If by amazing rapidity, you mean 10 years later.
Your entire argument was in response to someone saying this is not okay. The only reason to argue with their statements would be to say that you disagree.
People on this board are not stupid. We can read for context. People don’t defend sexism if they think sexism is not okay.
And the fact that it is not acceptable today means that, guess what, coming up with another sexist thing is also not okay. It doesn’t matter how long it took: it’s unacceptable NOW.
I mean, just forty years ago, there were several people who didn’t object to black people drinking in separate water fountains. I dare you to do that now.
These women were not allowed to do something solely because of their gender. That is sexism, and that is wrong. There is no modern debate about whether sexism is okay. Your personal ethics of the situation are out of date.
That particular thing is unacceptable now, but we differentiate, and discriminate by gender all the time. Was it wise to do it in this case? Probably not, but acting as though this is some big deal just shows that people lack perspective and are ignorant of the many situations in which we do this.
Do you really see this as analogous, because if you do, your outrage meter is broken. People actively discriminating against Black people is very different from dealing with a lack of space by only letting one group go to the movie. One policy was used to institute a system of preference that held that Blacks were less than human. The other was some administrators trying to figure out how to hand out some movie tickets. Again, get some perspective.
Not to mention that these tickets were only originally intended to go to poor kids. Is that fair? Isn’t that class warfare? Why won’t anyone defend the rich? The reason is because the rich largely do not need to be defended, nor do girls who suffer the indignity of not going to see a poorly-reviewed movie. Does it stink they didn’t get to go, yes. But, let’s not act as though this is some war on women.
Is having a female basketball team sexist? What if that girls team has more away games (goes on more outings) than the boys team? Is affirmative action sexist? What about outreach programs for woman in the STEM fields? Small business loans for woman-owned businesses? Ladies’ Nights? Woman’s colleges? Are woman really prepared to stand against all that in the name of “fairness”? I doubt it, and IMO, they shouldn’t have to.
The fact that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of my post suggests otherwise.
“My entire argument” was in response to a specific (to wit, the quoted portion) element of their response. I was pointing out that generalizations can exist and can be true, on a per capita basis and not an individual basis.
However, I then also added…
Which you either missed or somehow didn’t process provided you seemed to have already deemed in what “context” I was arguing.
By your reply, you missed the part where I was specifically speaking to my experience at my company, right?
Fair enough. My apologies.
No need at all, my good man; we were each just clarifying things.
Eh… it’s hard to get too outraged. It is DISD, after all. If there’s a more corrupt or retarded school system outside of New Orleans, I’ll eat my hat.
This is just one more example of idiocy out of those boobs; this kind of stupidity is all too frequent out of DISD.
(I live in the Richardson ISD even though I live in Dallas, so it’s sort of a spectator sport to keep up with DISD)
brickbacon, you keep yammering on about a ‘lack of space’ causing this decision. You keep yammering on about how boys might like this movie better. You keep yammering on about how sex discrimination happens in other places in the other direction.
None of it is relevant. Was there not enough space to accomodate all the students? Find another activity.
What we’re talking about here is a limited commodity and the only criterion for deciding who get to have it is the sex of the recipient. It was a stupid, sexist decision, especially when not making the sexist choice would have been so easy.
In this single instance. Not for all time, not through history, not in some other city, not because of some other happenstance like differing sports schedules.
This action, this decision, this particular choice made, was discriminatory, was sexist. None of the rest of those things you keep bringing up matters to this discussion.
I’m trying to picture gender-segregated field trips to watch The Sound of Music, The Ten Commandments or El Cid… nope. Would have sent the PTA through the roof, or rather, caused them to throw the Director through the ceiling. A couple of those got the students going in two different sessions, others got a special show time so we’d all be able to attend (and damn but The Ten Commandments is long!)
Gender-segregation of mentors… nice hole in the ceiling, again. We got mentoring from people who had different professions, but it didn’t even get segregated by “track” once we already were: all class groups got the talks from the people in Life Sciences, from the people in the Humanities, and so forth, and the chance to stay in contact with them if we were interested in their line of work.
Gender-segregration of sex-ed… the Director of the public school across the street tried to do that, once. Emphasis on tried.
The second time I’m being questioned on standing up for men’s rights as much as I stand up for women’s right. This is ridiculous and completely irrelevant to the thread. Feel free not to believe me when I say I care about equal rights, I really couldn’t care less about what you think.
But lovely men, just so you know, I regularly write to anti-discrimination organisations and sometimes embassies, councils and governments. I have addressed father’s rights in custody battles and paternity leave. I did support equal car insurance, because I would rather be judged for the way I drive than for being told I belong to some gender, even if it means I pay more. If I hear of any issues that separate humans along the gender binary that I feel constitutes discrimination, someone will likely hear of it.
My father is a feminist and always stood up for the rights of women. Why on earth is it strange to think I might do the same for men?!
Sounds like a non event to me.
I think that there was probably some sort of voting going on, among the students, and there hasn’t been any reporting of it.
There was only one quote from a female student who, of course, was wanting to see the movie; the rest of the story was one of the airmen’s diatribe about his wife, and then his son weighed in and we got a full discourse of her many talents. A lot of column space as to why women should be treated equally, and very little as to the whole of the student reaction.
I think, if one goes behind the face of the story, we will find that most of the girls are happier, and were involved in the selection process more than we think.
Actually, all of that is relevant. The first because it lends credence to the fact the decision was not made to exclude women, which would indicate a more malicious strain of sexism, but rather to deal with a scarcity of seats. The second point is important because people were questioning why gender would be used as a basis for discrimination. Given that boys typically like action movies more than girls, it would make the decision to split them up based on gender more understandable. The third point was addressing all the people here who, from this event, conclude that it is never okay to split people up by gender, or cater to one specific group at the possible detriment of the other. That is clearly a ridiculous opinion.
Why? First, it’s not entirely clear when they found out when they wouldn’t have enough space. If they had planned much of the logistics first, there may have been significant sunk costs that would have made calling the whole thing off unwise. Second, why should you punish the group that got to go in the interest of superficial fairness? The experience was probably good for them, and even though everyone couldn’t go, I don’t think it makes sense to not take anyone. Plus, there are very few affordable, appropriate activities that can be done with around 10k kids.
Again, you don’t know how easy it would be. Nearly half the cost of this venture was transportation and other ancillary costs. Those may not have been recoupable. To your second point, gender is a deciding factor in all sorts of situations, so if you are just raising a stink about this one, I would say you are being inconsistent at best. Given the inconsequence of the matter, it seems petty and nonsensical to get riled up about it even if you think they violated a principle of some kind.
What makes this different than a basketball team? Why should there be separate teams?
It was clearly discriminatory by definition. While I would argue that it does not fit the definition of sexism as it is commonly connoted, it’s really a matter of semantics. That said, you can bark all you want about how bad this is, but few have even bothered to hypothesize what problems will arise from this situation. What hard has the school system done these girls? Nothing was taken away from them, they were not required to do extra work, nor were they harmed in any way. Even if you think, as I do, that the whole situation is a bit absurd, getting angry over the way they school system decided to ration tickets is foolish.
Basically, your entire argument boils down to two things:
Other people do it so it’s okay.
The boys liked it.
You’ve assumed a lot of facts not in evidence here, including that money was already spent before they discovered that there wasn’t enough space to go around. So you’re adding incompetence to your reasons why it’s okay to exclude the girls. Even if the lack of space was found after they had already spent the money, it didn’t make sense to simply assume the boys were better suited to this activity than the girls.
Once again, the discussion is about this incident. Actions that anyone here might or might not have taken in the past about any other incident or situation are irrelevant.
You’re making all kinds of excuses to not accept this a sexist decision. None of them hold water.
Of course it was a supposition. I don’t think anyone would be under the impression it wasn’t. The point is that if they were caught be surprise as to the lack of seats, there are some very plausible reasons why they might not have been able to call it all off.
Sure it does. There are mountains of data to suggest that such an assumption is, on a global level, correct.
So explain to me WHY this is a big deal? I get you think it’s sexist. So are ladies’ nights and gender segregated basketball teams in a literal sense. Please explain to me why we should tolerate those others, and not this? What HARM will come of this?
Because many feminists don’t, based on my experience. With that said, I withdraw my snark and I’m glad to see someone fighting for the rights of both sexes. Carry on 
I don’t understand what the big deal is. Based upon what I’ve heard about Red Tails, the girls got the good side of the trade. 
It was shown to low income kids. If they only had room to take 5000 of them, why not find the 5000 lowest income group and take those?