I disagree. I don’t think the act of copulation qualifies as “work”, and I meant “work” when I said it. Once dad drops off the sperm, his “work” is done if he wants it to be. Not hers.
Totally agreed, and I never meant to imply otherwise. Similarly, war is not just something that men do to men for their own mysterious manly reasons.
We’re all in this together.
Cat Fight, of course I’m aware of gender disparities in education around the world. That doesn’t meant the OP’s statement is true.
Stoid, you ask based on what do I dispute your claim. I dispute it based on your lack of supporting evidence. You make sweeping generalizations coupled with irrelevant factoids (yes, men may be done with reproduction after the act of copulation–but rarely are). You ignore the overwhelming number of the victims of war who are male (or you try to brush taht off by suggesting that, since other males are killing them, their suffering somehow doesn’t count).
Basically, you haven’t proven your case. Make a slightly less grandiose case, and I’ll probably agree with it. But the one you’re trying to make just isn’t proven.
Daniel
Well, not always, and usually not for mysterious reasons, but most wars in history have been decided on by men and men who were forced to fight were forced by other men. There have been exceptions, but women have rarely been in any position to “do” war to men nor have we often had the power to prevent it.
To consider fairly recent American history, I don’t know how my great-grandmother felt about WWI. Maybe she was one of the women who handed out white feathers (for “cowards”) to men who didn’t serve. Maybe, like Helen Keller and Jane Adams, she vocally opposed the war. More likely she did neither, but whatever her opinions on the subject might have been, she couldn’t have expressed them through voting. She did not have that right at that time.
It’s the same through most of history in many times and many places. The women of Sparta enjoyed much greater freedom and better education than most women of the ancient world, and as you mentioned before they were hardly pacifists. But even Spartan women were not considered citizens, and they could not vote. (Many men in Sparta were not citizens either, but NO women were.) Sparta could go to war regardless of how women felt about it. If, rather than saying “Come back with your shield or on it”, the women of Sparta had all held hands and sang “Give peace a chance!” it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Now, I want to be clear that I don’t think that, given equal rights, Spartan women (or any other women) would have been “better” than men. Given their culture I doubt very much that Spartan women would have pushed for peace even if they’d been full citizens. My point is that, like most of the women who have ever lived and many who are alive today, they never even had the opportunity.
I guess some might say not being able to vote is a small price to pay for avoiding the danger of being pressed into military service yourself, but on the other hand history has shown us that many people have felt quite the opposite: that it is better to “live free or die”.
I think that it’s about time we had a thread like this. So many of the female posters on this board are content with sniping the opposite sex in other threads(I’m not even tuned into watching for it and I could name the 5-10 core posters that just radiate bitterness and contempt for men), that it’s nice to see it out in the open for once.
White guilt, male guilt I’m just torn up inside!
History has shown us that for most of history men as a class didn’t have the vote, but they’ve still been at liberty to help themselves to the horrible death of their choice. Universal female suffrage lagged universal male suffrage by an eyeblink.
AIUI the argument is currently founded along the lines of showing that the evil that men do to women is worse than the evil that women do to men, and * therefore* woman is the nigger of the world. I’m not quite following the chain of logic here, but I must admit it does make it convenient when you want to ignore trivia like the 19000+ British fatalities on the first day alone of the Battle of the Somme, which might put the goings-on in the Congo into some sort of perspective; and it also means you don’t have to harp on all that men do for the common good.
So what? We’re not talking about who inflicts more violence. If you want to say, “Man is the Killer of the world,” you’ll have a much more defensible position (although it’d still need some tweaking). But we’re not talking about who inflicts the most violence; we’re talking about who suffers the most. A man does not suffer from a male-inflicted gunshot any less by virtue of his shared sex with the killer.
Daniel
So, can I hire an army of women to do plumbing, or work in a coal mine or whatever?
Then I’ll pay them 90 percent of what men get. They will still make more than what all the other male oppressors are paying them, I get to pocket most of the rest, and business will be booming because I am the cheapest game in town.
Its a win win win!
Well, I guess I’m confused as to what you’re talking about, because the quote from you that I was replying to said “Similarly, war is not just something that men do to men for their own mysterious manly reasons.” That particular sentence certainly struck me as being about who declares war/commits acts of war, not who suffers the most from war, and what’s more I don’t think it’s true. For the most part war IS something that men do to other men. Women rulers have declared war and women warriors have fought in wars, but there haven’t ever been very many of either.
I agree that this is something of a hijack of the original topic, but you’re the one who brought it up.
I hate having to retrace thread history, but I think it’s necessary here.
People have posited that women suffer more than men.
War was brought up as a counterexample.
People argued that war didn’t count, presumably since men were the ones inflicting the suffering.
I’m saying it’s irrelevant who’s inflicting the suffering.
As for the point about whether war is something men do to men for mysterious manly reasons, of course it’s only true to the extent that FGM is something women do to women for mysterious manly reasons. Plenty of men have supported FGM and persuaded their spouses to continue the practice. Plenty of women have supported militarism and persuaded their spouses to continue the practice.
But again, it’s all an irrelevancy: if I suffer, the sex of the person inflicting the suffering is generally irrelevant to the extent of my suffering. As long as men are the overwhelming casualties of war, and as long as war is such a pervasive aspect of the human experience, it’s difficult to convince me that women experience the vast majority of human suffering–and even if you could convince me of that, you’d have trouble convincing me that such a point is relevant.
Daniel
That’s just not true, at least in the western world.
That’s simply incorrect.
That’s just not true, at least in the western world.
That’s true. The title of the thread probably should have been “Women are the niggers of the THIRD world,” in which case I think you would have a point.
People in much of the third world need to accept the superiority of western culture.
My opinion only.
It is my admittedly limited understanding that a man doesn’t need to persuade his wife to continue the practice of FGM. In cultures that engage in this practice, a man would typically have the authority to make such decisions for his daughters without needing his wife’s consent. If the wife felt strongly one way or the other then she might be able to persuade her husband to change his mind, but as head of household it would ultimately be his decision to make. This was certainly the case with my Kenyan classmate.
FWIW, I am not convinced it’s possible to say that one group or even one individual has suffered more than another. How do you quantify suffering? But as I said in my first post in this thread, if the question is which sex on average has had more power and freedom then I don’t think there’s much room for debate.
It’s possible to think of many situations where a particular woman or class of women would have more power and freedom than a particular man or class of men (e.g. daughter of the plantation owner vs. male sharecropper or field slave). But both historically and in many cultures today almost any man would have more power and freedom than his closest female counterpart.
I do not believe in resolution by war. But if there are to be armies, then women must be allowed to volunteer for any job that they are capable of doing. That includes combat. It is men who make the decision to go to war and men who make the decision to keep women from participating in combat. In overwhelming numbers, it is men who volunteer to go to war and men who give there lives.
It is grieving mothers and wives who survive them. Too often the widows have children to raise on their own. They too are casualties of war.
Suffering is not done in groups. It is experienced by individuals. But try to imagine a daily life in which people of your gender are talked about as if they were slabs of meat.
Imagine going to buy a car and knowing exactly what you want and you can’t get the salesman to talk to you. He will only talk to your spouse who knows nothing about the car you want.
Imagine going to a media store and buying a TV. The salesman goes to look up your account and looks you right in your very masculine eye and asks you if you are “Alice.” How would that make you feel?
Why can’t stores and salesmen recognize me as a human being with my own name and my own thoughts and my own bank account and choices to make? I am not my husband! Would you want someone to treat you as if you were only found in the universe somewhere under your wife’s name?
You haven’t died for your country yet. I have endured humiliation thousands of times.
Meanwhile, the women will continue to clear the table where the men eat and wash and dry their dishes while the men sit and talk.
I think people’s expectations of retail floor sales people are often quite interesting. There’s no excuse for rudeness, but if a male - female couple presents themselves as a purchasing team a salesperson has to decide to to approach the situation. The last thing they want to do is piss the customer off unnecessarily, and if 90% of the time in the salesperson’s experience a man is leading/controlling/advising the purchase of particular (in this case technical) item it’s only human nature to tend to engage the primary expected decision maker in initiating the qualification of needs.
In residential real estate sales quite often the male half of the purchasing team is virtually ignored after introductions while the (usually female) salesperson concentrates primarily on the female partner’s decision making wants and needs. If a couple walks into a wedding planners office or boutique how much attention do you think the salesperson is usually going to pay to the man vs the woman, even though he may have definite opinions about how the wedding should be conducted. Is he being oppressed and dehumanized by the salesperson focusing on his fiancee?
A particular sales process may be flawed, but (in most cases) it’s all about selling the product as effectively as possible, and you don’t do this by aggravating people. If you want to moan that this is some sort of objectification you are quite correct, but it’s objectification based on the experience of the salesperson as to how the transaction will proceed (and has proceeded in the past) most efficiently, not some desire to oppress your self worth as a human being.
If I walk into a sales scenario (especially one where sales people are part time and/or not particualry well paid or educated) where the decision maker is usually not my gender I feel that I have some degree of responsibility to state clearly what my sales objectives are to the sales person. waiting for them to be sensitive and astute enough to code switch, and pick up on the fact this sales scenario is in the 5-10% that are potentially different or I’m going to feel dehumanized is a passive-aggressive setup.
The West is just one step ahead of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is a pretty bad place to be a woman.
I have lived in a culture that much resembles the 1950s. Although people may talk about equal rights, everyone will admit that women are weaker and less intelligent than men. Jobs for women are listed separately and are openly less lucrative than jobs for men. Subjects like “Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?” are considered routine at job interviews. Female students are advised not to enter fields where they might make more than their potential husbands. They are strongly encouraged to enter the lowest paying majors. Women are expected to wear constricting girdles and painful high heels, and are constantly bombarded with extreme beauty ideals. And in general they are treated as children. A giant teddy bear is considered a perfectly appropriate gift for a boss to give to a 30 year old professional woman. I know, because thats what I got for Christmas from mine.
I have lived in a culture that resembles some time earlier. Women have no choice in who they marry, and are often married before the age of 14 to older men. Their husbands often have several wives, and usually many other women on the side. Adultry is illegal for women, and legal for men as long as it does not take place in the marriage bed. Husbands usually will not permit their wives to have ID cards, so women cannot travel freely. But even if they could travel to escape, say, an abusive husband, their family would probably not take them back. Women are expected to scrounge up their own money to feed their children, but are not usually hired into salaried positions. They eat separately than men and are given inferior food. There is no word for “unmarried woman” in the local language- only “young girl”, “married woman”, “old woman” and “prostitute.” They cannot receive reproductive health care (including birth control) without their husband’s permission. They basically have no choice or control in their lives.
All around the world, women suffer the most poverty. They suffer the most infectious disease. They have the least amount of self-determination.
America is by far better than many places, but these things are still with us. They are part of our history, and their shadows still darken our culture.
I agree with this.
Zoe, your post is a sloppy appeal to emotion and a statement of “I Win Because Of My Experience.” I’m sorry, but that’s not worth responding to.
Daniel
I wouldn’t be ecstatic about it, but I would not decide that men are the “niggers” of America.
I would laugh at it. “Yes I’m ‘Alice.’ for the morning.”
Actually, I’m a father and it regularly happens that moms will call my house to set up activities between their children and my children. Almost all of the time, the caller will ask for my wife, on the implied assumption that I have no responsibility or authority for arranging my childrens’ schedule.
More often than not, such people don’t even know my name and don’t really care about it. They just refer to me as “Jenny’s dad” or whatever.
People just assume that arranging activities for children is within the mom’s sphere of influence and buying cars is within dad’s sphere of influence.
Later, if a menacing stranger appears at the door, who will confront that person? If there is heavy snow that night, who will fire up the snowblower and clear the driveway? (I bet most women have never mixed oil with gasoline as required for a 2-stroke engine.) If the woman’s car won’t start the next morning, who will dig out the cables and jump the car? etc. etc.
The point is that it’s not as though women do all the unpleasant tasks in life.
Perhaps if this sentiment were more widespread we could apply the term “civilized” more accurately to the pretentious small fraction of the human population that’s drowning in technology and “social values”.
ETA: it’s not just about the injustices to women, it’s to humans as a group.
I have posted this before. It is SO easy to interpret statistics in a manner which suits your point. I found this example to be an eye-opener.
Of course, we could now say men were being discriminated against but that does not favor our preconceived notion so it is not proposed. But when it is women who appear to be accepted in lower numbers then the first thing that comes to mind is “diccrimination”.