Alright!
It's time for me to take the long-ass time to go through all of LordBucket's posts and compare them to his claims, and see if the two A. match up and B. actually mean something in regards to whether feminism is still relevant!
This'll be rather large, I warn you.
But before I begin, I must ask; LordBucket, are you a member of the MRA? Because whether or not you are, the type of things you're saying and claiming lead me to believe you're one.
LordBucket; the analogy is not, properly, a pendulum. It is a spring-coiled tube. There is innate resistance to equality from sources
outside of the specific battleground, and there are people pushing down. To get it high enough, we have to push back.
What is your criteria by which you judge when it's time to stop pushing?
Never. You never stop pushing. Quality of life is not something you simply give up on improving. Ever.
A few examples:
* More women are accepted into college than men
True. However, the correct response to this is to ask
why more women are in and graduate from college than men. Skimming the article, I find some interesting tidbits. Or really, some interesting paragraphs. Specifically, the bit that that attempts to explain the disparity. You know, rather than simply glossing over the surface details? Yeah.
* More women graduate with degrees
Huh. Interesting. But you know the real interesting thing about it? It's pretty easily explained in the above article you linked, and I did the math, and while I may be misinterpreting the data they give, as the way it's worded is confusing, but 46% divided by 70% is about 0.657. Meanwhile, 39% divided by 61% is about 0.639. Which is an incredibly minute difference, in the end. Of course, perhaps they mean 46%
of the number that equals 70%. It certainly fits the numbers. But once again, it's explained by the above article for why such might be the case! I would quote the whole bloody thing here, but this post will already become long enough as it is.
* Women usually win child custody battles
This, interestingly enough, is, in fact, due to the gender role bias that pervades our society, that feminism is trying to stop. Women are seen as more nurturing and caring for their children, while the men are often seen as abusive, if abuse is in question as to the reason for a need of child custody arrangement. Wherever would they get that idea? I mean, it's not like the vast majority of domestic violence victims are women, after all.
Oh wait... * Women control the majority of money in the US source 1
source 2 source 3 source 4 source 5
Hm. Now, I went into this expecting to find some government surveys or something as many of the other articles you linked have. I found...sites intended to market to women. Now, this is also a fact influenced by gender roles and bias in the economy; women are typically seen as the ones who take care of the home, take care of the kids, buy things like groceries, as compared to men, who are expected to bring in money. For example, if you look at the population-employed ratio
here, you'll see men have a higher employed to populated ratio. And that's before the pay gap! And yes, in doing research about it I found that it's not as significant in some ways as a result of
direct gender bias...but it is a result of gender bias. Women becoming mothers affects it in ways that becoming a father doesn't. Women are culturally encouraged towards lower pay jobs while men are urged to make the most money they can. Which creates an 'input-output' situation like we see. And that's before companies preying on social insecurities women have about self-image and the expectations placed on women that they look pretty.
* Women live longer than men, yet despite this the majority of healthcare money is spent on women, and for example, more than twice as much money is spent on breast cancer vs prostrate cancer research, despite similar numbers of afflicted.
Well, let's take a look at
why that might be the case, hmm?
Oh, lookie here. As for healthcare being spent on women, all I had to do was look in the article you linked for the answer; the longer lifespan is one reason, and the other, based on the data, would be that women can get pregnant; "The difference is greatest through the childbearing years and then diminishes continuously thereafter." The explanation for itself is also found in the last article! "Women, Johnson says, tend to be acutely aware and outspoken about their health concerns, while men shy away from such discussions." So, ya know, women participate actively in it, while men don't as often. Besides which, prostate cancer seems to affect more people, but there are less deaths from it! Even
with less funding! So amazing wow!
Meanwhile:
* Men are 12 times more likely to die on the job
* Men are twice as likely to be homeless
* Men are three times as likely to commit suicide
1. False correlation, or at least exacting numbers; yes, men are more likely to get more dangerous or risky jobs(hey look this ties back to that whole gender roles thing we've been talking about funny isn't it), but women also tend to work less, as I've shown, and that lists total fatalities; not fatalities per capita of each gender of worker, or in each different risk level of job. An issue, certainly, but in the sense of 'fewer people should die at work, period', not 'more women need to die at work before I'm willing to acknowledge that there is still sexism against women'.
2. I apologize for using a second-hand source, here, but the original source it used seems to be missing for whatever reason. Still,
this can explain that sufficiently for you, I hope? Gender roles and such can come into play here, as well as just some rather sad circumstances of life.
3. I...I don't really see how you can even make this as an argument. Men are more likely to succeed at committing suicide; women are, meanwhile, more likely to attempt it. Before accounting for the gender roles that end up telling men they shouldn't try to go for help. All this data coming from your own source, by the way. If you want to prove a point without having it shown to be a misleading presentation of the facts (at least not this easily), you should really screen them more.
...but, oh. There are more men in politics. And more male CEO's. And median male income is still higher than women's. Oh, apparently even that's starting to change:
"In 2008, single, childless women between ages 22 and 30 were earning more than their male counterparts in most U.S. cities, with incomes that were 8% greater on average, "
And again, it explains why, going back upwards to other points you've made, and my refutations of them, or explanations thereof for why feminism is neither causing these issues to worsen, nor is unnecessary.
So is your goal to keep pushing until everything favors women over men? Is that equality? After all, even though female CEO's make 40% more than male CEOs, there are still more male CEO's than female CEO's. Shall we keep pushing until they not only get paid more, there are also more of them too?
Oh, that's a good one! I get it now, you see it as a contest! It's only fair that there's more male CEOs than female ones, is it? Interestingly enough, this is actually for once caused by the whole pro-feminism debacle. Not that it matters. With the sheer amount of money a CEO in the top 500 makes, differences as measly as 40% are window-dressing, essentially. Yet...if you go down to the bottom of the article...where it talks about their assistants still being restrained by the glass ceiling? Yeah...
Or maybe what you want is social equality? Why not go to a bar with a female friend and see which of the two of you gets more free drink purchased for you. Or have your car break down on the side of the road and see which of you receives more offers of help. Try being a male or female assaulted by someone of the opposite gender and see who garners more sympathy. Go to the mall and do a quick count of how many stores cater to women vs cater to men. Have a female friend wear a boys are stupid throw rocks at them t-shirt, and then try custom printing a "girls are stupid throw rocks at them" t-shirt and wearing it and let us know who people are nicer to. Imagine a man and woman on a sinking ship competing for the last spot on a liferaft and tell me who gets it.
First, I'll ask if you are honestly so resentful of the few 'advantages' women get from gender roles in these issues that you would attempt to use them as part of an argument. Now I'll address your questions in turn, sometimes with questions of my own. 1. Why not go to a bar with a female friend and see which gender of waiter gets groped more often? Which of you is leered at more often? This all depends entirely on the women being attractive to men, which forms part of the pressures on women being pretty; not to get free drinks, but as a symptom of the underlying problem. 2. Again, she'd have to be attractive, and if someone did offer to help, which of you is more likely to be sexually assaulted? 3. Ties back into gender roles, women are seen as weak and unable to harm men. And honestly, unless you're referring to strangers? If you both have good friends and approximately equal numbers, odds are your friends would be supportive regardless of gender of you or the assailant(try being sexually assaulted as either by a member of the same gender and see who gets more sympathy, as well, huh?). That's before all of the various double standards regarding rape come into play, but that's partially because we're part of a victim blaming culture(in fact, I'd argue your entire rant and opposition is evidence of that!).
Next post! Hope we don't reach the character limit...
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.
It...it kinda is, though. If a women wants to dress in a typically masculine fashion, that's her choice. It used to be socially unacceptable, just like crossdressing men is nowadays. Why are so focused on men having shorter lifespans? I mean really. It's kinda weird for you to focus on this. Are you being fatalistic and resentful that you might not live as long as you could if you were a woman? And in the process forgetting the egregious number of problems a woman has to go through during said life?
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.
But there are equally excellent examples that demonstrate the opposite effect. Which I'm sure you don't like because they don't support
your conclusion; that feminism is actively detrimental or at the very least unnecessary.
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.
Are you seriously trying to paint the fact that men die younger as a
good thing for women?!? And this somehow has anything to do with the above? But let's look at other issues with your point. First off, you completely ignored the unattractive part, focusing only on the old(and apparently the very old, at that). Second, you twist things around by coming up with rationales to support a conclusion, then act as if Angle was the one positing that conclusion in such a manner as to make their position look worse. For shame. The point was about society's expectations of beauty in women as compared to men; look at Hollywood, for example; media is a great example of the bias between genders. Women aren't supposed to age, in Hollywood. What's the median age of male actors as compared to female actors? And for that matter, what are the proportional numbers of each gender still getting parts and getting main roles after 30? 40? 50?
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."
No. You are never 'done' with trying to get equality or improved conditions of life.
Ever. If you must, I'll share an analogy I stumbled upon several months ago in my musings. I was in choir, so the analogy is thus: Life is like a song. No matter how nice it might be, there is always a way you can improve it. Some parts might be more skilled than others at different points, and rather than saying 'well overall they're about equal' or 'well this part is better than that other one, sometimes, so we'll just be done here', you
always work on improving it, at every point and every level. And you work on keeping it as good as it is. It is
not something you ever finish. There's no true such thing as 'good enough'. There is 'good', 'great', even 'excellent'. But there is no 'flawless'. Not in real life. Not consistently, in song. You never stop trying.
Ever.
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."
You know, I think I'mma ignore this one for the moment until I can be rational about your obvious dismissal of women's practically available access to basic human rights, rather than the merely legal definition of having them. Maybe I'll just pretend you weren't being this awful of a person. Yeah.
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.
I feel like we've been over this before. Weird. Oh right, because that's a
sex role, not a
gender role.
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.
Two problems with the logic train here. First off, you forget that 85% of domestic abuse victims, or at the least, 60%(it varies by source), are women. And that only counts deaths, not the, you know, emotional scarring and sheer terribleness of the situation there. I mean, are you seriously fucking ignoring that it's domestic
abuse? As in, they probably suffer for years before dying, and there's countless who don't die and still suffer?
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.
Cute. I see how you ignored the 'cause' of the purported incidents. The article you link to? It talks about how "the military comes with all the ordinary everyday occurrences of life that have nothing to do with war or combat and some of those – accidents and homicides – lead to the death of its residents." And used hugely varying numbers, from, oh, about 4 years ago at the most recent. It's really goddamn difficult to find full numbers for all deaths caused while on active military duty
as a result of active military duty, apparently. Most of the sources only give the results for Afghanistan and whatnot.
2013 had about
130 or so dead. Meanwhile, I used a
different database to find law enforcement deaths.
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
Whilst, of course, ignoring the reasons behind such, as usual. Or, more accurately, your failure to establish what that actually means. So I guess I'll have to read into the sources myself. Which isn't helped by having to look at wikipedia and then go to it's source in turn. But, if you want it to be a competition, also look at the perpetrators of these crimes; mostly men. Gender roles in society place a 'greater wrong' on harming a woman, because they are seen as weak, vulnerable, and helpless, as compared to men, who oughta be able to defend themselves. After all, if they can't, they're not a real man! And thus the victim-blaming continues. But no, I'll take a look at it. Robbery is likely because men are more likely to run businesses, for example. Aggravated assault possibly because men are more likely to provoke people than women. Simple assault could be a similar reason, or more likely, simply the above reason I gave: people are more likely to restrain themselves against a women versus a man. But you act like this is something done on purpose. And then look at how much more likely women are to be victims of a crime perpetrated by someone close to them. But no, you can't. Instead, you act as though the number of people being
murdered is an excuse to not do anything about it. Jeezus christ man, you sound like a fucking sociopath, in all honesty.
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.
[sarcasm=on]Right, because
rape is anywhere near the level of, *ahem* 'social favoritism'. And we should totally stop trying to prevent domestic abuse and rape from happening to women and in general. That sounds legit, LordBucket. I'm sure you took this stuff into account when proposing your obviously perfectly valid plans.[sarcasm=off]
If you think feminism is about anything
other that equality, then you still need to prove it, 'cause you've sure done a shitty job so far.
Next post!
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."
...The fuck is wrong with you? Why the fuck are you so focused on all this danger shit? You know why women aren't hired in coal mines? They aren't seen as strong. They aren't viewed as capable of handling it. Why the fuck would a feminist focus on whether women are working in coal mines, when there's shit going on that far outstrips anything of that sort in areas that aren't ludicrously contrived as an 'example' of sexism against men? Why the fuck would they focus on who's working in a goddamned coal mine when there's women being blamed for their own rape? I mean, what the fuck, dude. A. It's not a goddamned contest of 'who has it worse', and B. even if it
was, women still win that contest.
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.
First, I'll address the analogy. It's a poor one. Here's probably a more accurate one: If you have a lollipop, an apple, a bruise on your face, and an ice cream cone, and I have an ice cream cone, an orange, and a gash across my right bicep, and I manage to get a lollipop, an apple, and some bandages for my gash? Yeah, you still have a bruise on your face, and no you don't have an orange yet. The paramedics were a little busy, bub. You're next. And as for the rest:
Well, you're wrong. Demonstrably wrong. Finance: Pay gap. Dating: Date Rapes, who doesn't love those? Oh, and if you mean 'how easy is it to attract a member of the opposite gender', do you mean any member, or a member that isn't liable to beat you when you don't do what they say? Social Exchange: I barely even know what you fucking mean by this, honestly. Peer Expectation: Oh, right, let's ignore the eating disorders women get saddled with due to the social expectations of beauty. Right. Law: As in, practicing it, or as in, the law favors them in cases? Because guess what? It typically has to, for there to be any justice whatsoever! And even then, it fucks up all the goddamned time. College: You're really sore about this, aren't you? You act like there's an immeasurable number of obstacles blocking men from getting into college versus women breezing through, when it's slight differences on a national scale. Health: Yes, because that's totally women's fault and they're purposefully trying to outlive men just to spite you. Those darned womenfolk! *snaps fingers*
Next post! Ooh, fourth already? And I've only been working on this for two hours!
Actually
this one I think I can skip since I think Samarkand would have handled Bucket's response to their post.
This one, in the end, I've effectively answered above, throughout.
So I suppose I'll finish up by responding to the one after that.
I'm still not sure what your conclusion is, or your supporting propositions. Could you explicitly write them out?
Succinctly?
1) Feminism intends to be about making life better for women.
2) In my opinion, life in the US is already better on the whole for women than it is for men.
1) At this point, yes, because women have some shitty lives sometimes.
2) Well, your opinion is wrong, because it relates to factual evidence, and the factual evidence is annoyed at being misrepresented. You. Are. Wrong.
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Topic: A Strange Idea about Gender Roles (Read 56966 times)