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[Nadaka]

SalmonGod:

I'm going to take a few issues regarding support for getting out of an abusive marriage.

You only get support like you mentioned if you happen to live in the right state. There is not a lot of help available for a woman to get out of an abusive marriage with kids in a lot of cases. You can't imagine the amount of bullshit that you have to go through. What support there is, is almost completely ineffective. You will barely be able to feed a family, you will barely be able to pay rent, you will not be able to provide clothing or utilities. And if she gets a job or education she will most likely loose all welfare benefits and risks having the children taken to foster care for abandonment.

On the other hand, a court will never grant a man custody if his wife is anything less than a convicted felon (or the man happens to be close friends with or bribes the judge). Most men in a relationship with a woman that presents a danger to the children have only two options, give them up and let them suffer or abduct them and flee.

[sonerohi]

Females don't abuse men often because the majority of guys are conditioned to not see it as abuse. Like Redking said:

I believe that true equality means recognizing that women and men are equally capable of violence, of exploitation, of all the negatives *and* positives to being a human being. We may have power structures in place which tend to inhibit some characteristics based on gender and aggravate other characteristics. But when an argument goes beyond the structure to argue that men and women are inherently more or less capable of something based on gender, that's when I call bullshit.

The Feminist movement recognizes this, but loses credibility when the few extreme end people like to go off on a big misandrogynistic spew. Misandry isn't even recognized as a word by my spell check program. Both genders oppress each other in different ways, definitely not equally, but it is there.

[Cthulhu]

One of the more insidious problems men face is that our problems tend to be discounted, not least of all because we're expected either not to have them or to deal with them ourselves.  If you want to talk to another man about your feelings you're gay, at least in the eyes of your fellows.

[SalmonGod]

You only get support like you mentioned if you happen to live in the right state.

I've seen two women get through it just fine, and neither came from priveleged backgrounds.  It was hard on them both financially, but they were never in danger of being homeless or starving or losing their children.  And this is in Indiana, which doesn't seem to be one of the better states regarding women's rights.

Edit:  Although I know that there are places where it is worse, and it is definitely worse through most of the less-modern world.

[nenjin]

Both genders oppress each other in different ways, definitely not equally, but it is there.

Posing a counter argument, is it really the female gender oppressing the male gender when it comes to men and how they deal with their feelings? Are women as a whole asking for men who internalize their problems, present a stoic front, ect.....? Or is that another product of males who want males to be a certain way, and sow that behavior through the media and cultural upbringing?

At some point these values become self-replicating. The centers of these values broadcast them and they're adopted by people and trickle down. You stop the broadcasts from happening, you still have to deal with the fact that these values are held and passed on through other means.

[Aklyon]

France wants to "civilize" the Internet. I though you people over there were supposed to be better at this than us over here in the US.

[warhammer651]

France wants to "civilize" the Internet. I though you people over there were supposed to be better at this than us over here in the US.

If that's civilization, call me a barbarian.


EDIT: good lord, some of these comments are bizarre

At last, an Ars article that acknowledges (if perhaps unintentionally) that "privacy" isn't necessarily something we should be in favor of. Any increase in privacy is a decrease in freedom.

Also: STEAM, I CAN GET ON THE WEB JUST FINE! WHY DID YOU LOSE THE CONNECTION!?

[nenjin]

Shadowrun, here we come BABY! YEAH!

[ToonyMan]

That's Steam itself, it happened to me as well.

[Bauglir]

Attempting to find the job board at the university I'm going to for grad school sends me into an infinite loop of error messages if I follow the directions they give. It would seem the page I'm looking for has imploded into a mass of "Fuck you". This does not bode well.

[nenjin]

The job market it picking back up, maybe you can try a phone call now and not just have them slam the phone down on you. University pages like that tend to lag way behind what's going on currently, so maybe they just haven't updated since the big down turn and hiring freeze.

[Bauglir]

It's mostly that I'm using it as a means of finding jobs to apply for. Until I move down there at the end of the summer, it's a 3 hour drive to get there, meaning I have to do all this planning stuff remotely, because gas money. As near as I can tell, this is the only listing of jobs at the place that aren't professorships (and I'm no professor, being a 22-year old with naught but a bachelor's), so it's my only option that isn't spamming professors for assistantships (which makes me feel bad and is unproductive so far, though that hasn't stopped me from trying since I've been explicitly told to do it).

[SalmonGod]

Both genders oppress each other in different ways, definitely not equally, but it is there.

Posing a counter argument, is it really the female gender oppressing the male gender when it comes to men and how they deal with their feelings? Are women as a whole asking for men who internalize their problems, present a stoic front, ect.....? Or is that another product of males who want males to be a certain way, and sow that behavior through the media and cultural upbringing?

I agree with your identification of a problem that exists, but I don't think this was part of the argument to begin with. 

Personally, I think that society oppresses both men and women in different ways, and a lot of the large scale forms of oppression can be traced back to patriarchy in ways that have been very thoroughly described.

On the other hand, I think both genders abuse/oppress each other equally when it comes to the interactions of individuals.  By individuals, I mean the way people treat each other outside of the context of a member of some institution, as in when people are just people and not CEOs, managers, teachers, politicians, etc.  On this level, I don't think behaviors can be so easily traced to well-defined cultural artifacts.

Bringing up the fact that women abuse men isn't to point out some systemic oppression of one gender over another.  It's only to point out that the same potential to be abusive as individuals exists in females as it does in males.  And it's no more acceptable to create excuses or shift blame in that context than it is to do so in the reverse, as responding by pointing out cultural expectations of males seems to be an attempt at.

[Bohandas]

Ave Discordia Imperatrix Mundi

[Angel Of Death]

Ave Discordia Imperatrix Mundi

Me no speak Latin.