"The new Feminism is a war against women" - Brendan O'Neil

[Tom Sawyer]

Yadayadayafa. Mens had gots theirs and now it’s time to forget the past (unless and until it suits us) and start from scratch. Nevermind that men were born on third base and women start at the plate with two strikes against them.

But that's not what anyone is arguing for (I don't believe - please quote anyone who is arguing for that if I'm mistaken). To extend your analogy, people are saying that if men are on third base then they support the arguments saying that women need to be given a walk-off triple so that they're at the same place and they do not support the arguments saying that women need to be given a home run in order to make up for the fact that a different group of men and women were playing on an uneven field.

Not at all. Jolly—and to a different extent, Loren (who seems more inclined to believe that women and black/brown people are less qualified than men) want to argue that what is past does not matter: we should just go from here, nevermind that people who look like them have third base and women ( and brown and black people) have to start at bat with some where between one strike and a full count against them. Now let’s resume the game from here.

No, they're saying that the goal is to get everyone to the same point and then have the game go forward from there.

Believe me, I’d love to think that women no longer face gender based disadvantages at work. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. I see it frequently at my place of work—and I would like to state that I work with highly educated professionals at a well respected work place with a world wide reputation for excellence and an extremely high rating as place to work for those I my field and related fields. Now, it’s been a long time sine I had to threaten to castrate a coworker wh outweighed ne by a couple hundred pounds because I did not want to have to fight him off in a store room, but it was only last month that I had another long discussion with a white male coworker who is a decade younger than me about why it is inappropriate for him to call female coworkers girls and non-white coworkers boy—btw, he never calls white men boy. He has finally quit asking for hugs and back rubs. And no, I am not making this up.

And I don't think there's anyone involved who would disagree with you and everyone seems to be arguing that getting rid of the disadvantages and sexual harassment is a good thing or thinks that this sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. There's no one on the opposite side of your point.

 

[laughing dog]

No, they're saying that the goal is to get everyone to the same point and then have the game go forward from there.

Except that they either deny people are not on the same point (i.e. there is discrimination) and/or reject actual remedies to help get groups to the same point on the grounds that any policy that disadvantages a single person is unfair and wrong.

 

[Hermit]

Here's an idea, how about we as a society choose to help everyone out who is disadvantaged and turn them into a productive contribution to society regardless of the circumstances of their birth? Does the poor white guy in a bad neighborhood not deserve to have the playing field leveled in his favor simply by virtue of being a man? Why over-complicate things by looking out for your interests alone when it's in both of our interests to look out for each other?

That is an echo of "All lives matter", and it sucks just the same. Yes, of course white men in a poor neighbourhood deserve to play on a level field just as much as women do, but "equality for all" simply ignores - if not denies - the fact that women in a poor neighbourhood suffer the same disadvantages as men plus the disadvantages that come by virtue of being born female. And it's more than that. If a level playing field is achieved for all, women still suffer the disadvantages that come with being women unless special attention is being paid to women's rights.

[Modern feminism] has the veneer of "Equality for all!" but in reality is just a matter of specifically socially/economically propping up women as a demographic, even though there are plenty of women who don't need it and plenty of men who do.

Straight out of the MRA textbook.

 

[Emily Lake]

a movement labelled something else and which is also inherently a more inclusive movement, I don't know, but my personal preference is for the latter.

........................

As often, I have been long-winded again. Sigh.

ruby, I appreciate the thought and effort that you put into your posts, and I hope you don't feel slighted by my trimming it to the part I want to respond to

The desire for it to be more inclusive is, to me at least, problematic. It circles back to the situation I described - the 'what about the menz' that you've acknowledged. So let me paint you a picture of an egalitarian approach, and what I see as the very likely outcome of it. Men and women make up about the same proportion within the US. But we know that on the whole, men make more money, and are promoted quicker, and hold a substantially higher portion of leadership positions. In general, men have more advantages than women do. While there are of course some scenarios in which men are disadvantaged relative to women, those scenarios are relatively infrequent, and they affect a relatively small portion of men. On the other hand, the scenarios in which women are disadvantaged relative to men are frequent and they affect a relatively large portion of women. If we take an egalitarian approach to this, that implicitly gives equal voice to both men and women in addressing those issues. Humans are human, so the most likely result would be that women would press for resolution to women's issues, and men would press for resolution to men's issues. But since there are far more women's issues that affect far more women... men end up with an effectively larger voice at that table. They would take about 50% of the discussion and the effort to address their issues, since they make up 50% of the voice.

But if men's issues actually only affect say 10% of men... and women's issues affect 95% of women... that means that there is far more attention-per-issue being paid to men's issues, even though there are far more issues facing far more women. Even if the concept is egalitarian, the outcome of that approach is not.

Really, it's tantamount to suggesting that if we want to address black issues, we should focus on white issues in proportion to the population distribution. And really, while that sort of fairness sounds excellent to a just-minded person, the impact of it is significantly less effective.

As an alternative, just to really hammer home the issue... one might say that wealthy people and poor people both have a mix of advantages and disadvantages in society... and that the fair thing to do is to focus on the issues of both wealthy people and poor people in proportion to their fiscal representation within the US.

 

[Emily Lake]

But when you get hyperbolic and start saying that men won't address women's issues until all men's issues are taken care of... that is an obvious untruth and makes you look aggressive and rather hateful of men, so you may want to tone that down a little and instead try to invite men to relate and help.

"You're never going to land a beau with that domineering attitude..."

Yes, I can totally see how an assertive, confident women speaking out on behalf of women could be seen as "aggressive" and "hateful" by men... and how they really should "tone it down" so that men feel valued and necessary. I mean, we definitely wouldn't want to run the risk of making men feel like they aren't fully valued at their true potential or anything...

 

[Emily Lake]

How would AA be a walk off triple? If you're giving priority to members of certain groups, then you are, by definition, not having people in the same place.

Because you're giving priority to a group of people that are substantially disadvantaged in order to equalize the opportunities.

If you don't give priority to the disadvantaged, the opportunities tend to never equalize, because it's not a level playing field in the first place.

 

[Emily Lake]

No, they're saying that the goal is to get everyone to the same point and then have the game go forward from there.

I'm in... now how are you going to get everyone to the same point, given that right now there's quit a schism between them?

 

[ruby sparks]

a movement labelled something else and which is also inherently a more inclusive movement, I don't know, but my personal preference is for the latter.

........................

As often, I have been long-winded again. Sigh.

ruby, I appreciate the thought and effort that you put into your posts, and I hope you don't feel slighted by my trimming it to the part I want to respond to

The desire for it to be more inclusive is, to me at least, problematic. It circles back to the situation I described - the 'what about the menz' that you've acknowledged. So let me paint you a picture of an egalitarian approach, and what I see as the very likely outcome of it. Men and women make up about the same proportion within the US. But we know that on the whole, men make more money, and are promoted quicker, and hold a substantially higher portion of leadership positions. In general, men have more advantages than women do. While there are of course some scenarios in which men are disadvantaged relative to women, those scenarios are relatively infrequent, and they affect a relatively small portion of men. On the other hand, the scenarios in which women are disadvantaged relative to men are frequent and they affect a relatively large portion of women. If we take an egalitarian approach to this, that implicitly gives equal voice to both men and women in addressing those issues. Humans are human, so the most likely result would be that women would press for resolution to women's issues, and men would press for resolution to men's issues. But since there are far more women's issues that affect far more women... men end up with an effectively larger voice at that table. They would take about 50% of the discussion and the effort to address their issues, since they make up 50% of the voice.

But if men's issues actually only affect say 10% of men... and women's issues affect 95% of women... that means that there is far more attention-per-issue being paid to men's issues, even though there are far more issues facing far more women. Even if the concept is egalitarian, the outcome of that approach is not.

Really, it's tantamount to suggesting that if we want to address black issues, we should focus on white issues in proportion to the population distribution. And really, while that sort of fairness sounds excellent to a just-minded person, the impact of it is significantly less effective.

As an alternative, just to really hammer home the issue... one might say that wealthy people and poor people both have a mix of advantages and disadvantages in society... and that the fair thing to do is to focus on the issues of both wealthy people and poor people in proportion to their fiscal representation within the US.

I'm going to try to be fairly.....brief here for once. Lol. I agree that things might turn out that way and I understand the worry that they might. But I also think that they might not. If I'm honest, and I will accept that I might be being the optimistic counter to your....I hope you don't mind me saying...slight pessimism, I don't think they would. I think the benefits of a more inclusive approach would outweigh the drawbacks. It would most likely be gradual anyway, with the prospect of slowly getting more men and more women on board than at present. Those who are not really up for fairness and addressing inequalities probably wouldn't be the ones to start joining, by and large, so the men and women who did join (which would only be some) might not be the sort to only pursue their own interests.

Speaking for myself, and I don't think I'm alone, I see gender egalitarianism as something that would give more attention to whoever is disadvantaged the most in gender terms. That would not, very often, be cis-gendered, white, middle-class, able-bodied, late-middle-aged (ie not yet needing a zimmer frame) white men like myself because it's obvious that people in other 'groups' need stuff addressed more than I or 'my group' does. Temporarily grouping for practical purposes.

There are it seems (according to what people say in polls at least) a lot more people, of both sexes, out there, who say they want more gender equality (86% of British men wanting this for women in their lives, according to data from a prominent UK Feminist Charity in 2016) but are put off by feminism, or at least the label (though I suspect it's more than just the name which puts them off) and only 9% of UK women self-identifying as feminist. There's arguably a large, untapped resource with an appetite for progress and positive change out there, at the moment, and advocate groups gradually (not suddenly) being more inclusive might draw more of them in. So it could be given a shot to see if it helped. According to several statistics, progress on gender inequalities has (overall) been disappointing over the last 10 years in the UK. And if being more inclusive didn't help, everyone could go back to the way it mainly has been for the last 50 years.

I think I'll stop there, or I'll end up waffling on again.

 

[ruby sparks]

"Fawcett’s research demonstrates that there are large pools of potential support for feminism but it also points to
important questions about why the majority of those who are pro-equality prefer not to use the word ‘feminist’.
The Fawcett Society is committed to doing more to reach this group and overcome barriers to their engagement
in campaigns for equality. Our analysis of responses to the word feminism provides useful insights about the
perceptions that may need to be overcome. Perhaps it is time to make the case that it doesn’t matter what you
call yourself; if you want to achieve a society where women and men are equal we can and must work together
to speed up the pace of change."

https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=a9a69875-749a-4482-9a8b-5bffaafe3ee7

 

[Copernicus]

On the question of why so many men carry such hostility towards feminism and/or gender equality, I think it is a bit unjust to attribute it all to selfishly thinking only about themselves and their privileged status. Peer pressure plays a huge part in it. Men don't want other men to think of them as "unmanly" or a "pussy". So it takes a little courage to stand up to the ridicule.

When the Access Hollywood tape came out, exposing Donald Trump's abusive, hostile attitudes towards women, the defense that emerged was that it was just "locker room talk". Manly men were supposed to talk like that in private, and they heard themselves make such comments all the time. On my Facebook page, I commented that I had not heard anything like that kind of talk in a locker room since at least high school, and one of my Trump-supporting acquaintances mocked me with a rhetorical "What kind of man are you?" He had no clue. In fact, I had been told by a woman colleague that, despite being tenured, he had been forced to retire early in the midst of teaching classes because of complaints that he was making inappropriate advances on female students. (His university covered the matter up and I hadn't known.) So I wasn't terribly surprised. This kind of attempted shaming is less frequent these days, IMO, but it is still very common. Attitudes don't change overnight, and it usually takes at least a new generation for a real change to occur.

 

[Toni]

a movement labelled something else and which is also inherently a more inclusive movement, I don't know, but my personal preference is for the latter.

........................

As often, I have been long-winded again. Sigh.

ruby, I appreciate the thought and effort that you put into your posts, and I hope you don't feel slighted by my trimming it to the part I want to respond to

The desire for it to be more inclusive is, to me at least, problematic. It circles back to the situation I described - the 'what about the menz' that you've acknowledged. So let me paint you a picture of an egalitarian approach, and what I see as the very likely outcome of it. Men and women make up about the same proportion within the US. But we know that on the whole, men make more money, and are promoted quicker, and hold a substantially higher portion of leadership positions. In general, men have more advantages than women do. While there are of course some scenarios in which men are disadvantaged relative to women, those scenarios are relatively infrequent, and they affect a relatively small portion of men. On the other hand, the scenarios in which women are disadvantaged relative to men are frequent and they affect a relatively large portion of women. If we take an egalitarian approach to this, that implicitly gives equal voice to both men and women in addressing those issues. Humans are human, so the most likely result would be that women would press for resolution to women's issues, and men would press for resolution to men's issues. But since there are far more women's issues that affect far more women... men end up with an effectively larger voice at that table. They would take about 50% of the discussion and the effort to address their issues, since they make up 50% of the voice.

But if men's issues actually only affect say 10% of men... and women's issues affect 95% of women... that means that there is far more attention-per-issue being paid to men's issues, even though there are far more issues facing far more women. Even if the concept is egalitarian, the outcome of that approach is not.

Really, it's tantamount to suggesting that if we want to address black issues, we should focus on white issues in proportion to the population distribution. And really, while that sort of fairness sounds excellent to a just-minded person, the impact of it is significantly less effective.

As an alternative, just to really hammer home the issue... one might say that wealthy people and poor people both have a mix of advantages and disadvantages in society... and that the fair thing to do is to focus on the issues of both wealthy people and poor people in proportion to their fiscal representation within the US.

I'm going to try to be fairly.....brief here for once. Lol. I agree that things might turn out that way and I understand the worry that they might. But I also think that they might not. If I'm honest, and I will accept that I might be being the optimistic counter to your....I hope you don't mind me saying...slight pessimism, I don't think they would. I think the benefits of a more inclusive approach would outweigh the drawbacks. It would most likely be gradual anyway, with the prospect of slowly getting more men and more women on board than at present. Those who are not really up for fairness and addressing inequalities probably wouldn't be the ones to start joining, by and large, so the men and women who did join (which would only be some) might not be the sort to only pursue their own interests.

Speaking for myself, and I don't think I'm alone, I see gender egalitarianism as something that would give more attention to whoever is disadvantaged the most in gender terms. That would not, very often, be cis-gendered, white, middle-class, able-bodied, late-middle-aged (ie not yet needing a zimmer frame) white men like myself because it's obvious that people in other 'groups' need stuff addressed more than I or 'my group' does. Temporarily grouping for practical purposes.

There are it seems (according to what people say in polls at least) a lot more people, of both sexes, out there, who say they want more gender equality (86% of British men wanting this for women in their lives, according to data from a prominent UK Feminist Charity in 2016) but are put off by feminism, or at least the label (though I suspect it's more than just the name which puts them off) and only 9% of UK women self-identifying as feminist. There's arguably a large, untapped resource with an appetite for progress and positive change out there, at the moment, and advocate groups gradually (not suddenly) being more inclusive might draw more of them in. So it could be given a shot to see if it helped. According to several statistics, progress on gender inequalities has (overall) been disappointing over the last 10 years in the UK. And if being more inclusive didn't help, everyone could go back to the way it mainly has been for the last 50 years.

I think I'll stop there, or I'll end up waffling on again.

So, we should just put lipstick on it and dress it up in stilettos? Or maybe a football jersey (American or real football)?

Pretend to be something else in order to be considered acceptable?

Like passing for white?


Here are some definitions of feminism:

1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes

2. : Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men.

 

[ruby sparks]

On the question of why so many men carry such hostility towards feminism and/or gender equality, I think it is a bit unjust to attribute it all to selfishly thinking only about themselves and their privileged status. Peer pressure plays a huge part in it. Men don't want other men to think of them as "unmanly" or a "pussy". So it takes a little courage to stand up to the ridicule.

When the Access Hollywood tape came out, exposing Donald Trump's abusive, hostile attitudes towards women, the defense that emerged was that it was just "locker room talk". Manly men were supposed to talk like that in private, and they heard themselves make such comments all the time. On my Facebook page, I commented that I had not heard anything like that kind of talk in a locker room since at least high school, and one of my Trump-supporting acquaintances mocked me with a rhetorical "What kind of man are you?" He had no clue. In fact, I had been told by a woman colleague that, despite being tenured, he had been forced to retire early in the midst of teaching classes because of complaints that he was making inappropriate advances on female students. (His university covered the matter up and I hadn't known.) So I wasn't terribly surprised. This kind of attempted shaming is less frequent these days, IMO, but it is still very common. Attitudes don't change overnight, and it usually takes at least a new generation for a real change to occur.

Yes, there are such 'group effects' imo. And they likely affect people, men and women, in all sorts of peer situations. Gender is just one of them, and of course, as with for example, ethnicity, it's a peer group that no one freely chose to be a member of.

I'm not saying one has to only associate with one's peer group, of course, but there are times (locker rooms being one of them) when one finds oneself in proximity to one's gender peers.

 

[ruby sparks]

So, we should just put lipstick on it and dress it up in stilettos? Or maybe a football jersey (American or real football)?

Pretend to be something else in order to be considered acceptable?

Like passing for white?

No, I personally wouldn't suggest anyone need do that.

 

[Toni]

So, we should just put lipstick on it and dress it up in stilettos? Or maybe a football jersey (American or real football)?

Pretend to be something else in order to be considered acceptable?

Like passing for white?

No, I personally wouldn't suggest anyone need do that.

I'm sincerely not trying to beat up on you but indeed, I think that's exactly what people who claim to be for equality for men and women but to be against feminism want: feminism, but dressed up with a different name, and minus any woman being angry or upset or in anyway unpleasantly upsetting the status quo unless it gives men more free reign to do as they wish.

Feminism is about women being treated as equal to men under the law, economically, in society and personally.

Equal to is not the same thing as identical to.

 

[Emily Lake]

Speaking for myself, and I don't think I'm alone, I see gender egalitarianism as something that would give more attention to whoever is disadvantaged the most in gender terms. That would not, very often, be cis-gendered, white, middle-class, able-bodied, late-middle-aged (ie not yet needing a zimmer frame) white men like myself because it's obvious that people in other 'groups' need stuff addressed more than I or 'my group' does.

I understand the ideal, and I applaud the intent. But people speak and take action for things they have experienced. Women speak out for women's equality because we experience those effects and we see them in our lives. Men speak out for their issues because those are the disadvantages that they experience. It's true that at least some portion of each will speak out about the issues they've vicariously observed the other group experiencing, but it's not usually as visceral. And in a very large number of cases, we simply aren't aware of the privileges that we ourselves have - that is what we view as normal, and because that is what we always experience, we have an incredibly difficult time even seeing that someone else doesn't have the same experience. So in a 50/50 mixed group of men and women addressing gender-based issues... I don't think the focus would be representative of the volume of challenges faced. If, for argument, we say that men's challenges make up 10% of the challenges, and women's make up 90%... I think it's more likely to end up being discussed at a rate of 40% men's / 60% women's issues.

Don't underestimate the fact that a lot of men don't recognize women's issues as even needing to be addressed. Just look at the participation in this thread, and the split of men who seem to think that women are just fine and that any attention given to women's issues is discriminatory and unfair to men. Do you think this board is representative of society at large? Because I'm inclined to think we've got a fair bit more in the way of egalitarian men who recognize that women face more challenges than they do So how's that going to play out once we depart our happy little collection of mostly like-minded folks?