Good, because until we can have a frank discussion about gender, nothing will change.
Yeah, that’s the worst part. They’re apologizing for oppressing us by reinforcing ridiculous stereotypes that have been used for centuries as justification for oppressing us? Grand.
Well, they were hoping we’re so bad at math we can’t actually count the problems with their video.
Combined they aren’t cool. But the wolf itself is cool. It ought to be something like a gerbil or dogs playing poker.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Less than a minute in and they’re talking about “energies.” :smack:
Not my cup of tea. At all.
I managed to watch the whole thing. The best way to sum it up is a belief that they should have used the word “synergy” up front.
These guys apologized for me, so that means I don’t have to ever again, right? BTW, I showed this to my shift replacement and her reaction was, “What the fuck is this shit? If my sub was that creepy and whiny I’d take him for a drive in the country. One way.”
This would be the obsessing over the new age goo. It’s not describing how they were encouraging men everywhere to become fawning, simpering sycophants as a means of enforcing workplace equality.
Because they weren’t.
You are making the leap that your opinion of the statement being made by the men is a directive: be simpering sycophants! (Sufferin’ succotash!) But their intention is specific and clear and not that: they seek equality, they simply believe that in order to acheive it, the historical and current inequality needs to be acknowledged first, and specifically rejected.
Absolutely nothing in it can be accurately described as saying that men should become unequal with women, nor do they tear men down. They specifically affirm the commitment to equality:
…I commit to owning and stewarding a masculinity that honors and celebrates us **as equals. **
…treating **each other with reverence and respect, and by worshiping the divinity expressed in both masculine and feminine energy.
…I know that by leaving the past behind and joining hands in the present, we can create a synergy of our **strengths.
Most of what the manifesto is about, apart from the apology (which is actually only a small part of it) is stated in very gooey ways, but is still clear: because men have mostly run things and made the rules, we’ve undervalued the female perspective. We think we’ve all been done a disservice by this, because the feminine way of being in the world has a lot of value, and we’re acknowledging it. We’d like to combine it with the male and come up with something better for all of us.
It seems to me you don’t need to translate what it 'seems" I’m saying at all, especially if it means you just pick out words and phrases from what I said, words and phrases from what they said, and toss them together in a mashup that leads to completely inaccurate conclusions like:
If I meant to say “most men can’t work with women”, that’s what I would have said.
a: I was specific that I was reporting my own observations.
b: I was specific that working together revealed the “gaps” in men’s ability to see women as equal.
c: I was specific that this was especially the case in working relationships where one party was in authority.
Why not try dealing with exactly what’s in front of you?
Which is what I said to begin with.. can’t you disagree with it, dislike it, trash it, mock it…without misrepresenting it? Doesn’t the truth of it deserve your scorn, do you have to make it into something it isn’t? There’s no question that they come across very earnest and gooey and that is superripe for mockery, you don’t have to distort the actual content in order to tear down the package it comes in.
No, that’s just “re-denigrating” it.
You have the opinions you have about something. They exist whether you express them or not. Sharing those opinions in a public forum is a choice you make for any number of reasons - the opinion is not the reason you share the opinion. “I think it sucks. I’m telling everyone I think it sucks because I think it sucks.”
Given your long history of valuing the opinions of those who disagree with you, being willing to take advice and even admit when you’re wrong I’m confident…
nevermind
I’m concerned that the video means men have been in decline since the time of Attila.
Greatest troll video of all time. Hilarious Stoid of all people posted this. 
It sounds like you are trying start a light saber fight against an imaginary enemy and that Youtube video got old a long time ago. Have you read the news lately? Young females are doing just fine in just about every category imaginable. There are some semi-serious discussions about needing affirmative action programs for males at some point in the near future if the trend continues because it is the males that are lagging in things like college graduation rates now that the blue collar trades have dried up.
Pretending this was just your first OP, your version of reality is quite different than many other people, especially younger females, see the world today. I have two daughters and that is all the children I will ever have. I don’t worry about their future as females or see anything they are being exposed to as being repressive in the least. I am guessing that you probably don’t like someone like George W. Bush. Do you think his daughters are oppressed in any way?
When I look at the video, one of many horrific things I see in it is a rehash of the 70’s but with older and creepier people. We don’t live in the 70’s anymore though and many of us don’t know what happened before then and don’t especially care at a visceral level. You can hang out back in some imagined time if you want but don’t expect too many people offering to be travel companions.
Do you not see that the video is also asserting that all women have the same ‘female perspective’, the same ‘feminine way of being’? That all women are deep and intuitive and nurturing and in touch with the earth? That women are not aggressive, analytic, strong, career-driven, etc? Don’t you see how that attitude is offensive in and of itself?
As **Sarahfeena **said, there is a great irony in these men using these outdated and stupid stereotypes to try and support their supposedly progressive outlook.
What? As opposed to “I think it’s great. I’m telling everyone I think it’s great because I think it’s great.”? Why is that better?
ETA: Why is my opinion ‘redenigrating’ the video? If you look at page 1, it’s exactly the first thing I said. And also, do I need a reason to share my opinion? Is this a ‘share your opinion if you agree with me, but if you don’t your opinions aren’t welcome’ board?
Stoid, I generally like your posts but what he said just above.
ALL the women who know me (co-workers, friends, family, girlfriends, wife [even though the wife is now an ex]) would tell you, whatever my faults, that I respect women and treat them as equals in all ways (indeed I think women have a leg up on guys in a few areas).
This thing is just a horror. Spreading it hurts the cause of equality more than it helps.
Those guy need to be kicked in the balls…if they have any.
soo…if I offer a fake, mealy-mouthed, Alan-Alda/Phil Donohue-esque sensitive new-age guy pseudo-apology for stuff I didn’t do, can’t control and (since I don’t have a time machine) can’t change, I’ll get chicks? By the truckload?
Ok, Doperbabes, be prepared for the best pseudo-apology you ever got:
*I’m (lip quivers) I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the time Attila the Hun ravaged and hurt womyn. I’m sorry for Torquemada. I’m sorry for Hugh Grant. I’m sorry I used the word “history” when it’s really HER-story. Or…“Ourstory”. I apologize for the deep distrust of what I used to describe as idiot quasi-mystical gibberish with a femyle spin–I now know that it was just my tremendous ballsack filled with the poison (poidaughter?) that is testosterone mocking the beauty of womynly consiousness and I…I feel ashamed for it as does my tremendous ballsack. (tear runs down my cheek. 
I’m sorry for everything bad that’s happened to everyone except white males (who deserved it…except that it hurt their mothers, who didn’t, so I’m conflicted here). And I apologize I haven’t worked harder to make sure that, say, the Rape of The Sabine Women didn’t happen. I’ll work harder in the future.*
There! Now…now that I (and my tremendous ballsack) have apologized and we’re now equals in all things, starting with a clean slate and all that, howsabout we hop in the sack like equal consenting adults and enjoy our new gender balance?
:: Patiently waits for Doper Womyn to swoon. ::
(is it working?)
You forgot the word “nurture”.
There you go inserting things that aren’t there again: stick to what is actually there. Saying that women are A does not mean that women are not B, unless A & B cannot possibly occupy the same space, which does not apply here. That’s an assumption you are making without any foundation. Especially since they very specifically say otherwise:
i.e.: whatever is in you is also in us, and what is in us is in you, and we all can tap into all of these things! You can be aggresive and goal oriented and we can be nurturing and intuitive, etc.
I don’t really understand what the point or payoffis in finding a way to be insulted by the positive words about women. ( I can’t for the life of me figure out how anyone came up with the idea that somewhere in there they are saying women suck at math.)
Did anyone say it was better? Or would that be you assuming and inserting things that aren’t there yet again?
They are the identical error: the reasons why we publicly say things is a separate question from the actual things we say.
First time you said it: denigrating. Second time you said it, RE-denigrating. Just another way of saying you are repeating what you did, not explaining why you did it.
“Need”? My initial reaction is to say yes, you do, otherwise you wouldn’t do it.
My second reaction is to wonder if you meant do you need to explain your reasons to anyone else, and the answer is no, you don’t.
And this would be you, again, reading into and finding things that no one except you put there. And again, doing so in the face of words which actually refute the assumption before you even made it, since this exchange began with me specifically saying to you that you sharing your opinion, even when it is critical, is entirely alright:
I wonder what it would be like if just as an experiment,you responded exclusively to the words you see before you and the plain meaning they convey, forgoing all assumptions, insertions, translations & restatements of any kind, made it a practice to keep the entire context and course of the conversation in mind, and asked for clarification before deciding to fill in any blanks you believe need filling.
:smack:
I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to nurture them (which would be sexist because no womyn NEEDS a man’s nurture) or if they were supposed to nurture me (but that traps them in the stereotypical gender role of mother/nurturer when they can be so much more.)
I and my tremendous ballsack apologize for my lack of enlightened understanding of gender roles. Can you doper womyn forgive me? 
And once you do, because, being womyn, you’ll forgive my confusion, You all being so super-ultra enlightened, each and every one of you from Eva Braun to Madame Mao to Imelda Marcos to…geez…even Lucricia Borgia (shining beacons all–forced to function in a male dominiated society warped them no doubt).
So can we hop in the sack now?
I don’t doubt it, Whack.
But the only way that video is a horror if is people choose to turn it into one, as they have in this thread, by assuming a bunch of things that aren’t there, as I jsut described to Meyer6.
Take it at face value. If you disagree with the premise that men as a group, historically and in the present day, owe women, as a group, historically and in the present day, an apology - that’s valid. But completely failing to recognize the way in which some people of both sexes would see it otherwise and seeing their view of it and decision to act on it as a “horror” strikes me as just a tad excessive.
The biggest horror in it is the goo factor, which I was unthrilled about for exactly this reason, that it gives so many people the ickies that they miss the core message. Like I said, disagreeing with the fundamental premise that any given man should or can apologize for all men is one thing, but not because it’s based on a false or worthless premise: women have been treated like shit since the dawn of human civilization, and more women than not still are, to varying degrees. (See my linked thread above.) I think these men did a really wonderful thing in a less than ideal way. I wish they’d kept it a little more grounded, but I’m glad for it in any case.