Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Virex]

Hmm in retrospect that comment is pretty sexist. I didn't mean to insist that all women are incapable of dealing with men, there may indeed be some for whom things like this don't matter that much.

[Duke 2.0]

The point is still sailing above your head, but alright, go for it buddy.

[Virex]

The point is still sailing above your head, but alright, go for it buddy.

I know perfectly well what you were getting at. You're superimposing the idea that I hate men upon a statement that doesn't contain any such ideas. I never said all men are hurtful or anything, but apparently it is so difficult to find one that isn't that if I were to be a women I would have given up on trying. That doesn't convey a sexist attitude because it is merely stating the fact that apparently a lot of men hurt the women around them, either purposefully through manipulation, or accidentally through subliminal sexism, a lack of care and stunted social development.

If you're sure you don't do any of that, this statement doesn't apply to you and you're picking a fight over nothing. If it does apply to you, you should try to better yourself instead of picking a fight. I could go on about how it is a prime example of male chauvinism to pick a fight over a perceived insult towards what's by all accounts the most privileged group ever, but that would probably cause the thread to explode, so I'll only mention it in passing.

[Andir]

Okay here's a less ranty example (cue sexist generalisations here):
F:"You never clean the bathroom!"
M:"Untrue, I did it once, 5 years ago. You're overreacting"

For some reason that reminded me of this:

A wife asks her husband, a software engineer, ”Could you please go shopping for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have eggs, get 6!”

A short time later the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk. The wife asks him, “Why the hell did you buy 6 cartons of milk?” He replied, “They had eggs.”

[/programming humor]

[Durin Stronginthearm]

I never said all men are hurtful or anything, but apparently it is so difficult to find one that isn't that if I were to be a women I would have given up on trying.

I think the problem is that you insist on the above like it's fact, when it's merely opinion.

[kaijyuu]

Even if he realizes that's just his opinion, that doesn't make it any less sexist.

Maybe he's not making the connection between prejudice and sexism.


EDIT:

Here's some reading Virex.

This is what you're doing. (And no, citing statistics or otherwise saying "but most of this group are!" does not in any way, shape, or form reduce the illegitimacy of your argument)
What I think your motivation is.

[Virex]

Even if he realizes that's just his opinion, that doesn't make it any less sexist.

Maybe he's not making the connection between prejudice and sexism.


EDIT:

Here's some reading Virex.

This is what you're doing. (And no, citing statistics or otherwise saying "but most of this group are!" does not in any way, shape, or form reduce the illegitimacy of your argument)
What I think your motivation is.

I always thought an association fallacy required the association to be on irrelevant grounds? And besides, what's wrong with collective guilt? We are after all responsible for these things.

[Descan]

No, the people who are responsible are responsible. The fact that they are men doesn't mean that all men are responsible.

How is this not obvious?

[Virex]

You say it like guilt can be unambiguously be assigned to a single person, something which is not a given in this case. Sexism is not some innate property some people have and others lack, it's an emergent effect created by group pressure and social situations. As a result of this, we all together contribute to the sexism in this world, even if we do not directly participate in it, by condoning or even stimulating it. Now, you could say that you do not do that, but then you would be wrong. What you're actually saying is that you cannot identify any situations in which you supported sexist behavior. However, men are notoriously bad at identifying sexism so in cases like this you cannot rely on your own judgment (how many of you thought that telling a woman she's overreacting is sexist before reading the linked article?). The logical conclusion of this is that all men are in fact sexist, no matter how hard they deny it and anyone decrying collective male guilt is pretty much decieving himself.

[Rose]

you do realize, of course, that assigning a behavior to an entire gender is, in itself, sexist, right?

[Virex]

Is it sexist to say all men breath?

[Rose]

breathing isn't a behavior, it's a life function.

Saying all men are misogynist pigs is just as sexist as saying all women are incapable of comprehending machinery.

[palsch]

Saying all men are misogynist pigs is just as sexist as saying all women are incapable of comprehending machinery.

But saying men are sexist isn't the same as saying all men are misogynist pigs.

To put it another way, people who are brought up in racially segregated communities, or who spend a lot of time exposed to racist stereotypes will tend somewhat racist in their thinking. That doesn't mean they are KKK members and it doesn't even mean that they will act racist. But recognising their preconceptions and misconceptions is the first step avoiding turning that cultural racism into actual practised racism.

Given that our culture is and always has been sexist, all guys are raised with some level of sexism internalised. How much of that is acted on and fed back into that culture is in no small part dependent on how often we recognise and confront it, within ourselves or others.

And somehow every time people try to point out sexist biases against women a bunch of guys make it about them and how they obviously aren't misogynistic, but those feminist bitches keep saying that they are.

[Andir]

I think Virex is pointing out how society itself makes sexism "easy"...

By saying that assigning a behavior to a sex makes something sexist would mean that an engineer that puts urinals in a men's room and not in a woman's restroom is sexist in that it assigns the behavior of peeing while standing to men only.  Would it be considered sexist to take away this capability from men because it's difficult for women?

[kaijyuu]

Given that our culture is and always has been sexist, all guys are raised with some level of sexism internalised. How much of that is acted on and fed back into that culture is in no small part dependent on how often we recognise and confront it, within ourselves or others.

As do women, mind. Double standards are indeed internalized in our culture, but blaming an individual gender for it is well... counter intuitive. Don't blame groups for the acts of an individual; blame individuals.

In other words, don't point to a random man you've never met and say "he's got internalized sexism in his consciousness!" because that's pretty damn prejudicial.

And somehow every time people try to point out sexist biases against women a bunch of guys make it about them and how they obviously aren't misogynistic, but those feminist bitches keep saying that they are.

I don't usually see this. I DO see a lot of calling out hypocrisy, but that's due to the nature of what we're discussing. When we're talking about inequalities and a group's concerns being ignored because of something arbitrary like gender, the irony is hard to ignore if they're also ignoring other people's concerns due to the same reason.

Is pointing out hypocrisy a tactic to marginalize the other person's opinion? A good chance of that, yeah. Then again, the usual response is an equal attempt of marginalization. I don't think we'll ever get past this stupid part of the debate until we stop making sexism be "about women" or "about men." It's about both. You can't ignore how it affects both sides of the coin, and this is true for every issue. Stop caring whether it's a man or women being hurt or given an unfair advantage, and start caring that they were hurt or given that advantage because of their gender, as that is the problem.



As a side note, we need to start seeing the "negative" and "positive" outcomes of sexism as equally heinous. Ex: Consciously opening the door for someone because they're a women is JUST AS SEXIST as consciously not opening the door for them because they're a women (though the latter's a bigger jerkass). The "because they're a women" is the problem and at the heart of what's being discussed, not the act of courtesy (or lack thereof). A lot of double standards are handwaved as not important because they encourage courtesy or somesuch bullshit. If you want to talk about internalized sexism in our culture, it's a lot deeper than just the types that are malicious. We won't move past sexism in our culture until we stop drawing arbitrary lines in the sand.




On a completely different note, my university put up some of those red cardboard cutouts of people to raise awareness about domestic abuse. To my surprise, I saw just as many cutouts of adult men as adult women. Most the men had statistics showing men being victims of domestic abuse as much as women written on them (while the women had generalized personal stories), but that's understandable. It brightened my day to see progress shown in these campaigns.