Feminism

Listening through the talk, there seems to be some mashing up of sexual harassment/abuse and gender equality?  idk, I am a bit tired after a hectic workday so maybe it's my fault for not concentrating enough and missing some detail (but if so, please fill up the blanks for me, sorry?).  Why I ask is the latter is a much broader issue and some aspects of it are easier to address.  We could sensitise corporations to compensate two equally valuable employees the same, irrespective of their gender.  We could address, gradually and over a long period of time albeit, the issue of parents not sending the girl child to school in many third world countries.  We can push inch by inch for greater representation of women in many walks of life, particularly in the part that is walled by the proverbial glass ceiling.  But after all this is done, I wonder would the issue of sexual harassment really have been addressed.  Because THAT is not as simple as just telling men to grow some morals and shape up.  As long as there are criminals, there will be molesters and rapists.  What can be done to address the unequal power equation, physically, between men and women is the question and that is imo at the heart of sexual harassment.  The men who harass women do so because they feel they are much stronger and can get away with it.  I don't know that there's much that can really be done about it.  There can be law enforcement after the fact but that would at best be a deterrent.  It cannot eradicate it.  Which means there is no way to PREVENT the shame and humiliation a woman somewhere in the planet is subjected to everyday if not every hour.  

Edited by rogerthat - January 27 2014 at 10:22

Read without prejudice

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/spyridon-mitsotakis/the-marxist-roots-of-feminism/

 

 

Edited by LSDisease - January 27 2014 at 10:20

I was at a Bible study last night and the topic of Christian feminism was brought up. Don't know what it all entails, but interesting concept. Don't have a valid opinion on it since I do not know much about it.

Dean wrote:   It is far from fair, if you think it is fair then you have a strange interpretation of the word "fair". Life isn't fair, but it is better to make it more fair than less fair. If schools were privately owned I would not have had the education I currently benefit from. That is a simple fact of economics and social status - by virtue of which parental unit I was born into would determine whether I had a University education or not, my parents lived from pay-cheque to pay-cheque, they could never afford to pay for my education. I'm not claiming that to be fair or unfair, it just "is a fact of life", the notion of "fair" is not a determining factor, I am grateful for a state education, and since I come from a time of student grants rather than student loans, I am grateful that it was free state education, and because of that I am happy to pay taxes to fund the education of this generation and the next. Fair is relative.

Life isn't fair and you won't change it. All attepmts to make it more fair create poverty and financial mess. Socialists do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them.

"If schools were privately owned I would not have had the education" Milton Friedman once said "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". Your parents payed for your education in taxes. That's how it works. And it's even worse cos normally you'd have to pay only the teachers. Now you also pay for all those ministers of education and other bureaucrats. So do you smell the difference?
 

The T wrote: The problem here started when someone did the ridiculous thing of comparing feminism with marxism....  And to say that feminism in itself is bad because there's (granted) quite a few feminist bigots who have taken it to a level of hate and stupidity without comparison is like saying all people who have religious beliefs are idiots and bigots because the Westboro Church exists...

I just prefer not to use the term "feminism" for what I think because of the negative connotations it has attached to it due to the radical wing appropriating the term, because of my differences with many feminists in what I think about traditional gender roles, and because I don't like the etymological connotations of the word, I far prefer, when identifying my own beliefs, to say that I support equality, rather than using a word that etymologically if not literally means "woman-ist."  I like to paint in broad strokes.

LSDisease wrote: Dean wrote:   You have a strange interpretation of the world "socialism" and an even stranger understanding of how it works.  However nothing I can say will ever fix that. I understand you're happy to pay higher taxes but it's your decision. Many people won't agree with you. But what you say, you want to force them to pay higher taxes? That's unfair. That's socialism.

LSDisease wrote: Life isn't fair and you won't change it. All attepmts to make it more fair create poverty and financial mess.

The Pessimist wrote: Okay, I never thought this would turn into a Socialists vs Capitalists debate. I think that there must be another thread on this site to discuss this, so kindly move to that respective thread please?A point brought up by our very own 40-50 year old British man Blacksword... I think the sound philosophy of feminism has been hi-jacked in our popular culture to push a rather distorted and actually quite bigoted message. The people who distort the message aren't to be taken note of. That is fundamental when understanding such an important movement as Feminism. Note, in most sitcoms and comedy films it's the man who's the idiot and is the target of everyones ridicule, and the focus of the comedy. The women is always the sensible character; at least relatively so. This doesn't reflect reality of course, where men and women can be equally profoundly stupid and self interested. Yes, isn't that gender inequality? That's not Feminism. It's the opposite of Feminism. Positive discrimination is just as harmful as negative discrimination, perhaps even more. The problem with this 'harmless fun' poked continuously at men is that it undermines the value of the father figure in the family unit, until he becomes nothing more than the resident clown and scapegoat. And what exactly is the "father figure"? Is it a position that no woman could ever achieve? What is it exactly? One hundred years from now, men will be simpering, feminised wimps, sexually confused and performing very few roles of any worth in our society. I doubt that very much. Hopefully, all men will be is a little bit more respectful to the rights of women. That, to me, makes them bigger and better men. Women will be in charge and ironically and tragically they will no longer resemble women as we know them. You mean the type driven meek and helpless by years of patriarchal oppression? Diddums. They will exhibit all the undesirable traits of ruthlessness and bigotry, once the domain of ambitious career obsessed males, in order to achieve the success they crave. Many women will choose not to have children, and many of those who do want children will choose to do so without involving a man. You sound very much like Enoch Powell, sorry. All your assumptions are a priori. They will concieve artificially, so to avoid being lumbered with a man in their life, and having a mans influence on the childs upbringing. You are undermining almost every woman's (95%) desire to love another man. My partner is one of the smartest people I know, and a feminist, and we love each other very much. She doesn't see me as inferior at all, and she's not bigoted towards men. In those times having a male child will be deemed less desirable than having a girl, in the same way that it is currently the opposite in some cultures. Where exactly is this information coming from? Then the backlash will come, and men will be on the march (burning their boxer shorts?) the wheel will turn, and the cycle return to the start.. I don't think this very likely. Partly because Feminism (and no organisation for that matter) is trying to achieve that.

"The people who distort the message aren't to be taken note of. That is fundamental when understanding such an important movement as Feminism"

That's the problem. They ARE taken note of, and that's how feminism is interpreted by many; the woman is always right and the bloke looks like a d!ck. It really doesn't matter that that is an incorrect depiction of feminism. It's lost on people.

You make many points, some I have sympathy with and I'm what I would call a true feminist rather than a media feminist. My dystopian vision of the future is just an extreme case fantasy, and probably wasn't to be taken entirely seriously, but you have to admit that feminism like religion is interpreted often in ways that suits the individuals outlook and agenda. For some women it's just an excuse to act like men. There was a time when women easily held the moral high ground on behaviour. You'd never see women half naked lying in the street, p!ssed out of their minds. That was always an idiot male thing, now - in the name of equality - it's commonplace. If that's what passes as feminism even in the minds of a significant minority of women, then that is a problem. You could argue that women who seek to be equal to men in this regard lack ambition..

When it comes to equal rights, equal pay and equal opportunities based on ability rather than gender is quite obviously a no brainer, and anyone who opposes that is an obvious bigot.

LSDisease wrote: "So I guess the best solution would be to just let things be " absolutely. Let the people be free and let 'em make mistakes. They will learn. If an option is a nanny state people will never learn. Because they'll constantly expect that all their problems will be solved by the government.

 So those who are born poor have to remain poor and those who are born rich can either remain rich or go poor (only to talk about wealth, there are many other instances of "unfairness"). So do you think that the market  will provide options for those who start at a disadvantage? Is that what you say? Or are your views completely empty only limiting to "just let things be" as a principle? 

LSDisease wrote: Read without prejudice http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/spyridon-mitsotakis/the-marxist-roots-of-feminism/

There is nobody on the planet who could legitimately mistake that site for an unbiased source