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Prodigal
 
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Xollob (3/9/2007)
just a thought but i thought feminisim was the female pursuit of of female equality, not male equality, which explains, why anti-male sexisim, which seems to be even more common and acceptable than anti female sexism, is so commonWhereas I freely concede that anti-male sexism exists, I dont agree that it is more common or acceptable than anti-female sexism. As I commented previously, we do not yet have complete equality between genders, there is a lot of casual anti-female sexism around. As Marios has mentioned, some feminists can be very anti-female unless you fit their ideals. One faction that really annoys me is the sort of mad earth mother image that says a woman is not a woman unless she has had a baby, and uses the obnoxious term 'wombyn'. Personally I consider that to be anti-female sexism because it reduces women to the production of babies, and it originates with *women*.
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Prodigal
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| MArios, I've just looked at http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/ Now that is a weird site. I cant put my finger on why, but its weird.
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Wag
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Executive Summary: Might Makes Wrong
Sarah (3/9/2007)
Whereas I freely concede that anti-male sexism exists, I dont agree that it is more common or acceptable than anti-female sexism.
In what sense do you mean 'common'/'acceptable'? Seems to me that there are two useful sense here - (i) common as common in the large-scale public media (i.e. adverts) and (ii) acceptable as in appearing on the bookshelves of self-respecting liberals (both the people most likely to earnestly disavow prejudice and be over-represented in the media as representing the middle-class consensus).
Can anyone conjur up an example of 'anti-female sexism' in television advert? I can't think of anything unless you go back quite a long way. 'Anti-male sexism' seems to have toned down somewhat from the obnoxious high-point of the end of the 1990's (20% of the adverts seem to be based around a Neanderthal-stereotype man and a clever woman who would use him as a foil to express how clever people would buy the product) but we still have Shiela's Wheels (it's unacceptable to judge a woman on the fact that women are more likely to take maternity leave than men are to take paternity leave, but it's ok to say "We found that women claim less, are responsible for far fewer driving convictions and have attitudes towards cars, driving and other road users that are often more considered than those of their male counterparts.").
I'm not trying to imply some sort of anti-male conspiracy - it's just plain old Christian slave morality. The underdog is always right (unless we can find some underdog that they are abusing in which case the overdog is always wrong). Pretty much every real-world moral debate - in the West at least - begins by both sides scrambling to nail themselves on the cross of victimhood (Israel-Palestine conflict).
Insofar as women are seen as the underdog then men are a fair target for abuse - because you're really abusing the concept of oppression, not real people. Equally, criticising women is about as politically dangerous as suggesting that army people are sometimes a bit rough and may use whatever excuse comes to hand. 'Stupid, fat, white men' will appear in the titles of popular, 'Slutty, lazy, black women' will probably not, irrelevant of any statistics on the preponderance of either trait. Might makes wrong!
Sarah (3/9/2007)
As I commented previously, we do not yet have complete equality between genders
What would that even mean? Do we 'have complete equality' when people are equal before the law or when both groups have equal amounts of whatever it is people feel is important at any time? Eskimo british citizens are equal before the law - but we don't, so far as I know, have an equal number/representative (?) number of Eskimo billionaires - does this mean that we don't have 'real equality'.
Sarah (3/9/2007)
there is a lot of casual anti-female sexism around.
There is? Where? If there's so much about, can you pick out an example?
Sarah (3/9/2007)
As Marios has mentioned, some feministscan be veryanti-female unless you fit their ideals.
Case in point - I'd say calling women 'morally similar to racists' if they don't buy into your ideology is pretty anti-female. I realise we're on the sillier sub-forum, but I find the suggestion that all my female (and male too, presumably) friends who don't call themselves feminists are being 'like racists' somewhat risible. The suggestion that they are feminists really, they're just too ignorant or confused to accept it is only slightly less offensive.
Sarah (3/9/2007)
Personally I consider that to be anti-female sexism because it reduces women to the production of babies, and it originates with *women*.
I can't help but feel that if the word is that meaningless - in the sense of not being able to use the word without having to completely redefine it - then it is almost completely exhausted of descriptive value.
Note that I kicked off talking about people who go out of their way to define themselves as feminists (and people who may not define themselves as feminists, but nonetheless come across as 'bored of women' tomboys). I think this is a useful description (there doesn't seem to be any consensus on what 'feminism' means - but it's clear what it means to say that someone puts up their hand and says "I'm a feminist").
Marios
P.S. It was a tomboy who chucked me FeministMormonHousewives as a source of an interesting point of view (which you'd probably remain ignorant of if you'd never seen that site).
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Champion
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Marios (3/9/2007)
Can anyone conjur up an example of 'anti-female sexism' in television advert?...[snip]...I'm not trying to imply some sort of anti-male conspiracy...You`re welcome to imply a conspiracy, though it isn`t anti-male in principle - only in execution. The principle is 'spending power'.
It`s a rare occurrence that I trust marketeers about anything, but their research has pointed out that there is no segment of the population in which the members are more likely to mimic eachothers` spending behaviour than well educated women between 25 and 35. 'If one well educated young adult woman buys a stairmaster, they all buy a stairmaster.' At the same time, it`s usually the woman who controls a couple`s/family`s spending. Consequently, they`re the hottest group to target, so a disproportionate amount of adds will be aimed at a female audience and guess what... they just love adds that make fun of men and make them feel all superior. The worst example of this that I`ve witnessed was in the approach to father`s day in my country a few years back. On the logical assumption that expensive fathers`day gifts were bought by mothers, each and every seasonal commercial for luxury goods totally ridiculed men.
Happy fathers` day! Don`t you just love cheap, but well meant?
Also, pollers working for broadcasting stations apparently found that the tastes of female viewers are less divergent than those of male viewers. Which is convergent with - or possibly based upon - the theory that men specialize more than women do. Meaning you`ll reach a bigger segment of the population if you specifically target women. Add to that, that commercial stations are dependant on advertisements which, as previously stated, are predominantly aimed at women, and as such demand programs that are aimed at women to be aired between, to make sure they reach their target group, and that noncommercial stations have to proof they appeal to enough people to warrant spending tax payers`money, and I`ll leave to you to ponder a) why especially commercial programs are so often utter and immoral crap, and b) why men switch channels more often than women do.
Of course, wives will maintain that men 'zap' for the sheer joy of exerting control, and if they fall asleep in front of the telly, they`re demonstrating a lack of interest in the world in general and in her world in particular. Why so many living rooms are centered around the television instead of around a reading/hobby table, or a LAN hub if you prefer, is beyond my comprehension. But then, I`m single and as such I get to arrange my furniture myself. I don`t own a television anymore. Then again, principles matter not. Does it matter why television/radioprograms are aimed at women? Men pay taxes too, don`t they? They earn at least part (some would say the biggest part) of the money spent on advertised products, don`t they? The sentiment that a person is defined by his opinions is bollocks. Opinions are meant to fill forums with and to make a good impression at parties. They`re not meant to be actually put to use.
For instance, one of my coworkers is from Jamaica and knows all about racism. He is both black, and a spoon-fed racist. You should hear the things he says when he loses his temper. He`s also one of my best mates (I`m white), because he also follows the coworkers code of conduct, and doesn`t practise racism at the workplace. The director, on the other hand, is strongly opposed to racism and quite outspoken about it. He`s even taken measures to prevent racism in the working place - mostly by tossing out minorities. Likewise, I myself am a self-declared misogynist (and I really don`t think misogyny needs an alternative  ), but I`ll maintain I`m not a sexist. I have yet to show disrespect to a woman in word or action, simply because she`s a woman. I`ve even rarely expressed disrespect towards woman who totally deserved it, but that, admittedly, has a lot to do with numbers and the twin facts that women tend to assume any disrespect shown to them will be based on their being women, and that the men in their company will do so as well, if only to improve their chances of procreation, or at least of 'getting any'. And men in the company of women tend to be more physical than men not in the company of women, both in the sense of them having a better physique, and in the sense of them being more prone to physical consequences.
When pressed, I`ll also admit to being a feminist, mostly because I was raised that way, and although I have suffered from it, I`m really not that familiar with other ways of thinking.
Most women I`ve met are sexist, regardless of whether they`d call themselves feminists or not. Most of them are sexist towards men, casually, but some are quite methodical. Few are sexist towards women. Now I`d like to think of myself as an equality feminist, and not a superiority feminist, the latter being the kind of feminism I grew up with, but if I try to treat women the way I would treat men, people get offended and accuse me of being a sexist. The women I`ve met that are not sexist, are usually found at both extremes of the intelligence scale. Those at the high end are very careful to be more than just politically correct and try not to think too much of the phantasms of the middle mote, while those at the low at tend not to think too much at all, and happily except the inequality of the sexes while at the same time using any power they have as naturally as it comes to them, thus ending up being 'more equal' simply in other ways then their husbands are.
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Wag
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Lavlin (3/10/2007)
It`s a rare occurrence that I trust marketeers about anything, but their research has pointed out that there is no segment of the population in which the members are more likely to mimic eachothers` spending behaviour than well educated women between 25 and 35.
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
Also, pollers working for broadcasting stations apparently found that the tastes of female viewers are less divergent than those of male viewers.
Human mimicry is currently one of my fetish-topics - do you have a link/reference to that research?
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
'If one well educated young adult woman buys a stairmaster, they all buy a stairmaster.'
Perhaps this is why increased female education correlates strongly with decreased birth rate. I'm as loathe to swallow the current belief that education makes you more right-thinking and that right-thought is to have few kids as I am to swallow the early Victorian fears that education would overwhelms women's brains and cause their wombs to implode. I find the concept that education is largely biased towards exemplary non-breeders (does anyone know Albert Einstein's mother's name?) and simply redirects normal human mimicry far more plausible - I just need more data about timing (25-35 is a bit late, but perhaps that's just the peak of the effect) and content (do we have any data for different birth rate reduction based on differing forms of education - I would expect a cursory course of just sex education to have less effect than a comprehensive education which doesn't include any sex education).
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
Which is convergent with - or possibly based upon - the theory that men specialize more than women do.
There's sociobiology for you - a rich source of narratives that can be bent around any instance of empirical data. Or it's opposite. It's a good source of hypothesis, but they are more referred to than tested.
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
why especially commercial programs are so often utter and immoral crap
What's an especially commercial program? Can you give me an example? If you mean, soap opera's like Eastenders, I think it's because people are obsessed with morality plays. Nothing ever just happens and generally bad things happen to bad people.
That covers utter and crap - but I'm not sure what you mean by immoral. If you mean 'dishonourable', then women have observably different views on honour. It's difficult to entirely clarify, but there's a major sexual difference in 'mate-stealing' (a male nabbing someone else's girlfriend/a female nabbing someone else's boyfriend). Growing up, I've heard from almost every source that men are the unreliable ones motivated only by their penis. However, in practice, men rarely initiate mate-stealing whereas women regularly initiate mate-stealing.
If there's going to sociobiological speculation, then I think it's worth bringing in the chimpanzees. Chimpanzees have a similar thing going - men don't lie, women do (a male chimp will never pretend to make-up after a fight to get the other chimp to come closer only to bite it horribly - female chimps will). Given that such 'cheating' is clearly beneficial in the short term, the real question isn't why female chimps cheat, but why male chimps don't. I think the reason they don't is that male chimp life is all about forming, maintaining and leading coalitions - it simply doesn't pay to cheat for short-term advantage when it could easily lead to you losing your coalition and ending up lying on the ground, several fingers chewed off with a hole in your scrotum where they bit you and squeezed your testicles out. Female chimps have a much looser hierarchy which is largely observable insofar as it meshes with the male coalitions (e.g. a high status female is noticeable because she's the one who goes to help male chimps make-up - she never does it for female chimps).
That seems to apply - to a degree - to homo sapiens (bonobos are interesting, but non-mated humans rarely seem to relieve aggressive tensions through mutual masturbation - verbal masturbation, maybe). Men are observably far more obsessed with rule-based behaviour (they have so much more to gain by following the rules and so much to lose by not) than women (doesn't matter what quotas you set - I think you'll be hard pressed to have a 50:50 gender balance in a philosophy department).
You end up with an odd situation where men are more concerned with morality, but also feel the need for aggression displays and renunciation of cowardice. Whereas women are actually less concerned with morality, but more concerned with keeping their heads down and swiping eachother's men. Interestingly, both sexes seem to adopt the double-standard - both genders excoriate a man for switching/snitching a partner, both genders have a much more muted response for a female doing the same thing (possibly this is simply a response to rarity value - but it's particularly puzzling when a man and a woman are visibly equally culpable for a break up and the man gets an observably rougher time of it).
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
Then again, principles matter not. Does it matter why television/radioprograms are aimed at women? Men pay taxes too, don`t they? They earn at least part (some would say the biggest part) of the money spent on advertised products, don`t they?
Depends if you support equality of opportunity or equality of result. If it's the latter, then you must be enraged at the discriminatory practices of advertisement organisers and demand more male-focused adverts. I'm sure naught but ignorance renders me unaware of such 'feminist' initiatives.
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
For instance, one of my coworkers is from Jamaica and knows all about racism. He is both black, and a spoon-fed racist.
Black people eat spoons? No wonder they're all so angry! I can't imagine what they must go through.
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
doesn`t practise racism at the workplace.
Is this like in Hotel Rwanda where the guy keeps his Hutu chemise under the desk during work hours? Great film - can't wait for the sequel.
Lavlin (3/10/2007)
He`s even taken measures to prevent racism in the working place - mostly by tossing out minorities.
Sound measures for a safer tomorrow.
Marios
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Wag
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Here's an interesting and somewhat pertinent (to some of the posts) excerpt from Kate Fox's "Watching the English". Two different studies report that men engage in gossip just as much as women (about 2/3 of conversation time), however there is one difference:
"Men were certainly found to be no more likely than women to discuss 'important' or 'highbrow' subjects such as politics, work, art and cultural matters - except (and this was a striking difference) when women were present. On their own, men gossip, with no more than five percent of conversation time devoted to non-social subjects such as work or politics. It is only in mixed-sex groups, where there are women to impress, that the proportion of male conversation time devoted to these more 'highbrow' subjects increases dramatically between to 15 and 20 percent.
In fact, recent research has revealed only one significant difference in terms of content, between male and female gossip: mean spend much more time talking about themselves. Of the total time devoted to conversation about social relationships, men spend two thirds talking about their own relationships, while women only talk about themselves one third of the time."
Long words make us bower birds.
Marios
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Wag
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Marios (3/9/2007)
That is generally the argument of a fundamentalist - you have to accept these principles as pre-eminent now. We'll discuss the fine details of implementation later.
Bah, I compared you to a racist and the best you can come up with is a fundamentalist? That's rubbish. I was hoping for Hitler or a mass-murderer or something...
No, I think he's right. If "Feminism" can be accepted as a synonym for "removing gender prejudice" then what's the point in talking about feminism? I don't think that feminism is a fundamentally about 'removing gender prejudice' any more than national socialism is fundamentally about 'removing racial oppression'.
And I do. So where does that get us? Obviously words mean different things to different people. I looked up feminism on dictionary.com and it said
"1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women."
Which I'd say was a lot closer to my definition than the one you are using. I'm sure you'll see it the other way round though, so I don't think there is really any further discussion on that one.
Is there anyone here who doesn't think that 'positive discrimination' undermines the tenet that society should not support 'discrimination'?
Me. Lots of other people I know. Positive discrimination is almost always contraversial, but quite a sizeable number of people support it's use because they think that the end product of the principle is to reduce gender/race/whatever discrimination in the long term. Hence we start with a fundamental goal, to reduce discrimination and we introduce a discrimanatory policy because we believe that the *net* effect will be to reduce discrimination on balance in the short term and in total in the long term. If you think that undermines the principle, fine, but I don't and I'm pretty confident that lots of people (albeit not the majority) agree with me.
There's a not particularly subtle shift from 'everyone should be equal under the law/equality of opportunity' to 'society must be re-engineered until everyone is equal-in-fact'. It's irrelevant if women artists aren't very good - we should still have 50% of galleries full of female art. Anyone criticising this is clearly a crypto-sexist.
Yeah whatever. I've no interest in defending the idiots who think that men and women deserve equal treatment because they are functionally identical, nor in advocating their ill-conceived and badly supported ideas. But if you feel like attacking that stance, just go right ahead, tell me when you're done and I'll come back and we can carry on talking about feminism.
I don't see any reason why lobby groups should stop at 'equality' when they can push for more for their consitituency. You don't. I do. You believe that lobby groups are darwinian memes carving up the political landscape trying to tear the guts out of their competitors and I believe they're bodies composed of principled people seeking to improve society according to their own views. We're probably both right to an extent that depends on the organisation (how warming to think that the feminist lobby is all principles and the road lobby is all profits). I'm not really interested in debating lobby groups, I'm not politically active enough to know anything about them. I'm interested in principles.
In the same way that lawyers are expected to make absolutely the best case they can for their client and trust that the opposing lawyer does the same, I expect lobby groups to push as hard as they can until they counterbalance the opposing lobby group. I don't see how you can really define 'equality' other than that point at which a rough balance seems to be struck (i.e. a situation of gross inequality is defined as one where as a situation of gross political instability).
You have opened my eyes! I had not realised that lawyers were a requirement for intelligent thought, but now that you have explained it, it is all clear. I will immediately cease thinking and engage a solicitor to do my thinking for me, forthwith.
So long as 'feminism' is viewed as _the_ political movement for 'removing gender prejudice' we're never going to have 'equality' because there's always going to be uneven advocacy. I find the suggestion that we can argue the case for the necessity of a feminist approach in the West by making reference to different belief systems within the West (which the adherents also view as feminist - http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/) a tad obnoxious.
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. I've never yet seen a lobby group that didn't *really hate* their philosophical near neighbours as I've commented before. However in this case, it's pretty clearly obvious why the two "strands" of feminism might not get on. If you think feminism is about reducing gender inequalities then you might well find yourself in severe disagreement with those who think feminism is about cutting up men.
Worse is the tendency to toss in some stuff about how women are treated outside of the West to beef up the case that we need more 'feminist' legislation in the West, then more or less ignoring the plight of the people you just referenced.
I don't particularly distinguish between being in the west or not being in the west. I think the whole notion of "country" exists to allow people to comfort themselves about the fact that all the awful things going on in the world only happen to people who live in other countries. I'm very proud of our record on gender discrimination in this country and in the west. I'd like to see the muslim block and other nations adopt a similar program. It makes no sense at all to argue for laws in this country on the basis of gender discrimination in other countries.
As for ignoring their plight. For all you know I might have devoted my entire life to running a hostel for battered women. I haven't of course, I chose to run a LRP company for my sins, but I made a decision about how much of my time to devote to trying to help the many people less fortunate than me in the world and I'm pretty happy with my decision thus far. I don't feel the fact that I haven't | | | |