Feminism in decline

[Chessmistress]

Which is why about 50% of past US presidents were female... Oh wait!

Patriarchy is real.

No, if patriarchy was real nearly 100% of people killed in wars would be women.

Why?
Patriarchy said men are powerful warriors and we are weak servants.

[Des-Bal]

Why?
Patriarchy said men are powerful warriors and we are weak servants.

Society said men were expendable, it said that because society is more complicated than patriarchy allows.

[Natapoc]

You said that as if it was evidence that patriarchy was real, then you just brushed it off when somebody pointed out the flaw in your logic.

Not at all. There is no flaw in my logic.

The fact that there has never been a female president in the united states is evidence of patriarchy.

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

There is no contradiction here.

[Russels Orbiting Teapot]

Why?
Patriarchy said men are powerful warriors and we are weak servants.

Would women like the privilege of being conscripted to go die in battle?

Why do you assume that this is a thing that most men would willingly choose for themselves?

[Des-Bal]

Not at all. There is no flaw in my logic.

The fact that there has never been a female president in the united states is evidence of patriarchy.

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

There is no contradiction here.

Nothing means anything unless it means patriarchy.

[Natapoc]

Not at all. There is no flaw in my logic.

The fact that there has never been a female president in the united states is evidence of patriarchy.

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

There is no contradiction here.

Nothing means anything unless it means patriarchy.

Nothing means anything unless it means blueberries.

[Russels Orbiting Teapot]

Not at all. There is no flaw in my logic.

The fact that there has never been a female president in the united states is evidence of patriarchy.

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

There is no contradiction here.

If we were to eliminate patriarchy, and have a society where neither men nor women had dominance, how would we know?

[Chessmistress]

Why?
Patriarchy said men are powerful warriors and we are weak servants.

Would women like the privilege of being conscripted to go die in battle?

Why do you assume that this is a thing that most men would willingly choose for themselves?

No, being conscripted it's not a privilege, it's the burden of the dominators: you have to use the force to maintain your power.
Conscription is EXACTLY the perfect example of one of males' issues that will go away with the deletion of the patriarchy - INDEED:
When patriarchy was totally dominant and widespread males were totally and universally conscripted, even during peace time.
More and more true equality is approaching, less and lesser males suffer conscription: even now in many western countries military is fully voluntary, and even in USA selective service don't take all males, just a part.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

The evidence shows that patriarchy is caused by female heads of state. Ergo, we should never have a female president.

[Natapoc]

Not at all. There is no flaw in my logic.

The fact that there has never been a female president in the united states is evidence of patriarchy.

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

There is no contradiction here.

If we were to eliminate patriarchy, and have a society where neither men nor women had dominance, how would we know?

The answer is contained in your question:

"a society where neither men nor women had dominance"

Are the positions of power and influence predominantly controlled by one gender? or is it fairly equal?
Does one gender tend to be assigned or assumed "head of household"? or is it fairly equal?
Does one gender tend to lead or is it equal?
It seems obvious.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Why?
Patriarchy said men are powerful warriors and we are weak servants.

Would women like the privilege of being conscripted to go die in battle?

Why do you assume that this is a thing that most men would willingly choose for themselves?

The solution is to get rid of conscription altogether.

[Natapoc]

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

The evidence shows that patriarchy is caused by female heads of state. Ergo, we should never have a female president.

What evidence would that be? Heads of state do not cause patriarchy.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

The evidence shows that patriarchy is caused by female heads of state. Ergo, we should never have a female president.

What evidence would that be? Heads of state do not cause patriarchy.

Geilinor pointed it out.

...France has had no female presidents while India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have had female presidents or prime ministers and face more sexism.

The proof is in the pudding.

[Russels Orbiting Teapot]

The answer is contained in your question:

"a society where neither men nor women had dominance"

Are the positions of power and influence predominantly controlled by one gender? or is it fairly equal?
Does one gender tend to be assigned or assumed "head of household"? or is it fairly equal?
Does one gender tend to lead or is it equal?
It seems obvious.

What if gender turns out to be a useful predictor of, say, career ambition, even after we eliminate coercion?

Do we hold men back so that an equal number of generally less-ambitious women can catch up with them?
Do we force a greater proportion of women to take leadership responsibility than actually desire this responsibility?

[Geilinor]

What evidence would that be? Heads of state do not cause patriarchy.

Geilinor pointed it out.

...France has had no female presidents while India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have had female presidents or prime ministers and face more sexism.

The proof is in the pudding.

Where did I say patriarchy is caused by female heads of state? I'm saying that it isn't necessarily an indicator of misogyny level.

[Natapoc]

The answer is contained in your question:

"a society where neither men nor women had dominance"

Are the positions of power and influence predominantly controlled by one gender? or is it fairly equal?
Does one gender tend to be assigned or assumed "head of household"? or is it fairly equal?
Does one gender tend to lead or is it equal?
It seems obvious.

What if gender turns out to be a useful predictor of, say, career ambition?

Do we hold men back so that an equal number of generally less-ambitious women can catch up with them?
Do we force a greater proportion of women to take leadership responsibility than actually desire this responsibility?

You would need some incredibly good data and arguments to show that women are just inherently less ambitious. That would be very surprising.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Geilinor pointed it out.


The proof is in the pudding.

Where did I say patriarchy is caused by female heads of state?

You didn't. I just took it to the (il)logical extreme.

[Natapoc]

Where did I say patriarchy is caused by female heads of state?

You didn't. I just took it to the (il)logical extreme.

So you don't actually believe what you said? Can you explain why you said it then?

[The Empire of Pretantia]

You didn't. I just took it to the (il)logical extreme.

So you don't actually believe what you said?

It wasn't obvious?

Can you explain why you said it then?

For kicks.

[Russels Orbiting Teapot]

You would need some incredibly good data and arguments to show that women are just inherently less ambitious. That would be very surprising.

Would it really be that surprising? Women have been taking a secondary, supporting role to men in power for thousands of years. I don't think it's surprising at all for natural selection to have made those women who better thrive within that role more common.

[Tahar Joblis]

What if gender turns out to be a useful predictor of, say, career ambition?

Do we hold men back so that an equal number of generally less-ambitious women can catch up with them?
Do we force a greater proportion of women to take leadership responsibility than actually desire this responsibility?

You would need some incredibly good data and arguments to show that women are just inherently less ambitious. That would be very surprising.

Not all differences are inherent, though.

I'll point out something: Women have safety nets. Women have easier alternative options to fall back on if things don't work out... or if things just get arduous. This is a driving factor in the gender gap for STEM jobs, - women who could go into STEM jobs have a wider variety of options than men who could go into STEM jobs. Partly because boys are discriminated against (especially in non-STEM education), partly because the "housespouse" track isn't easily available to men, etc.

No one has said that.

What has been said is that we don't need to change the name to appease people who wouldn't join anyway, and that there has been a strategic, concentrated effort by certain kinds of people (In America we call them "Republicans") to make feminism a dirty word. There has been a deliberate attempt by some to make sure that when people think of the word "feminism" the only associations they make are all the negative ones. Because some people are terrified of what feminism represents. What it actually represents, not what they try to make it out to be either through political opportunism or ignorance.

In short I, and many others, refuse to discuss feminism on misogynist's terms. The solution is education, not acquiescence.

And yet, oddly, I am neither misogynist nor friendly to the Republican Party, am not the least bit ignorant of feminism, and am telling you that feminism, as a movement, acts for and upon women's interests, rather the interests of gender equality.

This is perfectly OK when those interests happen to coincide; but as you yourself are a perfect demonstration of, the exclusive focus on issues that are perceived as affecting women negatively means that there are a large number of gender equity issues that feminism has not made any progress towards addressing lately, and is highly unlikely to make any progress towards addressing in the future. This includes:

1. Boys falling behind in the educational system.
2. Men being pushed out of the teaching profession.
3. Women dominating secretarial fields, nursing, etc.
4. Men having a virtual monopoly on really shitty jobs that pose a hazard to life and limb.
5. Negative stereotyping of fathers and men in general in the media.
6. Widespread anti-male / pro-female discrimination within the criminal justice system.
7. Child custody going nearly universally to women in divorce.
8. The social safety net catches women and lets men fall through.
9. People act on their own initiative to protect women, but not men. (Some examples: 1 2 3.)
10. Silencing of male voices on gender equity issues.

Feminism has not addressed these problems; even with, say, #3, feminism has largely only tried to work on the converse problem, to work to open other career options to women, and addressing the basic problem that pro-female hiring discrimination in female-dominated fields channels women into those jobs would do a lot to bring more women into "male" fields.

Feminism will not address these problems unless feminism changes.

And some of these problems, feminism has created (#10), contributed to (#2), or obstructed progress in (#7, though if we go back far enough, first wave feminism is implicated in the creation and maintenance of the current status quo of handing custody to women in divorce). The one feminism has done the most to address is #4, though little of that lately; and even with women being allowed to become coal miners and the like, feminists of today are profoundly uninterested in getting more women into coal mining, garbage collection, deep sea fishing, and other non-high-status male jobs; when it comes to inequality within the workforce, feminism's collective attention is focused on the single issue of high-status male jobs (STEM jobs, management positions, executive positions, etc).

(STEM has male-dominated fields. Lots of them. There's a reason for this, and it's not because men are by default "better at the thinkin' and sciencin' stuff".
Hint: it's internal and external pressures on those that might enter the field/s, along with discrimination within said field/s.)

A lot of this has to do with level of comfort with mathematics. In particular, women tend to hold fairly negative views about mathematics and in particular about their own mathematical abilities. Math anxiety is not unique to women, but it is common among women, and the level of mathematics presented as a barrier to entry into higher level undergraduate courses is much higher for fields that have few women in them.

This is not the only factor, but it has been, over the past 40 years, one of the singularly most important factors.

We've studied this. Girls very quickly learn the idea that mathematics is an un-feminine thing to do. Boys do not necessarily learn that it is a masculine thing to do - athletics remains viewed as a much more manly activity than sitting and doing problems.

From what we can tell, boys don't gain sexist views about mathematics from math-anxious female elementary school teachers, but girls do. (I recall seeing a number of studies along the general lines of that one.) In particular, elementary school teachers are mostly women; and also mostly drawn from a talent pool that is poor in mathematical skills. (People interested in teaching mathematics to children tend to become specialists in teaching mathematics, which - in the US, where that study is from - only happens in secondary school, rather than primary school.

Now, remember what I said about the problem in differentiating between "prejudice" and "internalized prejudice"? As best as we can tell, this particular prejudice against women has strong roots in elementary school... via girls watching women. It's transmitted to girls quite early (impacting their mathematics learning immediately); and that particular form of transmission entirely misses boys. (It seems likely that eventually, the girls then pass that prejudice on to the boys... or that boys start to notice that math is the one area in which the boys are not falling behind the girls.)

Also note that the model in that study isn't that the teachers are expressing sexist views, which the girls then internalize. In fact, if the teachers were passing on lessons about mathematics not being for girls, the boys would likely pick up on that. It is, rather, that they are both women and math-anxious, which leads girls to generate that stereotype.

See the problem with calling that "internalized" prejudice?

With high-level positions, another thing that works against women is the way that women prefer to marry up in income (in particular often to older men).

Married men have a huge advantage over unmarried men, and women of any marital status, when it comes to the top jobs. Why? Because a significant percentage of those married men are partnered to a younger woman who has no real career of her own and prefers to exercise her ambition through her husband's career. These spouses provide a lot of assistance and support. A woman married to a man with a high-demand career of his own simply can't expect to get that level of support to push her up the ladder.

[Tahar Joblis]

You said that as if it was evidence that patriarchy was real, then you just brushed it off when somebody pointed out the flaw in your logic.

Not at all. There is no flaw in my logic.

The fact that there has never been a female president in the united states is evidence of patriarchy.

The fact that some cultures recently have started having female heads of state but still have sexism is not evidence of lack of patriarchy.

There is no contradiction here.

In the world of inductive logic and statistical inference about inherently uncertain propositions, which is where social science lives, there is a contradiction there.

A datum X is evidence in favor of theory Y if and only if p(Y|X) > p(Y) - that is, the rational Bayesian update of Y contingent on evidence X is that Y is more probable. Similarly, it is evidence against theory Y if and only if p(Y|X) < p(Y).

Under standard probability theory, we have that the complement of X is not-X. This means implies that if X is evidence for Y, then not-X is evidence against Y, because p(Y|X)p(X)+p(Y|not-X)p(not-X) = P(Y)p(X) + p(y)p(not-X).

So. If "patriarchy is present" is your theory, and "not having had a female head of state" is evidence that "patriarchy" is present, that means that "having had a female head of state" is evidence that "patriarchy" is not present. In fact, the quantitative strength of the evidence is symmetric either for or against patriarchy in a certain sense; if p(X) and p(not-X) are roughly the same, then the statistical strength of the updates for and against are roughly equal. (If one is extremely unlikely, then it could provide a significant large update while the negation provides a negligibly small update, but this is not the case with "has had female heads of state").

[Prussia-Steinbach]

Then how come despite making up more than half of the human race, almost all of the fortune 500 corporations have male CEO's? Women are denied reproductive rights, largely due to the actions of male politicians? Women are quite obviously the main victims of gender discrimination.

Traditional society seeks to control men and women and force both into gender roles. Women are not uniquely.victimized by this.

The patriarchy can hurt men too. It just hurts women more.

[Prussia-Steinbach]

No, if patriarchy was real nearly 100% of people killed in wars would be women.

Why?
Patriarchy said men are powerful warriors and we are weak servants.

Exactly. "100% of people killed in wars would be women" wat lol

There's a reason calling someone a "girl" is an insult. Why people need to "man up."

[Gauthier]

Why?
Patriarchy said men are powerful warriors and we are weak servants.

Exactly. "100% of people killed in wars would be women" wat lol

There's a reason calling someone a "girl" is an insult. Why people need to "man up."

If men were the ones that carried and birthed, of course women would end up being cannon fodder in wars. Not to mention abortion would be possible in barber shops.