It’s a religion, actually. Similar to others you may know, there’s Holy Communion, but the “This Is My Body” bit is . . . nonmetaphorical.
We’re in ATMB here. The general discussion is about sexism and how it pertains to the rules of this board (and that was the case even before the thread was moved to ATMB, which happened just before your first post).
No, the OP is Czarcasm. You responded to ladyfoxfyre, and as I said, you were discussing a third poster and compared apples to oranges.
I absolutely guarantee you that you haven’t thought about the topic quite as much as women have.
Um, ok, so what?
I think that there is sort of specific examples.
If I say “I went on a date last night, I should have known better. I was set up by a friend and he turned out to be such a beta male” that is one thing.
Likewise, if a guy says “I went on a date last night, I should have known better. I was set up by a friend and she was such a golddigger.”
Yeah. Those are descriptive words for the person you were with. They aren’t flattering words, but they are illustrative to the story and not directed at any specific poster.
If I say “why are all guys such fucking beta males” or a guy says “all women are shallow golddiggers” - that’s sexism.
If I’m in a thread and I say “well, Malthus, that’s because you are such a beta male” it depends on the nature of the previous conversation. Likewise, if you say “Dangerosa, we all know you are a golddigger.” If this is friendly banter, cool. If this is an accusation, then we are getting into a sexist insult and while one MIGHT be ok in context, repeated behavior of that type outside of the pit should indicate we aren’t dealing with someone with respectful attitudes about the opposite sex.
And some adult communication has to happen here. “Malthus, I didn’t appreciate being called a golddigger.” “Oh, I’m sorry, I was joking, but I see why you didn’t think it was funny” and then backing the hell off. But continuing to make the same mistake over and over, or defensively saying I need to grow a thicker skin - that’s being a jerk.
No, you said, “…and presumably gives very little thought to the kinds of matters brought up in them.” I said nothing about how much thought I’ve given to these matters. You are simply mistaken here.
If you wish to continue to argue that I don’t have any standing to interpret the offensiveness of a joke, that’s on you, but it’s beside any point I was making.
You have a point here. I’m not the only person who has interpreted those statements as jokes. In fact, I find it difficult to interpret those statements as sincere. However, I have already been surprised in my reading of the pit threads where a poster has made what I thought was a pretty sarcastic joke that they, in later posts, stood by quite sincerely. I may indeed be mistaken about each of those statements in this thread that I referred to as jokes.
In one of the other threads, there were numerous posts addressing humor (including links to comedians telling jokes), and those posts had me thinking along the lines of my first post in this thread. FWIW
Whether I am mistaken about the statements in this thread or not, my argument is weakened because my examples failed to mean to you what they do to me.
Which kinda makes my point for me, again, albeit in the way that one seems destined to make pselling errors when pointing out spelling errors (that, in this case, may or may not have been errors after all).
Right. This is as good an example as any. I oppose any further attempts to tighten up the rules with the goal of curbing misogyny. GD uses rough language: those who want to participate in more civil conversation should try another forum. Same for those who want to participate in less civil conversation. I get a vote too.
I support existing efforts to curb jerkishness and trolling. Including ones featured here and the jerkery contained therein, some but not most or all of it misogynistically colored jerkery.
Furthermore… I really don’t want to read through more of the MOL thread than I have already (well under 20%). Too much of the male behavior there makes me cringe. If that crap becomes typical… I-yi-yi.
Indeed. Knowing the posting history of the people making the “jokes” well enough to understand that the opinions they express are sincere is also a pretty important part of interpretation that I think you miss out on when you haven’t made a habit of reading these types of threads.
Yup, agree with all of that. Well put.
Sorry, that is a genuine example of sexism.
Certainly, since women in society as a group have less social power than men and have suffered discrimination and prejudice moreso, on average, then men, especially in regard to their lack of power; then it stands to reason that women would be moreso, on average, to be much more sensitive to acts of sexism.
But then to generalize that a particular man is automatically less sensitive than any women? That is the fallacy of overgeneralization, which is the heart of both prejudice and then the discrimination that often follows (such as dismissing the person’s ability to address issues of sexism because they’re a man).
And this gets to the heart of this thread: Anytime anyone makes a point that a person or a group of people don’t understand, or takes a position, or is contemptible precisely because they are male or female is sexism. (Of course, biological differences notwithstanding, men can’t know what it’s like to give birth.)
Thus ‘slut’ is sexist because it implies a characteristic of a woman, while ‘sex-addicted’ isn’t. And ‘alpha-male’ is sexist because it implies that the person is acting based on male biological directives outside his control, while ‘status-seeker’ isn’t sexist. Insults or arguments where ‘slut’ and ‘alpha-male’ are directed at one’s opponents are the fallacies of ad hominem where their position is argued against because there is something female-ish or male-ish about them which makes the person or their argument dismissible. While it would still be ad hominem to call someone ‘sex-addicted’ or ‘status seeker’, it becomes a particular form of ad hominem, i.e. sexism, if you use ‘slut’ or ‘alpha-male.’
Shit–logic bomb makes muh head asplode!
IOW: nicely done.
Thank you, moriah. If I might add, what is worse than “You don’t understand/know/do it because you are a male/female”(a presumption) is “You can’t understand/know/do it because you are a male/female”(a condemnation).
Comparing the sexism women routinely face to any bigotry men face is absolutely ridiculous.
And the frustrating back and forth in these threads shows clearly that many men don’t seem to be able to grasp what the women are talking about, even though the same points are being stated over and over and over again.
I’d like to see a convention — not an enforced rule — that across-the-board sweeping statements that men and women are intrinsically different from each other {in this way or that way} do not fly here, or require extraordinary backing and elaboration and can’t just be tossed out there as if they were self-evident.
Why?
Men and women are not the same…so what?
Sorry, but I cannot count how many times I have seen, not just here but all over the place, a man quite resolutely state how much of a feminist, how much of an ally, how much of a supporter of women’s rights he is… and then immediately follow it up with some awful thing that Rune could have written. Ugh.
This is certainly not to say that men cannot through deliberate effort educate themselves on these issues. Many can and many do. However, a man who indignantly wonders why women’s complaints about some sexist behavior get any attention when he knows lots of stuff about sexism and those comments seem just fine to him and no of course he hasn’t actually read those threads, did you see how long they are?
Yeah, he never turns out to be one of the good ones.
Not at all. “Beta-male” is like calling him a “weenie” or a “schmuck”. Equivalent might be something like “ditz” or “blond” when used as a synonym for ditz. To get up to “slut” and “whore” level, you have to call a man a “cocksucker”.
Furthermore, there’s a distinction between saying “that woman is such a whore” and saying “women are such whores”. Just like there’s a distinction between saying “Why am I always hit on by cocksuckers?” rather than “Men are all cocksuckers”.
A lot of those “jokes” are being made precisely to be annoying because they are misogynist. Although I will say there were some of those comments made as jokes that seemed to be intended as ironic humor, an example of the attitude in question, others were being thrown just as digs at the posters, mostly female, who were reading.
Drunky Smurf and Shodan were particularly egregious in that thread. They weren’t posting those comments to highlight the attitude in question and condemn it, they were making those comments to be deliberately rude. Sure, it was the Pit, but I personally found their behavior to be atrocious.
Again, genuinely sexist notions.
You assume that just because some men don’t get it that means all men also don’t get it. Fallacy and sexist.
And just because not all forms of bigotry are exactly the same doesn’t mean there isn’t something that’s common to them in which anyone can sympathize and empathize. But, when you think that all men never have had an experience of bigotry or prejudice or discrimination… I can see how you might have come to that erroneous conclusion.
While you may think men have not had experience of bigotry precisely because they are male, they have indeed had experience of social expectations placed on them precisely because they are male, which can then lead to bigotry when they don’t conform.
Consider these social stereotypical expectations: Boys can’t cry. Boys must be strong and tough. Boys must be better than girls. And what happens when they fail to live up to these standards? They are feminized (which shouldn’t be considered an insult, but is used as such) and bullied and ostracized and relegated to a lower social class. So, men do experience bigotry based on the sex with real consequences when they fail to live up to those gender-based stereotypes. Maybe not in the same way as women do, but it can’t be discounted.
Also, it can’t be discounted that there are men who experience bigotry and prejudice and discrimination for non-gender based reasons: they are racial minorities, they are gay, they are disabled, etc… They have experienced real consequences of bigotry. So, are you saying they couldn’t possible have enough empathy to know the bigotry women experience for being women?
Also, there are men who love their mothers and sisters and daughters and wives very much. Are you saying they can’t feel the pain of their loved one’s experiences of bigotry and have the awareness and drive to eradicate sexism?
So, no, I don’t buy into this “You can’t feel my pain!” nonsense. Yeah, I’m not you. But we’re both human. And any sort of “you can’t understand” business is a denial of our common humanity.
Nobody here said that they can’t understand. I am hardly compelled to accept, solely on their solemn word, the authority of the ones who vociferously insist that they do, however.
It really is like Geddy sang: “Show, Don’t Tell.”