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[greatorder]

Toady said we could start up a new one, and we derailed right when I thought it was getting interesting.

This thread is a general discussion about genders, ranging from differences between them to gender rights movements to bigotry.

The rules:
1) Respect others. This one shouldn't have to be stated or enforced on these forums, but just in case...
2) NO EXTENDED DERAILS! The last thread was locked as a result of this.
3) If I tell you to stop something, please do so. If you don't, I'll probably employ the general practice of locking the thread for a day or two before reopening it. I'll limit this to things like derails. If someone's being an ass and people are responding to this, I'll lock the thread and report the guy(s) responsible.

Now, at the last thread, pre-derail, we were at the point of starting to talk about women in politics, you can continue from there, or start anew. Just don't bring back the whole racism thing. PLEASE.

[Orange Wizard]

Yeah, but the thing about racism is

((sorry))

New Zealand had a female Prime Minister for several terms - and she was awful.

[Neonivek]

I honestly didn't even know it was derailed, because I thought it as a flowing conversation. Especially since the thread specifically was "continuing a conversation", said conversation was actually not just about gender. Heck I still construe that it wasn't derailed.

---

Yeah InsanityIncarnate one thing I found out the hard way about Females in positions of power is dear goodness do they not have a good rap sheet. Canada had a totally ineffective female prime minister for like a month.
-On the plus side Canada has had great female governor generals... but they is not a real position.

Queen Elizabeth (or whoever the first Queen of England was) just about stands on top, but her ability to be an effective ruler was mostly because of how much of a neutral party she was mixed in with the fact that she was not all that bad.

Cleopatra though to my knowledge wasn't so bad either, but her real accomplishments are not very vast (she caretook some of the pyramids or something like that).

Cassandra the Great... I honestly don't know. A lot of the things she did is purely fictional written by her enemies to smear her. The horse thing for example was, from what I am told, made up.

[Reelya]

Cleopatra though to my knowledge wasn't so bad either, but her real accomplishments are not very vast (she caretook some of the pyramids or something like that).

lol I hope you're joking about the pyramids thing. The famous pyramids date from about 2500 years before her time, and they weren't being kept up. Later pharaohs built tiny, token ones. And Cleopatra really is pretty meh, she manipluated powerful men with sex, tried to put her son on the throne. You might as well praise Augustus' wife Livia, she achieved a lot more, except nobody recalls her fondly because she's not "sexy" like Cleopatra.

A better example is Catherine The Great of Russia.

[LordSlowpoke]

catherine the great did not manipulate men with sex. that's new to me

anyway ptw

[Reelya]

catherine the great did not manipulate men with sex. that's new to me

anyway ptw

Under Catherine's rule, Russia became one of the great powers, she extended the empire, lead economic reforms, etc.

The opposite of Cleopatra, who has exactly zero economic or political achievements.

[Neonivek]

she manipluated powerful men with sex

Cleopatra didn't actually do this to my knowledge. It is all pretty much a myth.

As for "care took" what it means is that Cleopatra's one contribution to history outside the mythology created by her is she took care of a few ALREADY EXISTING pyramids.

The opposite of Cleopatra, who has exactly zero economic or political achievements

If you add that the vast majority of the stories written about her are fabricated... She has had almost no achievements period.

But then again... Breaking even for 0... is still more impressive then many others. She didn't embarrass herself.

" You might as well praise Augustus' wife Livia, she achieved a lot more, except nobody recalls her fondly because she's not "sexy" like Cleopatra."

Lets just say stories of Cleopatra's beauty were by far exaggerated.

[Reelya]

As for "care took" what it means is that Cleopatra's one contribution to history outside the mythology created by her is she took care of a few ALREADY EXISTING pyramids.

I know what you meant. But that didn't happen. The administration (who was Greek then, but I don't think it would have mattered) had absolutely no interest in doing archeological work to maintain the pyramids. They just sat there. These are tombs, not temples, so they're not somewhere people hung out or maintained. It could be argued that nobody gave a damn about restoration until the Modern era and the rise of tourist travel in the 19th century.

So by "taking care of" we could mean "occassionally looking at"

Pont in case: the entire facia of the pyramids is missing. Originally they were decked in marble facades with solid gold center pieces on top. All this was looted over centuries well before Cleopatra - none of the original surfacing survived even then, we're looking at the internal scaffolding now thinking that's the surface.

[Reelya]

-ignore-

[Vector]

.

[aenri]

Sorry for the derail in last thread, I at least helped started it, but didn't want to get the thread locked.

As for topic - Slovakia had one female Prime Minister. She also has bad rap around here, but mainly because she was too nice person to be a politician. She was manipulated by her party colleagues to join vote of confidence with european stabilization mechanism vote - and she lost that vote.

[scriver]

As far as I can remember, Cleopatra's actual achievments include grabbing power in an extremely patriarchal society (in some ways even more so than the Roman/Geek ones), and outmanouvering her brother - the one she was supposed to be just a spousal attaché to - for several years. Her dalliances with the Romans were to gain powerful allies, though ultimately playing the wrong card in the Anthony-Octavius conflict became her undoing. She wasn't ousted but committed suicide, iirc, though Octavius later killed her heir, presumably to remove potential pretenders as he was the son of Caesar.

Which kind of brings to mind. Do you people realise how close we came to having a Greekyptian God-Emperor on the throne of the Roman Empire? Now that's an alternative history that's just begging to be written.

As for other historical female leader figures, I need to bring up King Pantsless of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. She used both political guile and military might to literally force the three kingdoms together against their will, making use of both the claims given to her by birth and the fear of the increasing power and influence of Mecklenburg and other powerful German states.

It has to be said, though, that when it comes to modern politicians in power, we usually judge them by quite different standards than historical rulers (and for good reason). I certainly can't think of any good people in power in my lifetime (the closest ones are before I was born, which means they are suspectiblepå. to romantisation and rose-tinted glasses), but then again Sweden was dominated by a powerhungry, pseudo-liberal douchebag for most of my life, and people of the opposite political spectrum for the rest of it (which I'm obviously biased against). So yeah, I don't exactly expect our leaders, regardless of gender, to be any kind of good, either personality-wise or results-wise.

[XXSockXX]

LOL @ Pyramids in Hellenistic Egypt derail.

As far as I can remember, Cleopatra's actual achievments include grabbing power in an extremely patriarchal society (in some ways even more so than the Roman/Geek ones), and outmanouvering her brother - the one she was supposed to be just a spousal attaché to - for several years.

Actually the hellenistic dynasties had quite a few powerful women, they seem less patriarchial than the Romans, especially in Ptolemaic Egypt where the rulers actively tried to incorporate elements of Egyptian culture, like the brother-sister-marriage tradition while remaining culturally Greek. There were several female rulers, mostly as regents in the Ptolemaic dynasty (most of them were named Berenike or Arsinoe or Cleopatra, like all the men were called Ptolemaios).
Cleopatra is generally judged too harshly, her dynasty had been on decline for a long time already. Same thing happened with the Seleucid dynasty in Syria/ the Middle East, it just is not blamed on a female ruler.

Generally it seems that historical female rulers are judged more harshly, because there are comparatively few of them. They are also, as exceptions, remembered much more. Everybody knows Cleopatra VII, but not many people know anything about Ptolemaios XIII.

In modern times female leaders are still an exception, I can't think of many important ones in the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher comes to mind, Golda Meir maybe, Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhutto.
Even if they are popular and/or successful, their style of politics is usually judged under the perspective that they are female. Maybe Thatcher would have been hated less if she was just as polarizing but male. Angela Merkel is quite popular even with the other political camp, but her passive non-polarizing style of politics is also often described as a feminine style of politics, be it positively, "motherly", or negatively, as passively scheming.

[scrdest]

-snip-
be it positively, "motherly", or negatively, as passively scheming.

So, motherly.

BA-DUM TISH!

[Sheb]

Helgoland told me Merkel is nicknamed the Übermutti. :p