And yet another way in which patriarchal culture harmed both genders. But statistically, women were and are raped more often, and biologically, women are less equipped to resist unwanted advances (not that female rape isn’t possible – it is, and when it happens it’s just as bad as male rape), and culturally, men were considered to be in the superior and leadership position in marriages, and women were expected to obey.
If so, this was a raindrop of opposition to wife-beating against an ocean of support and tolerance. Through most of history, and most places in the world, wife-beating was tolerated and sometimes even encouraged. In most places and in most times, abused wives had no recourse and no escape.
Pretty much all of the evidence, including most of the evidence you’ve presented, in this thread, has supported the notion that women have been treated poorly by society and abused more so then men through most of history. At most your evidence has suggested that at times wife-beating has occasionally been opposed, and that women may be responsible for a significant chunk (but still a minority) of domestic abuse even if they are injured and killed far more often in such abuse, and similar. Women had fewer property rights, fewer political rights, little protection against abuse and rape, were culturally considered inferior and encouraged/mandated to be subservient to men, etc.
Now, the stat I was looking for is one I couldn’t find. Namely, in what percentage of 2-parent families is the father the primary caregiver. But the stats I did find show:
-Dads end up working outside the home more, with women being in the home more. That indicates sexist attitudes about division of labor in families.
-Dads are less likely to believe that one parent can bring up a child as well as two parents. A judge might be less likely to grant custody to the person who thinks that a single parent can’t do the job as well.
-Not many dads married to working moms take care of their kids. I’ll hazard a guess that more moms married to working dads take care of their kids.
If moms spend more time with kids, are more often primary caregivers, and are more confident in their ability to single-parent-it-up, it’d be sexist for judges to grant custody equally to moms and dads.
Yes. Because all those homeless white guys begging for change? They’re at the top of the social pyramid. Because being born a white male is like being born with a Gold Card that never runs out of cash and you never have to repay. (I wonder where the fuck I lost mine?)
Because having an abusive father, a neglectful mother, a mental illness, and having the shit kicked out of you over and over doesn’t affect you as much, if you’re white, right?
This originally comes from Reddit, via Tumblr. Having said that, it seems authentic to me. As usual, I’m not quoting the whole thing, but you can read it here, if you want. The original is here, from the Subreddit, “Men’s Rights”.
Race is only one of a set of variables that comprises an individual.
Other variables can include: wealth, health, education level, gender, appearance, personality traits, family support, etc.
What iiandyiiii has been saying here is that,* all other things (variables) being equal*, being white confers an advantage.
Does a wealthy white man have more privilege than a poor white man? Yes. Because of the advantage of another variable (wealth). See how that works?
Your depiction of the homeless or mentally ill white guy adds other variables besides race, so of course, calculating an individual’s overall advantage is not that simple. Let’s say you have two people with exactly the same type and stage of cancer. Not an enviable situation for either one of them, but what if one was wealthy and one was poor? Just the addition of one variable makes the comparison more complex. Now add even more variables…
No one is saying that simply being white is a magical, get out of jail free, set for life attribute. It’s not.
One other thing to keep in mind: When someone is told to “check your privilege” (and I’m not a fan of it, because it can be seen as hostile), it is a reminder to consider the things that you take for granted because of a particular attribute.
For example, if you are white, you might take for granted that: systemic racism doesn’t apply to you or your children, you can rent an apartment or buy a house wherever you want to live in your price range, you will never be patronized by hearing “You’re a credit to your race”, you will not be followed around a store because the color of your skin makes you suspicious, etc.
And there is much, much, more; some might seem trivial to you, but there is a cumulative effect. It also means someone who isn’t white needs to be in a higher range of other variables (e.g., education, experience, appearance) in order to overcome the disadvantage of being non-white, and play on a level field.
I don’t know why you (and Rune) have a hard time understanding or accepting this.
If you still don’t acknowledge this as accurate, please explain your reasoning, instead of just mocking it or ignoring it.
Huh. You found a trans guy on Reddit. Coincidentally, I just found a trans guy in my bed. I showed him what your guy wrote. He said he was “an adorable kitten,” and to “get back to him when he’s a grown up.” I love the dude, but he can be a little bit ageist.
That said, he does have a point. My guy, I mean, not yours. Your guy says he lived for seventeen years as a woman, and five years as a man. But that’s not really true. He’s lived for five years as a man, and seventeen years as a girl. And by girl, I mean a minor child. He’s comparing the treatment he gets as a (putative) adult, to the treatment he got when he was a kid. Surprise: turns out being a grown up is hard.
Race has nothing to do with feminism and it’s kinda a dickish move to try to piggyback women on the backs of blacks (although I read that due to new definitions of racism to do with systematic or some such nonsense, that black people cannot be racists towards whites, this has inspired some women to likewise claim that women cannot be sexist towards men)
Anyway, women are not disadvantaged or underprivileged in modern Western society. That is what is up for discussion. Of course there have been times during history and there are places today, in third world shitholes with shitty cultures and shitty religions, where being female sucks. But those places are not here. Women also have issues which are particular to their sex, but so do men, and those of women certainly do not dwarf those of men.
I do not “accept” that we live in a Patriarchy where women are systematically being politically/morally and socially controlled and dominated by men because it’s simply false, and nothing you, or anyone else, have done have come anywhere near to presenting scientific proof otherwise. And when feminists do dig up statistics to back some of their silly theories (rape culture – come on!), the statistics tend to be false.
Incidentally, your usage of the word “accept” reminds me a bit of the Mattress Girl, and her anti-science beliefs (*“If we use proof in rape cases, we fall into the patters of rape deniers … When a person claims that their theory is science, they disqualify other types of knowledge.”[(i]) This whole movement of which 3rd gen. feminism is a part, seems to increasingly disdain basic scientific principles. Gender or women’s studies are based on such absurd (ideological driven) theories that they can only exists in echo chambers and safe places full of trigger warning where they can go unchallenged – like if a thing is felt strongly enough by some person, then it’s wrong and disrespectful (harassment) to disagree. For some reason anger seems to be the new proof – being really angry is something to be proud of and proclaim loudly to the world. Or whatever, a tangent. The whole of 3rd gen. feminism and their various dogmas (The Patriarchy, Rape Culture, Privilege, Victimology) reminds me increasingly of the “science” of Creationism and other belief or ideology driven pseudo-sciences.
What does it matter if one accepts? A creationists would want you to accept and believe. A Darwinist couldn’t care less about your acceptance. Either it’s true or it’s false, that’s all there is to it. 3rd gen. feminism just happen to fall in the false basket on so many counts.
Do blackspain why I should give a damn about that you’re non-white and what you feel offended about and how including a discussion on racism is likely to do a discussion on feminism any good. Like the subject isn’t nearly big enough without including race, ethnicity, religion, heightism, homosexuality, the fat acceptance movement, and the price of beans in China.
And add Intersectionality to the list of dogmas of dubious scientific value. Incidentally I’m reminded of the black guy was shot in the US a little while back by a white cop. He was running away because falling back on child support would land him back in jail. There’s intersectionality for you.
So is going after names actually the debating level you want to debase yourself to? Pathetic.
FYI, Rune is one of the more common names in Scandinavia. The female variant is Runa. (Put name in textbox titled: Fornavn)
It has a tribal meaning where I’m from, but I can’t tell you because it’s a secret.
I don’t think that is the case, but start with defining the places you consider modern Western society. I’d still argue that there is a disadvantaged, although obviously not as bad as it was in previous generations and in some parts of the world the disadvantage is less than in others.
I would say over most of the recorded history. And you seem to have a white/black separation, when in reality there are areas of greyness between “modern Western society” and “third world shitholes with shitty cultures and shitty religions”. What cultures, and what religions?
Also, I would say most women (and men, humanity in general) live in areas that are not “modern Western society”. Are they not worthy to be included in this discussion? What is “here”? “Here” means different places to different people, as evidenced by Jack of Words’s own words. I would think that “here” is this world, because I know of no other world, and I would like it to be fair overall for men and women.
What issues are those? And perhaps that is the point, that the issues should not be issues, or should not be particular to women (but also to men), and that perhaps they should not be treated separately. I can grant there are differences between both, but let us examine first what are the issues you talk about.
I do accept that we live in a patriarchy because I have first hand experience in some of the things discussed here (although to a much lesser degree than other women). I also hear the incidents told by my mom, aunts, grandmother, female friends, cousins, etc., and I realize that while my situation is better, it is still not comparable. Is it as bad as it was centuries ago? No, I don’t think so, I think most places have greatly improved, to the benefit of all. Are they still things/places/people that are resisting the change? YES, there are, and that is what we have to deal with.
Speaking from my position of Jewish Privelage, I hereby proclaim the relationship between race and feminism Complicated.
Of course, people want to make it not complicated. They want to have a nice proper ordering, where each axis gives you a fixed number of Oppression Points and having the most oppression points wins. Intersectionality as a theory is great; it should blow that theory away. And indeed, when we actually look at stats, we see that certain axes of oppression tend to fall on certain people, and that this isn’t well-ordered; it’s great to be Jewish in most of New York, Florida, and California, and less-great in rural Mississippi, it’s great (statistically-speaking) to be a woman who’s committed a violent crime and is about to interact with the justice system and a lot less great if you’re trying to get hired as a quant on Wall Street, and so on. Intersectionality, in this view, says that if you line up a few axes which hit on a particular category of risk, then regardless of whether or not these axes integrate out to privileged in the main, will end up concentrating their effects on you.
The obvious go-to example is violence, blackness, and maleness. Being black increases your risk of being a victim of violence, being male increases your risk of being a victim of violence, and so being black and male is worse, in the violence axis, than being black and female.
This is also like 90% of my problems with the incarnation of, for lack of a better term, tumblr-wave-feminism. People tend to take ideas which are basically true, like “It’s easy to overlook problems when they’re not happening to you or anybody you know.” or “Life factors can add up in unintuitive ways.” or “People tend to judge their status and life outcomes relatively, so having an unfair advantage removed feels like losing something you were entitled to.”, and then with very few exceptions fail to apply them to their own movement and groups.
And a lot of feminists don’t! A lot of feminists do recognize that there is a time to check their female privilege and let men talk about certain issues, that their relative disadvantage in many areas does not mean that they are disadvantaged in other areas, and that you can hold the mirror of feminist critique to mainstream feminism as a whole and see a whole lot of areas for potential improvement.
But there are a whole lot of very vocal feminists who don’t do these things. By their own dogmas and by the foundational assumptions of feminism as a whole, they are being bad feminists, but they are feminists nontheless.
All of this is specific to the modern Western world and America specifically, of course; as Karl points out. Of course, the relative amount of ink spilt by self-identified feminists to discuss the plight of women in American colleges vs. women in Saudi Arabia is another issue, but the near/far dichotomy is nowhere unique to feminism.
Can’t. There’s no explaining to those who won’t listen…
Don’t expect you to give a damn. Your hostility to the idea that oppression might make common bedfellows is obvious. Doesn’t matter, wasn’t trying to change your mind, I was pointing out the ridiculousness of you telling camille what’s dickish, when you’re not a member of the group that should take offense at the comparison, to the thread in general. It may look like I was addressing you, I really, really wasn’t.
Mostly, I was telling camille to ignore your bullshit and letting her know you don’t actually speak for anyone.
Yeah, we can only deal with one issue at a time. There’s no relation whatsoever to the way women are oppressed, and the way POCs are oppressed, and the way gays are oppressed. They have no reason to band together, and they can’t claim any fellowship, never mind common enemies. Yup. Because Rune said so. One oppression at a time, please!
And hey, male gays, you have no common cause with Lesbians, never mind Transgenders or any other queers. Obviously. It’s all too big for Rune to handle in one sitting.
Who said anything about science? We aren’t robots. Well, I’m not, at any rate.
