As a socialist I’m obviously not a big fan of the current arrangement of power, and I’m pretty sure the fact that most of the bigwigs are men doesn’t do me as a poor man any good whatsoever. But if a feminist organisation wants to limit its activities to persuading voters to vote for female candidates, I’ve got no problem with that. On the other hand most voters are women, and if they aren’t voting for women I’ve got no problem with that either. Representative democracy in action. More of a fan of sortition myself.
Both the argument that working for a group which is already at least equal, on aggregate, and the argument that feminist activities are a waste of resources are what I was getting at.
Was that an intentional demonstration? If so it was rather good.
I don’t agree with the point as a whole, though. I mean, women are credited with being nurturing and caring and so on, which are generally considered to be good things, and while there are drives and funding for getting women into “heroic”-type jobs, like policing or the fire brigade, it’s much more difficult for a man to get into teaching or caring. Quite the opposite, in teaching at least a female-dominated profession is simply becoming ever more female-dominated. Men aren’t seen as being suited for it, even though back when traditional ideas were more common they had less real-world impact, in that male teachers were far more common.
You should care because those problems affecting women have a powerful and well-funded movement to redress them, whereas those affecting men are, if anything, being made worse by that same movement, or at best ignored.
Pay is lower in female-dominated lines of work, partly a hold-over from the days when women weren’t expected to work or at least to support a family single-handed or to support a major part of the family’s expenditure. To a certain extent that’s still true today, those jobs pay less because they people who do them will take less, because they can. Also, a lot of “male” jobs a more dangerous, more unpleasant, and, crucially, more heavily unionised which allows them to bargain for better wages.
I stand corrected. Actually, on reading the article, I don’t. I still think the specific excerpt quoted by the OP is in reference to Judd’s work in the developing world.
Anyway, I don’t agree with the OP. I agree with **Sitnam **that oppression isn’t a zero sum game.
In terms of comparing pay for traditionally male vs female jobs, I think that however much nursing might tip the balance towards women is more than equaled out by the traditionally male dominated trades: plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, electricians, etc. A large part of the reason so many more women go to college than men is that the non-college career options for women are largely limited to retail/receptionist/childcare/food service. Men who do not have the temperament for college have much better options than their female peers.
When I signed my first-year contract to be a teacher, I got a $1,000 bonus for being a man. My female co-workers made a fair number of snarky comments over the years about how much easier it was for men to get hired, until I finally told them to knock it off. I think you’re wrong.
Feminism couldn’t have originated anywhere else than the most protestant country in the world, and also the country which needed it the less.
Feminism is at its core secular puritanical protestantism. American-style feminism despises men and the natural tension, seduction between the two [del]sexes[/del] genders.
And tangentially, Western-brand feminism happened because the capitalistic market wanted it.
The most problematic inequality is not between men and women, but between rich and poor, and feminists, who generally come from the upper classes of society, attempt to distract attention from this struggle.
I think male biology makes us more aggressive and competitive (in general, not for every single individual, lots of counter examples) - so I wouldn’t expect men and women to be equal through all of the power structures of society ever, if men are more assertive in trying to get power then they will have more power - unless you actively “legislate” that women “get” more power, which I think is a bad idea.
If I’m working for a company, I want the person that is most aggressive (don’t care if man or woman) because that’s what it takes to compete.
Ever since Stoid posted that, I’ve kind of been wondering how she thinks women are going to gain more power, since she believes that women are generally more peaceful, more gentle, and less competitive than men. I’m of two minds about this, myself. I definitely believe that doors need to be open and glass ceilings smashed, so that each woman has the chance to succeed in whatever arena she chooses. Whether or not there’s some kind of collective feminine voice that can only be fully expressed or heard when 50% of the power structure is controlled by women, I’m not so sure. I don’t go for that brand of identity politics.
I think it’s a very valid point. So if women are by nature unlikely to seek power in sufficient numbers to have a genuine impact on the culture, all the more reason that feminism remains necessary.
Too many people like to slap the sexism sticker on others in society due to some folks realizing the basic biological differences between men and women. We want to soak equal rights for all its worth, and just forget the realities sometimes.
Pretty much all through history men have had to protect, in different manners, women. This basically stems from the most major reality of the sexism issue, that men, 90% of the time, are stronger then women. Before anyone gets all offended, I’m am not saying stronger willed, or even mentally stronger, but simply physically stronger. This is exactly why our military doesn’t let women participate in infantry roles. I’m sure that if you had an infantry unit comprised of women, they could shoot and kill just as good as the boys, but you put a women in a trench with another man, hate to say it, but theres no contest. When ever I bring up this little factoid, people have a tendency to tell of some woman they once knew who beat up a man, or some girl in the Army that won out over other men in some MMA drills, but the only reason these example stick out is because they’re all exceptions to the fact.
I went back-packing in California for two weeks a little while ago, and we had a little saying that I kind of thought was clever. When, pertaining to the amount of equipment everyone would carry, our instructors would tell us, “Not equal, but fair.” The guys could usually carry 60-80 pounds of equipment, while the girls could carry at most 50. Our gear spread wasn’t equal, but it was fair to what people could carry, and we applied this rule after accepting the basic biological qualities of both genders. This same sort of rule is what should, and for the most part, has, been applied to most societies. Of course its much more in depth when pertaining directly to sexism, and of course you have some countries that aren’t exactly dealing out what is equal or fair to women, but nonetheless, you get my point. This is why men hold the door for women, and why we say women and children first when our boats are sinking, and why we don’t let women in the infantry. If there is someone directly enacting injustice on women because of the fact they are women, I’ll be among the first to stand up and try and stop it, but to take this sort of feminism to the max is just absurd.
Having women in power clearly can’t be an end in itself because it’s meaningless, it doesn’t actually accomplish anything (any more than saying men should be in power or green eyed people should be in power).
However, if it can be shown that having more women in power increases competitiveness (and in turn standard of living), then go for it.
If it can be shown that having more women in power decreases competitiveness compared to organizations with more men, then don’t try to legislate anything.
My personal opinion is that the system should generally take care of itself with some moderation to make sure that skilled and motivated individuals have the opportunity to be a part of the system. In other words, a system left to itself will tend to consolidate power over time and the best and brightest may not get an opportunity, but with a moderate amount of external control, that consolidation of power can be kept in check (not perfect, but better than the either extreme).
I agree with everything you said in your post, and this is the crux of my point in my previous post. Because women are physically weaker, as well as less competitive (in general, there are many exceptions, but exceptions are exceptions to the general truth, even when there are many), less aggressive, and (calm yourselves, ladies) more likely to want to spend large amounts of time raising their children, it will probably always be necessary for the entire society, culture, species, to remain vigilant about injustices directed at women. (And men, see below)
The above facts have led to or otherwise formed the foundation for other assumptions and presumptions about women that are NOT generally true: that they are less capable, less intelligent, less rational - that because the above things are true of most women to some degree, they are true of ALL women to the SAME degree. Decisions, reactions, opportunities, rewards and punishments that come from those assumptions must be eliminated in favor of recognizing the individual human being in the individual context. Many men have traits that are more like the traits associated with women. Many women have traits that are more like the traits associated with men. Each individual needs to be given the chance to be themselves, and their characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, abilities, gifts and challenges must be considered individually: women must be given the chance to demonstrate that they can carry 70 pounds, and if so, *let them. *Don’t deny Mondo Mary because most of her sisters can’t do what she can. And don’t deny Cathy Climber because you assume she’s going to go have babies and stay home, she’s not. She hates kids.
And that is the feminism I grew up with and believe in, not some blanket assertion that men and women are the same. They aren’t. But they are equally valuable, equally important, equally individual and need to be treated that way.
Feminism, at least the kind that isn’t full of shit, actually works to protect men from injustice as well, the kind suffered by men because they are men and in the same way assumptions are made about women without regard to the individual human being involved, assumptions are made about men The most common one is the unjust assumption that a father is a lesser parent than a mother. It’s taking a long time, but we’re slowly getting the news that, especially in our modern, educated, aware society, the having of a vagina is no guarantee of great parenting ability, and the having of a penis is no guarantee of incompetence and indifference.
I’ve often wondered about the “Inequalities in pay” thing- from my (admittedly limited) reading on the subject, I’m of the understanding that it really only seems to come into play at Executive Board Level, where most people - male or female- have a statistically unlikely chance of getting to anyway (there being a finite number of big important companies and a further finite number of board positions within those companies).
So, feminists complaining that there’s “Unequal Pay” as an overall average based on everyone in any sort of paid employment at all seems disingenuous to me when you consider that, as a male, I’m not earning the sort of money a CEO gets either and it doesn’t make me any more empowered or advantaged/priviliged/better because there’s a man somewhere who is.
That article is from seven years ago. And the study it quotes is from eight years ago. The most recent study, performed in 2009 and published in 2010, shows that the wage gap is gone:
Then have gender-neutral fitness requirements instead of point-blank discrimination. As a 210-pound weakling with very rusty martial arts training, I would lose in close combat against many women in the armed forces now, and I sure as shooting (heh) would be worse than them when you include small arms. Plus my arms go numb when I’m lugging more than 10 pounds of gear. Yet if there were somehow a draft and they called me in, I would be sent to the front lines before the many women currently in uniform that are much more capable than I am.
So if you have to haul X amount of gear, jog a 10 mile course in Y hours with that gear, or attain a certain level of close-quarters combat proficiency, then it should apply to both genders equally, without assuming without prior evidence that any particular woman fails the requirements due to her sex.
Feminism has a different meaning for everyone and even among feminists themselves. I find it a bit annoying when people associate an entire movement with the most extreme and unpalatable of the views so that they could write the whole movement off as being quackery and caricature the people associated with it, sort of like what some Americans do with Islam. That’s getting in Rush Limbaugh territority - he was the one who coined “feminazi” after all, which takes a leap of intellectual bad faith, even for him. However, “feminazi” is undeniably a clever term of propaganda - and Limbaugh is nothing if not a master propogandist. The word focuses aggressive hostility on feminists, who by that characterization are portrayed as the despised and violent ememy. It also has a powerful silencing effect, because what self-respecting contemporary American women would want to be compared to the Nazis? What man, for that matter?
For me, feminism doesn’t have to do with specific issues per se. The focus is not about promoting specific women’s interests or any interests, despite the name, but more about consciousness raising - a lot of feminist theorists talk about the intersection of race, geography, sexuality, class, as well as sex, so the discussion there is not focused solely on sex nor about one single “women’s issue”, since “women” covers a very heterogenous group.
The OP finds it hard to believe that feminism is not only about women’s issues, but also men’s issues as well - but for many, it is so. I think feminism challenges you to think about where you get your ideas and beliefs about men and women and to recognize that they are not born out of a vacuum; it encourages you not to be passive consumers of values and ideas promoted by the society/media/etc, because even though most intellegent people harbor a sense of healthy skepticism when it comes to most other topics, they still seem to accept cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity without a blink of the eye. The ‘boys will be boys’ idea assumes that people of either sex are not capable of acting/thinking/feeling a certain way and has a self-fulfilling quality - when certain behavior is rationalized as normal and expected, it is more likely to occur.
I do not think it is intellectually honest to blithely discount ANY genetic or biological factors that might contribute to certain behavior, but I think it fair to say that if it were ever possible to prove a hierarchy of causes, genetic or biolgoical factors- other than size differentials between men and women - would not even come close to being the most significant. If we stop automatically accepting the concept that men are [fill in the blank: less nurturing, less caring, whatever] due to biology, and thus that’s just how it is and nothing can change it, then yes as a byproduct of that, males may have more of a fair and “equal” fight when it comes to child custody cases and domestic disputes. And, as someone has pointed out, boys and men are perpetrators of certain violence, but in some cases, they are also its primary victims. So when feminists and others argue that we need to figure out ways to prevent men’s violence by transforming cultural definitions of masculinity that equate manhood with power, control, and dominance, they also mean men’s violence against other men as well as women.
While I fully accept the power of culturalization (not sure if that is a word) in shaping our personalities, I strongly disagree with how much you discount the genetic/biological factors.
Without going into a bunch of details, I used to think personality was maybe 50/50 nature/nurture, after having kids and watching siblings kids and seeing the unique aspects of their personalities from the earliest age (in some cases before being born, how aggressive with kicking and how responsive to when we pushed back, etc.), I can now see the extent to which nature points our personality in a specific direction.
Note: My point, which may not have been clear is not to say 50/50 is wrong, but that the nature portion that I have observed was far more significant then I realized and the nurture part may change many things but will not change the basic direction of that personality, maybe fine tune it in a million different ways.