I really hope someone else responds to LordBucket's post
No such luck. Four thread pages and not one single person has answered the question I asked:
"what is your criteria by which to judge when it's time to stop pushing for women's "equality?"
Yes, those are true, but I would blame them more on the attitudes of men than on women or feminism. Really, we men need a movement to reevaluate our gender constraints, and slip them, if necessary. For example, men have a lot of cultural restriction on being feminine, even when that's to their advantage. This can severely impede our ability to function in society. Women, on the underhand, have significantly slipped their restriction from acting masculine. This, I feel, largely accounts for women's better performance in school and professionally. As for medicine, women have gone and campaigned for better treatment. Men? Nope can't do that, it's not macho. I do agree that the funding is unbalanced, but you can hardly blame women for that.
1) Not really interested in placing blame. I'd rather we have a clear view.
2) I'm skeptical that social acceptance of "men acting femininely" is productive at all. Don't misunderstand. I'm the guy wearing the pretty pony princess avatar here. I'm not saying "rawwr guys must be macho rawwrr!" I just don't think that cultural acceptance of "women acting like men" is the cause of women having it better, and I don't think "men acting like women" is going to make life particularly better for men either.
I think it's
far more likely than men tend to want to protect women, so they're generally willing to try to make things better for women where they perceive unfairness. We're talking about he western world here, not Saudi Arabia. Combine that with the recent historical push from women to make lives for their gender better, and you end up with a lot of concerted effort to make life better for women. Hence, life becomes better for women. Cross-gender behavioral acceptance isn't really part of that. If you want to champion for social acceptance of men wearing dresses in public, or working as nurses and secretaries, I guess I'm not going to fight you on that...but I just don't think it would result in longer male lifespans and so forth. There's just no connection between these things.
Those are rather poor examples. Try going to any social event and see which one of you get's more unwelcome advances. See who's more likely to get molested. For that matter, try comparing old unattractive men and women, and see who comes out ahead in those examples above.
No, they were excellent examples. And others have pointed out that they were
accurate. You just don't like them because they don't support your conclusion.
try comparing old unattractive men and women, and see who comes out ahead in those examples above.
"Older, unattractive men" find dating easier than "older, unattractive women." Primarily because
men die younger which leads to not enough men to go around. Are you seriously trying to paint the fact that men die younger as a bad thing for women? I mean, yes...I see how it could be inconvenient. But painting men dying as a women's problem seems a bit twisted to me.
I do agree that there is a limit to how far you can push "Equality" without it becoming inequality. Whether or not that point has been reached is debatable, of course, but it is there.
Yes, it is debatable. Which is why I asked what the criteria is for evauluating "equality." Women's rights movements and feminism have been around for quite a few decades. How are we supposed to know when they've "succeeded" and can stop now? If we never have any definite criteria, and just forever keep making things "better for women" to the exclusion of men...again, that's pushing the penduluum past the rest point.
I gave a long list of
quantifiable ways in which women have it better here. And some of those items
used to be goals of feminism. Voting rights, safe and legal access to abortion, parity in education...these things
have been accomplished. But the goalposts have been moved.
So maybe we're reached the point, or maybe we haven't. But in order to evaluate whether we have, we need some criteria to look at say "if X is true, we've succeeded and we're done. If X is not true, then we haven't yet succeeded."
Alright, then, do educate me.
feminism
ˈfɛmɪnɪz(ə)m/
noun
noun: feminism
the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
Although you could argue that it goes beyond merely advocating for equal rights, and also encompasses equal social standing.
That definition is clearly silly. Which "rights" do you suppose that women lack? The only "rights" western women lack that I'm aware of is that they can't be conscripted or serve in some military combat roles.
Feminism is obviously not about women's rights. It's about...and I'm speaking loosely here because we don't all agree on definitions..."making things generally better for women." And there's nothing wrong with that. But I think this notion that "men have it better" is no longer very accurate. Again, I gave a long list of
verifiable and quantifiable ways in which "things" are clearly better for women.
I don't see feminists pushing to have more women working in coal mines "for equality." I don't see feminists pushing for longer male life expectancy "for equality." I don't see women rallying to move funds away from breasts cancer research in favor of spending on underfunded men's health issues..."for equality."
If people want to rally to make life better for women, that's ok. But stop it with the illusion that it's "for equality."
Equal social standing would mean gender roles didn't exist (if one gender has a specific role, then the genders are not equal socially).
If this is one's view, then it's somewhat improbable that mere social reform will
ever result in "equality." As has been mentioned, there are biological differences that influence "gender roles." Obvious example: women give birth and breastfeed children. Unless you're proposing we start growing children in vats, things like this are unlikely to change.
Then I remembered that more women die of domestic abuse each year than die in military service and law enforcement combined.
Doing some checking, the numbers appear to be similar enough that it depends on which year you look at. But in general the numbers are "low" in both cases.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/jr000250g.pdf"Every year in the United States, 1,000 to 1,600 women die at the hands of their male partners"
Those numbers increase if you include "suicides motivated by domestic abuse" but even so,
male suicide rate is three times as high.
Whereas according to:
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2013/07/24/annual-deaths-in-the-us-military-1980-2010/Military deaths range from 800-2500/yr or so.
In any case,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States"In terms of gender, males were more likely to become crime victims than were females, with 79% percent of all murder victims being male."To which, I predict your response will be that women are raped more often than men. Which is true if you ignore prison rapes. However, I repeat that above wiki link which claims that
males are more likely to become crime victims than females. Which is corroborated by lots of sources.
http://www.nij.gov/topics/victims-victimization/Pages/welcome.aspx"Men become crime victims more often than women do"http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/cv12.txt"In 2012, males had higher rates of violent and serious violent victimization than females."http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2009/05/who-is-most-likely-to-be-a-crime-victim.html
Picking out
one thing that's worse for women and ignoring all the things that are worse for men...I question your impartiality. Women live longer, they get more degrees, they get more health funding, they receive legal favoritism, they receive social favoritism, they control more money overall, businesses cater to them more than men...the list goes on. We don't need to be continually cherry picking the few things that men still have better and forcing those to be better for women too.
No. I think it's time to stop championing for women and start making life better for everybody.
If feminism is really about "equality," then let's prove it.
Author
Topic: A Strange Idea about Gender Roles (Read 56358 times)