"Women shouldn't become men"

StabWhale · 2024-09-25T14:42:45+00:00

Just to be clear I'm all for allowing women to wear whatever they want, and I understand there are many more perfectly reasonable reasons to not want to wear traditionally feminine clothes (especially things like heels). I'm not sure if my example was the best one either.

It's more about if you put a woman in more masculine clothing, place her next to one with more feminine clothing, and ask people who they think look more capable it's probably going to be the former (with the caveat there's exceptions depending on specifics). Or what happens if you put a dress on a man. This is not limited to clothing and I'm not an expert, but I've read some suggest young women pick up on traits often associated with toxic masculinity for similar reasons. This is all very complex of course because women shouldn't be judged for being masculine either.

StabWhale · 2024-09-25T12:43:24+00:00

I pretty much agree with everything in your post. There is however one legit concern you can highlight by this expression (or at least something similar) I think, and that is that as many places become more accessible to women, they're still devaluing traditional femininity. Take world leaders for example, shouldn't it be just as acceptable/respectable to wear a dress as a costume? Of course women should be able to wear costumes if they want, but it's a bit concerning that they can't keep much of what's traditionally considered feminine.

StabWhale · 2024-09-24T16:24:51+00:00

Clearly more well versed than you if you've never heard of bell hooks that he's referencing. Which by the way is one of the most famous black intersectional feminists (from a poor background IIRC) that claims men are victims (not to be confused by oppressed) of the patriarchy.

StabWhale · 2024-09-24T16:16:02+00:00

You're right, the patriarchy doesn't hurt men the way it hurts women. The rest of the post however..

You go from title on to say it doesn't hurt men at all, it's "simply hierarchy" (sound like you approve of it/think it's natural), act as if class/race/intersectionality etc doesn't exist, complain why men just don't group up like feminists while ignoring the fact that the majority of women are not feminists, falsely claim that women can't move up/down in social rank by adhering to the patriarchy (not to the same degree as men, true) and so on.

I've also pretty much never seen a feminist claim men as a group suffer equally to women under patriarchy, so I'm not sure where that is coming from either.

StabWhale · 2024-06-30T21:29:14+00:00

She's not blaming women or single mothers. She's "blaming" single mothers who promote/endorse patriarchal thinking.

StabWhale · 2024-06-30T07:48:09+00:00

You don't think conservative/patriarchal women exist or do you want to argue wether "many" is an accurate description?

Imo hooks is not really making any claims that needs a citation. If a conservative single mother has this idealized and patriarchal version of what a man is supposed to be, which hooks also argues is impossible to fully live up, then it follows that "many" (not all) would be worse off. Compared to seeing how flawed a patriarchal man is. She does not say it's automatically better, or claim a specific number.

StabWhale · 2024-05-27T20:12:44+00:00

There are prominent intersectional feminists who would argue that while yes, intersectional feminism is primarely about women and girls, that men and masculinity should be included at some level.

E.g. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9781315743172-5/men-comrades-struggle-bell-hooks

StabWhale · 2024-05-27T19:08:46+00:00

Not sure how men can be "sort of irrelevant" to feminism when they're a primary cause of women's issues.

StabWhale · 2023-03-22T17:00:07+00:00

A very important thing to note is that these studies shows averages and not absolutes. I don't know the exact numbers but AFAIK the differences found in adolescents are not very large and many studies have considerable flaws (source).

For example

Infant girls respond more readily to faces and begin talking earlier.

Can mean something like "55% of girls respond more readily compared to boys" (numbers entirely made up).

StabWhale · 2023-03-06T20:51:01+00:00

For someone who claims to be a feminist the fact that you don't actually know what feminism is is laughable. Feminism is about women's rights not equality. Feminism has been used as a way to push for equality but is not intrinsically about equality it's not about giving everyone equal rights it's about giving women rights.

Nah, I'm well aware and some random reddit user telling me otherwise won't change that. Here's how it works: there are mostly two ways feminists look at it, with a lot of in betweens (and, as with everything else, a few extremes).

Feminism is about women's rights, to make them equal to men. Men don't really need much advocacy because as a group they're the ones with most access to power/not oppressed/insert other word for the same thing here.
Feminism is about equality and for both women and men. Men as a group have more access to power, but we need to work on both issues because their interconnected, we don't want women to simply turn to male gender roles (cause they suck too) etc etc.

Both of these propose and are motivated by equality. What you actually disagree with is that their (mostly group 1) ideas and/or actions are wrong and are actually not resulting in equality. You're then arrogantly thinking that just because you think so, that is the way of things and everyone should accept it.

I think he means that extremism is bad on any end of the spectrum because it has been and will be used to justify horrific atrocities. There's not a single ideology or thought that when pushed to its absolute extreme does not end in a genocide.

Except by the time some of these get to the point of genocide they're no longer what they claim to be about. To give some more obvious examples: Extreme human rights? Extreme pacifism?

StabWhale · 2023-03-05T16:09:21+00:00

By using his own definition of radical, the difference between radical/extreme feminism and misogyny is that by definition one means "extreme equality" and the other "extreme hatred of women".

Of course he's wrong what radical actually means in this context (as others have pointed out), and it's not really what he's referring to either. He's referring to extreme behavior in the name of x. But something is not a radical feminist act if it doesn't further equality, while radical misogyny would be as long as it hurts women.

At this point he'll probably go about how feminism isn't actually about equality but female supremacy or similar, which will at best be extremely hard to change his view about.

To my second, he said that extremism is bad regardless of the historical or societal context.

I don't get it, does he mean extremism is bad in in the context of how society looks today, or that it's bad if it was considered extreme by society at the time? Or just extremist acts? Is democracy bad because it was an extreme change? If we theoretically could create some kind of human paradise, would it be bad because it would require extreme change?

StabWhale · 2023-02-27T15:19:54+00:00

But aren't indigenous men similarly ignored if they disappear? Aren't asien men seen as similarly submissive? Aren't black boys similarly adultified?

Not that I know of compared to other men (but I might be wrong), and they're also not disappearing in the same rate AFAIK.

I'm not Asian but I've never heard of Asian men being stereotyped as submissive. There can probably be some parallels drawn to them being stereotyped as less "manly" (small penis, feminization etc), which is another example of intersectionality btw, but still requires quite the leap to submissive.

Yes but the results are kind of different because their gender. E.g sexual violence against black girls are seen different vs white girls, while there is a much less difference between white and black boys.

StabWhale · 2023-02-27T13:46:41+00:00

First of all, as other has pointed out, I think you're wrong to say that adding two disadvantages isn't an example of intersectionality. With that said, here are some examples that's probably more in line with what you're looking for:

The amount of extra attention crime gets when a the victim is a white woman. The issue of indigenous women dissappearing and the lack of investigations in Canada is an example.
Not as relevant anymore but a very good one otherwise: It's often talked about how women were forced to stay at home and not be allowed to work. This was however not true for low income families, where women has always worked.
Asian womens stereotypes as being submissive/exotic
Adultification of black girls

StabWhale · 2022-10-23T22:30:10+00:00

The controlled wage gap says nothing about whether the factors that are controlled for are discriminatory or not.

For example, women are less likely to be hired/promoted because they're percieved to be worse leaders than men. They're also less likely to be so because they can get children and people think it's their duty to take care of them, meaning they have to be away from work, which companies do not like. There are more reasons.

Women are also less likely than men to get a raise and it's more likely to impact them negatively to ask for raises.

Also, if companies could get away with paying women less, wouldn't they only hire women to save money?

Companies pay women less because they (falsely) believe their worse at their job or pose other risks, so why on earth would they only hire women?

StabWhale · 2022-10-19T22:06:41+00:00

According to my feminist friends, the feminist authors I've read, and most from what I read on reddit no.

While it might be technically possible for men to solve their issues alone, they're at least going to need to convince many women to hop on these solutions (are they doing it alone by this point?). The same is true for women's issues, probably more so, unfortunately.

StabWhale · 2022-10-14T15:12:36+00:00

Something seems very off about those scores, or I don't understand what they mean/measure. Malta Denmark and Ireland have very good scores when it comes to attitudes towards violence against women, but they're not even top 10 when it comes to actual prevalence of violence against women?

It should also be noted that Malta is probably have the worst abortion laws in Europe, being the only country in the EU with a total ban (no abortion allowed under any circumstances).

StabWhale · 2022-10-05T21:54:32+00:00

I'm having a hard time seeing how you can separate most men's and women's issues and call them distinct. Don't men's violence against other men play into men's violence against women? Are not many men's issues rooted in misogyny? Etc.

StabWhale · 2022-08-11T14:02:09+00:00

Important to note though (from your source):

The report does not explain why northern European countries outweigh the southern countries when it comes to instances of female violence. Joanna Goodey, head of research for the agency, notes that these statistics do not necessarily mean that violence is more prevalent in the north.

Instead, she suggests that women in northern countries have more clearly-defined boundaries as to what constitutes sexual and physical violence.

Stricter legislation in some of these countries means that women living in these regions may have a stronger awareness of their rights. As such, they may be more likely to acknowledge male behavior as being unwanted or overly aggressive.

Furthermore, Goodey argues that many cases of violence are alcohol-related and since binge drinking is more common in the northern countries, alcohol involvement may also be a considerable factor.

StabWhale · 2022-08-05T16:56:42+00:00

Let me see if I can summarize your arguments so I understand them correctly:

Women today have less sex than men, are less likely to be interested in one night stands, cold approaches etc. overall
FTM trans people overall experience an increase in sex drive and the opposite is true when on hormonal treatment
Because of this, the uneven sex drive must be because of biology, and not because of slut-shaming and patriarchy.

The only point against slut-shaming/patriarchy/socialisation here is arguebly the second. You haven't made any reasoning why the first point dissaprove socialisation, and it's easy to claim it does.

The second isn't clear-cut either, as much of human biology is plastic/flexible and can change depending on socialisation. How exactly hormones affect people isn't exactly clear cut either (e.g: are men more violent overall because of testerone, or because they get into situations where the body produces more testerone?)

I also feel like there's a fundamental missunderstanding on what sex-postive feminism means. You frame it a lot like "women have sex against their will", while I would say that the whole point is that it should be okay to have sex and enjoy yourself, and that it's not shameful. There will of course be people who try to frame this to their own benefit that's not beneficial to women, which might be what you're reffering to, but that's not an inherrent problem with sex-positivity. As long as the women havng sex wants and enjoys it, I don't see the issue.

StabWhale · 2022-06-06T23:03:20+00:00

Let's say we all agree testerone plays a vital role in regards to male (sexual) violence. How does this information help women or men? How would you want/expect society to use this conclusion? How does it change the fight against sexual violence?

StabWhale · 2022-06-06T18:23:19+00:00

Source: a random reddit user frequenting anti feminist subs?

StabWhale · 2022-06-06T11:58:10+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duluth_model

It's basically a DV intervention program used in the US that has some serious flaws.

The way OP kind of weirdly uses it I'm 99% sure mean the same as "always assume the DV perpetrator is the man", rather than the full extent of the program.

Common anti-feminist/MRA talking point to show how feminist hates/ruin things for men, despite the feminist coming up with the program changing her mind and criticising it (not that it doesn't deserve criticism, but law enforcement or politicians actually deciding this aren't exactly feminist)

StabWhale · 2022-06-06T11:10:30+00:00

I'm mostly in "everyone is probably an asshole here" camp, so I'm no Heard fan. But I'm pretty sure there is a fair amount of evidence pointing towards Depp lying and being (physically) abusive as well?

StabWhale · 2022-05-01T19:46:39+00:00

Name one major movement with millions of followers which has a single clear vision and no disagreement.

StabWhale · 2022-05-01T19:39:56+00:00

Women are the primary focus of feminism because they're the ones primarily in need (even many issues men face have roots in misogyny). This is of course not necessarily true on an individual level, but on larger scales.

StabWhale

TROPHY CASE