The NationStates Feminist Thread II

[Frenline Delpha]

I see. I kinda figured it out from your previous post. And I don't necessarily disagree.

I mean, even if you take out the "white" part of it, you still end up with a bunch of people who are wealthy.

They're not exposed to the real problems poor women face, and they, for the most part, tend to ignore them because it is not part of how they grew up. It's not an intrinsic part of their background, so they don't know what it's like to be an immigrant woman crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, or a woman from Cambodia being trafficked to become a prostitute here in the U.S., or a poor white woman having to live with less than 1200-1800 dollars in her pocket lest she loses disability payments and medical care paid for by the U.S. Government.

None of these things are the reality they have to face. And so they have little to no reason to remotely care. I'd say feminists in this regard have dropped the ball massively by propping up among their ranks middle class people to serve the interests of women by making them "leaders" of the movement. The problem is first world countries is not the pay gap feminists love to talk about, for instance, it's the overwhelming, and increasing, wealth gap existing between the richest of these countries and the poorest.

This I can agree with. However, it'd be great if they focused on poor everybody. Focusing on one gender when it comes to poor people is not going to accomplish anything. But I doubt they will, since it grants no benefits.

[Lady Scylla]

The best source on the internet. Jello says so.

To be fair it's not as bad as it's reputation would have you believe. If the information is cited and the citations are legit then it's a pretty good source.
More reliable than the Encyclopedia Britannica I've heard tell.

Also important to note that Wikipedia doesn't condemn or condone positions, it's an encyclopedia. Having Patriarchy defined on it, as feminists believe it to be, doesn't give it immediate credibility.

[Frenline Delpha]

To be fair it's not as bad as it's reputation would have you believe. If the information is cited and the citations are legit then it's a pretty good source.
More reliable than the Encyclopedia Britannica I've heard tell.

Also important to note that Wikipedia doesn't condemn or condone positions, it's an encyclopedia. Having Patriarchy defined on it, as feminists believe it to be, doesn't give it immediate credibility.

Well, the people who edit articles certainly do. The GG page is the biggest example of this. However, the site itself can not condemn positions, as it relies on edits from users, not an internal board.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Hence why there is also (links on the front page) Black feminism, Chicana feminism, Jewish feminism, Islamic feminism, Postcolonial feminism, etc. A whole lot of division and separation based on identity, but you are right that this focus on inclusion of so many can make a movement too broad in the end.

People pushing "egalitarianism" to replace "feminism" I think want to encapsulate what intersectional feminism tries to be, but also adding white, cis, straight, able-bodied, neurotypical, [-insert more categories on the other side of the "kyriarchy"-] to the balance to really include everyone on Earth. But if everyone is included, isn't it too broad to address individual demographic issues that will inevitably exist?

I think you can agree everyone deserves equal rights under the law and the same kind of opportunity as everyone else. In that sense a broad, and inclusive, feminist movement has a lot of traction because of intersectional discourses among women of different backgrounds and points of view.

However, the problem becomes when you drag it down into the politics of oppression, or in other words, "look at me, I am the most oppressed in the group so my rights matter more than yours!". Any feminist movement that claims to be broad and inclusive has to fight hard for this whole oppression politics thing doesn't get to them and it starts breaking down their movement by being able to see each other's needs and negotiate a common ground to go after.

In other words, a broad and inclusive feminist movement would end up looking more like a clone of the Civil Rights Movement, and not like a feminist section on their own.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

This I can agree with. However, it'd be great if they focused on poor everybody. Focusing on one gender when it comes to poor people is not going to accomplish anything. But I doubt they will, since it grants no benefits.

Even if they did focus on one gender when it comes to the wealth gap, the idea that they should is not going to gain traction under the current politics of their movement, since that'd mean the wealthiest feminists would have to work against their own interests as the wealthy in order to provide some sort of relief to the poorest and most disadvantaged of women.

In that sense, feminists are no different than non-feminists in that both sides seek their own interests. A wealthy feminist is never going to work against their own standard of living. They're not primarily a feminist, they're primarily wealthy. Their being a feminist doesn't, and can't, associate them with other feminists across the class divide by default. There's simply too much disparity among classes for that to be the case.

[Frenline Delpha]

This I can agree with. However, it'd be great if they focused on poor everybody. Focusing on one gender when it comes to poor people is not going to accomplish anything. But I doubt they will, since it grants no benefits.

Even if they did focus on one gender when it comes to the wealth gap, the idea that they should is not going to gain traction under the current politics of their movement, since that'd mean the wealthiest feminists would have to work against their own interests as the wealthy in order to provide some sort of relief to the poorest and most disadvantaged of women.

In that sense, women are no different than men in that both genders seek their own interests. A wealthy woman is never going to work against her own standard of living. She is not primarily a woman, she is primarily wealthy. Her being a woman doesn't, and can't, associate her with other women across the class divide by default. There's simply too much disparity among classes for that to be the case.

And this is something I agree with 100%.

[Giovenith]

Also important to note that Wikipedia doesn't condemn or condone positions, it's an encyclopedia. Having Patriarchy defined on it, as feminists believe it to be, doesn't give it immediate credibility.

Well, the people who edit articles certainly do. The GG page is the biggest example of this. However, the site itself can not condemn positions, as it relies on edits from users, not an internal board.

Indeed. This is what annoys me most about attitudes toward modern feminism.

Feminist online: I HATE MEN. STERILIZE THEM AND GIVE WOMEN THE EARTH!
Public: Oh that's just an extremist whose views don't represent the actual issues. We all know the internet makes people crazy.
Non-feminist online: THESE FAT BITCHES SHOULD GET RAPED AND KILL THEMSELVES!
Public: WELL I NEVER! YOU SEE WHAT KINDS OF PEOPLE THESE PEOPLE ARE? THIS IS WHAT THEY'RE ALL REALLY THINKING, THERE ARE NO OTHER CONCERNS OR GOALS AT PLAY HERE, JUST HATE! DON'T EVEN BOTHER TRYING TO LOOK FOR ANY!

I know hypocrisy is kind of ingrained in our nature, but this is a type of hypocrisy that rarely seems even subconscious to me, people just do it without shame. You don't get to use the "those are just trolls who you should ignore because they're not part of the real discussion" excuse just when it suits your narrative but then suddenly turn around and treat social media shitposting as Serious Business© when it's your opposition who looks bad from it.

[Jello Biafra]

Heh. Wikipedia.

The best source on the internet. Jello says so.

Not the best source, merely an easily-accessible one-stop source.

[Jello Biafra]

Actually I don't mean you can separate drinking from the crime. Quite the contrary; I mean that it is a factor inthe crime, as it impairs judgement and encourages unwarranted confidence.

I would venture to say that this is a case of culture clash in general. Party culture encourages things that we actually want--social acceptance, fun, sex, status, etc Almost every beer commercial suggests that if you drink beer you will be popular and happy and have attractive people of the opposite sex wanting to hang around with you. So I think we could liken this to how Mothers Against Drunk Driving wanted people to reflect on how their drinking affected their actions which led to harm towards others. This is part of why I think that the "Don't Be That Guy" ads make much sense.

(here are some of the campaign products for it btw:
Don't Be That Guy Posters
An explanation of the background for the campaign.}

I was not happy with these campaigns or the videos and posters they presented,w hich present clear cut scenarios where it is easy to see what is going on. The ads didn't depict any of the complications that come up or how to deal with them, so I felt that they were basically damage control that made peple feel better while not really adressing the problems. I was also irritated by the campaigns going with a standard feminist narrative about female victims and male perps. There are two factors that I believe this kind of campaign ignores and to the likelihood of their efforts being unscuccessful.

Okay, let's say I agree. How do we combat 'party culture'?

The Tease Factor

Women have more sexual power than most feminists seem to want to recognize. One thing that often offends people when I bring it up is the confusion women can cause with their behaviour when we're talking about party culture. This is what I think about one example of such behaviour.

Let's say a woman is at a party or club or bar, and is acting in a very sexually provocative way. She's practically lap dancing with more than one guy, pretending to make out with female friends on the dance floor, is dressed in a way that by the standards of regular culture around her is sexually eye catching. The woman goes out of the place, gets into a car with a guy she's acquainted with, makes out with him but then doesn't want to actually have sex even though she's been talking eagerly about sex all night.

Here's where I think the popular feminist narrative is confused. I think it's actually perfectly reasonable of the guy in question to be angry with her. I think that in this scenario she probably did create the impression that she wanted sex, and that the guy would be quite fair in thinking she teased him and is toying with him.

What I think would be more effective teaching for this kind of scenario would be to say the following:
- The anger is reasonable, but has to be controlled.
- The anger does not justify hurting the woman or taking sex from her anyway. Sex in a civilized society has to be mutually pleasurable
- The woman has acted unfairly towards him by not making her own intentions clear.

The Sex Self Awareness Factor

Unfortunately we still struggle in most modern countries with a lack of a sense of honesty about sex. I think that is another factor in the scenario I offered along with the alcohol and party factors. Even in the raunchiest elements of our culture in the United States and Canada, for example, people are curiously self conscious. I've observed several affirmative consent classes and almost never do they really intelligently address this or factor in why.

I think the why is very simple from a scientific perspective. Human beings tend to be relatively asexual when they are very young. Then they display increasing curiousity about it but from what I've heard and recall from my own childhood a lot of this is focused more on the social aspects of sex than the seeking of pleasure. When human beings go through puberty they are usually tweens to in their early teens, and I believe that this comes as a shock. Unlike with training in eating, elimination of bodily wastes, putting on clothing, sleeping and language, human beings are given mostly theoretical training in sex. Any observation of human behaviour that goes on happens through popular entertainment or watching behaviour that hints at the possibility of sex.

To offer a comparison, if we treated say learning to eat, sleep and eliminate bodily wastes properly the way that we learn about sex, we would at a certain age be given a book to read, possibly sent to some classes, and wished good luck in our adventures. And I can only speculate about the results, but there are a few examples from life I know of where people struggled later in life because they were not taught skills. People for instance who never learned to tie their own shoes, people who had not been taught to read, etc, and found that they had a certain level of social dysfunction.

So I would sum this up as saying that sex is something most people want but have little clear idea as to how to get it.

To offer another comparison, in much of Western Civilization violent behaviour has been enormously contained. This is partly because of prosperity but it is also because the infrastructure surrounding the control of violence has been demonstrated to work, and generations of people have come to accept that. While violence still takes place, we have been taught successfully to believe that resolving conflict should largely be done through the processes of our civilization so that we go to court, mediation, argue with our words, vote, write letters, sign petitions, go on strike, divorce, complain to authorities and so on.

I refered earlier to how the way we deal with sex has changed hugely since the rise of feminism and the circumstances which made it possible. We no longer presume that we deal with sex through marriage or through secretive means like brothels. We assume that people should be able to have sex through social encounters.

Anyway I think this rambled on long enough for now, but if anyone would like me to continue I will.

Sure, feel free to continue.

[Jello Biafra]

Any system that allows for equal opportunity of the sexes and just so happens to fall in place with one of the two sexes more likely to pursue certain roles has no business being declared a "rulership" of that sex. People should not be vilified for their choices and men and women should respect each other as colleagues no matter how many individual members of their sex are in the field - that is what makes it a free and equal system.

Why the sexes choose the roles they do is reason for investigation, but to base your standards on what makes an equal society based on equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity is asinine. Human beings tend to clump into similar demographics, very view aspects of society have perfect 50/50 split. And that's okay, it doesn't need to be 50/50, it can be 20/80 so long as the 20 are being treated the exact same as the 80. Maybe someday the 20 will grow, maybe someday it will shrink, but as long as we can guarantee a fair and safe course for anyone who chooses to take that path the numbers are none of our concern.

I can agree that our system allows for equal opportunity in a legal sense, but not in a social/cultural sense. Social pressure and discrimination can and so still occur.

Here's a question for you: By your own standards, when does a society stop being a patriarchy? What percentages and what branches must have them before it can be declared an equal society? Must it fall exactly 50%, with 51% of either gender pushing it over the edge into patriarchy or matriarchy? Or is there a little more leeway for imbalance, and how much, and why? Do all branches of work and power in a society need to adhere to that percentage, are only some of them important - does it not matter if more teachers are women and more small business owners men - how do you go about deciding a cut off point for power and influence in a society where gender balance is no longer necessary?

Good question. I'd say that an equal society occurs when neither men nor women are discriminated against for doing what they want to do simply for being men or women. A gender imbalance in any field is acceptable, as long as it's the same imbalance that would occur if applicants were selected blindly - as far as their gender goes.
Of course, if there are gender imbalances we will need to be vigilant, because inequality of outcome almost invariably leads to inequality of opportunity.

[Jello Biafra]

And yet somehow, feminist ideas and policies are adopted by Western governments which often are harming other men? If the "patriarchy" was supposed to be some sort of malevolent, omnipresent force which benefited men and only men, as feminism claims it does,

I don't know that feminism claims that the patriarchy benefits only men. Some trickle-down effect that benefits women would still be patriarchal in nature.

why do women have so much legal advantages and how are women capable of influencing a predominantly male legislature to enact policies that benefit them and only them? How is it that the "patriarchy" seems to benefit women more than it does men?

Which policies benefit women and only women, and is there evidence of opposition to any of these policies from the majority of men?

And again, feminism has a huge influence on what is considered to be morally acceptable and what isn't. This is again reflected in the adoption of a wide variety of feminist policies by governments in the West.

Few religious leaders are women, in any country.

The only privilege that exists is economic. Everything else is contrived.

Why do you acknowledge the existence of economic privilege but not other types of privilege?

"Property" is such a loosely defined concept that it cannot be taken seriously unless there is something tangible to measure.

Okay, pick something tangible that you think is an example of property.

[Jello Biafra]

You're right. There is no practical way to force a balance and we shouldn't. The only thing feasible and far more beneficial for society is to create a framework where those opportunities are available to both sexes. I think that has been achieved. In a way the system is already working to discourage discrimination at least in the private sector. There is less profit in gender discrimination. Hiring the best people that you can regardless of sex is what maximizes productivity. I'm not saying sexual discrimination in the work place doesn't happen but the system makes it so there is a very undesirable penalty for it.

This isn't universally true. Even if business owners stopped discriminating against women, there is reason to believe their customers will still do so.

[The Emerald Dawn]

Well, the people who edit articles certainly do. The GG page is the biggest example of this. However, the site itself can not condemn positions, as it relies on edits from users, not an internal board.

Indeed. This is what annoys me most about attitudes toward modern feminism.

Feminist online: I HATE MEN. STERILIZE THEM AND GIVE WOMEN THE EARTH!
Public: Oh that's just an extremist whose views don't represent the actual issues. We all know the internet makes people crazy.
Non-feminist online: THESE FAT BITCHES SHOULD GET RAPED AND KILL THEMSELVES!
Public: WELL I NEVER! YOU SEE WHAT KINDS OF PEOPLE THESE PEOPLE ARE? THIS IS WHAT THEY'RE ALL REALLY THINKING, THERE ARE NO OTHER CONCERNS OR GOALS AT PLAY HERE, JUST HATE! DON'T EVEN BOTHER TRYING TO LOOK FOR ANY!

I know hypocrisy is kind of ingrained in our nature, but this is a type of hypocrisy that rarely seems even subconscious to me, people just do it without shame. You don't get to use the "those are just trolls who you should ignore because they're not part of the real discussion" excuse just when it suits your narrative but then suddenly turn around and treat social media shitposting as Serious Business© when it's your opposition who looks bad from it.

Virtue signaling, dog. It's all the rage.

[Frenline Delpha]

Indeed. This is what annoys me most about attitudes toward modern feminism.

Feminist online: I HATE MEN. STERILIZE THEM AND GIVE WOMEN THE EARTH!
Public: Oh that's just an extremist whose views don't represent the actual issues. We all know the internet makes people crazy.
Non-feminist online: THESE FAT BITCHES SHOULD GET RAPED AND KILL THEMSELVES!
Public: WELL I NEVER! YOU SEE WHAT KINDS OF PEOPLE THESE PEOPLE ARE? THIS IS WHAT THEY'RE ALL REALLY THINKING, THERE ARE NO OTHER CONCERNS OR GOALS AT PLAY HERE, JUST HATE! DON'T EVEN BOTHER TRYING TO LOOK FOR ANY!

I know hypocrisy is kind of ingrained in our nature, but this is a type of hypocrisy that rarely seems even subconscious to me, people just do it without shame. You don't get to use the "those are just trolls who you should ignore because they're not part of the real discussion" excuse just when it suits your narrative but then suddenly turn around and treat social media shitposting as Serious Business© when it's your opposition who looks bad from it.

Virtue signaling, dog. It's all the rage.

Like the bat signal but with 200% more vigilante screaming and 100% less vigilante justice.

[The Emerald Dawn]

Virtue signaling, dog. It's all the rage.

Like the bat signal but with 200% more vigilante screaming and 100% less vigilante justice.

It's the same thing with the "Thank the Veterans" campaigns.

Because saying thank you is going to suddenly fix the VA, the lack of pay, the mental health care system, the MIC.

It's so much easier for people to just signal their virtue, and make it SEEM like they did something useful.

[Giovenith]

Any system that allows for equal opportunity of the sexes and just so happens to fall in place with one of the two sexes more likely to pursue certain roles has no business being declared a "rulership" of that sex. People should not be vilified for their choices and men and women should respect each other as colleagues no matter how many individual members of their sex are in the field - that is what makes it a free and equal system.

Why the sexes choose the roles they do is reason for investigation, but to base your standards on what makes an equal society based on equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity is asinine. Human beings tend to clump into similar demographics, very view aspects of society have perfect 50/50 split. And that's okay, it doesn't need to be 50/50, it can be 20/80 so long as the 20 are being treated the exact same as the 80. Maybe someday the 20 will grow, maybe someday it will shrink, but as long as we can guarantee a fair and safe course for anyone who chooses to take that path the numbers are none of our concern.

I can agree that our system allows for equal opportunity in a legal sense, but not in a social/cultural sense. Social pressure and discrimination can and so still occur.

Here's a question for you: By your own standards, when does a society stop being a patriarchy? What percentages and what branches must have them before it can be declared an equal society? Must it fall exactly 50%, with 51% of either gender pushing it over the edge into patriarchy or matriarchy? Or is there a little more leeway for imbalance, and how much, and why? Do all branches of work and power in a society need to adhere to that percentage, are only some of them important - does it not matter if more teachers are women and more small business owners men - how do you go about deciding a cut off point for power and influence in a society where gender balance is no longer necessary?

Good question. I'd say that an equal society occurs when neither men nor women are discriminated against for doing what they want to do simply for being men or women. A gender imbalance in any field is acceptable, as long as it's the same imbalance that would occur if applicants were selected blindly - as far as their gender goes.
Of course, if there are gender imbalances we will need to be vigilant, because inequality of outcome almost invariably leads to inequality of opportunity.

Of course discrimination exists, discrimination is ALWAYS going to exist, because humans are unreasonable assholes who treat others badly for dumb reasons. The question is not, "Does discrimination exist?" it's, "Is discrimination common enough for it to be considered a widespread problem, and do we have effective ways of dealing with it when it happens no matter how rare or often?" Saying that a society can only ever be considered equal when there is NEVER ANY single case of discrimination is like saying a society can only ever be considered safe when there are NEVER ANY cases of assault or murder, it's a completely unreasonable standard that not only can never be achieved but paints a terribly inaccurate picture of the nature of a society.

There is no evidence that women are being discriminated against in the United States at any kind of epidemic level (and no, the wage gap has had itself soundly debunked). Nobody is stupid enough to say it never happens, but just because it may occasionally happen is not enough to constitute a patriarchy. Not to mention, men are frequently discriminated against too, much more visibly so in fact, they are more likely to receive heavier prison sentences than women for the same crimes, less likely to get custody of their children even when they're clearly the better parent, and less likely to be believed when they are raped or suffer domestic abuse. If they are accused of rape themselves but found innocent, society (especially feminists) almost never considers that he actually could have been innocent, his life is destroyed by being vilified as an example of how the system failed an innocent woman - a woman can effectively destroy any man she wants with one accusation, no matter how insubstantial, that power is there and there no effective recourse against it.

I know proponents of the patriarchy theory like to respond to this with, "well that's the patriarchy's fault too because it's all a result of the belief that men are cold and tough and women are nurturing and weak!" but it's a contradicting principle: Patriarchy claims men hold all the important power and yet there are several key points of society where they are that the mercy of women. It makes no attempts to specify or justify what parts of a society a gender must dominate and to what degree for it to be considered a rulership of the sex, it insteads uses it's own vagueness and arbitrary nature to claim every single instance of sex-based discrimination as proof of itself and leaving no way out short of creating an impossible utopia of sexless drones.

We don't need patriarchy theory to find and fight discrimination. It's a sordid mess of a theory that tries to hold men personally responsible for a complex set of social behaviors that they do not and could never primarily perpetuate or benefit from. It's standards are so flexible that there is practically nothing that couldn't be argued as "proof" of it so long as you have a strong enough sense of apophenia and mental gymnastics, and because of this, it prevents many of us from properly addressing instances of discrimination that clearly fly in the face of its premise (e.g. women holding abusive power over men) as proponents spend all their time trying to reassure us that a person's suffering/abusive nature is all still elaborately due to their privilege/oppression. Most of all, it never sets up an equivalent as to what a matriarchy looks like, it only ever sets us up to believe that discrimination against anyone = patriarchy (practically by your own words!) - men are always the oppressors, women are always the oppressed, as if these roles are inherent to our nature and incapable of being swapped. And THAT sounds SUPREMELY anti-feminist to me.

Discrimination is unique to the individual, it should be treated as such, not as a result of an elaborate invisible "system." It will never fully go away because people aren't perfect, the best we can do is discourage it and punish it when it happens. If we can do that effectively, we have earned the title of equal society.

[Costa Fierro]

I don't know that feminism claims that the patriarchy benefits only men. Some trickle-down effect that benefits women would still be patriarchal in nature.

Benefiting men is one of the primary reasons for why the "patriarchy" needs to be "dismantled".

Which policies benefit women and only women, and is there evidence of opposition to any of these policies from the majority of men?

Depends on which country. For example, in Norway, university admission is decided by gender, not by academic achievement. Then we have tertiary education scholarships specifically reserved for women in what are traditionally considered to be "male dominated" subjects yet no scholarships for male teachers or other subjects that are considered to be "female dominated". Women on average receive more paid parental leave than men do.

I think that a considerable amount of men are against these but they don't speak up because of the hate they would receive because they're men. In addition, I think a lot of men are unaware of the shitty deal Western governments keep giving them.

Few religious leaders are women, in any country.

And yet, the majority of Western countries are secular with virtually no religious influence, so it wouldn't matter if there were any women in high ranking religious positions simply because religion in a lot of countries is not as big of an influence as it used to be.

Why do you acknowledge the existence of economic privilege but not other types of privilege?

Because economic privilege is the only tangible form of privilege that exists. Wealth has a substantial, and measurable, effect on the quality of life in the West. You cannot get the same kind of tangibility with male privilege, white privilege or thin privilege because those kinds are not able to be measured in a quantifiable manner. And, for the most part, they are not used in a manner to demand government change or to be able to call for better or more substantial government investment in welfare or policies that enable social mobility but rather used by feminists and other social justice warriors to shut down arguments they don't agree with.

Okay, pick something tangible that you think is an example of property.

Home ownership. And in the United States at least, it varies. For example, single fathers have a home ownership rate of 55.9% compared with 46.7% for single mothers. However, single men have a home ownership rate of 49.8% compared with single women who have a home ownership rate of 58.9%.

The idea that men dominate and control property is a bit skewed because the common feminist claim is that women globally own about one percent, which is largely based on bogus studies attributed to the United Nations to give it some credence (because the average person doesn't bother to check sources).

[New Edom]

Well, the people who edit articles certainly do. The GG page is the biggest example of this. However, the site itself can not condemn positions, as it relies on edits from users, not an internal board.

Indeed. This is what annoys me most about attitudes toward modern feminism.

Feminist online: I HATE MEN. STERILIZE THEM AND GIVE WOMEN THE EARTH!
Public: Oh that's just an extremist whose views don't represent the actual issues. We all know the internet makes people crazy.
Non-feminist online: THESE FAT BITCHES SHOULD GET RAPED AND KILL THEMSELVES!
Public: WELL I NEVER! YOU SEE WHAT KINDS OF PEOPLE THESE PEOPLE ARE? THIS IS WHAT THEY'RE ALL REALLY THINKING, THERE ARE NO OTHER CONCERNS OR GOALS AT PLAY HERE, JUST HATE! DON'T EVEN BOTHER TRYING TO LOOK FOR ANY!

I know hypocrisy is kind of ingrained in our nature, but this is a type of hypocrisy that rarely seems even subconscious to me, people just do it without shame. You don't get to use the "those are just trolls who you should ignore because they're not part of the real discussion" excuse just when it suits your narrative but then suddenly turn around and treat social media shitposting as Serious Business© when it's your opposition who looks bad from it.

It's tiresome. You keep having the same idiotic conversations over and over again. However--leading feminists support this kind of thing.

[New Edom]

Actually I don't mean you can separate drinking from the crime. Quite the contrary; I mean that it is a factor inthe crime, as it impairs judgement and encourages unwarranted confidence.

I would venture to say that this is a case of culture clash in general. Party culture encourages things that we actually want--social acceptance, fun, sex, status, etc Almost every beer commercial suggests that if you drink beer you will be popular and happy and have attractive people of the opposite sex wanting to hang around with you. So I think we could liken this to how Mothers Against Drunk Driving wanted people to reflect on how their drinking affected their actions which led to harm towards others. This is part of why I think that the "Don't Be That Guy" ads make much sense.

(here are some of the campaign products for it btw:
Don't Be That Guy Posters
An explanation of the background for the campaign.}

I was not happy with these campaigns or the videos and posters they presented,w hich present clear cut scenarios where it is easy to see what is going on. The ads didn't depict any of the complications that come up or how to deal with them, so I felt that they were basically damage control that made peple feel better while not really adressing the problems. I was also irritated by the campaigns going with a standard feminist narrative about female victims and male perps. There are two factors that I believe this kind of campaign ignores and to the likelihood of their efforts being unscuccessful.

Okay, let's say I agree. How do we combat 'party culture'?

The Tease Factor

Women have more sexual power than most feminists seem to want to recognize. One thing that often offends people when I bring it up is the confusion women can cause with their behaviour when we're talking about party culture. This is what I think about one example of such behaviour.

Let's say a woman is at a party or club or bar, and is acting in a very sexually provocative way. She's practically lap dancing with more than one guy, pretending to make out with female friends on the dance floor, is dressed in a way that by the standards of regular culture around her is sexually eye catching. The woman goes out of the place, gets into a car with a guy she's acquainted with, makes out with him but then doesn't want to actually have sex even though she's been talking eagerly about sex all night.

Here's where I think the popular feminist narrative is confused. I think it's actually perfectly reasonable of the guy in question to be angry with her. I think that in this scenario she probably did create the impression that she wanted sex, and that the guy would be quite fair in thinking she teased him and is toying with him.

What I think would be more effective teaching for this kind of scenario would be to say the following:
- The anger is reasonable, but has to be controlled.
- The anger does not justify hurting the woman or taking sex from her anyway. Sex in a civilized society has to be mutually pleasurable
- The woman has acted unfairly towards him by not making her own intentions clear.

The Sex Self Awareness Factor

Unfortunately we still struggle in most modern countries with a lack of a sense of honesty about sex. I think that is another factor in the scenario I offered along with the alcohol and party factors. Even in the raunchiest elements of our culture in the United States and Canada, for example, people are curiously self conscious. I've observed several affirmative consent classes and almost never do they really intelligently address this or factor in why.

I think the why is very simple from a scientific perspective. Human beings tend to be relatively asexual when they are very young. Then they display increasing curiousity about it but from what I've heard and recall from my own childhood a lot of this is focused more on the social aspects of sex than the seeking of pleasure. When human beings go through puberty they are usually tweens to in their early teens, and I believe that this comes as a shock. Unlike with training in eating, elimination of bodily wastes, putting on clothing, sleeping and language, human beings are given mostly theoretical training in sex. Any observation of human behaviour that goes on happens through popular entertainment or watching behaviour that hints at the possibility of sex.

To offer a comparison, if we treated say learning to eat, sleep and eliminate bodily wastes properly the way that we learn about sex, we would at a certain age be given a book to read, possibly sent to some classes, and wished good luck in our adventures. And I can only speculate about the results, but there are a few examples from life I know of where people struggled later in life because they were not taught skills. People for instance who never learned to tie their own shoes, people who had not been taught to read, etc, and found that they had a certain level of social dysfunction.

So I would sum this up as saying that sex is something most people want but have little clear idea as to how to get it.

To offer another comparison, in much of Western Civilization violent behaviour has been enormously contained. This is partly because of prosperity but it is also because the infrastructure surrounding the control of violence has been demonstrated to work, and generations of people have come to accept that. While violence still takes place, we have been taught successfully to believe that resolving conflict should largely be done through the processes of our civilization so that we go to court, mediation, argue with our words, vote, write letters, sign petitions, go on strike, divorce, complain to authorities and so on.

I refered earlier to how the way we deal with sex has changed hugely since the rise of feminism and the circumstances which made it possible. We no longer presume that we deal with sex through marriage or through secretive means like brothels. We assume that people should be able to have sex through social encounters.

Anyway I think this rambled on long enough for now, but if anyone would like me to continue I will.

Sure, feel free to continue.

Dealing with party culture is a problem. We would have several options i think.

1. We can go with what some feminists propose, which is that drunk sex is rape. But of course this creates an immediate problem: what if both people are drunk?

2. We can examine how much of a problem this really is. This would require non partisan study, not one done through Gender Studies or a department at a university influenced by one. I would advise having it involve multi-disciplinary team of researchers.

3. We can focus on the actual crimes taking place and do what RAINN suggested--focus on community awareness, buidling victim self confidence about their own rights and role in establishing consent, making police more aware of how to work with victims and the communities. Making it more clear to possible perpetrators what the laws regarding consent actually are. Providing better victim services.

[Gravlen]

I don't know that feminism claims that the patriarchy benefits only men. Some trickle-down effect that benefits women would still be patriarchal in nature.

Benefiting men is one of the primary reasons for why the "patriarchy" needs to be "dismantled".

Which policies benefit women and only women, and is there evidence of opposition to any of these policies from the majority of men?

Depends on which country. For example, in Norway, university admission is decided by gender, not by academic achievement. Then we have tertiary education scholarships specifically reserved for women in what are traditionally considered to be "male dominated" subjects yet no scholarships for male teachers or other subjects that are considered to be "female dominated".

I don't know why you thought a good response to Jello would be to lie to him, but that's your weird prerogative. At any rate, no, this is false. University admission in Norway is primarily determined by academic achievement. They use a points-based system where a straight A average equals 60 points, a B average equals 50 points etc. You may also get some extra points included in the admission assessment, including up to four points for taking some language, maths and science classes. You may also get, and this is where it's relevant for our discussion, two additional points for certain study programmes if you are of the gender that is clearly underrepresented among students and professionals in the field in question. These points are given out exclusively in four fields of study for women and two fields of study for men.

It should be noted that you also get two additional points if you've completed your obligatory military service or national service, if you've one to community college or have other higher education. You may also get between two and eight points based on your age. (These are for all fields of study, not just a select few)

What you said about scholarships is not true either.

Women on average receive more paid parental leave than men do.

I think that a considerable amount of men are against these but they don't speak up because of the hate they would receive because they're men. In addition, I think a lot of men are unaware of the shitty deal Western governments keep giving them.

Are you saying men are against paid parental leave in general, or against women recieving more paid parental leave than men? Or is there a third option? I hope there is, because the two first are frankly downright stupid positions to hold.

[Gravlen]

Okay, let's say I agree. How do we combat 'party culture'?


Sure, feel free to continue.

Dealing with party culture is a problem. We would have several options i think.

1. We can go with what some feminists propose, which is that drunk sex is rape. But of course this creates an immediate problem: what if both people are drunk?

The courts are dealing with this problem daily, and it really isn't that complicated. The clue is "incapacitated".

[Jello Biafra]

Of course discrimination exists, discrimination is ALWAYS going to exist, because humans are unreasonable assholes who treat others badly for dumb reasons. The question is not, "Does discrimination exist?" it's, "Is discrimination common enough for it to be considered a widespread problem, and do we have effective ways of dealing with it when it happens no matter how rare or often?" Saying that a society can only ever be considered equal when there is NEVER ANY single case of discrimination is like saying a society can only ever be considered safe when there are NEVER ANY cases of assault or murder, it's a completely unreasonable standard that not only can never be achieved but paints a terribly inaccurate picture of the nature of a society.

There's a difference between 'equal' and 'sufficiently equal'; you asked about the former.

There is no evidence that women are being discriminated against in the United States at any kind of epidemic level (and no, the wage gap has had itself soundly debunked).

That at least some part of the wage gap is due to discrimination has not been debunked.

Nobody is stupid enough to say it never happens, but just because it may occasionally happen is not enough to constitute a patriarchy. Not to mention, men are frequently discriminated against too, much more visibly so in fact, they are more likely to receive heavier prison sentences than women for the same crimes,

Men are also more likely to commit crimes, and have a higher recidivism rate than women.

less likely to get custody of their children even when they're clearly the better parent,

This is perhaps because in general, society thinks it's better for mothers to stay at home with the kids and not fathers and because fathers seem to rate themselves as less capable parents.

and less likely to be believed when they are raped or suffer domestic abuse.

In part because men don't think they can be raped or that a woman could beat them up.

Don't take my responses here to mean I'm not saying that men can't be discriminated against or that there's nothing that can be done about any of these things. What I am saying is that this discrimination occurs with the permission of men. As the saying goes "Patriarchy hurts men, too."

If they are accused of rape themselves but found innocent, society (especially feminists) almost never considers that he actually could have been innocent, his life is destroyed by being vilified as an example of how the system failed an innocent woman - a woman can effectively destroy any man she wants with one accusation, no matter how insubstantial, that power is there and there no effective recourse against it.

Can you give an example of a man who was accused of rape, found innocent, and had his life ruined?

I know proponents of the patriarchy theory like to respond to this with, "well that's the patriarchy's fault too because it's all a result of the belief that men are cold and tough and women are nurturing and weak!" but it's a contradicting principle: Patriarchy claims men hold all the important power and yet there are several key points of society where they are that the mercy of women. It makes no attempts to specify or justify what parts of a society a gender must dominate and to what degree for it to be considered a rulership of the sex, it insteads uses it's own vagueness and arbitrary nature to claim every single instance of sex-based discrimination as proof of itself and leaving no way out short of creating an impossible utopia of sexless drones.

We don't need patriarchy theory to find and fight discrimination. It's a sordid mess of a theory that tries to hold men personally responsible for a complex set of social behaviors that they do not and could never primarily perpetuate or benefit from. It's standards are so flexible that there is practically nothing that couldn't be argued as "proof" of it so long as you have a strong enough sense of apophenia and mental gymnastics, and because of this, it prevents many of us from properly addressing instances of discrimination that clearly fly in the face of its premise (e.g. women holding abusive power over men) as proponents spend all their time trying to reassure us that a person's suffering/abusive nature is all still elaborately due to their privilege/oppression. Most of all, it never sets up an equivalent as to what a matriarchy looks like, it only ever sets us up to believe that discrimination against anyone = patriarchy (practically by your own words!) - men are always the oppressors, women are always the oppressed, as if these roles are inherent to our nature and incapable of being swapped. And THAT sounds SUPREMELY anti-feminist to me.

I'm not saying that the idea of patriarchy doesn't need to be tweaked. In particular, the way in which women adopt patriarchal norms for themselves, such as that violence solves problems or that men always want sex. We already know that women adopt some of these norms; I think it's not out of the question that they couldn't adopt all of them and still have a patriarchal system.

Discrimination is unique to the individual, it should be treated as such, not as a result of an elaborate invisible "system." It will never fully go away because people aren't perfect, the best we can do is discourage it and punish it when it happens. If we can do that effectively, we have earned the title of equal society.

I'm not sure why you can acknowledge that there can be social pressures that encourage or at least refrain from discouraging sexual assault, but not acknowledge that social pressures can encourage or at least not discourage discrimination.

Of course, all of this could just be because patriarchy is too nebulous or whatever, but it is what I believe, so *shrug*

[Jello Biafra]

I think that a considerable amount of men are against these but they don't speak up because of the hate they would receive because they're men. In addition, I think a lot of men are unaware of the shitty deal Western governments keep giving them.

The latter could be why women might be able to get policies that they like enacted - if the cat's asleep, the mouse can get the cheese, but that doesn't mean the mouse has more power than the cat.

And yet, the majority of Western countries are secular with virtually no religious influence, so it wouldn't matter if there were any women in high ranking religious positions simply because religion in a lot of countries is not as big of an influence as it used to be.

It's true that religion isn't as important as it used to be, but that doesn't mean it's of little or no importance either.

Because economic privilege is the only tangible form of privilege that exists. Wealth has a substantial, and measurable, effect on the quality of life in the West. You cannot get the same kind of tangibility with male privilege, white privilege or thin privilege because those kinds are not able to be measured in a quantifiable manner. And, for the most part, they are not used in a manner to demand government change or to be able to call for better or more substantial government investment in welfare or policies that enable social mobility but rather used by feminists and other social justice warriors to shut down arguments they don't agree with.

Which is it - do feminists want more of society's resources to be given to women or do they just want to silence criticism? You seem to be saying it's either/or.
Nonetheless, I think this study does a good job of figuring out a way that male privilege might be able to be quantified, at least in some instances.

Home ownership. And in the United States at least, it varies. For example, single fathers have a home ownership rate of 55.9% compared with 46.7% for single mothers. However, single men have a home ownership rate of 49.8% compared with single women who have a home ownership rate of 58.9%.

The idea that men dominate and control property is a bit skewed because the common feminist claim is that women globally own about one percent, which is largely based on bogus studies attributed to the United Nations to give it some credence (because the average person doesn't bother to check sources).

Well, from your source it does look like women exert greater control over home ownership than men do. Why do you think this might be?

[Aapje]

Can you give an example of a man who was accused of rape, found innocent, and had his life ruined?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -rape.html
His mother killed herself a year later, btw.

Steven Avery

Paul Nungesser

Mike Pressler, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, David Evans, Kyle Dowd

The members of Phi Kappa Psi

[Frenline Delpha]

Can you give an example of a man who was accused of rape, found innocent, and had his life ruined?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -rape.html
His mother killed herself a year later, btw.

Steven Avery

Paul Nungesser

Mike Pressler, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, David Evans, Kyle Dowd

The members of Phi Kappa Psi

But. But. PATRIARCHY!!!!!