Dear Woman video - pretty amazing

[Captain_Amazing]

@Stoid

2. If someone says women are X, does it follow that they are saying men are NOT X, and vice versa? Particularly when the text repeatedly refers, in various ways, to the idea that both sexes contain both masculine and feminine traits?

No.

I think it sort of does. I mean, from a syllogistic formal logic point, you’re right that it doesn’t. But in the context of the manifesto, it does. I mean, they don’t say things like, “I honor your bipedalism”. They seem to be saying that there are masculine traits (like violence, a preoccupation with goals, the principle of punishment, greed) and feminine traits (peaceful resolution of conflict, compassionate justice, a natural sense of nurturing), and that because men have ignored these feminine traits through history, it’s led to war, poverty, the exploitation and mutilation of women, and so on.

I think what people are objecting to is the broad stereotyping in this manifesto; and the assumption that these are masculine and feminine traits. And while you’re right that the text is saying that men have to, I guess, recognize the validity of “feminine traits”, it’s saying that men haven’t done that, and, in fact, there are “forces in the unconscious masculine psyche that feel threatened by and then seek to dominate the feminine.” It is sort of saying that women are better at peaceful resolution of conflict, nurturing, understanding their bodies, and all that, then men. That’s why the authors call them “feminine traits”; the manifesto is suggesting that those are traits inherent in the female.

[Stoid]

@Captain_Amazing

the manifesto is suggesting that those are traits inherent in the female.

Yes, of course they are.

Which doesn’t mean they are saying the traits exist in all females in equal measure and in no males at all, and in fact they they say, several times, that masculine traits and feminine traits exist in both males and females, which undermines ***any ***claim at all that they are denying the existence of masculine traits in females or feminine traits in males.

[Stoid]

@Grumman

A question: why did they say women are X, if they really mean people are X?

For the same reason that estrogen is called a female hormone and testosterone the male, although people have both.

[Captain_Amazing]

@Stoid

Yes, of course they are.

Which doesn’t mean they are saying the traits exist in all females in equal measure and in no males at all, and in fact they they say, several times, that masculine traits and feminine traits exist in both males and females, which undermines ***any ***claim at all that they are denying the existence of masculine traits in females or feminine traits in males.

You’re misunderstanding me. It’s suggesting that those traits exist in women to a greater extent than in men. It’s like you’re estrogen/testosterone example…even though both men and women have estrogen and testosterone, women have a lot more estrogen than men do, and men have a lot more testosterone then women.

So when they’re saying, for instance, that a sense of nurturing is a feminine trait, they aren’t saying that no men have a sense of nurturing. They’re saying that women have a much greater sense of nurturing then men do.

I understand what they’re saying, but those are the statements I object to. I don’t think that women are inherently more peaceful, more just, more nurturing than men. I think that’s insulting, first to men, obviously, because it turns men into violent brutes, but also to women, because it’s just a reinforcement of those old essentialist claims that have been used throughout the centuries to oppress women.

The sophisticated misogynist didn’t say that women shouldn’t have rights because they were stupid. He said that women shouldn’t get in politics or handle money, or work as a professional, because they had a higher purpose; because they were more nurturing than men, more peaceful, more delicate, and it was their job to save men from their own baser instincts, to civilize them, and to impart their superior morality on the next generation. And how could they do this? By being wife and mother, because they were to good and too delicate to survive in the man’s world without being corrupted. Putting women on a pedestal ends with being afraid you’ll break them if they’re taken down, and we won’t end sexism until we realize that the same capacity for good and evil, for pacifism and war, for justice and arbitrariness, for caring and callousness, lies in every human being, regardless of his or her sex.

[Stoid]

@Captain_Amazing

You’re misunderstanding me. It’s suggesting that those traits exist in women to a greater extent than in men. It’s like you’re estrogen/testosterone example…even though both men and women have estrogen and testosterone, women have a lot more estrogen than men do, and men have a lot more testosterone then women.

So when they’re saying, for instance, that a sense of nurturing is a feminine trait, they aren’t saying that no men have a sense of nurturing. They’re saying that women have a much greater sense of nurturing then men do.

So far, we agee completely in our understanding.

I understand what they’re saying, but those are the statements I object to. I don’t think that women are inherently more peaceful, more just, more nurturing than men.

We disagree, but that’s fine.

I think that’s insulting, first to men, obviously, because it turns men into violent brutes,

No it doesn’t, and here you are doing the same thing in reverse: assuming that because they are conveying their belief that women are more nurturing than men… they are saying men are violent brutes. That makes no sense, because it turns it into a binary: very nurturing, or violent brute, period. That’s becoming offended by something you invented that is silly. It’s a continuum between “nurturing” and “violent brute”.

But if you want to feel insulted by them assuming that men aren’t as nurturing as women, fine. Be my guest.

but also to women, because it’s just a reinforcement of those old essentialist claims that have been used throughout the centuries to oppress women.

So you believe, and that’s fine. I disagree, but it’s valid for you to look at it that way if you choose to.

The sophisticated misogynist didn’t say that women shouldn’t have rights because they were stupid. He said that women shouldn’t get in politics or handle money, or work as a professional, because they had a higher purpose; because they were more nurturing than men, more peaceful, more delicate, and it was their job to save men from their own baser instincts, to civilize them, and to impart their superior morality on the next generation. And how could they do this? By being wife and mother, because they were to good and too delicate to survive in the man’s world without being corrupted.

Yes, I know. But I won’t let the warping of an otherwise positive idea by some rob others of their right to embrace the idea honestly, and I believe the men who wrote this manifesto embrace it honestly.

Putting women on a pedestal ends with being afraid you’ll break them if they’re taken down, and we won’t end sexism until we realize that the same capacity for good and evil, for pacifism and war, for justice and arbitrariness, for caring and callousness, lies in every human being, regardless of his or her sex.

a. It does not have to end that way.
b. I disagree that the same capacity for all those things exists in every human being.

But you’re entitled to your opinion, my objections are to false representations.

[Meyer6]

Stoid -
I pointed out that there were no factual statements in this video, only opinions. You responded to that by saying it was a fact that the video said things like ‘women have a deep connection to the earth’. I tried to make it clear that that is not a factual statement:

@Meyer6

It is a fact that the manifesto includes those statements. Those statements themselves are not factual statements. Do you not understand the difference? If I made a video and said ‘the moon is made of blue cheese’, would that make it a fact? What if I sincerely believed it? It would be a fact that I said it, right? So that makes it a fact, right?

You then quoted only the first line of that (It is a fact that the manifesto includes those statements), massivly changing the meaning of what I said and making it seem as though I was agreeing with you and conceding to you assertion, and you added:

(

@Stoid

YES! Excellent! Well done!

I thought you were against misrepresentation? Editing posts so they appear to agree with you when they clearly do not is definitely misrepresenting. Why is it okay to misrepresent what I say?

[Meyer6]

@Stoid

I comprehend all those words in those sentences! They do not need to be interpreted or translated in any manner whatsoever, because they are in English, they are structured correctly to form ideas and convey meanings, and those ideas and meanings are clear because the words are clear.

We all comprehend the words. We all speak English. But we all, you included, interpret the things we see and hear, all the time. Your interpretation of the video as wonderful and life-affirming fits in to your world view, but it is not the only interpretation. Tell me, why exactly do you think the people who interpret it differently must have some nefarious purpose or inability to undrstand the English language?

Of course, I do consider honor, respect, justice, compassion, love, healing, grace thriving, etc as positive things. I guess if you think those things suck, you would find them negative. But I’ve never met anyone who thinks those things suck, so I think it’s fair to say that my calling them positive is an accurate assessment of the intention behind them.

The point is not that they’re positive things, the point is that they’re stereotypes. Nobody is saying that those traits suck - only you are interpreting the criticism that way. If I say ‘all gay men are fashionable dressers and great dancers’, is that nice of me just because those things are positive traits? Or is it an absurd generalization that may be hurtful (or laughable) to a gay man who wears sweat pants every day and has two left feet? Is it implying that he is somehow not a ‘real’ gay man?

[FinnAgain]

@Stoneburg

If you’re not an atheist, you believe in things that are much more incoherent than this.

Do you find that awful tu quoques like this normally work for you? You already tried it with ‘gee, American culture sure is silly in a lot of ways, so you guys can’t object to this either, hah!’ Now you’re trying it with religion, too? Even if true, all your argument would mean was that you were telling someone objecting to one incoherent pile of pablum that they shouldn’t object to it if they weren’t also objecting to all other incoherent things. Does that sound rational to you?

As for what’s so bad about this idiocy, any number of things, from the suggestion that men are naturally goal-oriented while women are just ‘live in the moment’ intellectual drifters, to women being more in touch with nature than men, to women better understanding the needs of their bodies and “playtime”. Seriously, “playtime”, who uses that word on purpose when they’re not referring to toddlers? In point of fact, these milquetoast men are reiterating and attempting to reinforce almost all of the stereotypical views of women that we’ve spent decades getting past in order to accept that women can be nurturing or nasty, emotional or hyper-rational, in tune with the planet or tossing Styrofoam cups out the window of her SUV…

@Stoneburg

No you missed my point. “Not accepting their claims” proves nothing.

Actually, you’ve missed the point by a wide margin.
Not accepting the claims in the video places you into the second of their two categories, that of a brutish, angry man. That’s the dichotomy they’ve set up, they’re speaking for all enlightened, fully-conscious men. And those who disagree must, perforce, not be the men they’re speaking for and must therefor belong to the other camp. If I announce “I am the spokesman for all good, decent people and this is what we think” and then you disagree, where does that put you in the dichotomy I’ve just created?
This is the whole point of their deceptive, manipulative, sexist twaddle. The very act of providing a rational critique to rebut their nonsense is just proof of how irrational and unevolved you really are.

And since “it” in this case is made up of a lot of statements and connections made, you would have to make arguments against all of them.

This is worse than your tu quoque.
If I put out a YouTube video that says “I have super powers and can read your mind and cheese cures AIDS and my cat can run faster than a horse that’s strapped to a rocket and I can jump 800 feet straight up into the air. And two plus two is four.”
Well… you don’t need to waste your time going through each claim. As it happens I’m still pretty sure that the Milquetoast Men don’t make a single correct one, but that’s irrelevant. Including factual flotsam in a sea of stupid doesn’t mean that we can’t safely disregard the video as a whole and wait for someone to champion any rational points it actually did make.

And if there really were 100 such claims in a video, it would be more than passing strange for someone to demand “Okay, so AIDS doesn’t cure cheese, but how about that part where he says that global warming is caused by penguins having too much sex? Or what about his argument that there really are hundreds of flying saucers buried under the Gobi and our world leaders have slowly been extracting some of them from time to time in order to reverse-engineer their technology? And anyways, you have no business objecting if you’re not an atheist or if you’re an American.”

[TheChileanBlob]

@Spit

The two in the video acted like serial rapists who are trying to throw people off of their trail.

There was an episode of L&O:SVU where Luke Perry played this Mr Sensitivity guy; his wife was a rape victim and he was really involved in rape-survivor support stuff. He acted as a foster parent to the son of another rape victim and was always all “Hey, buddy, let’s talk about your feelings, mmmkay?” Turned out *he * was the rapist.
My husband is a sweet, sensitive guy. He loves me more than anything on earth, so much that it moves him to tears sometimes. He’s written me love poetry. But he’s a man, and he makes me feel safe and protected. These guys strike me as the type who would need to be protected. Milquetoasts, as someone upthread so eloquently put it.

Ugh, the chirping birds and soft music and curly script at the beginning of that video! I’ll have to admit, I only got about thirty seconds in before I was overcome by vomiting.

ETA: I’m sorry, I meant to comment on how people shouldn’t apologize for historical wrongs, etc. I got sidetracked by the wussiness.

[TokyoBayer]

@some really whacky guys

As a man, I acknowledge that the religions of the past several thousand years have been mainly founded by and propagated by men. As men, we have often acted as if we have the last word on God and the spiritual life, when all we have really known is the masculine expression of those things. I honor your pathways of spiritual awakening. I commit to the celebration of feminine spirituality.

Let’s see whois making this claim.

Gay Hendricks: President
The Hendricks Institute

So, in addition to everything else, we’ve got hypocrites here. The New Age woo-woo is fine to say, but not followed by anything meaningful, such as making his wife a co-president.

@Sarahfeena

Wow, I got red text! Must be because my intentions were so deeply nefarious.

:mad: Damn, it means that I lost the Dope Office Pool. I had my money on Meyer6 being the first to get red text, and not until Page 6.

[xoferew]

I wouldn’t feel good about women being soldiers, police officers, doctors, stock brokers, lawyers, members of congress, etc. etc. if they were all more defined by intuition and peaceful nurturing than by logic and rational goals. It wouldn’t be good for them or for society.

[Sarahfeena]

@Stoid

See how easy it was to crap all over it without making anything up?

I knew you could do it!

Good job.

Thanks. I couldn’t really add anything to your interpretations of what they said…that was a good job, as well. Must be your natural feminine intuition.

[GrandWino]

This is all because of Charlie Sheen, isn’t it?

[Muffin]

@TokyoPlayer

:mad: Damn, it means that I lost the Dope Office Pool. I had my money on Meyer6 being the first to get red text, and not until Page 6.

Not ‘red’ text, ‘menstrual’ text. Please intuit an effort at keeping up with the new age terminology.

[Odesio]

@Stoid

No it doesn’t, and here you are doing the same thing in reverse: assuming that because they are conveying their belief that women are more nurturing than men… they are saying men are violent brutes. That makes no sense, because it turns it into a binary: very nurturing, or violent brute, period. That’s becoming offended by something you invented that is silly. It’s a continuum between “nurturing” and “violent brute”.

I guess you didn’t read the other parts of the manifesto.

@manifesto

Throughout history, men have raped and abused you, burned you at the stake, bought and sold your bodies for sexual pleasure, barred you from religious and political office, relegated you to subservient chores, forced you to hide your faces and even cut off your organs of sexual pleasure.

By the way, are they aware that women in societies that practice female genital mutilation often support the system?

@manifesto

We men have waged endless wars over our disagreements. In the act of defending our lands and protecting our families, we became addicted to the fight itself.

So, yeah. The manifesto is essentially saying men are violent brutes.
I am curious, as a staunch supporter of prostitution and a pornographer how do you interpret this statement?

@manifesto

I feel sorrow that men have used your beauty as a form of commerce in prostitution and pornography.

[wonky]

@Odesio

By the way, are they aware that women in societies that practice female genital mutilation often support the system?

Men started it!

It’s the masculine violence inherent in the system.

I love how Stoid’s expression of her intuitive feminine side is the same creepy condescension as the dudes in the video.

[MsWhatsit]

I just came in to check on the red, bold, underlined text situation.

Coming along nicely, I see.

(Did you see how I feminized the situation by calling it “nice” there?)

[leander]

@needscoffee

I think the words just made Stoid feel good all over about herself and that’s all that she can comprehend. I think she’s easily manipulated and should be very careful about who she listens to since she only hears the words that she likes and ignores all the rest of the crap.

This is what I thought also. The kind of people who are “enlightened” by this nonsense are so clearly and desperately in need of some kind of sad insecure affirmation. They want and need to hear this lovey-dovey crap spoon fed to feel better about themselves.

Frankly I just feel sorry for anyone who buys this.

[FinnAgain]

@Muffin

Not ‘red’ text, ‘menstrual’ text.

Nope, still wrong.

Life-giving crimson-glory of the Mother Earth Goddess Herself… text.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Odesio

By the way, are they aware that women in societies that practice female genital mutilation often support the system?

“Often”? I’m no expert on the practice, but the only societies I’ve read of in which fgm is practiced perpetuate the practice entirely through female lines. It’s the women who conduct the whole mutilating ceremony start to finish.

Certainly the men support this practice, just as women support warfare. But just as warfare is (until recent times) an almost exclusively male practice, fgm has been an almost exclusively female practice.

Which in no way decreases its horror, of course. Compare it to warfare: a man isn’t comforted or somehow less victimized by warfare when his killer is another man, and a girl isn’t comforted or somehow less victimized by fgm when her mutilator is her mother. There’s no meaningful gender guilt, no cosmic gender scorecard. But it’s worth noting how fgm is practiced if only as a reminder that gender studies are complicated and not easily reduced to idiotic mass apologies by a handful of smug assholes.