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[TD1]

It's about gender roles, in a physical aspect, so still relevant.

[Lyeos]

  You might have to resort to baby formula, though, if the mother dies.
Just sayin'.
So, paternity leave at least makes sense then.
I guess.
Excuse me while I return to vomiting.

[TD1]

Looked up. It requires a particular cocktail of hormones and "Breast wall stimulation"

...and babies do it too. It's often called "Witch's milk" and was believed to be succour to the familiar of a witch.

Okay.

[GavJ]

Paternity leave, as well as maternity leave for any amount of time beyond maybe a couple of weeks, is for taking care of needy newborn babies, which men and women can both do and either one may NEED to do, depending. (I.e. if the woman is the bigger breadwinner, then she might go back to work as soon as physically able while the dad takes off 2-3 months for the newborn care)

Breastfeeding. Sure, there's all sorts of baby formulas out there, but they're all inferior to the real thing.

1) Two parents at home > one parent at home for a child
2) Single fathers
3) Inferior formula is better than losing most of your income if the dad works for a more progressive company than the mom and offers paternity leave while hers offers nothing
4) Um... Breast pumps?
5) Most (or many) maternity and paternity leaves are not 100% pay, so in a country with both with, say, 50% normal pay, and she makes twice as much as him, then it may be economically obvious to take the paternity leave and the mother stay at work to get 100% of the larger, more important income figure.
6) Some couples may simply personally decide that the father is a better caretaker than the mother and has more parental instinct, and thus plan, regardless of economics, to have him be the principle caretaker.
7) Gay male couples with surrogates
etc.

Or maybe the entire rest of the western world except America and I are just playing a practical joke by pretending it makes any sense.

[LordBucket]

10 seconds google, feminist pushing to have more women working in coal mines "for equality." I know you might not count this because it's India, but women have been systematically pushed out of the workforce by a combination of social/workforce trends and legal restrictions over the last century, and that article is a feminist argument for why this is a problem.

Going to dismiss this. Obviously the context of the discussion is the western world, and that's been specifically pointed out a number of times. If we're talking about the world at large, a whole lot of what we're talking about changes. For example, there are places in the middle east where being female and outside your house unescorted by a male relative means you might be raped, stoned and put in jail for being in the wrong about it.

That kind of thing renders most everything in this thread fairly trivial in comparison.

Basically your post seems to boil down to, "If we focus on the things I care about, then there is no need for feminism." Which, well, fair enough. But choosing not to care about certain social inequalities or discrimination doesn't make them go away.

More like..."why is feminism still a thing when so many quantifiable indicators suggest that they already have it better than men?"

I assert that feminism has long since surpassed its original goals, and that life in the western world is already much better for women than it is for men. I've given a number of indicators to this effect

If equality is really the goal, how does it make sense to continue promoting women over men? I gave the analogy a bunch of thread pages ago about trying to "balance" a pendulum to the result of pushing it past the balance point in the other direction. I think that point has long since been reached.

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've seen you bring this up multiple times in the past as a defense against you possibly being judgmental in your description of some men- it's not! It's like saying "I have a black best friend, so I can't possibly be racist."

...I can see that perspective, but I think it's a mischaracterization. Consider the full context of the quote you're referring to.

Angle said this:

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.

To which I responded:

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.

A more accurate characterization would be that I'm saying "I'm not opposed to the idea of accepting men behaving in ways that are traditionally viewed as feminine. Case in point: I do it myself. It would be hypocritical of me to suggest that men have to act manly. But, that being the case...I don't think it's a solution for the problem we're discussing."

"what is your criteria by which to judge when it's time to stop pushing for women's "equality?"

Never.

the goalposts will always move.

...wait, seriously? Did you just admit that or am I totally misunderstanding you? Because it sounds to me like you're saying that no matter how good it is for women, it will never be good enough. That you'll always feel the need to keep fighting and championing for them.

I would be fascinated to hear the perspective of an actually female feminist on your statement. Because it sounds an awful lot to me like you're suggesting either that women will never be equal to men and that they need men to forever and always keep protecting them...or simply that you don't care how fair or unfair anything is or how good woman have it already, they're on a pedestal and always deserve more.

Do you really want to take either of those positions?

it is a problem. I need only link to domestic violence statistics to make that abundantly clear.

Sure it's a problem. But from your link:

"On average, 3 females and 1 male are murdered by their partner each day"

So, three women a day. In comparison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

"79% percent of all murder victims being male."

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hus11.pdf

"In 2011, an estimated 14,610 persons were victims of homicide in the United States"

(From chart on page 4:)

14,610 homicides, of which 11,370 were men and 3,240 were women.

So, 11,370 men are murdered for every 3240 women. Of those 3240 women who are murdered, according to your domestic violence link, 3 a day, so ~1095 per year.

Why are the domestic homicides the problem here?

I mean...yes, it's a bad thing. I acknowledge that. But why do you look at the 1000 women being murdered by domestic partners and think that's more important than than the 11,000 men being murdered? Even if you look at all 3240 women being murdered by everybody...why is that a bigger problem than the 11,370 men being murdered?

Do you see a certain disparity here? Are you seriously saying that one third as many women being murdered is a bigger problem than three times as many men being murdered?

Keeping in mind that this particular comparison of domestic abuse deaths was started because of this comment of yours:

Also, in all honesty, I've always wondered if the gender ratios were like that because men were more likely to serve in a military capacity than women.

Then I remembered that more women die of domestic abuse each year than die in military service and law enforcement combined.

...let's consider that:

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.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/21/us/22-veteran-suicides-a-day/

"Every day, 22 veterans take their own lives. That's a suicide every 65 minutes."

And yet you apparently perceive the 3 women a day murdered by domestic partners as a bigger problem? Would you care to revise your statements now that you've seen the actual numbers?

[TD1]

Hehe.

[Lyeos]

Let me grab my popcorn. 
LordBucket, I love your points. Not that anyone here that champions feminism as the be-all and end-all to solve all problems will accept them, but I love your points..

[TD1]

Can I share? I forgot mine.   

[palsch]

Going to dismiss this. Obviously the context of the discussion is the western world, and that's been specifically pointed out a number of times. If we're talking about the world at large, a whole lot of what we're talking about changes. For example, there are places in the middle east where being female and outside your house unescorted by a male relative means you might be raped, stoned and put in jail for being in the wrong about it.

That kind of thing renders most everything in this thread fairly trivial in comparison.

Well, I'd say that India is generally considered a fairly westernised nation within Asia, but assumed you would dismiss this anyway.

So thirty seconds google for a book on women coal miners in Appalachia from a socialist feminist point of view.

But to expand this to a broader point, feminists do push for women to be accepted in dangerous and (often low paying) manual roles all the time.

If equality is really the goal, how does it make sense to continue promoting women over men? I gave the analogy a bunch of thread pages ago about trying to "balance" a pendulum to the result of pushing it past the balance point in the other direction. I think that point has long since been reached.

Because you are looking at this as some absurd one dimensional measurement of equality, measured by whatever factors you choose to care about at this given time. If you measure life expectancy, or cherry pick a certain subset of income levels (properly controlled to remove potential inequalities) or look at random violence then sure, you can dismiss feminism as over and say men have it worse.

But if you choose to look at all facets of human experience you are going to find gross discrimination and prejudice against women on many levels in many areas. Areas where, to use the clichéd meme, we still need feminism.

Further , to broadly back up Rolepgeek, it's not a matter of centring the pendulum (or giving it a push and expecting it to find the centre through pure momentum). Abortion and other women's reproductive health topics are a good example. We see push back on this topic year after year, with only active resistance preventing the roll-back of decades of progress. Maybe, in a few decades, anti-woman arguments will be so unthinkable that there don't need to be groups specifically to push back against them, but I honestly don't see it happening in my lifetime.

Finally, dismissing feminism as just a political movement to promote women ignores the wealth of feminist work and writing on gender roles that could well be illustrative of the issues men are facing. Hell, bell hooks has written a book on understanding how patriarchy harms men (targeted at getting feminists to understand and embrace men) and another on black masculinity with a view to building a more constructive model of masculinity, avoiding harmful (socially and personally) stereotypes. I never see any of this discussed outside (certain) academic feminist circles though.

[LordBucket]

So thirty seconds google for a book on women coal miners in Appalachia from a socialist feminist point of view.

What about it? It appears to be a historical fiction novel. I don't think a novel about female coal miners constitutes an example of feminists pushing for parity in numbers of male vs female coal miners.

Now, to be fair...I haven't read the thing...it's possible there's political commentary in there, but reading only brief excerpts, what I get from it is basically "women have worked in coal mines, and they did perfectly well, so don't look down on women and claim they can't do a man's job."

That's all well and good, but I don't think it addresses the point we were discussing.

feminists do push for women to be accepted in dangerous and (often low paying) manual roles all the time.

Let's go back to the original comment of mine that prompted this particular discussion of coal mining:

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."

Please read the above quote. In case it was not clear...the point of the coal mining example, like the other examples given, was that so far as I can tell, feminists are not usually interested in equality. They simply want to make things better for women. If there is a desirable position or industry where there are more men than women, or unpleasant things that more women have to deal with than men, they will be perceived as inequalities. But when there are unpleasant things in which there are more men than women or desireable positions held more by women than men...those won't be perceived as inequalities.

Rather than fictional novels based on real-life female coal miners, can you find me example of feminists saying that it's unfair that so many men work in dirty, dangerous, unpleasant positions like coal mining and "to be fair and equal" we need to get women in those positions to relieve men from the injustice of being unfairly represented in them? Can you find me examples of feminists saying it's unfair that women hold the vast majority of highly paid nursing positions, and that we need to get more men into those positions to be fair? Can you find me examples of feminists saying that it's unfair that women live so much longer than men and that we need to spend more research money on men's health issues to make things more equal?

Because that was the point of both the coal mining and the other examples in that quote. That feminists don't appear to be interested in equality. Only in promoting women and calling it equality. When men have an advantage, they will decry it and suggest that women need better. But when women have an advantage, they don't decry that advantage and say that men need better.

Which, like I've already acknowledged:

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."

...it's ok if feminism exclusively promotes women. But if that's the case, then be honest about it, and say that it's all about promoting women...and stop claiming that it's about "equality."

Because you are looking at this as some absurd one dimensional measurement of equality, measured by whatever factors you choose to care about at this given time.

So give me different factors to look at. I've asked for that multiple times.

What criteria do you wish to use to judge this? I've given several. If you don't like mine, that's fine. We can use something else.

I assert, that speaking generally life is better in the US for woman than it is for men. Choose any area you like: finance, dating, social exchange, peer expectation, law, college, health...in most areas, women simply have a better deal than men.

Are there certain specific areas in which men have a better deal? Yes. In my opinion they are both outnumbered and out-how-much-bettered by the areas in which women have the better deal.

Simultaneously, it has been my observation, that "the trend" among those who espouse and vocally self- identify with feminism, is that they tend to perceive women as disadvantaged in comparison to men, and seek to reverse this perceived disadvantage.

If I have a lollipop, an apple and a bruise on my face...and if you have an ice cream cone, an orange and a papercut...and if you then see this and call it unfair...and if you then wage a war "for equality" that results in me having a lollipop and an apple and a bruise on my face and you having a lollipop, an apple, an ice cream cone, an orange and a band-aid on your papercut...did you really make things more equal?

I don't think so.

dismissing feminism as just a political movement to promote women ignores the wealth of feminist work and writing on gender roles that could well be illustrative of the issues men are facing.

I never see any of this discussed outside (certain) academic feminist circles though.

Yeah, I don't generally see those things discussed either.

To be fair, I have read articles by feminists acknowledging the US dating culture is unfair to men. They are, however, largely drowned out by the wage disparity complaints.

[Samarkand]

Let's do this systematically. Correct me on any point, but please also confirm the ones you agree with so we can establish what it is you believe.

Conclusion: Feminists are women who are interested in being better than men, not equality.

I don't see feminists pushing to have more women working in coal mines "for equality."

Proposition 1: Feminists don't want women to have low paying and dangerous jobs.
     Non sequitur: This does not logically lead to the idea that feminists want to be better than men. That would require demonstrating they advocate for men to have these jobs, which they don't. They'd probably prefer nobody had to do those jobs. Said another way, reluctance to take a shitty job does not imply superiority over the group that takes that job: nobody wants shitty jobs.
     Counter-example: Feminists often advocate for women in active military service which is dangerous and often far from lucrative.

I don't see feminists pushing for longer male life expectancy "for equality."

Proposition 2: Feminists have not actively worked to improve male life expectancy.
     Counter-examples: Princess Diana was a feminists, and viewed part of this position as helping expand people's social definitions of the AIDs epidemic, helping men (who were disproportionately effected by the disease) seek treatment. The National Organization for Women spearheaded a campaign to expand the definition of hate-crimes, which helped the gay community greatly. Lovisa Stannow, noted feminist, worked in a campaign to stop prison rape; which effects men. All of these have had huge public effects.

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."

Proposition 3: Feminists have not redirected funds from their own efforts to help men.
     Non sequitur: This does not imply they think they are superior, or that they do not value equality. Redirecting funds is rarely a platform of any group, regardless of their goals.
     Counter-examples: See AIDs example in Prop. 2. This demonstrates they have helped with men's health issues, though it does not address redirecting funds.



I'll start with those for now. I have other bay12 things to do.

[Orange Wizard]

I don't see feminists pushing to have more women working in coal mines "for equality."

Proposition 1: Feminists don't want women to have low paying and dangerous jobs.
     Non sequitur: This does not logically lead to the idea that feminists want to be better than men. That would require demonstrating they advocate for men to have these jobs, which they don't. They'd probably prefer nobody had to do those jobs. Said another way, reluctance to take a shitty job does not imply superiority over the group that takes that job: nobody wants shitty jobs.
     Counter-example: Feminists often advocate for women in active military service which is dangerous and often far from lucrative.

From what I've seen of the US, military service is glorified to a high degree. Coal mining, for example, not so much. In this case, it's less about the danger and money, and more about the patriotism and "freedom".

[Samarkand]

I don't see feminists pushing to have more women working in coal mines "for equality."

Proposition 1: Feminists don't want women to have low paying and dangerous jobs.
     Non sequitur: This does not logically lead to the idea that feminists want to be better than men. That would require demonstrating they advocate for men to have these jobs, which they don't. They'd probably prefer nobody had to do those jobs. Said another way, reluctance to take a shitty job does not imply superiority over the group that takes that job: nobody wants shitty jobs.
     Counter-example: Feminists often advocate for women in active military service which is dangerous and often far from lucrative.

From what I've seen of the US, military service is glorified to a high degree. Coal mining, for example, not so much. In this case, it's less about the danger and money, and more about the patriotism and "freedom".

That's the thing, there is at least some reason to want it. If you asked feminists if they would be fine with women working in coal mines as a result of feminism, they'd say yes. If asked if they wanted women to work in coal mines they'd say no. Because nobody wants to be in those death traps.

[GavJ]

Proposition 1: Feminists don't want women to have low paying and dangerous jobs.

If true, it might be evidence, yes. But I really doubt it is true. Why would you NOT want job availability? Citations?

The ideal is always to have as many job offers as humanly possible if you're a laborer, it never benefits you to actively shun an industry. You might not go out of your way to court their favor, but that's not the same thing as specifically not wanting to have them as an option.

Proposition 3: Feminists have not redirected funds from their own efforts to help men.

I don't see how this is relevant to your conclusion, whether true or not.

BOTH feminists who wanted infinite female power AND feminists who wanted only equality and no more would act like this, up until the point of equality, at which point they would diverge. Since we aren't at the point of equality yet, this is not a diagnostic measure.

Edit: Or more precisely, it might be evidence in some cases, but not others, and these need to be split apart. For example, Proposition 2 is actually a subtype of this proposition, which has been split off usefully. You need to do that with the rest of this as well.
1) "Things where men are actually behind women, AND where the women are still not diverting funds to help" versus
2) "Things where men are not behind, which are irrelevant whether feminists are diverting funds"

Proposition 2: Feminists have not actively worked to improve male life expectancy.

This is the best of the three insofar as actually being decent evidence of your conclusion. It is a bit esoteric, though. More/ more generic/mainstream examples would be better. See above comments.

[Samarkand]

Proposition 2: Feminists have not actively worked to improve male life expectancy.

This is the best of the three insofar as actually being decent evidence of your conclusion. It is a bit esoteric, though. A more generic/mainstream example would be better.

I agree this was his strongest point, hence it not being labeled as a non sequitur. The problem is there are so many counter examples. Feminism has improved life expectancy some, and quality of life a lot.