted their individual beliefs (or outright insulted them). And look where it has got us (endless division)... "Nothing changes" might have been better than the step backward that was caused by the constant focus on aesthetic measures of fairness. If you want a society where people are elected because of skin color and geniticular happenstance, then welcome to America. Identity politics has successfully revived national socialism by teaching people that it's fair to treat people differently based on their race (and gender).
Hope remains though. Trump is the perfect Falstaff to demonstrate the dangers of inherently dividing demographics into competing teams. He is our ipecac.
If men and women are both capable of acting as representatives in an elected body such as parliament, then we would expect to see equal numbers of men and women.
But we do not.
So either women are not capable representatives, or there is some other extrinsic factor biased towards men.
Your response?
In so far as feminism is about the improper use of gender in determining eligibility for social roles, it is as much an advantage to males as to females.
Advocates for various issues see themselves as part of an overarching progressive agenda. It's those who oppose change who are most bothered by the range of issues, and who see them as somehow in a state of antagonism.
My response is for us to stop the biased favoritism of men and the biased dis-favoritism of women, not to compensate by shifting to overt favoritism for women at whichever stage of candidate pre-selection (because that achieves nothing but pander).
I don't wish to discuss female-vs-male capabilities in the general sense (but we can if necessary), because whatever they may be, it is the merits of individual candidates that matter, not the merits of their gender.
We should expect to see more female political representatives than we do, and the causes of that outcome are myriad. You want to treat the effect without addressing or understanding the problem(s) to begin with. If more women aren't making it to office because of a myriad of social obstacles placed before them, foisting a few more individual women into parliament solves nothing.
The rest of woman kind will remain affected by those obstacles you have yet to name or address.
Quotas work on the opposite basis, that's to say, because of the capability of women (whether equal or greater than a man), we get more of them in position, bypassing other cultural elements which would overlook capable women in favour of men.
The objection of merit doesn't work in this context because the issue at stake is that capable women are being excluded. Remember, the question of capability isn't a status by which we judge whether one person gets a position over another capable person, it's a measure of whether someone fits skills and knowledge of the position.
As such, merit objections to quotas contain the underlying assumption that women are not capable. If women are capable, there is no objection to be made, on the grounds of capability, about them getting a position by a quota (or any other means).
Ah, so we have grounds for agreement at least in that there is some bias.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Well, perhaps the opinions of the women so selected will assist in identifying the problems invovled.
Indeed, that seems to be what happens - a period of reverse bias leads to a new stability.
The middles aged middle class white males who dominate political processes may not be the best folk to judge issues of feminism, gender, race, and ability.
What is being advocated is an approach such that we work to allow folk to do what they are capable of. Quoting VagabondSpectre
It works at the individual level. SO for example one would focus on what a person with a disability is able to do, and remove barriers to the capability. Ramps instead of steps. A few extra boxes for the short guy.
The US is just old fashioned.
We have here a parliament 46% female, 54% male and I thinkis that quite close enough. Especially when below 50% of the candidates running for Parliament were women, hence women haven't had it more difficult to get the the Parliament than men. The Green Party here btw. has 85% of it's members of parliament female. Here's the stats from the birth of the modern Parliament with the amount of female members of Parliament. Women have been present right from the start. (There are 200 seats in the Parliament here.)
What if one of the main obstacles is a toxic masculine culture in parliaments and party rooms that discourages them from getting involved? Experience shows that a pretty reliable way to dissolve toxicly masculine cultures is to require them to have a significant proportion of women in their midst. That can be achieved by quotas. Once the quotas have done their job, the obstacle will be gone and the quotas will no longer be necessary.
In 1994 the Australian Labor Party introduced quotas for the proportion of women in winnable seats. It was met with strong internal resistance at the time, but some brave souls pushed it through. The result is that the party's culture has changed enormously, it has very strong female representation in parliament, most of its its most potent political operators are women, and its opponent - the strangely-named Liberal party - is now broadly perceived as being anti-women, which is an enormous electoral liability for them.
Fair enough. We were taking as our example the Australian Liberal Party, which faces a thrashing in a forthcoming election partly because of its entrenched misogyny.
There's always room for agreement, but where we differ is always more interesting. I've never said sexism and misogynistic bias doesn't exist, but I probably believe it is of lesser magnitude than you (finding out how much less, entails a very wide discussion of how we weight each causal factor which contributes to a disequilibrium of average outcomes between genders).
Quoting Banno
They're supposed to be voted in, democratically, for that very reason. The people speak in large part through the concerns and promises of the candidates they elect, and it is by the words and actions of those candidates (rather than the virtues of their gender) that the most immediate and impactful change can be instituted
The long and storied rises and falls of the Equal Rights Amendment in America is a didactic history on this point. Americans had the chance to put in constitutional writing that individuals could not be discriminated against on the basis of sex or gender. The champions of the opposition were often female, and their main argument was that women would lose their special treatment (not being drafted and gender based labor legislation favored by conservatives).
Using what is ostensibly your present argument, that differences in capabilities between men and women warrant different treatment, the Equal Rights Amendment Act, which is the very legal entity which would make unconstitutional the unfair discrimination we both agree is a problem, was prevented from being passed into law.
"I'm a woman, take it from me; we don't need no ERA".
"Perhaps" just isn't good enough.
Quoting Banno
(In America,) I don't believe the middle class dominates much of anything. Why hold the average man uniquely accountable? Crimes of thy father and all that?
I don't condone reverse bias. Groups don't suffer, individuals do, reverse bias is just more bias.
I really wouldn't see the reason in entrenched misogyny or anything like that (even if I don't know Australian politics so well). Sorry, but apart from the Muslim Brotherhood I assume few political parties are entrenched with misogynists. If the voters, especially women voters, have been used to vote for men, then that is a far more bigger reason than misogyny. One really has to look at how voters relate to women candidates. Typically the media seeks to make misogyny or chauvinism to be the reason for under representation of women and hope they catch some old politician they don't like saying something bad about women in politics.
Tell you the truth, very few men actually hate women and would be opposed to them in Parliament in the Western World. Political traditions are different in various countries. If there isn't the tradition of female politicians to seek office, then you simply don't have so many talented candidates from to choose from.
OK.
The same number of women and men don't always apply for the same job, and companies should have the right to choose based on merit even if it doesn't create perfect gender parity in staff numbers.
The causes of the disequilibriums between men and women aren't wholly caused by the actions of sexist cis gender white males.
Did you even read my post?
Why are you taking this with or against us attitude? If I say that I'm against unjust discrimination, and I don't agree to what is in my view more unjust discrimination, I'm therefore in support of existing unjust discrimination?
All I can say is that you are not looking.
We're all capable of being the president (Trump proves that). So should we work to ensure that Ivanka Trump becomes the next president? (She does have the potential after-all).
The rights of accessibility, and the standards of decency we try our best to uphold for people with different physical capabilities are not comparable to political offices, nor to the reasons which hold back women at large from breaking into the areas traditionally dominated by men (I don't know about Australia, but elsewhere the times are a changin). It's laudable to help people reach their potential, but you've mostly been talking about helping a tiny fraction of economically and politically elite women attain a privilege that few people can ever experience.
So I ask again, once the Liberal Party learns to pander and has 50% female representatives, what then? How have you otherwise said or achieved anything meaningful? How will I know which side to vote for?
As an aside, what do you think the Labour party says to the female candidates who are pre-selected because they are women? "Congratulations! We would like to support you in a campaign for your district! There are a bunch of other people we would rather select, but since we need to pander to the masses by having a better ratio of men to women, you're our strategic choice!".
Wouldn't that be a bit unsatisfying? Wouldn't you rather have not been unfairly subjected to extra obstacles in the first place?
This highlights the dangers of people using 'misogyny' as a synonym for 'sexism'. The two are very different, with only a small area of overlap. Far too often people use the word 'misogyny' when they mean 'sexism'.
You are right. Very few men actually hate women. But many men either think they are superior to women in the features that matter (such as intellect), or that women's roles should be constrained to the traditional ones of home-making and caring.
The toxic masculine culture that persists in many male-dominated parliaments, party rooms, board rooms, men's clubs and sport clubs incorporates those features of perceived superiority, desire for women to keep to their place, and very often the treating of women generally as sex objects rather than as humans. The latter manifests through telling jokes that portray women as sex objects, plus language, songs and chants that do the same. None of this qualifies as misogyny, but it is enough to make the vast majority of women to want to go nowhere such a bunch of people.
Personally I would like to see people stop saying things are misogynist when what they really mean is sexist, demeaning, or even rape-culturish.
Congress/Parliament isn't just another man's club. We can fiddle with the rules of conduct/transparency of conduct for those who are put there by constituents, but we can't tell the constituents who to put there in the first place.
In my opinion, people like AOC are actually already doing a good job of this. More women holding congressional seats would be even better, but because the job they're there to do is more important than anything else, we just cannot force it.
Quoting andrewk
Ultimately the voters will choose, and if intentionally fielding more women gets them more votes, that's the system as it stands. I would just hope that voters are still voting on the basis of the soundness of political ideas and personal consistency (merit) rather than voting based on emotional appeals. I realize that the law of averages allows campaigns to rise and fall through such approaches, but I resent them as political pandering and harmful to democratic health.
For sure, but it's not about a specific cause, it's about a result. Are capable women contributing? If not, quotas address that problem (aside from specific instances in which women are almost entirely disinterested/don't have the skills to enter form outside), whether we are talking people direct intervening to keep women out or some kind of instance or a wider social context in which capable women haven't been interested.
Again, people are being picked on merit here because we are discussing capable women. An organisation concerned with merit has nothing to fear because the people the quota insists they pick are capable. In terms of merit, there is no reason for an organisation to complain.
The causes which create male-female disparities in certain professions exist at different levels of the professional hierarchy in question. For example, lets assume fewer women are being accepted to courses/academic programs in STEM fields, and that women face more obstacles during their courses, causing fewer of them to graduate. The existing market of qualified graduates might be male heavy through no fault of any individual women (it would be the fault of the prior discrimination), and companies requiring technical STEM skills would have no choice but to hire mostly men as a result.
Quotas at the top don't account for or solve imbalances that are stratified throughout a hierarchy. We have to start at the bottom, which is where my concern has long rested, and that's a broader discussion of economic issues that transcend gender and race.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Interpret what is written in the stupidest way possible. That'll work.
How do you move from accessibility ramps to gendered Parliamentary ramps?
Make a stupid comparison, get a stupid interpretation.
Evidence?
http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/4891/Why_quotas_work_for_gender_equality.html
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/do-gender-quotas-really-reduce-bias-evidence-from-a-policy-experiment-in-southern-africa/9C64EDE9CA9C1B60C0428A57A823872C
https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/news-item/a-gender-agenda-the-effectiveness-of-quota-systems-in-increasing-womens-meaningful-participation-in-politics/
https://www.aeaweb.org/research/can-gender-quotas-help-improve-quality-of-politicians
I think you're doing an obvious bait and switch by using the analogy of accessibility ramps in the context that you have done. By its very definition, people need to win the privilege of becoming a political representative, and as such, everyone's respective ramps should be at the same incline.
That's one crux of our disagreement. You want to implement a reverse bias to counteract the existing bias which primarily serves rich white men, while I want to remove the bias which presently favors rich white men. Your way actually complicates things in theory, because then we need to counter every extant advantage with a respective proportional ramp for every conceivable demographic
Everyone, regardless of ability or race or gender should have access to a guaranteed set of rights that everyone shares, and that includes having reasonable access to public buildings. It's a universal right that we extend to individuals. Becoming a political representative is not a universal right that we can guarantee to everyone, the best we can do is try to set the game up to be as fair as possible. Rigging the game such that you get parity in gender outcomes isn't same as having a game where people have the same amount of opportunity to use their capabilities to succeed in the first place.
Quoting Banno
Let's assume the worst, and take it for granted that patriarchy is operant and causally dominant at every level of society. By treating it as a simple and purely top down problem (assuming parity at the top with trickle down to parity at all levels), it may amount to mere "tokenism". If a body politic isn't capable of voting for politicians who uphold egalitarian values, regardless of their gender or gender quotas, how much can we achieve beyond symbolic gesture? Won't women still wind up getting the short end in all the ways that they currently do?
That is to say, if it's just rich cis white het power-having males making all the decisions merely permit some women to win political office, won't they still hold the power? Won't they just select women willing to maintain their desired status quo? Political beliefs wont need to change, only optics.
I suspect we might disagree less if we wen't using political office as an example to explore, as it is something that relies on meritocracy, regardless of preconditions. A level playing field in our election processes has importance beyond civil rights.
How?
Societal values themselves need to keep progressing until we finally understand that we aren't and should not be defined by the circumstances of our birth or the contents of our limbic systems. Relatively extreme economic inequality is itself a present and major source of "privilege" that we can look at through a lens of racial averages, but that's just one potentially misleading fraction of the picture. Poor white families in Appalachia don't dominate or benefit from what happens in Washington. Many of the dominant forces in our society are ultimately white and male owned or operated, but they neither represent nor serve the mean, median or mode white male (or really anyone but their major stakeholders).
Massive reform is required across many levels of government, not least campaign finance laws (which in theory hamstring female candidates by selling political influence to rich white men). If there were more rich women, or less sexist rich men, we would see more investment in female candidates, but I wouldn't expect a change of anything but the shape of the talking head. I don't have the answers, but I know turning knobs in the dark until we have desirable optics isn't a strategically coherent approach.
Nice rhetoric. What we know is that quota systems change culture - not always, but enough to be considered.
Here's the deal: given preselection candidates of roughly equal competence, select the woman. Do this until the bias is removed, or it is apparent that it's not working. then stop.
People cannot express a preference for woman politicians unless there are women politicians for whom to vote.
Is that because political preference is, in the strict sense, only expressed through voting?
I want the parity in outcomes to be a consequence of equal opportunities, and maybe getting there requires some messy generalizing, but I'm not that kind of radical (I think we're getting there without it, and more deeply rooted/widespread problems are my more immediate concerns).
A "preference for female politicians" is a bit strange to me, as we're supposed to be voting based on policy. I get that we can help to program culture with quotas at the top, but I'm reluctant condone it for necessity. A bottom up or system wide approach (such as an ERA) achieves the same result without arbitrary top down correction (arguably interfering with "democratic freedom"). That said, reform is required, which should go a long way to solving our present issues regarding inequality of outcomes.
I'm not actually opposed to this, but this isn't the same as a quota. Where differences in merit are indistinguishable, I could care less who gets the job, and if promoting more women in this way has long-term or indirect benefits, I'm all for it. I'm not in favor of passing over more meritorious candidates in pursuit of quota targets.
Does the bias exist to any large degree in modern wester society or is it merely an assumption based on a bygone era? As for the whole “white” issue. So what? Is it at all surprising that wealthy nations (predominantly white) produce a lot of predominantly white rich people? If the population, demarcated by arbitrary phenotypes, was split 50/50 then I would expect figures to rest, or be moving toward, a roughly equal distribution. Note: I don’t think it is fair to assess somewhere like the US by these measures because the extent of the problem there is historically more significant (esp. in the South).
Anyone ever considered that women vote for who they believe are the best candidates and that such women are not sexist so simply vote for who they believe in rather than what they’ve got between their legs?
If women want more women to represent in the government then they should back them. I don’t see how we can blame men for how women vote? At a stretch you can try and attach some narrative of social manipulation to the story, but wouldn’t that be belittling to women’s ability to make their own rational choices?
I don’t quite see whether men are white or not has much relevance to talk about “Men’s Rights” and “Women’s Rights”? Of course we can push the history of this in how “feminism” was racist in earlier days, but is that massively relevant now given that women are women and men are men?
Money does buy power, and that's a root issue (along with relative economic inequality). That most rich entities are white is mere circumstance.
As for economics resources are never distributed equally because if they were society would be massively inefficient - in this sense economic inequality is part and parcel of a fully functional society in which a variety of people’s with different personal and group affiliations live(be this difference by trade or merely aesthetic tastes).
The true societal force lies in the ability of its citizens - which dictate the allocation of resources where they most “benefit” society (meaning “benefit” as in, don’t fall below the baseline efficiency).
I said it is a root issue. I'm characterizing money in politics, and it will take deeper reform than shifting money to ameliorate our electoral systems as a whole.
Quoting I like sushi
I'm not arguing for the equal distribution of resources, I'm arguing for less relative unequal distribution of resources, and perhaps a rearrangement of the relationship between industrial-corporate profits and deferred costs.
Quoting I like sushi
Efficiency isn't everything though. I'm not objecting to capitalism per se, I'm objecting to broken markets, and a broken relationship between private wealth and political influence.
Campaign finance reform is a viable and direct solution. It would level the playing field and revolutionize the electoral system.
Then perhaps I'd vote, but until then, I refuse to give my assention to a muppet.
:up:
They'll call it idealism, but we do need reform.
Edit: they will indeed. Lol
In white collar professions that tends not to be the case. In medicine and law more graduate entrants are female than male, yet most of the people in senior positions are male. My observation is that in business generally, men only slightly outnumber women at the graduate entry level, but the upper echelons are dominated by men. SO in those professions at least, attention is needed at the medium to higher levels of the hierarchy.
Of course there are plenty of other problems that go across levels, such as the domination of women in poorly-paid 'caring' professions, and the lower participation of girls in STEM training. The arguments for and against quotas are different therefrom the ones that apply in parliaments and boardrooms. It is possible to be convinced that quotas won't work in increasing female STEM participation at the same time as favouring their introduction in boardrooms and political parties.
Personally, I think that carefully-designed quotas might be able to help in the STEM area as well, for class imbalance as well as sex imbalance. But that's a different discussion and the pros and cons are different.
I also wonder whether "seltsam" is a more appropriate translation of "strange" for Sellers' character, as it carries a connotation of "weird", whereas - so I understand - merkwürdig just means unusual, or at most "odd".
I'd be delighted to be corrected by any native German speakers.
So it's a misnomer? That was a serious comment. I think a name change would help the cause of which you speak.
Even [i]ramps[/I] have a gender now? What's the world coming to?
True. Especially when people deliberately exploit it. It seems to me that it was probably a better name historically than in modern times.
Yeah, but if we were to start a campaign or a group of activists or a movement or something, we'd probably need some sort of naming, wouldn't we? What kind of names would we use? Something to do with equality, I'd say, without wording relating to one specific gender and not the other.
I'm sorry, but that reminds me of Scott Morrison's comment that he wanted women to rise to leadership, so long as it was not at the expense of anyone else...
Yes, that's what he said.
Lol. Well, with a brief google search on the topic and it looks clear that the problem is a totally inflamed political environment about the issue. Sure, for a reason.
The real question is the following: why don't women vote for women?
Look at it this way: Women have had the right to vote and be members of the Australian House of Representatives since and the Senate since 1902, right? Yet the first female member entered the house as did the first member of the senate in 1943 AND ONLY after 1980 has there been continuously women in the house of representatives. My question is why?
This is not a problem about men. This is a serious problem about Australian women.
Finnish women have been members of Parliament right from the start and we had the first female minister in an administration in 1926. We have had one female President (with several candidates), two female prime ministers and 79 female ministers of the 574 ministers of every administration there has been. Before 1990, Australia had had only 8 female cabinet ministers.
It doesn't seem like the distinction you're proposing is holding up to analysis, but we'd have to explore it in more detail.
What are "we" doing to gay people that even comes close to throwing them off buildings or performing public executions?! That's an outrageous comment to make. Of course hate crimes against gay people still occur. Some gay people end up getting murdered for being gay. But it doesn't even come close to the situation in certain places in the Middle East and Africa. I remember a campaign about trying to get school children to think about using the word "gay" as an insult. That's an indication of the level of development we're at. Your comment isn't just clueless, it is downright offensive.
Staggering indeed.
:100:
The term "equality" isn't the best term, either, actually. I agree with you on that. The term "proportionality" is better, and I have used it before in place of the term "equality".
In your picture where each individual can see over the fence, they each have the right proportional adjustment, which leads to a better outcome.
Wealth proportionality would be a good thing. We don't have it. It is out of proportion, and grossly so in some cases. This is an injustice. I don't think you have the best understanding of Marxism.
In what context?
In what context?! Economically, yes. I am far from neo-liberalism, and I have little sympathy for the 1%. I would jump at a chance to pull them down.
I believe the 1% on a global scale puts anyone earning something like $20,000 a year in the top 1% ... not massively fair given the relativity of financial wealth I admit, but it at least brings into question how you apply this 1% idea and whether you feel so strongly about everyone within said 1% at all/any particular level of analysis.
You're not familiar with what's meant by the 1%? No, funnily enough, I'm not talking about anything remotely close to my earnings. If we're pulling people down, then I say we should start with the richest billionaires and work downwards, not with people on the lowest incomes by Western standards.
The examples you cite don't seem to show any unfair treatment. There is a disproportionate number of men dying/suffering but, if we dig a little deeper, I think we can find the cause in discrimination by men AND women against something else.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/27/how-much-you-have-to-earn-to-be-in-the-top-1percent-in-every-us-state.html
This is a selection of the difference between some countries:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/a-global-guide-to-what-it-means-to-be-part-of-the-1
Where do you draw the line? How would wealth be redistributed? How would you prevent the wealthiest from grouping together in order to expand businesses, create jobs and/or invest in future projects?
Somewhere that seems proportional. I haven't suggested that it's an easy job to come up with a really detailed and practical way of doing this. Who do you think I am? Am I a famed intellectual? Am I a politician? Am I an economist? Am I even remotely close to the genius of someone like Marx? No.
But I can easily point to the most clearcut cases of excess wealth, which is the 1%, and I know you understand what I mean by that, so stop pretending.
Quoting I like sushi
For a start, by taking the excess wealth from the wealthiest billionaires, and then redistributing it to those in the lower classes, with the aim of closer proportionality. All the details are open for debate, and don't expect me to have a fully worked out plan, because you'll be disappointed.
Quoting I like sushi
I'm going to disregard your wording, and answer the question of what I'd do towards preventing the wealthiest from amassing excess wealth, and the answer would be the law, and law enforcement.
I’m not pretending. I’m just curious about your thoughts and who the worst people are? You did at least say “little sympathy” so I imagine you accept that not everyone in the 1% (relative to west only for clarity) is driven by excess and greed.
I don’t quite see that taking wealth and giving to lower classes would necessarily be helpful and/or welcome by those in lower income brackets. Of course though I’ll take that with generosity and assume you’re sensible enough to mean this is terms of using said redistribution to boost health, education and work toward improving the general environments of poorer areas - investing in future job prospects by creating jobs and developing skills and trades. You’d get no argument from me there.
They would no doubt be drawbacks to this concerning the global market and it is already the case that western countries are feeling a bit of this kind of pinch due to how global equality has shifted over the past few decades - I just worry that the trends in western wealth have set people up to be oversensitive to slight fluctuation which will come and go as wealth is redistributed globally.
It is certainly complex though and that is the reason I probed at what you said for greater clarity and to get a possible new perspective on how the world functions.
Thanks
The consequences of their actions vastly outweigh any goodness in their intentions, in my judgement.
Quoting I like sushi
It would be accepted on a wide scale by the lower classes, and it would certainly be helpful to them. You see, there's this thing called the cost of living...
It could be distributed in a way that would mean a decent increase to income or having to pay less tax, so they wouldn't even really have a choice, or even if they did, who on earth in that group would object to having to pay less in tax or receiving an increase in pay? I'm confident it could be done in a clever way.
It doesn't have to be dished out in one large sum, which we could call "a charity payout for skint chavs". That would most probably get rejected on a much larger scale, because of pride. Although I still wouldn't reject it. I'd say something like, "Great! Where do I sign?".
Quoting I like sushi
I'm talking about proportional pay for work. More people would make more money, because the pot would be shared more equally instead of drained disproportionately by just a few, with the scraps being distributed amongst the rest. Those who get millions for kicking around a ball on a field would get less or be forced to find another profession. Nurses and teachers would get more.
That's closer proportionality, as I assess it.
We are still assaulting people for what their orientation is, or what their racial makeup is. Point is we are still hurting people for a makeup they didn't choose. Did you know there were three historically black churches in the states that were burned down and the person that did it was a son of a cop and did it with racism in his heart? I still live in a society where people are will to hurt other people because of their phenotype. Yes we are very much more "liberal" than the Muslim countries in those regard but in others, we are still very much behind.
Quoting S
I don't. What campaign is this and where since you remember?
Nope, I've acknowledged that sort of thing, and it's still not even close. You should just retract your original claim, as there's a greater chance of hell freezing over than of you successfully defending it.
Quoting Anaxagoras
I live in England, and I distinctly remember seeing a giant poster about it with my own eyes by a train station in my town a number of years ago. I don't know what the campaign was called, if it had a name. It might have been a government thing. I would have to see if I could find out those kind of details through the internet.
Assault is assault whether you're killing people or putting your hands on someone. Fact is, it shouldn't happen period if we are better.
Quoting S
I don't need to retract shit. I know from my own personal as well as professional experiences of what I've seen.
Quoting S
Oh that explains it. I see how your media deals with Meghan Markle, and the acid throwing incident (a Muslim girl reportedly had acid dowsed on her face).
Quoting S
Yes that tells me a lot of "what you know."
"Last week a 16-year-old boy was charged over five linked acid attacks which took place in just 90 minutes on 14 July.
But despite suspects being identified in 60 per cent of cases, the vast majority never even reach court."
Source:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/acid-attack-london-resham-khan-trolled-out-of-hospital-online-abuse-a7854146.html
That's the fallacy of missing the point. We were arguing over your original claim, and that's a completely different claim with no valid logical relation to your original claim, as far as I can tell.
Quoting Anaxagoras
You should definitely retract the following claim, for the reason that it is obviously false and offensive:
"Just because we aren't actively throwing gay people off buildings or performing public executions does not mean the west is significantly better".
Yes it does.
Quoting Anaxagoras
That's another fallacy of irrelevance. Possibly poisoning the well.
Quoting Anaxagoras
It wasn't hard to find results verifying this sort of thing. Do you not know how to google? Here, click this link: https://www.google.com/search?q=uk+government+homophobia+in+schools&oq=uk+government+homophobia+in+schools&aqs=chrome..69i57.21660j0j7&client=ms-android-alcatel&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
Behind who?
Wow. You continue to stagger me.
It should happen much less if we are better, and since it in-fact happens much less, is less culturally acceptable then yes the west is better on that issue.
He's not being reasonable, he's just virtue signalling.
When it comes to general public treatment regarding sexual identity the west is still very under the shadow of a Christian based sexual repression - but on the flip side the liberal values upheld in the law allow these to be addressed more directly (albeit under the duress of politicised jargon in order to garner public support and play on people’s heart strings: politics has always been a cynical affair!)
I think he is trying to be, and thinks he is but has gone so far down the wrong road he cant see the turn-off (where he went wrong) anymore. The statements he is making are often utterly clueless as far as approaching the issue from a perspective other than his own.
It amazes me, cuz this dude is living a life somewhere, holds down a job, presumably interacts and gets along with other people, deals with the life problems we all have to deal with...how? How does he get by with such poor, dogmatic thinking? Its just so hard for me to imagine.
Religion poisons everything. What can ya do?
Because they don't have the massive problem of actively throwing gay people off of buildings or performing public executions, which is strong evidence for the West being significantly better in this respect.
That we even [I]have[/I] a Minister for Women and Equalities says a lot in itself.
What's your point?
Why do you want to live in a world where some people thrive at the expense of others?
The comparison is between equity and fairness or justice. . Proportionality might stand for [i]justice[/I].
I agree. It's just not in the remit of this thread. It's not all economics.
Justice wouldn't.
I would say it leads to justice, and it is fair.
Quoting Banno
Yeah, I went off topic. Oops.
Which distinction, and where is the analysis?
Quoting S
Most of the thread is off topic...
We should stop talking in vague metaphor and stick to a clear context. I'm not sure I'd answer the question in the same way for all contexts.
What was my original claim?
Quoting S
Again, your English so obviously your bias is showing. I'm of a minority class and obviously I see the position differently than you do I think we need to address that.
Quoting S
Ah another fallacy because I brought up something that happens in YOUR country?
Of course I acknowledge it happens less, but the fact remains it should not happen period. On top of that at least in my country we tell the world we are a "Judeo-Christian" society and yet I see it way differently.
It's relevant to the point I was making. Don't tell me you're from England when you have dog shit in your yard. If you're going to have the dialectical point of view of arguing on the position of the West superiority, make sure you cover the issues in your neck of the woods.
It makes no difference what you see or claim. It is a case of anthropological history. The western world’s foundation is Judeo-Christian and that is a separate issue from religious inclinations. This is traditional heritage is the bones of our language and culture.
Maybe you conveniently omit the important point? The article you posted shows that this is an illegal act and that life sentences are being proposed for such attacks. In other countries acts of homosexuality can be met with the death penalty.
How well these laws are upheld doesn’t distract from the legality of killing people in one case and attempts to hand out harsher punishments for physical attacks - that don’t involve the death penalty.
Again, there is the case of “honour killings” too. Not necessarily based on any religious grounds. The cultural weight regarding family honour in countries outside of the western world (especially in the east) undoubtedly plays into this - religious or not doesn’t really matter as the act is no less vile.
Note: poverty does also play into how family members are treated too (sometimes as a commodity).
Not throwing gay people of buildings is better.
This doesn't make The West better than everyone else. We used to do it to.
Sometimes places start up again or make things worse (e.g. Brunei recently, 19th England specifically codifying homosexuality and its punishments, etc.). Other places may change just have we did. Throwing gay people off buildings isn't and essential Muslim trait any more than it is a Western one. Muslims have as much reason, from a Muslims point of view, to undo this cultural aspect of murdering gay people as the West did.
It's insulting to equate a people, their entire history and culture with nasty aspects of culture at one time or another. Imagine, for example, suggesting we ought to replace (or "assimilate" ) Notre Dame (since its a topical Western achievement) and Christianity with another culture because our Western, Christian culture abused gay people terribly 150 years ago? Absurd. People and culture are more complex.
In these general terms, all cultures and people live and build things of value. All of them are bound to an ethical responsibility of creating a community. The fact people and their culture are not just their horrors or abuses is something everyone has. One culture or people doesn't become essentially better because , at one point, they stop murdering gay people. Such horrors are present cultural aspects to be overcome, not reasons to abandon entire cultures and history.
We’re, or at least myself, not equating people with the legalities of the institutions they live under. Of course many cultures have gone through certain changes regarding laws, secularism and technological advances. Sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back. In this regard there is most certainly a lack perspective if you’re only acquainted with a narrow experience of human cultures and traditions.
Homosexuality was illegal in the UK too not so long ago. Even when it was illegal people knew it went on, and decades before such periods it was more or less accepted. Things have gotten better in many ways and floundered in others. The most hideous story regarding this particular area would be Alan Turing - a genius who was basically punished for for saving millions of lives.
Note: 150 years ago is not now. The possibility of such attitudes returning in the UK seems quite unlikely anytime soon. Homophobia still exists in the UK too, but people are now protected by the law and attitudes have altered in the public sphere, through debate, and in entertainment (although a certain degree of stereotypical tropes were used this has fallen off).
Also, is anyone suggesting otherwise than this:
Some ares of the globe have more immediate and obvious horrors than others. The point being made , by myself at least, is that liberalism, democracy and free speech are better than authoritarian rule, subjugation, and silencing of ideas. Again, this has and will continue to be an ever shifting problem in many regions on Earth. In this respect the west is currently doing better than many other non-western countries around the globe, including the cast majority of countries in Africa, and the East. I am NOT saying the people are superior, but I would argue that the laws of the countries and the general cultural shape being taken on by these laws is superior to many others - most likely because the west has already been through the shit to get where it is now for numerous reasons in regards to technological advances, geographic location, and plain and simple luck.
You've got to be kidding me. I had just quoted you saying "The point is the difference between equity and fairness" (along with one other short sentence).
You must be trolling. I quoted it in that same reply.
Quoting Anaxagoras
Ah. Yes. [I]Obviously[/I].
[I]I'm[/I] the one who's biased.
Because I happen to be English.
:eyes:
Quoting Anaxagoras
Yes, a fallacy of irrelevance, because bringing up something that happens in my country doesn't address the point.
I haven't denied any of the "dog shit" in my "yard". Stop trying to spin your own narrative and try to be reasonable. Pointing to particular extreme cases doesn't support your original claim. I am more than capable of bringing up such domestic crimes myself, but I haven't done so because it wouldn't change anything, logically. You are missing the point, and you are being unreasonably defensive.
How about the comparison between proportionality and aesthetics? (e.g: equal proportions of dicks to vaginas might not lead to meaningful political change for non-politicians beyond the appearance of Parliament).
And what about the comparison between aesthetics/proportionality and insipid pandering? (e.g: as you and yours kick up a fuss about vaginal scarcity in the Liberal party, they'll simply start acquiring female representatives. They don't need to actually implement coherent policies to change the plight of women, they just need to abide by your heart-felt appeal. If the Labor party happened to have a more unequal ratio of men to women in a given election cycle, would you instead vote for the Liberals?).
Justice for politicians does not necessarily translate to justice for constituents.
Yes. Yes, it is. And the West doesn't do this, or at least nothing like the extent to which that sort of thing happens in other places. So the West is better in this respect than those other places.
It is possible to make an overall assessment based on things like that, and to reasonably reach the conclusion that the West is significantly better than these other places with a horribly homophobic culture, and a greater rate of hate crime against gay people, and that sort of thing.
It's appalling that this schmuck is trying to draw a false equivalence, and seems to think that he's being fair or honourable in doing so. It's actually ignorant and disgraceful.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
[Mod deletion applied]
Please try to stick to claim that was being disputed.
He's got that anti-colonial chic.