Men's rights.

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No, it's just no longer culturally/socially acceptable to support patriarchal mores in the West. That doesn't mean they've stopped existing, and true gender equality is certainly a long ways away.

I have to say that I tend to dislike male feminists more than female feminists(particularly NT male feminists), actually. For the own asinine reasons, they defend everything that women say and do, even when women say or do things that are wrong, stupid, or a combination thereof. I don't blame feminism for this behavior though, I blame chivalry.

Chivalry is part of patriarchy.
I don't think that you can claim Vexcaliber is supportive of whatever women say; in my experience, he's an equal-opportunity skeptic.

And yet it's a part of the patriarchy that many, MANY feminists very much want to preserve. Why? Because it benefits women. One of the aspects of modern chivalry is to stick up for women whenever they are conflict with men or they speak out about being treated unfairly; even when the women is clearly in the wrong. You say he's skeptical but clearly hasn't the slightest dose of skepticism when it comes to feminist claims. Such chivalrous men are quick to label men who question feminism or criticize women's behavior as "misogynists" or some other ad hominem.


And the whole point of talking about "male privilege" is not to make any individual man feel guilty, it's to induce a sort of
collective guilt in order to change the social norms in their favor.

Of course it is, feminism or any other movement with the goal of changing society will always be manipulative to the core. I think most men would be inclined to agree to the concept of "equal rights and equal responsibilities" for the genders, but the processes feminism has utilized to reach its goal (social manipulation, affirmative action programs and special treatment) are discriminatory in their own right.

To say it is wrong for women - or anyone - to want to change society to better suit them assumes society as is is somehow 'natural', that it just happened to form like that. The point of feminism (or any other critique) is to show that it isn't 'natural'. Society comes pre-manipulated, pre-engineered - that's what 'privelige' is. It is easier for me to go out and about as I am able to walk, and not confined to a wheelchair. Being aware of this state of affairs - this privelige (it is a privelige as there is no non-discriminatory reason wheelchair users shouldn't enjoy as near equal mobility as myself as possible) - doesn't make me feel guilty. It makes me feel grateful, and to want to change things to make it as equal as possible for those in a wheelchair.

'Manipulation' (if pejorative, it's a classic misogynistic term, btw) only looks so if one assumes the world as is is fair, a 'level playing field'. It's a classic piece of wrong thinking that, where one has something easy, so does everyone else - if they fail to find it easy, it is some fault in them. Given the playing field exists in people's minds and attitudes as well as the law, how does one then make it level?

AspieRogue - what are your complaints against feminism/women on here if not an attempt to change social norms to your benefit?

I'm sure there are men who are chivalrous, and women who appreciate it. I've not yet met a feminist who does. Chivalry and feminism may look the same in a certain light, but they are not.

The problem is the term "natural" the natural order of things is the rule of the strong over the weak, as displayed by just about every single species on this planet. If it's a matter of physical strength or intellectual manipulations is really inconsequential at this state of development, it just is. Feminists or anyone else presenting a critique is free to do so, however they are engaging in manipulation to better suit society to their tastes, as opposed to the tastes of others.

What you are engaging in here is actually linguistic, or perhaps I should use the term rhetorical manipulation. In essence, it shows your own bias in that you view people in wheelchairs as less privileged than you are, thus judging them entirely as a group, rather than as individuals. Furthermore, you do what is frequently done in these discussion, namely reduce the context down to where you can most easily make an argument from it. I.E. "walking about". FDR for instance was in a wheelchair, but was arguably more privileged than most American's at that time.




No, manipulative techniques are manipulative regardless of to what end they are utilized. In embryo manipulation is about constructing a pattern of data that goes into a brain in a manner that has the highest possible chance of resulting in the person agreeing with you.

For instance, when you used the example of the person in a wheelchair as opposed to a person able to walk, you utilized that example because of the visual impact it has, in addition to effect a counterargument would have on a crowd. You are pandering to the cognitive bias of the crowd, since most of them are likely to share your of the disabled as somehow "less capable".

If you had used an example of let's say an upper middle class female vs an upper middle class male, it would be less effective. It's why the "Aid to Africa" campaigns always use starving/sick children for instance.

The idea of a "leveled playing field" is also faulty, there is an expression "all men are created equal" which funnily can be continued with the phrase "but they do not stay so for long". It's similar to how the concept of "fairness" is ingrained in human beings but tends to be strongly influenced by various manifestations of psychological bias.

One of the great ironies of the feminists on this board is that you feel perfectly comfortable making arguments such as your wheelchair argument, the "male privilege" arguments and similar arguments and apply them to entire population groups, yet when we paint you "ladies" with one brush, we're suddenly a**holes.

They would have no success if they campaigned on giving an African dictator who has a huge palace, a fleet of cars, a helicopter and his own army to protect him more money. That's where a lot of aid money ends up though.

I'm male. Mind blown, eh?

(Unless you're implying by being a feminist I am not a gentleman but in fact some sort of pseudo-lady)

Being a feminist, I paint neither men nor women with a single brush. Yes yes, I use spray cans. Guffaw. 'Male privelige' isn't about painting men with a broad brush. It is about noticing how the social rules and institutions privelige men. Most men don't consider they have this privelige - for them it is just how the world works, the 'natural order' - we only notice it when it doesn't work as it should. 'Male privelige' is not a conscious decision on the part of men - I can understand how you would think that, seeing as we're all trying to subjugate each other and all.

I used the example of a wheelchair user as, first off, it is a very clear visual example of a physical difference, and most people who can walk should be able to engage in a thought experiment of 'what if I couldn't?'. It is both an example of my point, and can serve as analogy or such. I wasn't hoping to engage your sympathy for disabled people (frankly, I'd be surprised to find you have any). To move through the world in a wheelchair is not as easy as doing so on foot, wheelchair user qua wheelchair user.

I chose it as I was soon to have to go out and get the bus and run errands, and I started thinking how hard it would be if I couldn't walk. And, though still harder than going about on foot, after all the accesibility efforts and protests and laws it would still be a lot easier now than, say 20 years ago - nowadays most buildings have ramps, buses have ramps and lowering floors, and designated wheelchair bays.

What's more, most people wouldn't have thought themselves as deliberately shutting the wheelchair bound out of daily mainstream life/society - a deranged few may have hated those who couldn't walk ('how dare they not walk, the crippled bastards'), but most people wouldn't have given it any such thought. Yet the world functioned so as to effectively exclude them, and it was only after campaigning ('manipulating', as you have it) that that began to change.

If you will insist on some all-against-all vision of the world, be consistent and admit all you are doing in arguing against feminism (or any other social/political/economic critique) is trying to maintain the status quo which better suits you.

I'm a socialist. I believe the first privelige is class privelige. I am quite happy to agree with you on that.

You write like a girl.



The reason why your analogy doesn't really fit is that most of us can agree that there are obvious challenges facing the disabled. Now, some of us (me) think women are just as capable as males in most regards (strength etc is debatable) whereas some of us (you) think women aren't capable of handling their own business, and thus subscribe to a systematic excuse theory of male privilege and the patriarchy in order to avoid having to accept uncomfortable truths.

The "patriarchy" and "male privilege" (which translates to white male privilege) become a lot like "God of the gaps". No proof can be presented for its existence, however one can look at gaps with no explanation and go "look there it is!"



I don't argue against all social critiques, just the "get something for nothing" ones. This includes socialism (which is a nice word for "give me s**t I didn't earn) and feminism (which at this point is analogous to socialism in methodology and goals).

As I've said before, I'm all for men and women having equal rights and equal duties in all ways that are possible. However, some things cannot really be changed. For instance, women have to give birth (at this time at least), which does impede a career, women have to chose to study engineering, technology and business and men have to go into teaching and nursing. These are all individual choices, and we mustn't let ideology go before individuality.

Quite clever, for you.

What are these 'uncomfortable truths'? I hope they contain lots of 'cold, hard facts'. Yum.

I think women are just as capable as men, too. We just disagree on that whole patriarchy thing (which does down men as well as women). And what it means to 'earn'. And a lot of other stuff.

Such as instant gratification being problematic. If we take the corporate c-class and boards for instance, the representatives in management and on the board would have to be equal, so it makes sense that going from hardly any women in management and on boards to 50% will require a certain amount of time before qualified candidates for such positions are available. After all, if you promote a woman to such a role based on her gender, it's

A) Discrimination,

B) Will undermine her credibility with her colleagues as she will most likely be less qualified than her colleagues in similar positions (you can find statistics on this from among others Germany)

C) Will add fuel to the fire of people who argue "women just can't do the job".

The argument here consists of the following:

In 1995, the average starting age of an executive in a Fortune 500 company was 48.8 years old (http://www.forbes.com/2003/03/31/cx_wt_0401exec.html) the median age of a CEO was 55 in 2007 (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/co ... ceos_n.htm). out of fortune 500 CEO's only 35 didn't have a college degree (http://www.usnews.com/education/best-gr ... -to-school)

If we assume a 4 years on average spent at College, and then the median age of the CEO being roughly 52 years of age, that adds up to give or take 30 years of work experience. This means that CEO's would have graduated between in roughly 1978. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a list of major choices by gender from 1975 - 1985, but if we figure that they haven't changed much, it suddenly makes a lot of sense that the CEO and executive distribution is male biased, especially in male dominated industries.

Another uncomfortable truth is that if 50% of the tech, science, finance and other male dominated industries should consist of women, it requires women to actually study science and go for jobs in these industries. We can spend months arguing over why women aren't going into these fields, but it won't lead to anything except more "god of the gaps" logic and the same discussion I recently had with LKL in another thread. (http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staf ... /sr364.pdf) (http://theop.princeton.edu/reports/wp/A ... 0(Feb%2009).pdf)

That if gender equality is the goal, then women will have to take on a lot more of the dangerous jobs which males now dominate such as roughnecks on oil fields. Yet, I've rarely seen the argument from any self-proclaimed feminist that we need to affirmative action women into those jobs, or encourage women to take more of those jobs. (http://www.kanetix.ca/ic_life_info_life_articles_30)

If gender equality is the goal, then there needs to be more men as C-class executives and on the boards of feminist organizations, currently there are less men in those jobs than there are females in equivalent jobs in the corporate sector.

If gender equality is the goal, the only thing that should decide if someone gets a position, scholarship or spot in college are grades. Ideally, all applications should be anonymized before they are reviewed.



I believe you misunderstand the word "earn" it's synonymous with "put in the time and effort to obtain"

...and such is the problem of feminism in a capitalist system.

There is a gap between legal equality (that is, the absence of a: women being barred from x job by the law, and b: the barring of women by an employer accepted under the law) and lived, accepted equality. The culture and society and media environment we find ourselves in makes things harder or easier, though we may face no such opposition in the law itself. If you assume I want 50/50 representation in every single field of life, you'd be wrong. What is necessary is a change in culture, a persuading of people to change attitudes, so the conditions are such that people can follow into whatever field suits them.

People put in plenty of time and effort, and come away with f**k all. Others put in f**k all, and come away with plenty.

ETA: I've linked to these before, but I think they're worthwhile.

https://twitter.com/MalePrivilege

http://www.everydaysexism.com/

You see it or you don't. I'll grant I might be seeing something that isn't there, but I don't think so. I grew up in a predominantly female family, and I have two daughters. Both these experiences have shown me what is expected of women, how they are supposed to see themselves, what they are capable of.

Further re 'equality' - do you believe it is as bad for a white person to call a black person a 'n****r' as it is a black person to call a white person 'honkey'?

Your problem with "lived, accepted equality" is kind of the same as your link, namely subjective perception. Perhaps some people do not in fact view themselves as equals and thus create a reinforcement of this in their lives and view acts that others would brush off as confirmation of their inequality.





I read something recently, and "time + effort" isn't actually the formula, formula is performance. It doesn't matter how much time and effort you put into building a house, if you keep trying to nail the hammer into the wall.





It's probably a bit of both, you seeing too much of it and me not seeing it at all. It could be a country difference as well, here half the job applications have "women are encouraged to apply" and apartments for rent adds have "Women only" or "no men".

On those links, some of it's sexist, some of it is women overreacting or reading more into it than it is.



Isn't really sexist. Plus, one has to try and understand the intentions behind it, for instance, a colleague of mine has a tendency to comment "aww I guess it's the blond in me" whenever she makes a stupid mistake and at that point, it's not sexist to make blond jokes.




Well you know, we've all been singing along to "Mo Money, Mo Problems" a time or two. Of course, reminding someone that she's female is slightly different to calling someone a slave though isn't it?

I've never understood how capitalism is inherently patriarchal. I say this because I often hear feminists speak of "patriarchal capitalism". The thing is, starting in the late 60s with the second wave, feminism and Marxism have become heavily intertwined. It does seem like some modern third wavers have broken away from this and defend women's freedom of choice(along with recognizing the fact that we as human beings are NOT equal and most likely never will be). The Marxist wing of feminism seems to not only seek to make western culture unisex, but to socially enforce conformity among women(and men too) in order to create equality among women as well as ostensibly promote equality between the sexes. That is where this nonsense about "sexual objectification" comes from: Female sex symbols, and female exhibitionism, is vociferously condemned because the result is people realizing that some women are prettier than others.

TM - A naive question: why isn't 'n****r' on equal footing with 'honkey'? They're just insults based on deriding someone's skin pigmentation. Slavery happened aaaages ago, and blacks are equal with whites before the law.

Holyf*ckingWOW. If I had friends, and some were feminist, I'd pass this around so we could laugh at the douchey wrongness.

Last edited by Hopper on 11 Oct 2012, 3:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.