I think you’re being too generous here. Pretty much any thread astro starts that’s related to women at all – and he’s started a lot – boils down to “Women sure are dumb, aren’t they?”, “Women sure are slutty, aren’t they?”, or “Women sure are a bunch of dumb sluts, aren’t they?”
Soon after my boyfriend of over a year and I started dating, he said, “It’s sometimes hard to know how to be a man with you.” It was a little hard to hear, but I get it. His dad takes his mom’s car to fill it up with gas so that she never has to. My dad wouldn’t let me take the family car if I didn’t know how to change the tire. I’m an engineer who supervises construction sites at times. I get it.
My boyfriend probably wouldn’t call himself a feminist if asked, because people have such strong opinions about what that means. But the things he does in terms of traditional gender roles reflect that he is looking at me as a person, not just some alien mass of femininity. When a super creepy guy tried to get me into his murder van and we came across him later, my SO let me decide how to handle it instead of going on a macho rampage. He opens jars when I bat my eyelashes comically and say, “I need a man.” We do a martial art together. He throws me around as much as anybody when on the mat. But off the mat, if he steps on my toe, he seems to worry that he might have crippled me forever.
I had to adapt, too. When I am carrying four bags and his hands are empty, I let him have a couple. Not because I can’t carry them all, but because sharing my burden doesn’t mean I’m weak - it means we are a team. I go to him for advice, not because he is a man and therefore knows better than me, but because he has a different perspective that informs my decision. I let him take me out for Valentine’s Day instead of saying it’s a made up holiday.
When I was young, an older guy was telling me that men should open doors for women on dates. I harrumphed and asked, “But when there are two sets of doors, I get to the second one before him. What am I supposed to do about that?” He said, “You adjust your pace.” It has stuck with me for years, and I try to have that attitude in more things as I get older. Small gestures matter, and adjusting yourself to allow for the give and take of small gestures matters even more in a relationship.
To the original question, I wouldn’t respect anybody who thinks that feminism means he can let a door slam in my face. But I wouldn’t respect anybody who lets that happen, regardless.
I have to ask, do these “feminist” men still turn into blubbering idiots when they see a woman flashing alot of cleavage or otherwise, showing off alot of skin? Are they even turned on by big boobs or does that part of man-think go away?
So if I’m walking ahead of a guy and I hold the door for him and he isn’t offended, you think that means somehow he loses his libido? How does that work, exactly?
Duh, he turns girly and… stuff.
Imagine what it’s like to be a woman using a wheelchair, re doors being held open for them. Gahh, I can’t even. If it is as prevalent as it is for young, athletic** men** using wheelchairs, it’s got to be absolutely non-stop with women using them.
While men are overwhelmingly usually the ones who respond in the overtly negative manner (being offended, behaving condescendingly, etc.) the only person I’ve ever had actually refuse point blank to go thru a door I was politely holding open for them was a woman. She had to be the one holding it for me and she wasn’t going to budge until I relinquished my hold on that door and let her do it. I just shook my head and said “okie dokie” and turned and went thru the door. /anecdote
I hope you ran over her toes.
I posted a question quoted below that if someone claimed to have absolutely no gender bias and operationally and consistently behaved that way, treating female SO’s in relationships as pure equals with no gendered based deference given, could that person justifiably claim to be a feminist based on existing definitions of the term and how would he be perceived? I did not ask if that kind of behavior was morally right or wrong only if was it enough to meet that definitional standard.
There were a lot of different and thoughtful answers on what it means to be a feminist in that context and in general the consensus was that someone just being actively non-gender deferential, almost to a fault, was not enough in and of itself to meet that definitional standard.
The article referenced in the OP addressed the question on one level of “What is feminism?” per the header quote below. It made me wonder on a tangential basis if non or anti-sexist behavior would be enough for a man to be to be considered a feminist and so the OP was asked. I’m not sure how you dragged “dumb and slutty” out of the OP quoted below.
I’d consider this to be one of your “Women sure are dumb” threads, for basically the same reasons that Spice Weasel considered it an attempt at a “gotcha” about feminism. It’s not a “dumb and slutty” one at present, although given enough time it would probably get there.
I note that this thread currently happens to be just below one you started about high school students working as strippers, a juxtaposition that nicely encapsulates your posting history with regard to women.
So what you’re saying is, you turn into a blubbering idiot when you see cleavage?
I consider myself to be a feminist and frankly yes, I sometimes do. Some things just bypass all rational function and light up the underlying monkey brain.
Which doesn’t mean I can’t make a conscious effort to not stare at the person’s chest, to carry out a civil conversation, and to treat the woman in question as an adult and an equal, but we all have our base selves lurking in the background. The trick is keeping them back there.
I like Fearless Girl, what she is and how she was created, and I think it’s a great piece. The pose is not fearless. It’s acknowledging fear and facing your adversary anyway, because you can. We women were all that little girl once, were we not? The world can be scary at any age. There is nothing “infantile” about planting your feet and standing tall, so I disagree with the author of the article on that point and several others.
We can and often do disagree with one another, but we can’t kick each other out of feminism. It can’t be done to your hypothetical guy either, if he has good intentions and he wants to be there.
And the totality of that question addressed (specifically) the ability and limits of a public school’s institutional power to force a high school student to comply if the 18 year old student was doing something they did not like, or was possibly embarrassing to the school and upsetting parents, but was fully legal on their own time.
The answer was (generally) that there were no limits (by a public school) on the agency of an 18 year old to pursue whatever legal jobs they wanted.
While I am a big fan of exposed female skin, my brain continues to work even around women who are strolling around naked or mostly naked. This is a learned behavior exacerbated by living a life that doesn’t involve seeing much skin, it’s not something inherent to being male. If this was really a ‘man’ characteristic and not learned behavior, hunter gatherer and tribal societies where the women don’t wear tops would not function, nude beaches would only be able to hire female lifeguards, and porn would only be directed by women. Also, not all men are turned on by big boobs, that’s another behavior that’s mostly learned. If you look at what was considered sexy historically and even across societies now, the ideal breast size varies a lot.
Wow, are you clueless on men’s brains.
Let’s say a guy drops something, you being the helpful person, bend over to pick it up for him and he gets a good look down the front of your shirt at your beautiful and ample busoms. When you stand up he stutters slightly and says thank you, or maybe… thank you!
What the hell has that got to do with anything? I don’t presume to speak for all women on this, but I don’t normally flash my tits when holding doors.
Right, but instead of asking about a kid working at a head shop or an abortion clinic, you used as your hypothetical a situation likely to inspire a guilty dick-twitch. This is a pattern.
What?
You want to know if a man who lets a woman hold a door for him “even likes to look at tits anymore”. What the fuck does that have to do with catching a glimpse of someone’s breasts when they bend over? Are you saying that men mostly hold doors for women so they can look down their shirts as they pass, and that men who let women open doors must be perversly willing to forgo the opportunity?
ISTM that the gist of the OP is “be careful what you wish for.” For an opposite example, some men may like to be in control, and have the woman defer to them - yet would be very annoyed if they asked their wife/girlfriend, “So, any particular restaurant you’d prefer tonight?” and she deferred-deflected, “It’s all fine/every choice is equally acceptable/no preference,” etc. They’d prefer that she actually have an opinion (i.e., Outback, Ruth’s Chris, Applebee’s etc.)
So some women may want a man who is feminist, but not like the downsides that come that. You have to take the good and bad with everything.
Mithril, that was a beautiful description of your relationship.
Gosh, thanks. I’m getting all blushy over here.
Feminist men have libidos like any other man. They may have a similar physiological response as a misogynist would to sexual stimuli, but they will behave in a respectful manner, because they view women as equals.
Right. That is probably the OP’s point, and it is a stupid point.
I have yet to encounter a single ‘‘downside’’ of marrying a feminist man. I adore him and he adores me and that has not changed in 15 years. I don’t think most non-feminist men really grasp how good it can be in such a relationship. These feminist men so reviled by misogynists are the ones getting all the steaks and blowjobs while their own relationships are falling apart and they will never understand why. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that anything resembling chivalry must die alongside misogyny. I would have a million doors slammed in my face if it would have meant not being blamed and ostracized by my family for my own sexual abuse. I would open a thousand jars to have not gone through the unimaginable pain of that experience. It’s not even in the same ballpark of relevancy. This idea that women should be willing to make these insignificant sacrifices in exchange for our basic safety is condescending as hell, and indicates a fundamental misunderstanding about why feminism exists in the first place.
Protip for the gentlemen: We definitely don’t want that.
These threads aren’t a glimpse into the way feminists think; they are a glimpse into the way non-feminists think. People who think there actually is a trade off, that people can’t be courteous if they aren’t sexist. Apparently that men can’t have libidos if they aren’t sexist, either.
It’s always the same names, too, popping up over and over. As if the board had sexist psoriasis.