Feminism, Sexism and Other Misunderstood Things

[Sara NoH]

I am a feminist.
I am heterosexual.
I occasionally wear dresses.
I usually shave my legs and underarms, unless I'm in a hurry.
I believe in equality for all.
I believe every person has basic rights.
I don't believe a fetus is a person. I believe it's a potential person which should be more valued than say, a dog; but less valued than an existing person.
I don't believe anyone is superior to anyone else.
I don't believe all____ are inherently_____. People are different, there are usually exceptions.

At it's core, I think feminism is about equality. It's not about superiority, it's not about man-hating. What do you think feminism is about? What do you think makes a feminist? Why are you or aren't you a feminist?

[Jimmy Nicholls]

Most of the points in the list are ridiculous. I understand feminists believe men and women are the same and should be treated the same, but I don't. If you read the list with that in mind you'll understand my point of view.

And with regards to the "uninformed" comment, it was because it fails to understand the reasoning behind certain ideas. It is not "sexist" that women are advised not to go out alone at night, it is just common sense.

[Abreo]

Point 46 (as I mentioned to Kenny to read) is the entire reason why you should be careful labelling it bullshit (how do you know you haven't just missed it?).

 

I don't believe thats a problem, the points I specifically addressed were all things that I can adequately observe. For example, I haven't heard of men harassing women and demanding that they smile but as stupid as it sounds it is a minor annoyance that I reasonably could go through my whole life without knowing so I ignored it. 

 

I know they did studies on homeopathy but I tried it and it workedperfectly! So I guess those studies are wrong...

You see, the pluralis of ancedote isn't data. Things might be changing, but when your experience doesn't conform to what studies say then it's probably your experiences that are exceptions rather than the studies who are wrong.

 

Has anybody told you that you are massively annoying? I never said my anecdotal tales proved their studies to be wrong, I was mostly commenting about it out of surprise. It's obviously not a fact that girls will always be more ignored than males 100% of the time but still I went to schools in both New Jersey and Texas and I have only seen the reverse of this so I am surprised to hear that it's a problem. 

[Übereil]

Translation: You don't have a vagina, you're not allowed to have dissenting opinions.

I've already explained the purpouse behind that comment, which wasn't to claim not being a woman disqualified you from having ideas on the matter.

I understand feminists believe men and women are the same and should be treated the same, but I don't.

If you don't belive the list describes problems you also seem to believe men deseves to be treated better than women. Change women for blacks and see where that leads you.

And with regards to the "uninformed" comment, it was because it fails to understand the reasoning behind certain ideas. It is not "sexist" that women are advised not to go out alone at night, it is just common sense.

Besides that the reason they can't go out at night is because of sexism the idea of the list isn't to explain why things look the way they do, they're just to describe what they look like. The list doesn't say that sexism is involved, that's just a conclusion you can draw from the list.

Has anybody told you that you are massively annoying? I never said my anecdotal tales proved their studies to be wrong, I was mostly commenting about it out of surprise. It's obviously not a fact that girls will always be more ignored than males 100% of the time but still I went to schools in both New Jersey and Texas and I have only seen the reverse of this so I am surprised to hear that it's a problem.

Pepole have poured drinks on my brother (who's argumentation style is probably a lot similiar to mine) if that counts. When I discuss with reasonable pepole I tend to be rather reasonable myself, but when I come across ignorant pepole holding harmful ideas I first need to shake their mind open. I tend to get overzelous though, which scares pepole away rather than open their mind, but hopefully that's compensated by the non-participants seeing the reason behind what I say.

Anyway, this appears to have been a simple misunderstanding (tends to happen when you focus more on disproving pepole than discussing with them), which is regrettable. To be fair I'm not sure all of the points on the list are up to date, that point being one of them. I mean, given that women are starting to have better grades than men (a worrying trend, by the way) it makes sence that they also get more of the attention. I also wouldn't be surprized if this was because of an attempt to avoid sexism ("let's not focus all on the boys now").

Despite those details I still think the overall message holds though - men can expect to be treated in a better way than women more often than not (with exceptions, of course). It's changing slowly, but if we activly try to change it it will change more rapidly.

[Fern]

 On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are.

If you were a burgular, would you attack the man or the woman?  Men are usually thought to be stronger than women, and better at fighting (although in many cases this isn't true).  I'm not saying this is good or bad, but it's one of the reasons.

 If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.

 Stay-at-home moms are hundreds of years old, and although they are less common today, they are still more common that stay-at-home dads.

[Jimmy Nicholls]

That women wear skirts and men don't isn't built into biology.

Well yes it is. Not in the sense that girls are born with skirts on and men with trousers, but in the sense that legs represent a major selling point of a woman's sexuality, but not a man's. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never heard a woman comment that "He has such nice legs").

That women are better teachers and men are better scientists isn't either (because neither is true).

It really depends on what is being taught, and how it is being taught. And also on the individual person. But I'd be surprised if women were not generally better at some things than men, and vice versa.

In fact, most of the differences between the genders exists because of social factors (ergo: they have nothing to do with biology). We haven't really been able to find what this different wiring means in practise. What we have been able to find is that the differences between the sexes is dwarfed by the differences within the sexes.

All rhetoric and no appreciation for the facts. Most "social factors" are caused by biological ones, and if not they are directly influenced by them.

[Übereil]

Well yes it is. Not in the sense that girls are born with skirts on and men with trousers, but in the sense that legs represent a major selling point of a woman's sexuality, but not a man's.

What we do and don't find attractive is actually mostly taught.

It really depends on what is being taught, and how it is being taught. And also on the individual person.

So basically, it's not the biological difference between men and women, it's more about individuality? IE what I said?

But I'd be surprised if women were not generally better at some things than men, and vice versa.

Maybe. But at the moment we have fields that are dominated by men (IE 90+% of the pepole in the field are men) even though tests have consistently failed to show that men are more talented than women for the subject at hand (like math and science). You can cry about there being biological differences all you like, most times where we've actually measured to see the relations on skill in various fields we've found that men and have equal aptitude for it. Including child care.

All rhetoric and no appreciation for the facts. Most "social factors" are caused by biological ones, and if not they are directly influenced by them.

See what I said about the field of math and science. And then ask yourself who doesn't have any appreciation for the facts.

[Jimmy Nicholls]

This article suggests that mostly it is women refusing to enter the given field that has resulted in the field remaining male-dominated: http://www.livescience.com/1927-men-dominate-math-science-fields.html

If women really want certain fields to be populated by them then they need to go do it. The sexual revolution of the 60s was not started by legislation or campaigning, just people having more sex. There is no discriminatory agenda going on here, just women not wanting to take hold of all the opportunities Feminism fought for. Which is fine.

[Übereil]

Yeah, it also explains why they don't want to get into the field:

A recent study, detailed in the October issue of the journal Psychological Science, claims to bring a new feature of gender bias to light. Women are less likely to participate in science and engineering settings in which they are outnumbered by men, found Stanford University psychologist Mary Murphy. "A lot of the situational cues that might seem innocuous to some have real important meaning and effect for others," she said.

Science barriers

The finding adds to a slew of reasons that have been put forth to explain why male-dominated fields are, well, dominated by males. These have included socialization in which girls are taught, directly and indirectly, to steer clear of studies and jobs typically pursued by boys and men. In addition, past research has revealed an unconscious bias at universities where evaluators rate resumes and journal articles lower on average for women than men.

The responsibilities of family caretaking still fall disproportionately on women's laps. And so women often choose the stay-at-home-mom position or their household responsibilities make it nearly impossible for them to meet the long hours required for a high-level faculty position.

Stephanie Pincus, founder of the RAISE project, a campaign to increase the number of women receiving science-related awards, agrees with the findings. She notes that in order to bring gender equity to science fields, the social and cultural aspects of the fields must be revamped.

"We have to start looking at the cultural factors, the social factors, that discourage women from math, science and engineering," said Pincus, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who did not work with Murphy on her latest research.

So it's discriminatory in the sense that it's set up in a way that only men will have the ability to participate (since women have been set to do a lot of extra work compared to men). Which is how most modern day discrimination work: it's the system that discriminates, not the pepole.

Saying the problem is that women just doesn't choose to get into the field suggests pepole make choices in vacuums, which pretty far from the truth. It's not just their choice, because no such thing exists. And if we do nothing women won't suddenly start choosing to get into the field. In order for that to happen we need to adress the reasons why they choose not to get into the field.

[Jimmy Nicholls]

I'd refer back to my previous post. Maybe some factors encourage women not to take certain roles, but in that case they should just start taking those roles anyway. If women suddenly decided "Hey, we're actually going to go for those engineering jobs," then more of them would start getting the jobs.

[Übereil]

And I'd refer back to my previous post. Yeah, if women suddenly did that then the problem would go away. Humans doesn't work like that though, and for that reason they just won't.

[Kenny]

So basically what you're saying is that if women for the most part are capable of attaining job equality but each one is making the personal choice not to then we should force those bitches into better paying jobs because you know what's best for them?

[Übereil]

Why don't pepole en masse jump down a cliff? Because doing so has no advantages and major disadvantages. Why don't women get into male dominated jobs? Because the male dominated jobs are skewed to favour men, so women have to work unecesarily hard to get into them. In other words they're skewed in a way to have extra, unecesary disadvantages and these disadvantages discourages women to get into the field. Work on removing this scew in favor of men and women will be way more inclined to get into the field.