One of the pillars of feminism is that women are oppressed. Without it, you have to ask, what is feminism for?
No, the point is that women have historically been oppressed throughout much of human history by declaring them unworthy of (or incapable of) legal and social equality with men. And that remnants of these oppressive legal and social structures persist in varying degrees even today, even in developed societies where women have achieved formal legal equality.
The “pillar” or fundamental principle of feminism is that this traditional legal and social inequality should be rejected as oppressive (to women and men both, in different ways) because women are inherently worthy and capable of legal and social equality with men.
I have good news for you:
Study finds, surprisingly, that women are favored for jobs in STEM:
Boys are more likely to be labeled as “problems,” and to drop out of school:
Teachers give better grades to girls in elementary school, in every subject:
I’ll also note the first study you cited was based on “Twenty-two undergraduate education majors.” The second one, though widely distributed, doesn’t actually say what you think it says:
Basically, they took a statistically insignificant difference, and claimed it meant something.
The third one was based on a made-up resume sent to “over one hundred” potential employers. The fourth link was about the percentage of women who leave tech fields, vs men.
So ‘rape culture’ doesn’t oppress women? Or are you saying it doesn’t exist?
And that’s why men who seek equality before the law must be silenced by chanting, shaming language, false fire alarms and hoax bomb threats. Because it’s a feud and you aren’t done with it yet.
I do have a cutting on display, from my local paper’s ‘100 years ago today’ column, in which the opinion is expressed that women are not suited to government. People have always held strange opinions. 70 years ago, Germans considered Jews unworthy…but 70 years later, I have no interest in defending a feud against germans.
It would be helpful if you flagged up your alternative meaning of ‘equality’ when you use it (or choose a more appropriate word). There are no rights that men have that women don’t (and there haven’t been for a long time). But that’s not equality, because women have rights that men don’t.
But are you oppressed or aren’t you? Just now it was ‘history’, suddenly it’s still here. Are you able to state clearly what would constitute ‘equality for women’, so us chaps know when we can stop paying for the sins of our great-grandfathers and start asking politely for some equality of our own? I imagine even anti-feminists would get behind your campaigns if we thought there was a determined end-point. As it is, I see heavily invested feminists, with a financial interest in maintaining the ‘feud’, inventing ‘the male gaze’ and ‘manspreading’ and rape hoaxes and twitter traumas, in order to keep their lucrative war going (not so different from men after all…)
Ah, oppressive to both women and men…I see. So everyone was oppressed and that’s why feminism seeks equality for women. You should have said earlier (like the beginning of your post). Your ‘rejection’ is a stock call for revolution (with the stock revolutionists’ rallying cry of “It’s not fair!”). I find it odd, given the interest in inequality, that middle-class able-bodied feminists spend so little time protesting the punishing inequalities that have always oppressed the working classes and disabled people (inequalities wholeheartedly supported and enacted in the UK by female feminist politicians and peers …oh no, hang on, not ‘odd’, what’s the word? Predictable.
Are they? I don’t hold with the concept of original sin, but I don’t think anyone is inherently worthy, least of all because of the shape of their genitalia. History is full of distinctly unworthy women (and I can’t help feeling there’d be more if only we hadn’t been oppressing you).
Being treated equally by the law is not a matter of ability. I’m not sure what ‘social equality’ is, but I imagine it relates to how society treats women (careful, as previously noted there are always at least two ways to reach equality and most people would prefer one over the other by a considerable margin). Nevertheless, both relate to how women are treated, and their ‘capability’ is an irrelevance. Perhaps you’d like another try?
Doesn’t surprise me at all. Most STEM departments are still very disproportionately male due to heavily skewed gender ratios among older faculty, and many of them are actively working on achieving better gender balance. So when hiring new junior faculty, a female candidate is often perceived as more desirable than an equally qualified male one. The same holds true for candidates from ethnic minority groups underrepresented in STEM fields.
Similarly, male candidates are considered much more desirable than female ones for most elementary school teaching positions, since the existing teacher population skews so heavily female.
[QUOTE=LinusK;Teachers give better grades to girls in elementary school, [in every subject]
(New UGA research helps explain why girls do better in school - UGA Today):
[/quote]
But not just because they’re girls, but because they tend to have higher levels of the qualities that have traditionally been associated with being a “good student”:
In other words, girls tend to get better grades than boys because their behavior tends to conform better to how students are “supposed” to behave. Boys who also display that kind of conforming behavior actually get graded better than girls with equally good behavior and test scores.
:dubious: It’s a bit difficult to be sure what previous post of mine your rather minimalist quoted excerpt is referring to, but I think you were talking about this exchange with LinusK:
I should have stated more clearly that yes, I agree that men who are falsely accused of rape (like any innocent person falsely accused of any crime, for that matter) have a lot of pain. And no, I disagree that it should be considered acceptable not to spare somebody the pain of a false accusation merely because it might provide a beneficial learning experience for them in some other respects.
Innocent people who are falsely accused of crimes should not be made to suffer that experience “for their own good” or for any other reason.
Finally, “rape culture”, or the popular trivialization and normalization of rape as something that’s “no big deal” or is somehow the victim’s fault, does indeed exist, and oppresses both women and men. (So does the popular trivialization and normalization of violence committed by women against men, by the way.)
Are you unaware that men benefit from Affirmative Active now in college admissions? Yes, that’s right. So they have their champions, despite historically benefiting from centuries of advantage.
I shouldn’t be surprised that no one has yet pointed this out. This board has a massive blind spot when it comes to AA.
Wow, full irony straight out of the gate.
If an AA policy is designed to help the previously disadvantaged, this would not make sense.
If, as most colleges say, AA policies are for diversity and balance, to the benefit of all students, it does make sense.
But presumably you would defend opposition to persistent antisemitic bigotry and violence from rightwing groups in Germany nowadays?
Just because German antisemitism still hasn’t disappeared, and opponents of antisemitism continue to denounce German antisemitism, doesn’t mean that anybody’s engaged in “a feud against [G]ermans”.
Likewise, just because sexism still hasn’t disappeared and feminists continue to denounce sexism doesn’t mean that they’re engaged in any kind of “feud” against men.
But ability to sustain equality has to be recognized before legal equality will happen. For example, children are not treated equally with adults by the law because they are (rightly) not considered capable of being equally responsible citizens. Previously, women were not treated equally with men by the law because they were (wrongly) not considered capable of being equally responsible citizens.
What I said was “women are inherently worthy and capable of legal and social equality with men”.
I.e., on average and as a group, women are deserving of and able to sustain legal and social equality with men, on average and as a group.
If you genuinely don’t understand that in the context of the history of women’s rights in general, such a statement doesn’t mean the same thing as asserting the personal worth and capability of every individual woman everywhere, I’m afraid I’m not likely to have the time to provide you with the full amount of detailed literal exegesis that you’re evidently going to need in this conversation.
AA serves all of these purposes. And in case it’s not clear, I have no problems with this practice. If half the pop is male, we should want college campuses to reflect this. Even if standards for “merit” (gasp!) have to be adjusted for them. Who wants a society that has a huge undereducated, economically marginalized underclass? Not me.
The question, though, is why do so many young white males persist in thinking they–and they alone–do not benefit from diversity hiring/admissions? Does seeing the value in admitting less academically-competitive males make it harder for white men to condemn AA for blacks and others? I would think so. That could be uncomfortable.
Might it even force them to reassess their assumptions of inferiority and the standards we use to measure merit? Yup, this too. No one really believes women are smarter than men, and yet we do see women kicking more ass in school. How do we explain this? Is it possible grades and test scores aren’t the end-all be-all they have been cracked up to be?
Can white males continue to push for a “return to” meritocracy, when doing so might result in them being relegated to the bottom of the economic hierarchy? No doubt this is an interesting question. The court cases we saw decades ago challenging AA on race, we very well might see directed at men. What will be the response then I wonder?
Still waiting to hear why we are defunding having sex with people so incapacitated that they don’t understand what is going on.
Because we decided it would be wrong to go on paying for it?
(emphasis added)
(snerk) 
The most pressing problem facing the US - as far as equality goes - is the maldistribution of wealth and income.
Over the last several years, the US has gone from about 10% unemployment to 5%. It’s not a mystery how it happened: it’s the result of simple policy choices on the part of government.
The wealth of a country is determined by the number of people working times the average productivity per worker. The US is pretty good about increasing productivity. We’re not so good at maximizing employment.
The policies that got us to 5% unemployment should be continued. Not only to increase the wealth of the nation as a whole, but to force companies to begin to compete for workers: in other words, to force them to pay more to get and keep good employees. Once that happens, we’ll finally begin to see an increase in real wages, and a narrowing of the gap between the very rich, and the rest of us.
On a side note, the tribalization of politics is counterproductive in the long run.
It’s safe to assume that women will “continue to have equal access to a political voice, medicine, education, and the right to work.” They have it now, and there’s no reason to think it’s going to change.
What’s more problematic is the effects of feminism on the coming generations.
To be sure that I’ve understood you correctly, the best path forward to ensure equality for men and women is for there to be an increase in real wages. I suppose in general terms society as a whole does benefit when this happens. I am not certain how this addresses the creation of a different social movement to replace “feminism”, which you consider unhealthy.
Somewhere the apocalypse has started, because we agree on this.
And, back to disagreement. As with other less privileged groups, there is every reason to believe that recently gathered privileges will disappear. Many are under attack even now (women’s health care for example). Many are still incomplete. As another example, in my lifetime, women finally became senators. We are not represented in Congress in anything close to actual, population-based numbers. I would argue our political voice is incomplete.
Remarks like this are what have driven me to ask you what a better movement would look like. What replaces “Feminism” in a way that works for true gender equality without “harming” anyone? I, myself, see only positive results coming from the last several generations of work from Feminists. You clearly feel differently. Your answer was an economic one, which I find interesting, but incomplete. I also fail to see the harm that has been perpetrated by Feminists. Any more than I see the harm that has been perpetrated by Civil Rights activists. A more complete society doesn’t “hurt” you or your children. It benefits you.
So does Linus believe the tribalization of politics are bad for everyone when buying the idea that the womens are to blame for all his problems and not ignorant white men persistently voting against their own interests for thirty-plus years?
See post #52. Is that based on a perverted definition of “equality”?
Or, perhaps you meant that this way.
When you stop counting 10s of millions of unemployed as unemployed the rate magically drops.