Piobaire wrote:
MidlifeAspie wrote:
I'm also not threatened in the slightest by feminism (Which as Gloria Steinem observed is simply the revolutionary notion that women are actually people). I'm perfectly willing to stipulate that this is a brutal oppressive patriarchy where women earn 20% less for the same work, have a 1 in 4 chance of being assaulted and a 1 in 6 chance of being raped, and that this is inexcusable BS and a violation of both their rights to equal protection pursuant to the 14th Amendment and their human rights pursuant to the UN Charter (not to mention notions of basic fairness and common decency). Furthermore, I'm more than willing to stipulate that women should have complete and exclusive agency over their bodies free of the paternalism of either church or state.
How f*****g insecure does a guy have to be to feel threatened by equality?
Gloria's quote has been quite persuasive, but it is a red herring. Feminism has tried to re-define "people" along the way. I was raised to eschew any advantage of "patriarchy" yet I was treated as an equal by feminists. Instead, I was severely abused by my wife, and made a pariah because no man could avoid reminding her of her own abuser from time to time. Not long after I realized that even the term Feminist is sexist, I lost my whole community.
Yes, there is a pay gap, but there is also a value gap. A few years ago Newsweek ran a very well-controlled study showing that all else being equal, both men and women want 20% more pay to work for a female boss. As employees, they are naturally more distracted by pregnancy and motherhood, while fathers can be relocated and made to work harder, putting the company first and family second, as long as they are provided for.
We are constantly told that men are brutal patriarchs who oppressed all women until quite recently. There are quite a few leading feminists who are clearly planning a matriarchy as the proper response. However, the whole concept of patriarchy is a way to explain history in a way that splits the progressives, and lets the plutocrats who truly oppress us off scot free. Before the Industrial Revolution, a housewife was more important, because she was expected to produce both food and clothing from a kitchen garden plot, while homeschooling the children. Standard education, and moving to the cities, threw both men and women into new, dire straits. If men were really not used to considering the opinions of the women in their lives, it is very strange that they got the vote without using that other modern "great equalizer," the gun.
Gender issues can't be treated like racial issues. Adoption can change just about any "racial" characteristic except skin colour, but gender preference is not much affected by environment. We overlap considerably, but on average the genders each have different strengths, so we need to learn a new symbiosis, not a new way to be divided and conquered.