Feminism vs. Equality

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It is different now.

I have lived during times of change, for example when I was little my mom didn't work, but then when my other brothers were little both of my parents worked. I went through the change of values. I remember how things were before the change and I can see them now. Even the thing between loving fathers and their daughters has changed, but I cannot explain exactly how.

Okay, I skimmed the first page and probably missed a shoot-load of stuff, but from what I saw it seems that...

A) A bunch of people are debating what a "feminism is" as if it's some free-floating, Platonic ideal form. There's a trillion different forms of it, each born out of different movements, struggles, historical idiosyncracies, and understandings of what "Gender equality" means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_m ... ideologies

B) Some other people are arguing that since "Men [the Median Man] and Women [the Median Woman] are different, that must mean it's 100% biological, and since it's biological that means equality is stupid!" No, aside from being a particularly vulgar way of deriving an "ought" from an "is", legal, social, and economic equality very rarely is synonymous with "sameness".

Okay, lets ...

1) Ask who decides what "woman-ness" is and what distinguishes it from "man-ness" and...
2) How this statement would be different if you replaced "women" and "men" with "blacks" and "whites" in reference to racial equality?

A white man and a black man are physiologically and psychologically capable of being equal. Generally speaking, of course.

A white woman and a black woman? Read above.

A white man and a white woman? One gets pregnant and has milk stored in her breasts to breastfeed her baby. The other doesn't.

A black man and a black woman? Read above.

I'm aware that feminism ranges from reasonable to like totally radical dude. And who are you referring to with B)?

What if it's because your parents grew in knowledge as parents and developed better parenting values with every child?

My mom, when she was raising me and my two brothers, was quite different as a parent from when she was raising our youngest sister, and now she's changed quite a lot as a parent now that we've all grown up. But the change in this case had nothing to do with whether she (or our father) had a change in their working habits or something. My dad was always the out-of-home worker (even though he's been consistently a f*****g narcissist).

But then again, I most probably understood you wrong on this.

I always wondered what "Princess" and "Knights' in Shining Armor" fairy tales would be like if a committe of Jacobins decided to revise them.

With B I'm referring to the fact that "female traits" tend to be statistical medians based on aggregated data. So, a lot (MOST?, MANY?, ALMOST ALL?) women may have more white matter than gray matter or may navigate based on landmarks rather than abstract spatial directions, but there will always be outliers. I, for example, have the "feminine" traits of navigating based on land marks (and having a poor sense of direction) and having much better verbal reasoning skills than spatial skills (although my verbal reasoning is still very "local" rather than "holistic", which is a Median Male trait).

In many ways, people run the risk of missing the important variants and subsets if they define the "essential woman" based on statistical aggregates - for example, the "essential woman" could be better at verbal reasoning and uses landmarks to navigate, while the "subset" of "women who have higher verbal reasoning skills" may (parodoxically) be those who don't use landmarks to navigate but rather have a strong sense of abstract direction while women who navigate based on landmarks have poorer verbal reasoning (okay, this is just a far out, made up example, but it's meant to illustrate the point that aggregated data can be misleading).

And there's even quite a bit of *radical* difference between the radical schools of feminism. Remember the Feminist Sex Wars?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_Sex_Wars

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 26 Mar 2011, 12:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Okay, I was going to post some snarky comment about ability to withstand the African sun for a duration of time without you're skin burning, but I see you meant "generally" as in "things that matter" and that point really would be splitting hairs.

But I don't really see what you can derive from that difference. Perhaps more woman would experience a longer time on parental leave immediately after the birth to recover from the birthing and to breastfeed (however, even this can be reduced with the usage of bottles). But that only gives you a snapshot of the difference between the "essential man" and "essential woman" for a short period of time, as in the long run theoretically any of them could be the primary or even sole parent.

For the last point, just look at the rise in single dads over the past decade or the rise of stay at home dads, functions once considered "essentially female".

And let's look at other gender differences. In Europe, women tend to be more conservative then men. In the United States *UNTIL THE 1970s* women were more conservativve then men as well. Yet that trend reversed and now women are a core constitutency, one of the major reasons why Democratic Presidents get elected. How did that change? Did the "essential woman" radically change in North America or was the effect cultural?

The point I'm trying to make is that it's fool-hardy to try to pigeonhole certain instances of gender inequities as the result of gender differences on the basis of some physiological distinctions without further argument.

I really find it funny how Amero-Cons are reversing their rhetoric on feminism as of late. For the longest time they scared a large segment of the white male population and segments of the female population by using the misandristic, radical feminist boogeywoman. But when neoconservatives started their "culture clash", Arab hating rhetoric, it became clear that using feminist principles to denounce Islamic theocracies could expand the mandate for their Muslim nation-bombing and make up for the loss of "little America" isolationist paleocons (NOTE: some Arab-fearing conservatives are even hijacking the LGBT rights rhetoric to stir certain segments of the gay community into supporting neoconservative policies). So now we have the current Amero-Con coalition, deeply schizophrenic about the status of feminism and gender equity (Sarah Palin once self-described herself as a "feminist", if I'm not mistaken - but then flip-flopped).

I suppose neo-con is a label I don't mind carrying myself. But I don't really trust Palin as a leader any more than I trust Obama. I think she is a weak candidate, and it was a sad day when McCan't/Phailin was the best we Repubs could do against the Obamination. I hear Romney is again making noise about running in the next election--and again, if he's the best we have next go-round, then we are truly in trouble.

I don't know if we're really "hijacking" anything. The conservative, traditional view of gender roles is simply no longer relevant in our contemporary culture. Just two decades ago we were still talking about whether it was "proper" to have a woman president. Obviously we've overcome many of our misgivings about race and gender, spurred on by strong leadership by women Dems. McCan't's choice of a female candidate was plainly a response to the racial question, not a real choice with any real substance. But the acceptance of a number of strong(er) female Repub and Tea Party candidates certainly shows a shift of attitude towards them and away from outdated tradition-for-tradition's-sake.

And maybe feminist principles aren't really far off the mark in the rhetoric department. Just because you disagree with someone, or just because you dislike someone, it doesn't mean they are wrong ALL the time. If they found that the Femi-Nazi's were right about at least SOME thing(s), then it shows they are beginning to wake up and use their brains, if only just a little. Not so with Sarah Phailin. I don't dislike Phailin because she's a woman. I dislike her because she's so inconsistent in her message. I bet if she won the top job in the nation, she'd end up with more broken promises than Obama--not to mention the damage potentially done to the image of the Repubs and Tea Partiers. We're perceived badly enough as it is. It has nothing to do with her gender, but rather her ability lead.

I have nothing against a woman for president, of course. I worry, though, if after Obama breaking the race barrier that a woman president would be little more than a novelty at this point. I think after Obama's election this is less likely to be the case.

On political and foreign issues, I'm not sure I see how we're hijacking feminist rhetoric. I think it's more likely that we tend to use such language when we're passionate about something. The world is not the same as it was even 5 years ago. Given all that has happened, I'm not surprised in the least. Hijacking is probably not the best term to use for it. "Cannibalizing" seems to me more appropriate.

We need to differentiate Feminists into at least two groups.

Group 1: Promotes Equality and doesn't want to demonize men in the process.

Group 2: Times I think this group would only be happy if men were slaves, they are completely off their rockers.

How big is this group? Can you make examples of feminists that act like this?

Here in Sweden the feminist party manifesto called for men to pay higher taxes than women to ofset all the years that women have been oppressed by men.

Some activists want to see an extension to the rape laws and what constitutes consent. They want it to be that if the expectations of the woman when she gave consent are not met, then there was in fact no consent and therefore a rape has occured. So for example a woman consensually sleeps with a guy who she thinks really likes her and she expects to have a relationship with. The following day, he's no longer interested, he got what he wanted, end of. They want this to be classed as rape because the woman would not have consented if she knew then what she knows now.

That could also be interpreted to mean if she is not satisfied in bed. aren't your rape trials held behind closed doors?

Yep. Some say this is the force behind the Assange case. Both women thought they'd bagged their man, then found out about the other one, then cried rape.