Also, this may or may not surprise some women (I suspect it won’t surprise most of you), but it’s ridiculous how much groups of guys get into discussions of the hotness of various women. Like I said, I find the conversations incredibly boring at best, and I really do find them somewhat objectionable. But it is absolutely terrible for you, as a guy, if you don’t want to discuss that topic. I’d wager it’s worse than not being into sports. You will get mocked, peer pressured, pushed around, and even bullied for long after the conversation if you refuse to participate (even if “refuse to participate” means “politely stay quiet and don’t bother anyone”). It’s gotten to the point, on occasion, where I just lied and said I was gay to get a free pass on not wanting to participate.
Luckily I don’t have to deal with it much anymore, because I can generally choose who I want to be around, but it is really rampant in situations where you have to be in contact with groups of random guys with time to kill for a while (i.e. a cabin at a camp, waiting around for some male-specific event, etc).
If you don’t care about her hurdling achievements, how is it doing her or anyone else any favors that you like to watch her titties jiggle? Why did you feel like the people in this thread needed to know about this predilection of yours?
I don’t think talking about a woman’s attractiveness is always objectionable by any means, but what gets me is that both men and women are guilty of critiquing women in this way. But at least with women, you don’t have to hear about how fuckable so-and-so is. (Their critique still can be extremely shallow and objectifying, though.)
This is one of those things that is pretty easy to dismiss as unimportant until you sit and think about the far-reaching implications this habit has on how little girls grow up to see themselves and others like them. On one hand we’re telling girls that they can be anything they want. Astronauts, presidents, teachers, whatever. But that message is constantly being mixed with “…but is she hot?”
“Oh, hey, you’re Michelle, right? Wow, nice to meet you!”
“Hi. You’re a fan? Cool! What did you think of my last match?”
“Oh, well, uh… it was okay.”
“Yeah, I messed up a bit, I need to practice more.”
“No, you did great! Uh, I think. I mean, I’m not all that knowledgeable about… uh… hurdling. But you know, you make it interesting.”
“Oh, okay, thanks for your support I guess. What’s so great about me that makes you want to watch me hurdle? Not that I don’t appreciate it.”
“Oh, uh… um… well… Have a nice day! Great talking to you!”
As an undergraduate I took a few courses that also fit until the gender studies curriculum and I never heard any of the above nonsense. In the last year I have seen a lot of that nonsense online though. Privilege checking is often used as a club to stifle dissent of any kind. On one message board someone wrote “it’s as if half the people here have double majored in diversity and are dedicated to bludgeoning the other half who have not.” Fortunately this kind of behavior has not migrated to the SDMB.
While I don’t consider myself a feminist (for reasons I’ve already gone into) I never had a hard time with the self-identified feminist who taught or those who were students. There was only one instance I thought was remotely close to man bashing and it was exceedingly mild and originated from the students. Generally speaking, most scholarly feminist have a nuanced view of things like race, class, and religion and how it interacts with gender. In the 1970s it was very much us (women) versus them (men) but for the most part it’s not like that today.
Actually I like that she seemed genuinely happy to be competing and wasn’t just standing around with a dour look on her face, but don’t let that get in the way of your stupid little crusade. My thinking that doesn’t do her any favours but neither does it hurt her in the slightest. As for why I brought it up, I was giving two examples to illustrate my point that finding a woman attractive does not come at the expense of unfairly dismissing her achievements.
This is what I was trying to get at with my huge post a while back. As far as internet blogger/message board feminism goes, a very large contingent have adopted a large part of the actual, decent sociological work many scholarly feminists have done and adopted it as a tool to shut up anybody who doesn’t lick their boots and agree with everything they say. Of course, there are a few “academic feminists” now and then who participate in this nonsense, but by and large I don’t feel that’s the case.
Yeah, it’s not “men vs women” so much as “people who unquestioningly accept my incredibly narrow analysis of gender dynamics vs ALL YOU DEPLORABLE PEOPLE WHO SHOULD FEEL BAD AND SHUT UP.” (Again, for mainstream internet blogger feminism, not everyone).
Though, anecdotally, my friend took a women’s studies class at my university and got yelled at for bringing facts to the discussion by the TA. As in, he brought in statistics and said “because of X, Y, and Z I think…” and got marked down and reprimanded in discussion section because “statistics make some people uncomfortable and make some people’s opinions feel invalid.” (purportedly an actual quote). I’m just going to go on hoping that that TA was completely insane and didn’t last long, or he was exaggerating/distorting the intent of the discussion, or doing something assholish and not telling me (which I doubt judging by his personality, but you never know).
In a thread where we are discussing, among other things, how women are valued for their appearance instead of for their talents, thoughts, and efforts, why did you think it necessary to bring up the name of an athlete whose discipline, aptitude and focus you deem to be less important than whether she has a smile on her pretty face when she jumps?
Regardless of what it’s supposed to be, that’s how its used most of the time.
No; this statement is an example of how the term is misused. It’s used so people can look at someone eating out of garbage cans, unjustly imprisoned or dying of cancer and just sneer at him because of his gender and skin color. It’s about ignoring real suffering and injustice, and well as class issues and the real power structure in favor of pretending that white or male = privileged and everyone else = subjugated. It’s about the American desire to pretend that class doesn’t exist and wealth has nothing to do with privilege. It’s about ensuring that the people on the bottom spend all their time attacking each other instead of realizing that they are all being exploited and abused.
And how many men who bring it up know that? That’s the first time I’ve heard of it, and you can’t really blame men for not conceding a point that feminists don’t even bring up, in favor of lectures about how it doesn’t matter if men die or how they deserve to die, or how the men should just shut up.
And? Plenty of the sexist abuses that women undergo are inflicted on them by other women. If the rule is that we can’t attribute unfairness or abuse of a gender to sexism if it’s perpetrated by members of that same gender, then that also means we can’t call much of the worst abuse and oppression of women sexism either, which is ridiculous.
Men talk over women mainly for the same reason they talk over other men; that’s how men talk. Men interrupt each other all the time, and tend to talk until they are interrupted, and expect to be interrupted when the other party has something to say. That’s how American male conversational rules work.
“Shut up, we don’t care” in other words. If some man gets stabbed by his wife and imprisoned because hey, he’s a man so he must be guilty of something; he should just shut up and take it rather than disturbing the “domestic violence is about the male oppression of women” paradigm.
Is there anyone (male or female) in this thread who doesn’t believe in the social, economic, and sexual equality of both genders?
People can continue to bring their own definitions of what a “feminist” is into the discussion. But it order to communicate what you really believe, shouldn’t there be some common understanding?
I’ve been a feminist for over forty years. (I’m almost seventy.) I can remember ridiculous impositions of discrimination – and some of those impositions still exist.
How many of you grown men have been asked how you manage to balance a career with family life? And check out current labor statistics for equal pay for equal work.
Things have changed an enormous amount, but occasionally people still show their fannies when it comes to understanding what a feminist is. (This includes women and men both being discriminatory and discriminated against.)
He or she is indeed a feminist by that definition. Maybe there should be a new word that means the same thing as feminist so that more people understand that it’s not just about women.
Men are expected to sacrifice their family life for their career; no one would ask, because “balancing” is unacceptable. A man’s primary contribution to his family is still supposed to be as a wallet. A man who neglected his career to spend more time with his family would be more likely to get hostility than gratitude from that family, much less everyone else.
What I took as her point was that women face a bewildering range of issues that must be balanced (there’s that word again), while men face one crushing burden: never, ever show weakness. To her credit, Brown acknowledged her resistance to accepting this about men, as well as how women in general are in denial about how they impose this burden on them.
I may not be in the right thread here, since I view (or at least want to view) feminism as a political philosophy, not a just personal one. Personal philosophies are great, but not much more than outlets like stamp collecting or radio-controlled model airplanes. Political philosophies shift power so that powerless Afghan girls can go to school or bosses can’t demand blowjobs.
But politics requires compromise. Not compromise of ones core convictions; but a broadening of them to include vital allies. If men are indeed so powerful, why would it be in their interest to share power? Unless they can be helped to see how it’s in their interest, too. So I’ve re-entered the thread to suggest again that feminism needs to build on the political power it’s achieved to protect everyone it can. That uncoordinate little boy with glasses who’s going to be called “faggot” and beaten is just as much a victim of male privilege as the early-developing little girl who’s going to be called “slut” and raped. It should be feminism’s agenda to help both those kids.
I agree with your post, I’ll start with that. But I think this is exactly what offputs a lot of men about modern feminist rhetoric. “Sure, you’re being victimized too, by male privilege.” I’m not commenting on whether it’s technically correct or incorrect whether or not the social theory of “privilege” is the prime driving factor behind the oppression. It’s not the theory so much as the branding that offputs a lot of men. It makes it sound like it’s still your fault, somehow, that little johnny is getting beaten. Even if you WERE little johnny at that age, “male privilege” makes it feel like that just by existing and contributing to society you’re necessarily fueling what makes it happen even if you’re a perfectly nice person.
Again, we can argue all day whether “privilege” is an apt term, or whether or not it truly is the impetus behind this or that social issue, I just think the branding makes a lot guys raise their eyebrows – and then going around and conceding “oh, but of course YOU’RE hurt by it too” starts to read a lot more like “stop hitting yourself” more than the intended “no, really, society has a harmful underpinning and I care about you too.”
Edit: I don’t think this helps either:
Again, think isn’t what is meant by the rhetoric, but a lot of guys end up parsing this as “women participate in this harmful treatment of men too. But we’re still calling it male privilege because it’s your own damn fault.”
No, he’s not providing an example of privilege at all. You said it yourself, privilege is the idea that there are advantages inherent to being a part of certain groups within society. Disagreeing with the concept of privilege or being ignorant of privilege is not an example of having an advantage based on membership in a specific group. Unless you’re really stretching the definition of advantage.
Also, as Der Trihs has pointed out, there are valid criticisms of male privilege paradigm. Male privilege includes being more likely to be incarcerated, murdered, assaulted, addicted to drugs or alcohol, commit suicide, homeless and less likely to graduate from high school or college.
If we have to point fingers, I think it’s more correct to blame society and culture for sexism (and racism), rather than getting bogged down in blaming one sex or the other. Bias and discrimination against one particular gender is very often perpetrated by members of the same gender as well as the opposite.
It’s a societal issue, because we are exist in an environment that trains us to think a certain way.
It sends the signal that a woman’s looks are of utmost importance to you. Her actual achievements come secondary, if at all. And this is what I’m saying is a problem when amplified to a large scale.
