Gender roles and hypocrisy [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Spiryt

2011-05-20, 11:54 AM

Even the worst dictators in modern history knew what their people wanted and at the very least promised it to them. Be it work, money, freedom or land.

A narcissist on the other hand, would just build lavish castles and enslave half the populace because they wanted their tea now.

To sum that up, I don't get your argument. How were most great leaders narcissists who can't comprehend empathy?

I don't really get your, to be honest.

They don't really need to comprehend empathy that much, because since rather ancient times had passed, they don't need to interact on personal level with people all that much. More of a intellectual analysis of moods/needs is way to go.

That is caring, if you create building projects to give the people work, rage war to give them land or oppose those among your politicians who support slavery to give your people freedom then you care what they think.

That's not caring, that just using. Rage war and give them land, women, spoils, and whatever, when you're achieving your goals.

Then send them to Dominican to fight riots when they're not needed.

A narcissist on the other hand, would just build lavish castles and enslave half the populace because they wanted their tea now.

That's not essentially narcissist, mostly idiot.

Smarter one would at least build lavish castles of some purpose and enslave population in more subtle manner than chain them and whatever.

Even the worst dictators in modern history knew what their people wanted and at the very least promised it to them. Be it work, money, freedom or land.

How does it require empathy though?

AFAIK, lacking empathy often includes : aggressiveness, strong personality, dislike of objection, compromises, forcing your view on others etc.

Perfect way to describe uncle Stalin or Lenin. Who were undoubtedly great leaders, being possibly biggest malefactors in the world, rarely even promising anything to anyone.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-20, 01:33 PM

I don't really get your, to be honest.

Narcissism is the inability to comprehend that the opinion of anybody but yourself can in any way be important or being arrogant enough to think you are so important that they don't matter. Most leaders go at least to the point of knowing that yelling obscenely won't neccesarily help getting what they want.

They don't really need to comprehend empathy that much, because since rather ancient times had passed, they don't need to interact on personal level with people all that much. More of a intellectual analysis of moods/needs is way to go.

Which a narcissist won't be able to do. After all, why would they? They are obviously too important to be bothered with all that analysis when they just want the power.

It is possible that a narcissist could learn that they get what they want if they help others but then they'd be on the road to be empathetic. Wouldn't they?

That's not caring, that just using. Rage war and give them land, women, spoils, and whatever, when you're achieving your goals.

Then send them to Dominican to fight riots when they're not needed.

Yes it is? It's not caring emotionally but it is caring enough about it to consider it useful.

Doing that is not going to make you a great leader, so how does that prove that great leaders are narcissists? I am confuddled.

That's not essentially narcissist, mostly idiot.

Smarter one would at least build lavish castles of some purpose and enslave population in more subtle manner than chain them and whatever.

It is narcissist, a super-empathetic idiot would try to build everybody else lavish castles. Wouldn't they?

It is a good point, but doesn't it show that narcissism is a flaw for a great leader? A non-narcissist would consider their subjects' opinions without needing to be smart, wouldn't they?

How does it require empathy though?

AFAIK, lacking empathy often includes : aggressiveness, strong personality, dislike of objection, compromises, forcing your view on others etc.

Perfect way to describe uncle Stalin or Lenin. Who were undoubtedly great leaders, being possibly biggest malefactors in the world, rarely even promising anything to anyone.

Because empathy is understanding the feelings and experiences of others? I admit that it is not always considered empathy if it is done by logical means instead of emotional ones so that may be why we think differently on the subject. I should have looked it up. :smallredface:

Stalin and Lenin weren't great leaders in my book, they were terrible ones. What do you mean by great? That may be where we misunderstand each other.

But I will point out that lacking empathy and yet understanding that others can be used as chess pieces is either sociopathy or psychopathy. I am pretty sure narcissism is neiter. Could be wrong, though. :smallsmile:

Spiryt

2011-05-20, 01:48 PM

Stalin and Lenin weren't great leaders in my book, they were terrible ones. What do you mean by great? That may be where we misunderstand each other.

Uh, sorry, they were absolute monsters and degenerates, but they were without doubts great leaders.

They managed to change fates of entire nations and whole world, decide what's going to happen and what not, force their will onto others, and countless other things using they're ability to rule people.....

They were both attained their goals, huge goals, by commanding people. That's leadership.

I think that you're using some different definition of leader - like someone who's bringing profit to people he leads, or whatever.

As far as narcissism goes - yeah put like that it would be mostly crippling thing. I'm not really sure what's "true" narcissism or not, I assumed that ability to comprehend the fact that the others still can be dangerous to you and all doesn't disqualify you as one.

Mazeburn

2011-05-20, 02:15 PM

I love talking about this stuff. :D Interestingly if you're depicting kids, the girl's likely to be more confident at that age because up until puberty, girls tend to mature faster. The dominance thing is an interesting point, though; it's like how it's way more acceptable for women to be gay than men. It all gets very Freudian; a woman can do what she likes with a woman, but the moment a man has the deed of a man done to him? He's submitting, and therefore losing his masculinity.

Similarly, worst insults you can say to a woman: slut, c-, bitch, etc. Worst insults you can say to a man: sissy, gay, girl, c-. So the worst thing you can call a man is a woman, and the worst thing you can call a woman is... well, a woman. :|

The stereotypes are changing, but it's slow and certainly the older generation has them still quite ingrained.

The best thing in the world is still my 250lb built-like-a-brick-wall programming teacher who looks like he could punch out a bear but gets terrified at the idea of holding hands with a man.

So in conclusion: I don't think it's exactly deliberately sexist, just that lots of guys are insecure. :smallbiggrin:

Mono Vertigo

2011-05-20, 02:33 PM

As a kid, I remember having dealt with a particularly short-tempered boy. He wanted to punch other kids, and me in particular, for reasons that could be boiled down to mutual taunting.
He's never won a fight against me. And, yes, we were very good friends despite this, mostly because, being children, we didn't really hurt each other. Before puberty, my parents hardly taught me anything about gender roles and raised me with both Barbies and toy cars; before puberty, most of my friends were boys, and no one ever felt threatened, physically or psychologically, by me.
Things went downhill with puberty when my mother figured I should be more girly and wear make-up.

Long story short... yes, I do believe it is very important to show little kids different examples. Boys can be strong, emotive, introverted, brave,... and so do girls. It's not doing a favor to anybody actively or passively restricting children to gender roles.
And since the examples of "boy with good, manly qualities vs girl with bad, girly qualities" are quite overwhelming already due to their sheer longevity as an absolute norm... honestly, we could start focusing on creating more gender-equal examples, and not add much more to the already-existing sexist ones.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-20, 04:24 PM

Uh, sorry, they were absolute monsters and degenerates, but they were without doubts great leaders.

They managed to change fates of entire nations and whole world, decide what's going to happen and what not, force their will onto others, and countless other things using they're ability to rule people.....

They were both attained their goals, huge goals, by commanding people. That's leadership.

I think that you're using some different definition of leader - like someone who's bringing profit to people he leads, or whatever.

As far as narcissism goes - yeah put like that it would be mostly crippling thing. I'm not really sure what's "true" narcissism or not, I assumed that ability to comprehend the fact that the others still can be dangerous to you and all doesn't disqualify you as one.

This is why I said you should define what you meant by great.
To me, a great leader is one that is liked and does good for his people. AKA "He was a great guy" and not "He was a powerful king".

I freely admit that some leaders through history have been unemphatic or mad, but few of those are considered anything but catastrophes or laughing matter as far as I know. They were leaders, but not great. So to speak. :smallsmile:

Well, it is a fluid spectrum so presumably it is possible to be both narcissistic and understand others to a degree, Most people are at least a little bit narcissistic after all, so I honestly can't say for sure what exactly would be a narcissist or not. What I can say is that I should probably have specified that I meant a complete narcissist of the kind that has almost become the stereotypical teenager these days. I apologise for forgetting that. Sorry. ^_^'

On a different note, I am on the side of not trying to enforce gender-stereotypes on children. Sexism isn't going to make a kid more confident, it just mean that they will have to conform to roles they may hate because they will get mocked for not doing so. :smallfrown:

Worlok

2011-05-20, 06:03 PM

Similarly, worst insults you can say to a woman: slut, c-, bitch, etc. Worst insults you can say to a man: sissy, gay, girl, c-. So the worst thing you can call a man is a woman, and the worst thing you can call a woman is... well, a woman. :|
Wait... Those are often considered to be pretty devastating, I agree, but whether or not something's "the worst" within a given category largely depends on personal views.

For example, {{scrubbed}} are not always female, even if that may be considered the norm - {{scrubbed}}", arguably, are, because of the origin of the term and all, I'll give you that - and {{scrubbed}} describes a sexual characteristic of females, sure, but that is generally a body part without a gender of its own. So technically, it wouldn't be calling someone a woman most of the time, but calling them something associated with the receiving end of the act, which happens to be mainly the domain of biological females. This may be a stretch, but I think the underlying implications are not so much concerned with "being female" as with {{scrubbed}}, which implies (willing?) submission to the inseminating part, usually the biological male.

Which is why {{scrubbed}} is also considered an insult, one more commonly(?) aimed at males at that, even though possession of one is not exclusively a "girl-thing".

Depends on how you look at it, I reckon, but I'm fairly sure that right there's essentially a tendency, rather than a veritable fact or truism. :smallconfused:

As a women who frequently participates in non stereotypical activities, I encounter such things frequently from adults.
Arguably, humanity's collective library of stereotypes, specifically in concerns to gender, is too extensive to not fit in with at least one of them, no matter how you act. I do believe I'm speaking from experience with this, I've been through about twenty I'm aware of (even though, in fairness, not a lot of those were gender-based). "Typical woman-who-does-not-behave-like-a-typical-woman", I'm afraid, is just as common a sentiment as "typical woman", even though the former would likely be vocalised quite differently. So, honestly, we may be looking at a textbook vicious cycle there: Being non-stereotypical goes its way to building stereotypes, no matter what or if we like it. Just a thought. :smalleek:

And, as I just realised, the darker side of this:

The stereotypes are changing, but it's slow and certainly the older generation has them still quite ingrained.
Which I'm tempted to agree with, stereotypes change, but I, personally, consider them unlikely to ever really disappear. They're way too easy to revive or tune for that. :smallfrown:

...but yeah, there are still gender roles and there is commonly hypocrisy involved. As with quite a lot of things, I figure. Depressing, certainly, but not an uncommon occurence by and large, as far as I can tell.

---

Underlinings mine. No insult intended, disregard if stupid. Clueless non-gender-involved yours truly over. (:smallwink:)

Eleanor_Rigby

2011-05-20, 06:10 PM

Worlok

2011-05-20, 06:12 PM

Then again, she could conceivably beat anyone (up), so there's that. :smalltongue:

THAC0

2011-05-20, 06:13 PM

Arguably, humanity's collective library of stereotypes, specifically in concerns to gender, is too extensive to not fit in with at least one of them, no matter how you act. I do believe I'm speaking from experience with this, I've been through about twenty I'm aware of (even though, in fairness, not a lot of those were gender-based). "Typical woman-who-does-not-behave-like-a-typical-woman", I'm afraid, is just as common a sentiment as "typical woman", even though the former would likely be vocalised quite differently. So, honestly, we may be looking at a textbook vicious cycle there: Being non-stereotypical goes its way to building stereotypes, no matter what or if we like it. Just a thought. :smalleek:

Well I never said I fit in with no stereotypes... All I said was that I participate in some activities that are stereotypically "male." And some men resent that.

...So basically you're postulating that stereotypes effectively don't exist because everything you do just creates a new stereotype? :smallconfused:

Worlok

2011-05-20, 06:19 PM

Well I never said I fit in with no stereotypes... All I said was that I participate in some activities that are stereotypically "male." And some men resent that.
I did not mean to imply otherwise. That was essentially what I got from that statement. Just the phrasing "non-stereotypical" bugged me, as personally, I have come to consider that an unattainable quality.

...So basically you're postulating that stereotypes effectively don't exist because everything you do just creates a new stereotype? :smallconfused:
No. I think they do exist and are a hard-if-actually-possible-to-fix bug of the human mind, if for the exact reason you gathered. Sorry if that wasn't clear. :smalleek:

Teddy

2011-05-20, 06:35 PM

I did not mean to imply otherwise. That was essentially what I got from that statement. Just the phrasing "non-stereotypical" bugged me, as personally, I have come to consider that an unattainable quality.

No. I think they do exist and are a hard-if-actually-possible-to-fix bug of the human mind, if for the exact reason you gathered. Sorry if that wasn't clear. :smalleek:

Aren't you tweaking the definition of "stereotypical" a bit too far when you say that whatever you do, it will be stereotypical? Especially when you say that someone is wrong(-ish) in saying that she (or he) acts out of the stereotype, which should be implied to be the standard stereotype (i.e. stereotypical girl in this case). :smallconfused:

Worlok

2011-05-20, 06:59 PM

Aren't you tweaking the definition of "stereotypical" a bit too far when you say that whatever you do, it will be stereotypical? Especially when you say that someone is wrong(-ish) in saying that she (or he) acts out of the stereotype, which should be implied to be the standard stereotype (i.e. stereotypical girl in this case).
I can't exactly rule that out, I fear. You may be right. In fact, I'm fairly certain that it does constitute tweaking of that definition, if to a degree I deem acceptable. Still, I'd say that regardless of how you act, as long as you have discernible (fe)male traits, you run the risk of being shoehorned into one specific stereotype, whether as, say, a "stereotypical girl" or a "stereotypical non-girly girl".

Which I do not expect you to accept as truth or even as much as sound reasoning, but it's a (probably shamefully defeatist) thought I could not leave unmouthed and think should be considered. Also, I don't think it's wrong(-ish) as much as a tad idealistic, in lights of that whole "There's a stereotype for everything" idea of mine I talked about above.

THAC0

2011-05-20, 07:01 PM

I did not mean to imply otherwise. That was essentially what I got from that statement. Just the phrasing "non-stereotypical" bugged me, as personally, I have come to consider that an unattainable quality.

Non-stereotypical, as in "conforming to no stereotypes" is probably unattainable. However, I was using non-stereotypical as in "not conforming to a specific stereotype," which is attainable.

No. I think they do exist and are a hard-if-actually-possible-to-fix bug of the human mind, if for the exact reason you gathered. Sorry if that wasn't clear. :smalleek:

I think to some extent we agree. Stereotyping will never go away completely and in some cases it's quite useful.

However, despite that, I do believe we need to work to reduce, if not eliminate, negative stereotyping, such as the kind described in the OP.

rayne_dragon

2011-05-20, 07:16 PM

Gender roles on the whole disgust me, or at least the idea that there is/should be a clear divide on what things are 'female' and what things are 'male.' The whole thing leads to sexism even if that isn't inherant in the nature of the roles described.

Besides, it doesn't make sense to draw such a clear-cut artifical distinction about something nature isn't quite as particular about... or at least it doesn't make sense to me.

Worlok

2011-05-20, 07:19 PM

Non-stereotypical, as in "conforming to no stereotypes" is probably unattainable. However, I was using non-stereotypical as in "not conforming to a specific stereotype," which is attainable.
Alright. I may have misinterpreted that one at first. I'm sorry, it's actually quite obvious in retrospect. :smallfrown:

I think to some extent we agree. Stereotyping will never go away completely and in some cases it's quite useful.

However, despite that, I do believe we need to work to reduce, if not eliminate, negative stereotyping, such as the kind described in the OP.
I think we do agree, at that. To reduce that kind of things is obviously a necessary motion and let none dare say otherwise, just to eliminate them will most likely take the work of many generations yet to come, if it can at all be done. Which I am simply not entirely convinced of. Which is not to say that it shouldn't be attempted and worked towards, of course. Just that it's gonna be a long and probably quite sisyphean task.

Fiery Diamond

2011-05-21, 01:15 AM

At certain age most boys just organically cannot stand anything possibly related to girls.

Similarly girls keep alienating themselves from boys, talking mostly to each other, singing weird songs and.... See Bluewind95 posts for better details, I've never was a girl, so I have no idea. :smalltongue:

:smallannoyed: :smallmad: No. This is socially generated, it is not "organic."

Remember, though: you are an adult. You've had years to understand how things work. You've also gone through puberty, which leaves you better equipped to identify with the opposite sex. Your target audience doesn't have those advantages. While there is some truth to the saying "if you treat kids like they're smart, they'll be smart", they are not fit to understand and accept all truths. That comes with experience and maturity.

Erm... How about the idea that you just see them as humans regardless? I didn't really understand all this nonsense about boys and girls and why they were supposed to be antagonistic and comparing against each other AT ALL when I was a kid. It wasn't until I started to hit puberty that I even thought of girls as being different from boys. I mean, obviously they were physically different, I'm not blind or an idiot or anything, but I honestly did not see any difference on the personal, humanity level. When I was 8 I identified with 8 year old girls just as well as I did with 8 year old boys.

I still vaguely remember my outrage by the suggestion that a girl would be really better than me at something, especially physical.... It was real tragedy when they managed to win over us just once in some kind of ball throwing game. :smalltongue:

And I wasn't really even very competitive and all kid, kind of opposite actually.

So there's something about that, all in all, as above ^.

I remember my own outrage when it was even suggested that a BOY could possibly be better than a GIRL. Boys VS girls... and when we won, it always gave me a nice, fuzzy feeling inside. I mean, we were teaching those boys who was boss!

I also tended to dislike the protagonist characters of a series SO MUCH because they usually were boys that were depicted as the best, while the girls were usually depicted as much less competent and distressed. I hated that so much. As a result, I'd either imagine my own version of the character as a female, or simply dislike the male protagonist and, if there was a strong female character, be a fan of that one instead. It was just SO annoying to me that it'd be almost every character and it'd be so rare to find a female character that was honestly as good (preferably better, but that's even rarer) as her male counterpart.

Now look at the two quoted things. It should reveal something very obvious: that the experience of the girl and the boy were pretty much exactly the same. The boys in the illustration situation do not need to be emotionally coddled while it's somehow perfectly fine to put girls through what bluewind experienced. In fact, when I was a kid (preteen and below-ten) I read plenty of books with strong female protagonists and loved them, some of them written for kids in general (Redwall books for example, I have to say that Mariel of Redwall is my favorite Redwall hero. Loved her strong-willed-ness and her relationship with Dandin, which was a relationship of EQUALS, by the way, not one where he had to save her all the time) and some of them written for girls (the Unicorns of Balinor series, for example, which features a 13-year-old heroine).

I'm sorry for you, bluewind, that you did not get many chances to read stories with strong female protagonists when you were a little kid. There really do exist some good ones.

Do some children display these gender stereotypes?

Yes.

Is the way to fix it just to let them "naturally grow out of it"?

Heck no!

These stereotypes need to be reduced in our society. When I see or hear anything like that from my students, it merits a long discussion. In fact, I had one such two days ago, when a second grade boy became very upset that the show Stomp! had girls in it. :smallconfused:

As a women who frequently participates in non stereotypical activities, I encounter such things frequently from adults. Kids don't just grow out of it.

Amen to that.

Ugh, I hate it when women do double standards. It is not only sexist, but it even puts back the women's attempt for equality. Strangely enough, we are now in a time and culture where people are sexist to both genders. :smallsigh:

I am in totally concurrence.

Gender roles on the whole disgust me, or at least the idea that there is/should be a clear divide on what things are 'female' and what things are 'male.' The whole thing leads to sexism even if that isn't inherant in the nature of the roles described.

Besides, it doesn't make sense to draw such a clear-cut artifical distinction about something nature isn't quite as particular about... or at least it doesn't make sense to me.

Can I give you a hug? Because there are not enough people who outright say this. Yes, I feel the same way you do about this.

In short, in response to the first post: While you really can't do anything about it since she's the one paying, I completely agree with you. Her attitude is :smallannoyed::smallmad::smallfurious::smallfuriou s: inducing.

H Birchgrove

2011-05-21, 09:09 AM

Hah. I guess the stuff the author was talking about explains why Pippi Longstocking never garnered any success. Nobody likes a girl who can beat a boy, after all. :smalltongue:

I appreciate plenty of people probably don't like Pippi but what have you.

Yeah, but Tommy wasn't a bleeding idiot. And Prussiluskan* was as much a representative of authority figures as Kling and Klang.

* Has anyone mentioned that she had perfectly good reasons to see out that Pippi got taken care of? Then again, considering how the Swedish welfare state at that time took care of some young girls and women, it was perhaps good that Pippi took care of herself.

Dvandemon

2011-05-21, 11:32 AM

So in conclusion: I don't think it's exactly deliberately sexist, just that lots of guys are insecure. :smallbiggrin:

This. Very much. I had the this really big guy in Biology once. He made a slight stink about getting a pink hand-out paper and my teacher, a mild snarker said, "If you're insecure enouh to worry over getting pink paper, that's the least of your problems" I wasn't sure who said it, but now I use the phrase, "I'm secure enough in my masculinity to do this" whenever I do something that freaks the guys out.

lobablob

2011-05-21, 03:17 PM

I'm not sure I see the problem - I don't think the fact that you differ with her on what the characters should be like can be said to make her sexist; especially because she wants the characters to be equal, which seems to me to be the opposite of sexism. I think she is acting in a completely reasonable way in reserving the right to say what the characters will be like in her own story and I think your disproportionate outrage at the idea of the male character not being less competent than the female character is utterly bizarre.

Jae

2011-05-21, 03:35 PM

Erm... How about the idea that you just see them as humans regardless? I didn't really understand all this nonsense about boys and girls and why they were supposed to be antagonistic and comparing against each other AT ALL when I was a kid. It wasn't until I started to hit puberty that I even thought of girls as being different from boys. I mean, obviously they were physically different, I'm not blind or an idiot or anything, but I honestly did not see any difference on the personal, humanity level. When I was 8 I identified with 8 year old girls just as well as I did with 8 year old boys.

I feel like that's just not the case though. Boy and girls ARE different. Generally, boys and girls think differently. Now this is not to say that one thinks better than the other, or that all boys think the same and all girls think the same. But as a general rule, there are differences in the male/female personality that are undeniable. Not to mention just ignoring that boys and girls are different seems like kind of the wrong way to go about that. That can lead to some odd complications I feel like...

rayne_dragon

2011-05-21, 03:52 PM

I feel like that's just not the case though. Boy and girls ARE different. Generally, boys and girls think differently. Now this is not to say that one thinks better than the other, or that all boys think the same and all girls think the same. But as a general rule, there are differences in the male/female personality that are undeniable. Not to mention just ignoring that boys and girls are different seems like kind of the wrong way to go about that. That can lead to some odd complications I feel like...

Personally, I don't deny that there are differences between boys and girls, but I disagree with societal additions to those differences and enforcing them as somehow opposite of each other or implying that one is better than the other. Plus, when most people explain the differences they tend to polarize them as two points, rather that iterate how gender is really more of a spectrum and that there is a lot of overlap in how maleness or femaleness is expressed. The whole thing also tends to leave anyone more in the middle of the spectrum feeling completely orphaned, since being less common, such people are often neglected, ignored, or misunderstood in the explaination of the differences. I'm not saying the differences should be completely ignored, just that they need to be more accurately addressed when they are dealt with.

Can I give you a hug? Because there are not enough people who outright say this. Yes, I feel the same way you do about this.

Of course! I always accept hugs, especially from people who agree with me about gender issues.

This. Very much. I had the this really big guy in Biology once. He made a slight stink about getting a pink hand-out paper and my teacher, a mild snarker said, "If you're insecure enouh to worry over getting pink paper, that's the least of your problems" I wasn't sure who said it, but now I use the phrase, "I'm secure enough in my masculinity to do this" whenever I do something that freaks the guys out.

I love that phrase. I usually think that people's focus on confidence is excessive, but in this case I have lot of respect for men who are comfortable enough with themselves to break out of gender stereotypes, especially since in some ways men actually have more pressure on them to conform to those stereotypes, especially these days.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-21, 04:38 PM

Honestly, if a kid can't take seeing their own gender portrayed as worse than the other I'd say to them:

SUCK IT

Have you ever been around a child? Why do you think kids are, generally, insulted when something like, "You throw like a girl?" And yeah, rather horrible stratagem.

Dacia Brabant

2011-05-21, 04:51 PM

Now what I'd done was make the character of the girl a bit more competent and assertive than her male counterpart

Why couldn't they be equally competent? Why not have it so that in one picture the girl takes the initiative on the task, and in the next picture the boy does, etc. etc.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-21, 05:43 PM

Murdim

2011-05-21, 05:44 PM

RLivengood

2011-05-21, 08:18 PM

By what "point"?

They would never be dead, especially among children. It's just built into our hormonal reactions and stuff.

At certain age most boys just organically cannot stand anything possibly related to girls.

Similarly girls keep alienating themselves from boys, talking mostly to each other, singing weird songs and.... See Bluewind95 posts for better details, I've never was a girl, so I have no idea. :smalltongue:

While behavior of that chick in OP is not very reasonable, and obviously influenced by her own prejudiced, which is obvious as she's human, but she has some points, books for the children at this age should be pretty carefully put for full enjoyment. :smallwink:

I'm not an expert on child development, but I don't think that the hormonal differences in boys and girls are as signifigant as you seem to think. A much bigger impact on a child is made by the messages they get from the outside world. Boys are taught to be competitive and girls are taught to be passive. This starts at a very young age.

Think of almost any kids' show. Compare the number of male characters to the number of female characters. There are almost always more male characters with more diverse personalities, and they are the ones driving the plot (The only exception I can think of is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which was written specifically to combat the under-representation of female characters). Most fiction, for children or adults, sends the message that women are all the same and unimportant.

Children alienate themselves from the other gender because they think they should. Boys are praised for masculine behavior and girls are praised for acting feminine. If a boy hangs out with girls or acts like them, he is called girly. If a girl acts like a boy or acts like a boy, she is called a tomboy. Both labels have developed slight negative connotations.

This extends to adults. Sometimes it seems like everyone expects that the only possible relationship between an unrelated man and woman is one of a romantic or sexual nature. The world doesn't need that. Gender roles are also probably one of the main causes of homophobia. Gay men are seen as less of men and lesbians are seen as threats by both genders. There is nothing beneficial in perpetuating gender stereotypes.

Children's media needs characters of both genders showing a variety of behaviors. Otherwise, how will girls learn that they do matter, and how will boys learn that "tough" does not equal "strong"?

Coidzor

2011-05-22, 01:43 AM

Why should gender roles of the past justify telling any sex that they should emulate something our society takes to be a sign of weakness?

I see no problem with her decision not to tell young boys that they are or should be cowards even if her stated reasoning seems a bit off and simplistic.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-22, 02:08 AM

I'm not an expert on child development, but I don't think that the hormonal differences in boys and girls are as signifigant as you seem to think. A much bigger impact on a child is made by the messages they get from the outside world. Boys are taught to be competitive and girls are taught to be passive. This starts at a very young age.

Think of almost any kids' show. Compare the number of male characters to the number of female characters. There are almost always more male characters with more diverse personalities, and they are the ones driving the plot (The only exception I can think of is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which was written specifically to combat the under-representation of female characters). Most fiction, for children or adults, sends the message that women are all the same and unimportant.

Children alienate themselves from the other gender because they think they should. Boys are praised for masculine behavior and girls are praised for acting feminine. If a boy hangs out with girls or acts like them, he is called girly. If a girl acts like a boy or acts like a boy, she is called a tomboy. Both labels have developed slight negative connotations.

This extends to adults. Sometimes it seems like everyone expects that the only possible relationship between an unrelated man and woman is one of a romantic or sexual nature. The world doesn't need that. Gender roles are also probably one of the main causes of homophobia. Gay men are seen as less of men and lesbians are seen as threats by both genders. There is nothing beneficial in perpetuating gender stereotypes.

Children's media needs characters of both genders showing a variety of behaviors. Otherwise, how will girls learn that they do matter, and how will boys learn that "tough" does not equal "strong"?

Whille I generally agree that we need more and more diverse female characters in children's media, there have been quite a few popular shows before My Little Pony: Friendship is magic that show a variety of femaale characters. Even if that show is fantastic.

Kim Possible, Avatar: The Last Airbender and even newer versions of Scooby Doo are some examples that made it all the way across the pond.

So at least some of them are trying to give kids more diverse characters. :smallsmile:

unosarta

2011-05-22, 02:27 AM

Have you ever been around a child? Why do you think kids are, generally, insulted when something like, "You throw like a girl?" And yeah, rather horrible stratagem.

Whaaaaaat? He isn't saying that the male character is female, from what I have read, but rather that the male character is acting less assertive. This is something that kids will have to deal with at some point in their life. There will always be boys who are less assertive. If every single guy they see is assertive, then what will they think when they see a guy who isn't? That he isn't a man, or man enough? That he doesn't deserve respect?

Coidzor

2011-05-22, 02:44 AM

Whaaaaaat? He isn't saying that the male character is female, from what I have read, but rather that the male character is acting less assertive. This is something that kids will have to deal with at some point in their life. There will always be boys who are less assertive.

He said his approach to children would be to just insult them or at least show them unwarranted hostility if they didn't see the world his way and disagreed with his analysis of the situation, I imagine that's more what was being reacted to.

edit:...Taking things literally, especially in terms of the reactions of others who have to look after children, his choice of words would be rather extremely inappropriate to use toward children.

edit2: Come to think of it, that's just so not how you talk to 5 and 6 year-olds that it's not even funny, it's just confusing.

If every single guy they see is assertive, then what will they think when they see a guy who isn't? That he isn't a man, or man enough? That he doesn't deserve respect?

You really think that's possible?

Murdim

2011-05-22, 03:44 AM

I see no problem with her decision not to tell young boys that they are or should be cowards even if her stated reasoning seems a bit off and simplistic.
By this reasoning, you're also agreeing with her decision to tell young girls that they are or should be cowards. Since any girl is apparently never allowed to be more assertive than any boy. :smallannoyed:

That, or you're saying that two people of different genders should never, ever be depicted as unequal in any way in terms of competence, else it is teaching the "weaker" character's entire gender to be "weak".

You really think that's possible?
Not only that's possible, it's pretty common. One of the main justification for bullies from middle school all the way through high school, actually.

On the other hand, I would agree with you that 6-year-olds have a licence to be stupid. Not that it would be right to insult anyone spontaneously, instead of trying to have a civil debate with them. But I kinda doubt that Rockbird would really say that to a sexist child. That was an hyperbole, nothing more... though a really poorly thought-out one :smallamused:

Coidzor

2011-05-22, 04:08 AM

By this reasoning, you're also agreeing with her decision to tell young girls that they are or should be cowards. Since any girl is apparently never allowed to be more assertive than any boy. :smallannoyed:

Nope, that's a secondary issue that I did not address at all, nor did I read anything about her making such a decision. edit: Though I guess I read more into what Rockbird was suggesting for the male than I perhaps should have.

That, or you're saying that two people of different genders should never, ever be depicted as unequal in any way in terms of competence, else it is teaching the "weaker" character's entire gender to be "weak".

Holding up something that is non-ideal to the extent that it is viewed as deleterious as an ideal role model to children seems inappropriate to me, yes.

I don't write for children, either to teach them a lesson or aid in their moral education. I don't know what the ideal approach to gender roles there is, I just don't think that holding up a flawed role model is appropriate for children who are young enough that they still read illustrated childrens' stories, which is like... no one older than 8 as far as I can recall, barring unfortunate circumstances.

Now, if you're doing something where the flaw is one that it's "ok" to have so long as it doesn't rule one's life, that seems like it's a different beast entirely from setting up a direct compare and contrast between two individuals who are serving as representatives of their entire group. Now, if there were a group of male and female children to draw from, that'd make it another different scenario.

Not only that's possible, it's pretty common. One of the main justification for bullies from middle school all the way through high school, actually.

The main justification for bullies from middle school all the way through high school is that they never see people do the things they bully people for? :smallconfused:

But I kinda doubt that Rockbird would really say that to a sexist child. That was an hyperbole, nothing more... though a really poorly thought-out one :smallamused:

The main point was that it's an inappropriate sentiment that set people against what he was saying because of it and would set people against him even if he argued everything else well if he expressed that sentiment IRL.

Murdim

2011-05-22, 05:21 AM

Nope, that's a secondary issue that I did not address at all, nor did I read anything about her making such a decision.
A secondary issue ? :smalleek: That's pretty much the central question in this topic.

Also, do you really fail to realise how those things are inseparably linked ? If you agree that boys shouldn't be depicted as "less competent" than girls, then you agree that boys should always be depicted as "as competent or more competent" than girls. That's... basic logic. :smallconfused:

Holding up something that is non-ideal to the extent that it is viewed as deleterious as an ideal role model to children seems inappropriate to me, yes.

I don't write for children, either to teach them a lesson or aid in their moral education. I don't know what the ideal approach to gender roles there is, I just don't think that holding up a flawed role model is appropriate for children who are young enough that they still read illustrated childrens' stories, which is like... no one older than 8 as far as I can recall, barring unfortunate circumstances.

Now, if you're doing something where the flaw is one that it's "ok" to have so long as it doesn't rule one's life, that seems like it's a different beast entirely from setting up a direct compare and contrast between two individuals who are serving as representatives of their entire group. Now, if there were a group of male and female children to draw from, that'd make it another different scenario.
Well, I don't think we should hold every character as a representative of their entire gender, race, nationality, belief system, or whatever. But I agree that many people, especially children, seem to think like this ; maybe you're right, and the only way to depict two characters of opposite genders without stirring sexist sentiments one way or the other is to present them as pretty much interchangeable. Which has pretty depressing implications for mixed-gender casts... :smallfrown:

The main justification for bullies from middle school all the way through high school is that they never see people do the things they bully people for? :smallconfused:
One of the main justifications for bullies from middle school all the way through high school is "but I just wanted to help him man up!". Been here, seen this.

Coidzor

2011-05-22, 05:31 AM

A secondary issue ? :smalleek: That's pretty much the central question in this topic.

I was rather specific in what I was addressing, so, yes, it was rather secondary to what I was saying. Irrelevant to what I said, even if it's pertinent to the topic as a whole.

Also, do you really fail to realise how those things are inseparably linked ? If you agree that boys shouldn't be depicted as "less competent" than girls, then you agree that boys should always be depicted as "as competent or more competent" than girls. That's... basic logic. :smallconfused:

I already said I agreed with her decision to reject Rockbird's suggestion based upon my understanding that Rockbird was suggesting having the main male character be depicted as a coward not as "merely less competent," I did not say I agreed with her reasoning, indeed, I called it simplistic if I recollect my wording correctly. What do I need to say to make this more clear?

Well, I don't think we should hold every character as a representative of their entire gender, race, nationality, belief system, or whatever. But I agree that many people, especially children, seem to think like this ; maybe you're right, and the only way to depict two characters of opposite genders without stirring sexist sentiments one way or the other is to present them as pretty much interchangeable. Which has pretty depressing implications for mixed-gender casts... :smallfrown:

Well, with mixed gender casts of greater than 2 you have more ability to showcase a spectrum so that one male can be flawed without saying all males are or should be flawed. Or even that it's ok for girls to be both as physically active and competitive as boys or to enjoy other activities more.

One of the main justifications for bullies from middle school all the way through high school is "but I just wanted to help him man up!". Been here, seen this.

Has anyone ever believed them? :smallconfused: Do you?

That was always a lie in my case when people wanted to get into fights with me as a small child and as I got larger they only attacked me because they wanted to kill or maim me due to being angry at me for being assertive.

And you're still missing what I actually said. :smalltongue: Kind of hard for a kid to bully other kids for not being assertive if they only ever see people in their lives who are assertive in the first place.

Murdim

2011-05-22, 05:44 AM

I already said I agreed with her decision to reject Rockbird's suggestion based upon my understanding that Rockbird was suggesting having the main male character be depicted as a coward not as "merely less competent," I did not say I agreed with her reasoning, indeed, I called it simplistic if I recollect my wording correctly. What do I need to say to make this more clear?
Sorry, I wrote that part before refreshing the page and reading the part you had added in the meantime, so it wasn't really relevant anymore.

Has anyone ever believed them? :smallconfused: Do you?
Well, precisely. We are talking about justifications, not reasons. I mean, it's not like bullies actually need reasons for their actions. :smallyuk:

Gender roles does not make children into bullies, but it does make bullying easier, because there are quite a few adults that agree with this reasoning.

Teddy

2011-05-22, 07:40 AM

And you're still missing what I actually said. :smalltongue: Kind of hard for a kid to bully other kids for not being assertive if they only ever see people in their lives who are assertive in the first place.

I think you missunderstood what he meant. The "every guy you see" was most likely referencing to children's media, as that had been mentioned as recently as in the post just above his, and is/has become the general topic of this thread. He was (probably) talking about how stereotypes in media will act as justification for bullying later on.

To the OP:
I don't know what kind of activities these two children in your pictures partake in, but I would suggest that you make each of them better at their own things. I know I got annoyed (and still do) at my maths books for their habit of generally putting girls on the top position whenever there's some sort of ranking order (sports results, mostly; amount of money, partially; other things, sometimes). It's sad that I actually cared in the first place, but because I was caring, the book only helped to reinforce negative attitudes toward the other gender (even though I doubt it has affected me in more ways than just actively looking for this in my maths books, so it was probably more negative attitudes toward my books and "anti-sexism" sexism in general :smallwink:).

Lissou

2011-05-22, 12:07 PM

I think the best would be a mix of the two. I think it's important to show kids that they can be better at some stuff and less competent at others. So having each of the two characters (who happen to be a boy and a girl) have different strengths would really be best.
I think the best would be to have a mix of traditional and subversion. If the characters are just the opposite of stereotypes, they're a stereotype too, they need to be a full-fletched person, that would be more realistic and children could relate to that better I feel.

I think the woman's point wasn't "boys are more competent" but "boys wouldn't handle being less competent". That reminds me of the documentary Tough Guise, about how society pressures males into fitting some things (tough, strong, even violent).
Anyway, the thing is, even if she's right (and I think kids might be less brain-washed if you talk about it early enough), that's something that needs to be changed. I would have been infuriated too not being able to try and shake up stereotypes a bit.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-22, 01:13 PM

Whaaaaaat? He isn't saying that the male character is female, from what I have read, but rather that the male character is acting less assertive. This is something that kids will have to deal with at some point in their life. There will always be boys who are less assertive. If every single guy they see is assertive, then what will they think when they see a guy who isn't? That he isn't a man, or man enough? That he doesn't deserve respect?
No.

He said his approach to children would be to just insult them or at least show them unwarranted hostility if they didn't see the world his way and disagreed with his analysis of the situation, I imagine that's more what was being reacted to.
This is correct. Children are, well, children. They aren't PC.

unosarta

2011-05-22, 09:22 PM

No.

This is correct. Children are, well, children. They aren't PC.

Aren't "PC"? What does that mean? Anyway, I was specifically talking about your "Why do you think kids are, generally, insulted when something like, 'You throw like a girl?'" comment. It seemed to be either strangely placed, since it didn't seem to be responding to anything the OP was talking about, or that it was misunderstanding what he was saying.

Coidzor

2011-05-22, 10:24 PM

Aren't "PC"? What does that mean?

As an amusing anecdote that's also incredibly depressing, I've witnessed 6-8 year olds getting into fights with one another because of a difference of language or skin color, which is the sort of thing you'd otherwise think was a joke.

Teddy

2011-05-23, 05:15 AM

Aren't "PC"? What does that mean?

I'm not sure, but he could have meant "politically correct". A good example on when you shouldn't use acronyms, given that both "player character" and "personal computer" are more common uses of the same acronym on this board.

Also, Coid, good job at not answering his question. :smallamused:

Lissou

2011-05-23, 05:45 AM

I think kids are more likely to speak without holding back, which adults can do out of politeness or concern. This being said, they're also young enough that most of what they say would be stuff they've heard and been taught. So often it might not be what they think, but what they think grown-ups think.

Fiery Diamond

2011-05-23, 11:20 AM

How does that make gender any more relevant to how you should treat someone as a person, rather than an element in a set ? Also, what exactly are all those differences ? People always talk of them as if they were obvious, but I've yet to meet someone who can give me a convincing list of them. And if you don't really know what those differences actually entail, then I don't see how you could legitimately treat people differently according to their gender.

I agree with this. Nobody seems to be able to give me a good list either. For the most part, I don't think they exist. In fact, any differences which DO exist, in my opinion, don't come about until puberty when all the hormones really get to influencing.

I'm not an expert on child development, but I don't think that the hormonal differences in boys and girls are as signifigant as you seem to think. A much bigger impact on a child is made by the messages they get from the outside world. Boys are taught to be competitive and girls are taught to be passive. This starts at a very young age.

Children alienate themselves from the other gender because they think they should. Boys are praised for masculine behavior and girls are praised for acting feminine. If a boy hangs out with girls or acts like them, he is called girly. If a girl acts like a boy or acts like a boy, she is called a tomboy. Both labels have developed slight negative connotations.

This extends to adults. Sometimes it seems like everyone expects that the only possible relationship between an unrelated man and woman is one of a romantic or sexual nature. The world doesn't need that. There is nothing beneficial in perpetuating gender stereotypes.

Children's media needs characters of both genders showing a variety of behaviors. Otherwise, how will girls learn that they do matter, and how will boys learn that "tough" does not equal "strong"?

Also in complete agreement with this.

some back and forth that happened in the thread that the next quote is relevant to

I think the best would be a mix of the two. I think it's important to show kids that they can be better at some stuff and less competent at others. So having each of the two characters (who happen to be a boy and a girl) have different strengths would really be best.
I think the best would be to have a mix of traditional and subversion. If the characters are just the opposite of stereotypes, they're a stereotype too, they need to be a full-fletched person, that would be more realistic and children could relate to that better I feel.

I think the woman's point wasn't "boys are more competent" but "boys wouldn't handle being less competent". That reminds me of the documentary Tough Guise, about how society pressures males into fitting some things (tough, strong, even violent).
Anyway, the thing is, even if she's right (and I think kids might be less brain-washed if you talk about it early enough), that's something that needs to be changed. I would have been infuriated too not being able to try and shake up stereotypes a bit.

I agree with this also. The mixture point and the second point.

I think kids are more likely to speak without holding back, which adults can do out of politeness or concern. This being said, they're also young enough that most of what they say would be stuff they've heard and been taught. So often it might not be what they think, but what they think grown-ups think.

This is, I think, vastly under-appreciated. Kids VERY often say what they think grown-ups think, and then proceed to allow that to influence their behavior...given enough time, it then becomes what they actually think. They don't act in many of the stupid ways that they do because it's "natural", but because they learn it.

TheArsenal

2011-05-23, 11:30 AM

Honestly, if a kid can't take seeing their own gender portrayed as worse than the other I'd say to them:

SUCK IT
:

Ironicaly....I felt HORRIBLE as a kid. Most TV shows portarayed males as dumb cavemen while females where smart and inteligent. I hated that. But its possibly because Im allot more effeminate then the rest of my class.

I wish I just saw both smart or athletic people on both sides.

Shades of Gray

2011-05-23, 11:34 AM

Personally, growing up, I saw girls as more competent and intelligent. Every tv-show has a "girl-power" episode. Often, to be politically correct, shows make the girls more competent. The goal of these episodes is to show that girls are just as good as boys at anything, but they actually make the boys worse.

This is also combined with the bias in the early schooling system. Boys, in general, learn better through the hands-on approach, and like to move around. We are spatially-minded, which is why we do better at geometry than Algebra. Girls are more abstract, and are more content with sitting still. There's been a shift to a more algebraic curriculum, at least in Canada, as well as having the kids sit still. So in addition to girls apparently being just as good (read:better) than boys at sports, they are also seeing the girls do better at school.

SamBurke

2011-05-23, 11:38 AM

They would never be dead, especially among children. It's just built into our hormonal reactions and stuff.

At certain age most boys just organically cannot stand anything possibly related to girls.

Similarly girls keep alienating themselves from boys, talking mostly to each other, singing weird songs and.... See Bluewind95 posts for better details, I've never was a girl, so I have no idea. :smalltongue:

I'm gonna have to disagree, here, man. Me and my sister were CLOSE. Close. While my friends were off torturing girls, I was just like, "You're kinda different. Whatever." It's not hormonal, man. Unless, of course, I have less hormones or something.

Same thing with my sister, we were around each other so much, we just didn't care.

I think it's not gender roles so much as general sibling animosity that I don't like. Each age group and gender is separated and told they're somehow slightly different. As people get older, many lose this (because it's obviously idiotic), but not entirely. Again, subconcious, but CULTURAL, not HORMONAL. <rant/>

Coidzor

2011-05-23, 11:41 AM

Also, Coid, good job at not answering his question. :smallamused:

Oh. He was literally asking what PC signified? I thought he was trying to make some kind of point and shared one of my anecdotes on the subject of the Political Correctness of children.

I can't really think of any other term that would make any sense in this context.

Lissou

2011-05-23, 12:02 PM

I definitely have to pitch in with the culturalness of it all. In France where I grew up, the concept of cooties doesn't exist. I had boy and girl friends in maternal and elementary school (the first one being age 2 through 6, the second one age 6 through 12) as well as later on. None of the boys were ever disgusted by girls, none of the girls were disgusted by boys, and we all played the exact same games all together.

So no, kids don't universally think the opposite sex is gross out of some kind of instinct. It's not something I experienced and I think it's definitely a cultural thing. It's a bit like kids and vegetables/fruit vs candy, when I grew up it was normal for kids to like fruit and vegetables, although there were some that were liked less often (usually spinach), and candy was something you had from time to time.

Then when I was 7 friends of my parents from the US made rice crispy squares for the four of us (my brothers and I) and their own kids. My brothers and I took one each, bit in it... and all four of us at once went "Ewwwwwwwww!!!" and started feeling nauseated. It was way too sweet for us. Their kids loved it though and the parents were really surprised. "All kids like sweet stuff" they said, but really, kids like what they've been fed. For me, "sweet" meant something like "fruit salad". And I mean without added sugar or cream, just fruit and lemon juice.
And I had never heard of a "sugar rush" before I moved to North America.

So my point is, a lot of people think "kids are such and such" but really, they're the ones who encourage it by giving their kids candy and ice-cream and assuming they'll ate fruit. Similarly, if they assume their boys hate girls and think they're gross (or if the kids see it depicted on TV), they'll act that way because they think it's expected of them.

Coidzor

2011-05-23, 12:10 PM

I dunno, violence has usually been pretty strongly discouraged in my experience, and yet I've had issues with children attacking me for no reason for ages.

SamBurke

2011-05-23, 12:16 PM

Coidzor

2011-05-23, 12:25 PM

Violence and gender roles are different. In my opinion "violence" (depending on what exactly you mean by that) is something that little children DO have inherently, but learn to control.

But, before you ask about that: what do you mean by "violence?"

They're different, yes, but Lissou's point was that "children are x" statements are all false and a result of parental encouragement rather than some innate quality children have.

As for the violence I was thinking of... Well, there was trying to kill me when I was a child, generally via throttling, occasionally trying to stab me though that was thankfully rather rare and generally with pointy sticks that only mildly broke the skin rather than knives, climbing all over me and kicking and sometimes biting and attempting to steal my glasses in a mob when I was a teenager and had to watch some of them on good days and trying to hit me in the junk on the bad days. And I'm talking 8-year olds at the oldest and rarest and more often 5-7 year olds.

And the "race war" that happened on the playground for a week during kindergarten or 1st grade where kids kept seeking out fights between the spanish-speaking and english-speaking ones which I alluded to earlier.

Teddy

2011-05-23, 01:38 PM

Oh. He was literally asking what PC signified? I thought he was trying to make some kind of point and shared one of my anecdotes on the subject of the Political Correctness of children.

I can't really think of any other term that would make any sense in this context.

I see. And nothing wrong with anecdotes. I just felt like teasing you a bit. :smalltongue:

I dunno, violence has usually been pretty strongly discouraged in my experience, and yet I've had issues with children attacking me for no reason for ages.

Violence is kind of tricky, as that actually is a built in mechanism for problem solving. Violent humans and animals were successful in the past, so they got to reproduce and pass on their genes, which causes a lot of unwanted problems in the present... :smallsigh:

And ouch. :smalleek: I'm in awe just because you managed to survive that. Especially without turning into a monser yourself.

And why were they attacking you as a teenager when some of them were barely half your age no matter what yours was? :smallconfused:

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 02:42 PM

Aren't "PC"? What does that mean?

Politically Correct. (As Teddy pointed out.)

Anyway, I was specifically talking about your "Why do you think kids are, generally, insulted when something like, 'You throw like a girl?'" comment. It seemed to be either strangely placed, since it didn't seem to be responding to anything the OP was talking about, or that it was misunderstanding what he was saying.

I was going off of this,

What happens? Well, she says I need to change it because the little boys couldn't possibly handle being less competent than a girl.

statement.

Lissou

2011-05-23, 02:57 PM

I dunno, violence has usually been pretty strongly discouraged in my experience, and yet I've had issues with children attacking me for no reason for ages.

While parents generally discourage violence in their words, sometimes they don't show it in their actions. If they use corporal punishment for instance, the kids are still getting the message that violence gets you to be obeyed.
Not to mention you can get messages from other sources than your parents, such as TV, and violence is glorified in a lot of shows and movies. The "badass" characters are violent.

KenderWizard

2011-05-23, 03:45 PM

I agree that a lot of what kids do comes from culture and conditioning. There was a psychological study done where the same baby was introduced to adults as a boy or a girl. The adults had a doll, a football and a... neutral toy I forget. The adults gave the "boy" a football about 90% of the time, and gave the "girl" the doll. They told the "boy" he was a strong little man and were more physical with "him" (jigging "him" on their knee or playing clapping with "his" hands). They told the "girl" that "she" was beautiful and were more delicate with "her", like "she" was somehow more fragile than "he" was. And they talked to "her" more. There is no functional difference between boy babies and girl babies, there is no reason to treat them differently, but people do. So what happens? The boys learn they have to be "strong", and they're encouraged to walk sooner and do physical play. Girls are taught that beauty is what's important, they're quicker to learn language because adults talk to them more.

There are biochemical differences, most notably during and after puberty, when boys and girls have different hormones sloshing about in them.

The fact is, we can't take 1000 babies and raise them in a completely isolated environment tended by robot nurses programmed to be completely gender neutral in their behvaiour, both in demonstration and in their treatment of the babies, to see what behaviours the girls demonstrate statistically significantly more often than the boys. Because that would be completely bloody insane.

Humans are really, really complicated. Does it matter how your grandmother treated you when you were a baby? Does it matter more than the amount of testosterone in your mother's system when she was pregnant with you? Does that matter as much as the influence of your peers during your formative years in preschool?

But, since there's no personality trait that exists ONLY in one gender, I think the combined cultural effects that act on us from when we're born have a lot to do with how "stereotypically" male or female we end up. It's part of what makes us so unique, because no one else gets exactly your upbringing. Given that I believe that, it makes me optimistic that we can reach a more gender equal society, where boys don't score worse on average in school tests and girls participate in equal numbers to boys in team sports. And that's why I think it's important that we have these discussions and that boys and girls both have a wide range of varyingly competent role models in all media.

[/essay] :smalltongue:

Kris Strife

2011-05-23, 03:51 PM

Ironicaly....I felt HORRIBLE as a kid. Most TV shows portarayed males as dumb cavemen while females where smart and inteligent. I hated that. But its possibly because Im allot more effeminate then the rest of my class.

I wish I just saw both smart or athletic people on both sides.

Personally, growing up, I saw girls as more competent and intelligent. Every tv-show has a "girl-power" episode. Often, to be politically correct, shows make the girls more competent. The goal of these episodes is to show that girls are just as good as boys at anything, but they actually make the boys worse.

This was my experience growing up as well. Actually noticed that if a girl joins up to a group she's good at everything and that's a point of the show. If a guy joins up, he's horribly inept at everything (even if being that inept should realistically have gotten him killed) and it's a running gag. :smallsigh:

I always wanted to see a show where everyone has a baseline level of competence in everything, but everyone has their own area of expertise. They can all fire a gun, but one can shoot the wings off a gnat from across a foot ball field. They're all pilots, but one could fly a plane through a street tunnel in a snow storm without scraping the wings. Please let be mixed a mixed gender group too. If a guy's an ace pilot, have one of the women be the sharpshooter. I'd love to see a show that actually shows certain people are better at certain things, but that gender isn't a factor.

On a side note, I wished they'd quit giving the bad guys all the coolest looking stuff. :smalltongue:

H Birchgrove

2011-05-23, 03:52 PM

Unprovoked violence is indeed a problem. But the solution isn't to indoctrinate kids into becoming absolute pacifists, but to learn them to defend themselves and to control their rage.

Mono Vertigo

2011-05-23, 04:09 PM

Lissou

2011-05-23, 04:26 PM

H Birchgrove

2011-05-23, 04:38 PM

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 04:46 PM

I'll drop this here, and come back once my opinion is more elaborated than "sounds like a very interesting experiment, but it will probably fail in the way intended by the parents sooner or later": http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babiespregnancy/babies/article/995112--parents-keep-child-s-gender-secret
This sounds like a horrible idea. They aren't even doing it for a good reason.

“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” says Stocker.

I mean, she's correct, but really, they'll have to tell doctors, school officials, whatever, so the minute it goes to school, whatever stereotypes they've been avoiding will be enforced.

Not to mention that this kids is going to have the ever-loving-sanity bullied out of it the minute it starts something resembling a school. Then again, judging by these yuppie parents, I doubt it'll ever go to one.

Witterick practices unschooling, an offshoot of home-schooling centred on the belief that learning should be driven by a child’s curiosity. There are no report cards, no textbooks and no tests. For unschoolers, learning is about exploring and asking questions, “not something that happens by rote from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays in a building with a group of same-age people, planned, implemented and assessed by someone else,” says Witterick.

Sure, the school system has a problem, and I, personally, have gone to similar schools where we did "project learning" where we researched what were interested in, but the basics were still required.

Anyway, back to this gender stuff.

Yeah, yeah, stereotypes are bad, but you shouldn't be messing with biology here, especially when theirs nothing wrong on a genetic (or, or that matter, emotional) level. Plus, they're setting it up for a life full of confusion.

These parents sound horrible. Freedom is great, and one should strive for it, but you don't give a child free reign of their lives.

They are setting Storm up to fail.

EDIT: More insanity.

“Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?”

What? Who doesn't? You're repressing the child. I want to rip my hair out.

Lissou

2011-05-23, 04:58 PM

Yeah, yeah, stereotypes are bad, but you shouldn't be messing with biology here, especially when theirs nothing wrong on a genetic (or, or that matter, emotional) level. Plus, they're setting it up for a life full of confusion.
[...]You're repressing the child. I want to rip my hair out.

Did we read the same article?
They're not hiding from the child their sex. All the kids know, the parents know, some friends know. They've just decided not to tell random people about it because they feel it shouldn't matter.
They said they'd only do that until the kid was old enough to make their own decisions. That should happen before they go to school, so I don't see that as an issue. (Although apparently the kid will be home schooled?)

They already say their two other kids, whose sex is male, are free to shop from either the boy or girl section and to have hair the length they want. Yet obviously it wasn't enough and their kids had to face prejudice to be who they were, so they're not telling people about their youngest, so that this kid can play with trucks and dolls and not be pushed towards one of the two.

The only thing I think is crazy in this whole thing is the reaction of everyone around. So what if you don't know the sex of the kid? Does it really matter anyways?

Mono Vertigo

2011-05-23, 05:14 PM

Not quite as bad as the doctors who, after a boy had lost his genitals or parts of them thanks to a botched circumcision, told his parents to make him operated into a girl (because that is easier than repairing male genitals) and to foster him as a girl.

It. Didn't. End. Well.

He felt bad growing up, knowing something was wrong, and learned that his life was a lie. After he got surgery to become male again, his brother was so shocked that he took his own life.

I can't links for the moment, but I remember that the original article was written by Bettina Röhl (daughter of Klaus Rainer Röhl and Ulrike Meinhof, infamous co-founders of the Red Army Faction or the Baader-Meinhof Gang, but she does not subscribe to her parents' ideology).

I believe you might be talking about this man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
(Amusing, you're the second one today to point out this case in reaction to that article...)
Then again, David's case is very different, and much more horrible. The sex reassignment operation was greatly unnecessary, and worst of all, he got heavily pressured into ignoring what he knew was his real male identity, to act like a girl. The circumstances are much more horrible here, mainly because he didn't get any say in that matter, and that he got lied to in absolutely terrible ways.
Then again, I am firmly against sex reassignment of babies, whether they suffered surgical damage beforehand, or were born intersex. Half the time, the results are depressing, mostly because both the parents and the doctors think they can force a gender identity upon them and that they will like it. Surprise! It's a terrible idea when the baby was born the opposite gender, and it's just plain coin tossing when the gender is ambiguous!

The baby in the article is at least getting a completely opposite treatment: they effectively get a say in their identity, and I presume that if they ever want to know if they are a boy or a girl physically speaking, their family will offer them the truth. If their older brothers are allowed to express their identity the want they want, including telling people they're boys, I sure hope little Storm will get a better answer than "you're genderless, and don't dare tell anyone otherwise". Because that would ruin completely the point of the, err, experience.
(I'm much more bothered by the fact the children are homeschooled, honestly, but that's not a relevant issue in this topic.)

RLivengood

2011-05-23, 05:16 PM

While I generally agree that we need more and more diverse female characters in children's media, there have been quite a few popular shows before My Little Pony: Friendship is magic that show a variety of female characters. Even if that show is fantastic.

Kim Possible, Avatar: The Last Airbender and even newer versions of Scooby Doo are some examples that made it all the way across the pond.

So at least some of them are trying to give kids more diverse characters. :smallsmile:

I forgot those ones. Thanks for pointing them out. :smallbiggrin:

Coidzor

2011-05-23, 05:20 PM

Did we read the same article?
They're not hiding from the child their sex. All the kids know, the parents know, some friends know. They've just decided not to tell random people about it because they feel it shouldn't matter.

Can't be that simple. Wouldn't be newsworthy if it was.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 05:20 PM

Did we read the same article?
I'm afraid so.

They're not hiding from the child their sex. All the kids know, the parents know, some friends know. They've just decided not to tell random people about it because they feel it shouldn't matter.
Gender only exists if you let it. By not referring to it as a boy or a girl, they are hiding it's sex. We call people boys are male, girls are female. It has nothing to do with gender. Well, not in this case.

They said they'd only do that until the kid was old enough to make their own decisions. That should happen before they go to school, so I don't see that as an issue. (Although apparently the kid will be home schooled?)
If it doesn't realize that such a thing exists, it will never choose. Which will become a sever problem later on in life.

They already say their two other kids, whose sex is male, are free to shop from either the boy or girl section and to have hair the length they want. Yet obviously it wasn't enough and their kids had to face prejudice to be who they were, so they're not telling people about their youngest, so that this kid can play with trucks and dolls and not be pushed towards one of the two.
They're raising their kids to run away from problems. The reason they're "unschooling" is because Jazz was teased for being effeminate. I had a baby doll when I was a child, and no one made fun of me for it. *shrugs* If people make fun of you, just ignore them and plow right on through.

The only thing I think is crazy in this whole thing is the reaction of everyone around. So what if you don't know the sex of the kid? Does it really matter anyways?
Not so much. But these people are not competent. They're basing their experience off of Free to Be You and Me. The people who wrote that weren't parents at the time. This is a sick, sick experiment.

Kris Strife

2011-05-23, 05:27 PM

They're raising their kids to run away from problems. The reason they're "unschooling" is because Jazz was teased for being effeminate. I had a baby doll when I was a child, and no one made fun of me for it. *shrugs* If people make fun of you, just ignore them and plow right on through.

A little childhood trauma builds character. :smallamused:

But seriously, as long as there's no physical harm, there's no problem with kids teasing each other. That's what they do.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 05:28 PM

But seriously, as long as there's no physical harm, there's no problem with kids teasing each other. That's what they do.

Exactly. They're teaching they're kids to run away. Kid's have teased, will tease, and will continue to tease. Toughen up.

Teddy

2011-05-23, 05:29 PM

I heard of that and I thought it was annoying that the article says they're keeping the gender secret. They're keeping the SEX secret so that it doesn't affect how people treat the baby, until the baby is old enough to decide for themselves.

Excuse me, but could you tell the difference to a non-native speaker? :smallconfused:

This sounds like a horrible idea. They aren't even doing it for a good reason.

Avoiding the gender stereotypes that people have been raging at through this entire thread? Make a step toward a more gender-neutral society? Give everyone a valuable lesson? Are those not good reasons? :smallconfused:

Not to mention that this kids is going to have the ever-loving-sanity bullied out of it the minute it starts something resembling a school.

I know a lot of societies are not as mine, but in my kindergarten, there was a girl who did wanted to be a boy. She played with the boys, had a short hair and boyish clothes. I actually thought of her as a boy most of the time. I don't know what happened in school, except that she'd turned more girlish by the point she'd reached 7th grade, but I frankly don't believe there was any bullying.

What? Who doesn't? You're repressing the child. I want to rip my hair out.

You, apparently: :smallannoyed:

These parents sound horrible. Freedom is great, and one should strive for it, but you don't give a child free reign of their lives.

EDIT:

They're raising their kids to run away from problems. The reason they're "unschooling" is because Jazz was teased for being effeminate.

Wait, what? Running away? From what, and how? :smallconfused:

Also, I heard you've read his biography. :smallannoyed:

A little childhood trauma builds character. :smallamused:

But seriously, as long as there's no physical harm, there's no problem with kids teasing each other. That's what they do.

This actually hurts my brain (no wait, that's probably just my lingering cold :smallwink:). Still, point out a study that says teasing is good in any way.

Coidzor

2011-05-23, 05:36 PM

Excuse me, but could you tell the difference to a non-native speaker? :smallconfused:

Simplest way to put it as I can see it is that gender is something only the babby in question would know. But the babby is a babby and thus we really can't consult it on the issue and there are those who believe it doesn't have the personhood necessary just yet to realize anything on that level about itself.

As gender is self-identity in this usage rather than physical sex.

I personally see this as along the lines of refusing to breastfeed one's child when easily able to do so in all regards, that is to say, uninteresting and boring to me and of questionable impact on the child.

Mono Vertigo

2011-05-23, 05:39 PM

In a way, yes, the parents are teaching their kids to run away from their problems (but again, more due to homeschooling than not making the baby's gender/sex a determining part of their life). Because they will interact with the rest of the world much less than they would at a regular school. Not just other children, but also adults will tease them, bully them, or try and enforce normality on them. And when the day comes, when they will be grown-up and face society... I seriously doubt they will have been prepared to casual cruelty.
That doesn't mean they should adapt to the norms of society that are also stupid. They just will have a very hard time proving their lifestyle is valid if they expect people not to be morons upon meeting them. Sooner or later, they're going to face cruelty or ignorance, and it is better to do so, when they still theoretically have the protection of adults and their mental development isn't done yet, than later, when they will be expected to be self-sufficient adults.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 05:58 PM

Avoiding the gender stereotypes that people have been raging at through this entire thread? Make a step toward a more gender-neutral society? Give everyone a valuable lesson? Are those not good reasons? :smallconfused:
They are. But their have to be different ways to fight stereotypes. By raising Storm, it, without gender and sex, (which they may deny but, by calling Storm it and/or Storm, they are) they are removing building block for the child to establish themselves. Sure, sometimes you don't like those building blocks, but they aren't hard to change. It may be hard to change one's appearance in an established setting, but it's not like Storm won't have the chance. (Well, actually, it may not, but that's another problems with these people's parenting style.)

She'd turned more girlish by the point she'd reached 7th grade, but I frankly don't believe there was any bullying.
This is why the bullying didn't happen. Or so I'm assuming

You, apparently: :smallannoyed:
What? That doesn't make any sense. Unless the context I'm thinking of isn't what you're referring to.

Wait, what? Running away? From what, and how? :smallconfused:
He isn't standing up for himself and his parent's aren't doing it for him either. He should be at school and interact with the other kids. If they make fun of him, that's their loss, and his parent's should tell him that instead of hiding him away and depriving him on an education.

EDIT: Mushi brings up another good point for this particular piece.

Also, I heard you've read his biography. :smallannoyed:

Yeah, he's 5 year old, it's not long and it's kind of right there in the article.

The Rose Dragon

2011-05-23, 06:02 PM

If they make fun of him, that's their loss, and his parent's should tell him that instead of hiding him away and depriving him on an education.

Homeschooling is not depriving children of an education. I am not homeschooled, and I will not homeschool my children if I have a choice in the matter, but children do not need to attend formally established schools to get an education.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 06:04 PM

Homeschooling is not depriving children of an education. I am not homeschooled, and I will not homeschool my children if I have a choice in the matter, but children do not need to attend formally established schools to get an education.

He isn't homeschooled. He's being "unschooled" I have no problems with homeschooling, but this isn't homeschooling. At all.

EDIT: He being Jazz.

And she got this whole decision on a short, (as far as I can tell) fiction, story. Good parenting all around.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-23, 06:11 PM

If it doesn't realize that such a thing exists, it will never choose. Which will become a sever problem later on in life.

Apparently not, since several posters in the LGBTA thread have mentioned not comprehending the idea of genders or considering it part of their idetity and they seem pretty untroubled, if slightly annoyed that there is such a pressure to have a gender.

They're raising their kids to run away from problems. The reason they're "unschooling" is because Jazz was teased for being effeminate. I had a baby doll when I was a child, and no one made fun of me for it. *shrugs* If people make fun of you, just ignore them and plow right on through.

That doesn't make every decision they make bad, even if you're right. Nor does ignoring teasing work for everybody.

Certainly didn't work for me, I still retain trust issues and stage fright because of teasing that others may have dealt fine with. We aren't Borg drones with interchangeable strengths and weaknesses after all. Even if some of us do act like it. ^_^'

Not so much. But these people are not competent. They're basing their experience off of Free to Be You and Me. The people who wrote that weren't parents at the time. This is a sick, sick experiment.

So? Winnicott was neither a sociologist nor a parent yet his theories are taught in Social Studies in Scandinavia. Does he also know nothing about parenthood and child development?

I mean, I am a teenager but that doesn't mean that a psychiatrist won't know more about the mental changes and a doctor know more about the physical changes of puberty than me. Hands-on-experience in a single case doesn't make you an expert, does it? :smallsmile:

Lord Raziere

2011-05-23, 06:18 PM

hmmm.......raising kids without ever telling them about gender, leaving them to choose what they want to be when they are old enough. that actually sounds interesting, if only there was a way to experiment further and see what kind of impact it would make on society. would it solve social problems? make them worse?

unfortunately....no way to tell.....:smallfrown:

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 06:18 PM

If slightly annoyed that there is such a pressure to have a gender.
That pressure. You would say it's not a problem? :smallconfused:

That doesn't make every decision they make bad, even if you're right. Nor does ignoring teasing work for everybody.
I know ignoring doesn't work for everybody, but if you aren't used to being teased a little as a child, what are you going to do when you enter the real world and hatreds are more ... impassioned?

So? Winnicott was neither a sociologist nor a parent yet his theories are taught in Social Studies in Scandinavia. Does he also know nothing about parenthood and child development?
I'm sorry. I have NO idea who that is. :smallredface:

I mean, I am a teenager but that doesn't mean that a psychiatrist won't know more about the mental changes and a doctor know more about the physical changes of puberty than me. Hands-on-experience in a single case doesn't make you an expert, does it? :smallsmile:
For you specifically? Of course not. In general? Yes. And if hands-on experience doesn't make you an expert, what does? It's nice to research something and become an expert, but most things don't work that way.

Teddy

2011-05-23, 06:22 PM

They are. But their have to be different ways to fight stereotypes.

I belive you (partially), but, please, name some. :smallsmile:

This is why the bullying didn't happen. Or so I'm assuming

And I assume that you assume wrongly, and that it's more about chosing/being chosen by/being put in another group. I've encountered other older boyish girls in my life as well (not quite as many girlish boys, though).

What? That doesn't make any sense. Unless the context I'm thinking of isn't what you're referring to.

It's true that it lacks context, but I reacted quite strongly on your quite forcefull expressions to both that they give Z (I noticed that I was using the pronoun it, which feels rather impersonal) freedom and that they "repress" Z.

Yeah, he's 5 year old, it's not long and it's kind of right there in the article.

Oh, wait. My brain name-fail. Never mind. Also, it doesn't explicitly say that he's teased, only that all conversations gravitate around his choice of lifestyle in a bothering way (which is kind of what you expect). I disagree with the parents decision on homeschooling as well, but that's mostly because they won't be able to make up for the lack of social contact that the school enables.

If I may be somewhat naive, then I'd guess his choice of lifestyle will grow rather uninteresting as a conversation topic rather soon if he's allowed to be around the same people for a while, and if there is any prolonged teasing or any bullying, then the teachers and/or the higher administration clearly isn't doing its job properly.

The Rose Dragon

2011-05-23, 06:23 PM

That pressure. You would say it's not a problem? :smallconfused:

To be honest? I have so many other problems that the occasional tease about the issue does not really bother me anymore. And most people don't even notice that I'm not acting as "masculine" as I should (or pretend not to). And I was not raised to choose this on my own. And I don't live in a very liberal country.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 06:40 PM

I belive you (partially), but, please, name some. :smallsmile:
I can honestly say, that I have no clue. :smallsigh:

Just let the child do what it wants. If the parent's don't make it go out for Football, or Soccer, or Basketball, or whatever, they aren't enforcing stereotypes. Making it so it doesn't have a sex and gender isn't the right way to do that. Free To Be You and Me, as much as a yuppie play it is, has some good points. It's all about gender neutrality, the main character is a boy who plays with dolls, but everyone knows what sort of genitalia he has.

And I assume that you assume wrongly, and that it's more about chosing/being chosen by/being put in another group. I've encountered other older boyish girls in my life as well (not quite as many girlish boys, though).
And I don't. :smalltongue: This isn't something either of us can actually know though.

It's true that it lacks context, but I reacted quite strongly on your quite forcefull expressions to both that they give Z (I noticed that I was using the pronoun it, which feels rather impersonal) freedom and that they "repress" Z.
They don't give it, Storm, freedom though. They say they do, but by making have to live without a sex, they are well, repressing Storm. If they raised it as whatever sex it really is, I'm positive they'd let it change it's mind if it felt transgender.

If I may be somewhat naive, then I'd guess his choice of lifestyle will grow rather uninteresting as a conversation topic rather soon if he's allowed to be around the same people for a while, and if there is any prolonged teasing or any bullying, then the teachers and/or the higher administration clearly isn't doing its job properly.
It's fine that for now. Jazz and Storm wont be meeting kids their age anyway. But in the real world, you meet new people all the time, if only briefly. Unless they live as shut-ins their entire lives, it'll be a problem.

Teddy

2011-05-23, 06:56 PM

I can honestly say, that I have no clue. :smallsigh:

Just let the child do what it wants. If the parent's don't make it go out for Football, or Soccer, or Basketball, or whatever, they aren't enforcing stereotypes. Making it so it doesn't have a sex and gender isn't the right way to do that. Free To Be You and Me, as much as a yuppie play it is, has some good points. It's all about gender neutrality, the main character is a boy who plays with dolls, but everyone knows what sort of genitalia he has.

Isn't the whole thing that they're taking all actions to not enforce stereotypes? And Storm does have a sex (based on the rather poetic definitions I got from Coidzor), and will be aware of it, and will be free to spread it later based on Z own wish. It's just that the partents don't do it.

And frankly, I think just about everyone draw more conclusions than we're entitled to. Storm is 4 months old, and there's just that many decisions that can be made at that age.

And I don't. :smalltongue: This isn't something either of us can actually know though.

True. we can't know (unless I find and ask her), but based on both my proximity and society, I'd say that my own guesses are better estimated. :smallamused:

They don't give it, Storm, freedom though. They say they do, but by making have to live without a sex, they are well, repressing Storm. If they raised it as whatever sex it really is, I'm positive they'd let it change it's mind if it felt transgender.

I think I'm going to stand by my statement about drawing conclusions for now so that I can go to bed soon... :smallwink:

It's fine that for now. Jazz and Storm wont be meeting kids their age anyway. But in the real world, you meet new people all the time, if only briefly. Unless they live as shut-ins their entire lives, it'll be a problem.

The thing is that when you reach a certain age, people stop asking and start assuming (for better or worse, as they'll base their behaviour on said assumptions as well). Also, at that age, most people are able to answer for their life-styles.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-23, 07:00 PM

[
That pressure. You would say it's not a problem? :smallconfused:

I said nothing about what my thoughts on the pressure were but I do indeed consider any arbitrary pressure to conform a problem, yes.

Which the parents of Storm seem to do too, since they are not applying it to their children.

I know ignoring doesn't work for everybody, but if you aren't used to being teased a little as a child, what are you going to do when you enter the real world and hatreds are more ... impassioned?

I am no sociologist but I would presume you would do what you have been taught to do. Maybe. I personally don't know since I was bullied as a child. Sorry. ^_^'

I do wonder what you're supposed to do if you were teased, though. Running away? Cowering from the bad memories? Shutting yourself out of social interaction? 'Cause that's kind of my tactics. :smallfrown:

I'm sorry. I have NO idea who that is. :smallredface:

This guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott) :smallsmile:

QUOTE=AtlanteanTroll;11052763]For you specifically? Of course not. In general? Yes. And if hands-on experience doesn't make you an expert, what does? It's nice to research something and become an expert, but most things don't work that way.[/QUOTE]

For me specifically what? And I said in hands-on experiencea single case, not in general.

Psychology works similar to "hard" sciences like physics and chemistry when it comes to empiri, quantity, quality and relative objectivity are very important. Being an expert does not mean that you have raised several kids but that you have seen and studied cases from a standpoint with as little bias as possible and as little outside influence as possible. Research is not neccesarily part of being a psychologist or psychiatrist. :smallsmile:

Otherwise I would be an expert at physics because I have done a few tests in pre-high school. Wouldn't I? ^_^'

Coidzor

2011-05-23, 07:02 PM

Homeschooling is not depriving children of an education. I am not homeschooled, and I will not homeschool my children if I have a choice in the matter, but children do not need to attend formally established schools to get an education.

A social education.

Like, how I learned that humans are crazy and will knife people over inconsequential things as children.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-23, 07:18 PM

I said nothing about what my thoughts on the pressure were but I do indeed consider any arbitrary pressure to conform a problem, yes.

Which the parents of Storm seem to do too, since they are not applying it to their children.
Mmmmm. But a lot of people don't feel pressured. By taking steps to avoid it now, they are guaranteeing such pressures later on when Storm has become accustomed to a lack of pressure.

I am no sociologist but I would presume you would do what you have been taught to do.
Did someone say people don't?

Maybe. I personally don't know since I was bullied as a child. Sorry. ^_^'

I do wonder what you're supposed to do if you were teased, though. Running away? Cowering from the bad memories? Shutting yourself out of social interaction? 'Cause that's kind of my tactics. :smallfrown:
I think ignoring is the best tactic, and that's what I personally try to do, but of course that doesn't always work. I got into scraps when I was younger, as that usually took care of it, but now I'm sort of passive aggressive ... :smallannoyed:

This guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott) :smallsmile:Uh-huh. I'd say he knows less then he would if he was a parent, yes. Or was that not your point? :smallconfused:

QUOTE=AtlanteanTroll;11052763]For you specifically? Of course not. In general? Yes. And if hands-on experience doesn't make you an expert, what does? It's nice to research something and become an expert, but most things don't work that way.[/QUOTE]

For me specifically what?
He knows less about you, a single case. But given 10 children though, I'm sure he'll know their general ... issues.

And I said in hands-on experiencea single case, not in general.
Missed that bit. :smallredface:

Being an expert does not mean that you have raised several kids but that you have seen and studied cases from a standpoint with as little bias as possible and as little outside influence as possible. Theoretically, but a parent who has raised, let's say, 12 kids successfully will know more then a new parent whose baby as just been born.

Research is not neccesarily part of being a psychologist or psychiatrist. Otherwise I would be an expert at physics because I have done a few tests in pre-high school. Wouldn't I? ^_^'
I never said it did, though I wouldn't call a test research.

Worira

2011-05-23, 07:19 PM

Yeah, the kid is going to end up either a lumberjack who hates his parents, or a ballerina who hates her parents.

ZombyWoof

2011-05-23, 07:31 PM

Actually just this one time where a woman railed at me for half an hour because I was holding her hand through some basic maintenence of her computer. She claimed it was because she was a woman and I wouldn't be telling a man these things.

If ooonly I was allowed to say, "no, I'm telling you because you're a flaming idiot who's just going to break this computer again in a month."

Coidzor

2011-05-23, 07:41 PM

THAC0

2011-05-23, 08:14 PM

Meh. I have way more of a problem with this "unschooling" thing than I have with the "not telling people the gender" thing. Let's face it, in about four years (if not sooner!) the kid will be able to talk and will probably have figured it out, at which point the kid can do whatever it wants as far as telling people.

That is, assuming the brothers don't let it slip first.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-23, 08:23 PM

Mmmmm. But a lot of people don't feel pressured. By taking steps to avoid it now, they are guaranteeing such pressures later on when Storm has become accustomed to a lack of pressure.

To my experience, a lot of people feel pressured by society but are too afraid to act on it. But I don't know the numbers.

I do know that if the pressures are inevitable then why not postpone them until the child is old enough to face them? Why confront it when it's so young? :smallsmile:

Did someone say people don't?

Don't think so, but it's my best guess.

Uh-huh. I'd say he knows less then he would if he was a parent, yes. Or was that not your point? :smallconfused:

So? That doesn't mean he doesn't know enough about it to be right, but your post earlier made it sound like an author could never be right about parenthood because they weren't themselves a parent. I apologise if that was unintentional but that's what "The people who wrote that weren't parents at the time. This is a sick, sick experiment." sounds like. :smallfrown:

Theoretically, but a parent who has raised, let's say, 12 kids successfully will know more then a new parent whose baby as just been born.

And a pediatrician who has talked with and helped hundreds of kids will not? I am not arguing that parenthood won't make you more knowledgeable about it, but against it being the only way one can know anything about parenting. :smallsmile:

I never said it did, though I wouldn't call a test research.

Sorry, my wording was very poor. I meant that a few hands-on experiences with chemistry didn't make me an expert in the field just like I don't believe raising a few kids makes you an expert on the psychology of ALL children. :smallsmile:

Savannah

2011-05-23, 08:45 PM

Not exactly on the original topic, but since a number of people have brought it up:

I was unschooled. So are/were a number of people I know. We're all intelligent and well adjusted. While unschooling is not for every parent or every child, it neutral to beneficial for everyone I've met who does it (likely because the ones for which it would be detrimental realize this and change their method). (And while I have not read this particular article, as I was only skimming the thread when it came up, I would not be at all surprised if unschooling was misrepresented by the article's author - in my experience, it usually is.)

Marillion

2011-05-24, 01:09 AM

^Thank you, Savannah, for saying it first.

There is nothing wrong with homeschooling. :smallannoyed:

Believe it or not, there are ways to meet people outside of school. Karate classes, book clubs, even playing with the other children who live on your street. And beyond that, you can find groups of like-minded parents who get together expressly for the purpose of socializing, themselves and their children. It isn't that difficult.

I was homeschooled for a significant portion of my life (I attended grades 1-3 and 9-12), and while I'm not exactly a stunning example of well-adjustedness, I'm still better off than many people I know, as are many of the children I grew up with. Upon re-entering the school system, I was given a standardized, government authorized placement test that said I should be in college. I made friends easily, some of whom I still have, and I knew how to deal with bullies and idiots. It's the people who were tormented day in and day out for being different, the ones that tried but DIDN'T make friends, that become friendless miserable shut-ins.

THAC0

2011-05-24, 02:17 AM

^Thank you, Savannah, for saying it first.

There is nothing wrong with homeschooling. :smallannoyed:

Just gonna say, from where I stand, homeschooling and unschooling are NOT the same thing.

Savannah

2011-05-24, 02:20 AM

There is nothing wrong with unschooling, either.

SamBurke

2011-05-24, 02:30 AM

Just gonna say, from where I stand, homeschooling and unschooling are NOT the same thing.

I agree heartily. We are not maladjusted. We are not undersocialized.

Remmirath

2011-05-24, 02:50 AM

First, on the original topic, I think that boys and girls should generally be represented as equally competent or having different strengths (but not stereotypical ones) in children's books. However, if one or the other has to more competent, I'd personally probably just flip a coin.

Just gonna say, from where I stand, homeschooling and unschooling are NOT the same thing.

Unschooling as I know it is simply a form of homeschooling where you don't have specific times that you sit down and learn things, or a specific way that they must be learned. It's unstructured, but that doesn't mean that there is no learning taking place. I was unschooled until highschool, at which point I was plain old homeschooled, so theoretically I should have some idea what I'm talking about here. :smalltongue:

Now, I'm not ruling out that there is a different definition of it which I am not aware of, but unless that's the case I fail to see the problem.

If anyone happens to be curious and doesn't already know this stuff, this FAQ (http://www.clonlara.org/home_based_faq) doesn't have very much on unschooling specifically (eighth question down is the only one), but most of the other things it talks about in that first section apply as I understand it. I'm sure there are more useful sites out there about it, but it's late and I'm tired and I just went with the one I know.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not wonderfully sociable, and I am very shy - but of all the (quite a few, really) homeschooled people I know, including my brother, I'm the only one who's like that so I'm pretty sure it's just me. I always had social activities, too.

THAC0

2011-05-24, 11:31 AM

Unschooling as I know it is simply a form of homeschooling where you don't have specific times that you sit down and learn things, or a specific way that they must be learned.

From what I read, there's also no specific things you LEARN, which is where my problem comes in. Unstructured is cool. Not making sure kids learn what they need to know to go to college is uncool. And yes, not all unschoolers might fall into that, but I've read a few articles from some who have.

KenderWizard

2011-05-24, 12:19 PM

Honestly, after reading the story about Storm, I kinda want to keep the sex of my children secret, just for the first year or so. It shouldn't be important to anyone but themselves, I can't see it doing any harm, and it might allow them to escape the pink vs blue baby dichotomy. But once they became a toddler, I think it's more important to make them comfortable to be who they are rather than keep putting effort into keeping it a secret.

Coidzor

2011-05-24, 01:04 PM

Honestly, after reading the story about Storm, I kinda want to keep the sex of my children secret, just for the first year or so. It shouldn't be important to anyone but themselves

It's basically being rude to those showing polite social niceties to you, so I don't really see the point. Individual babies are quite boring and have no ability to be interesting in ways that don't mean that a given baby is either going to die or in huge risk of dying for a good period of time. Especially not as topics of conversation.

it might allow them to escape the pink vs blue baby dichotomy.

The pink vs. blue baby dichotomy is entirely up to what the parent gives to the child, not other people. Whether or not other people know the sex of the babby in question is irrelevant.

Themrys

2011-05-24, 01:17 PM

So a while ago I was hired to illustrate a book being written by a local lady. This book was a schoolbook for kids in the ages 6-8 or something, so it was all really kid-friendly stuff.

Anyway, this woman was really insistent that we keep the number of pictures depicting boys/girls about equal, something i supported wholeheartedly. In general, she claimed to be a real advocate for womens rights.

Then I began sending her sketches of the characters (there were a boy and a girl that kept appearing throughout the book). Now what I'd done was make the character of the girl a bit more competent and assertive than her male counterpart - I figured an insecure boy would be a nice change (I was honestly afraid that she'd find this subversion of gender roles a bit cliché).

What happens? Well, she says I need to change it because the little boys couldn't possibly handle being less competent than a girl.

...:smallconfused: :smalleek: :smallannoyed: :smallmad: :smallfurious:
WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

So, yeah. I felt like venting a bit. Anyone have any similar stories?

Probably she wanted to be fair. You know, men feel oppressed so easily - there are many who claim they're being oppressed because women now have the same rights.
With your illustrations, people (i.e. men) would probably have claimed the author was a man-hater and so on.

There are a thousand and one children's books where the girls are just there for decoration, but confront the boys with just one male character who isn't overly competent, and parents will complain you hurt their poor sons self-assurance.

Edit: Okay, since you live in Sweden, you might have gotten away with it. Swedish men aren't such wusses, it seems.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-24, 02:27 PM

The pink vs. blue baby dichotomy is entirely up to what the parent gives to the child, not other people. Whether or not other people know the sex of the babby in question is irrelevant.

And then of course, you could just decide to dress them in Green. If that's not a gender neutral color, none are.

RLivengood

2011-05-24, 02:27 PM

Themrys

2011-05-24, 02:33 PM

And then of course, you could just decide to dress them in Green. If that's not a gender neutral color, none are.

If you do that, people will assume the gender of the baby is "elf". :vaarsuvius:

Teddy

2011-05-24, 02:43 PM

H Birchgrove

2011-05-24, 06:09 PM

Coidzor

2011-05-24, 06:11 PM

I wouldn't see it as rude. You'd have to explain your decision, but that would just add a possible conversation topic.

You wouldn't, but it is unless you word yourself very carefully, as you're going to come off as either condescending or hostile 9 times out of 10 to a polite nothing.

Actually, the caring about the polite nothing and throwing it back into someone's face in the first place is probably the real thing, etiquette-wise.

Also, aren't you applying your own preferences on others when you say that specific babies are boring and never good as conversation topics?

Nope, I'm saying that a newborn baby has nothing to talk about it except for what it is, as it has not done anything unless it's tried to get itself killed, which is generally due to some defect inherent in the baby's heart or lungs or some other, worse, developmental kerfluffle.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-25, 06:25 AM

Nope, I'm saying that a newborn baby has nothing to talk about it except for what it is, as it has not done anything unless it's tried to get itself killed, which is generally due to some defect inherent in the baby's heart or lungs or some other, worse, developmental kerfluffle.

Coidy, You're not thinking fourth dimensionally! There is plenty to talk about.

What the plans are for the family's future. who they're going to ask to babysit, how adorable the baby looks in green and so on.

How does a baby's gender make good conversation, anyway? The biggest conersational topic I remember about my youngest cousin when she was
newborn was how tiny she looked.

Teddy

2011-05-25, 06:40 AM

You wouldn't, but it is unless you word yourself very carefully, as you're going to come off as either condescending or hostile 9 times out of 10 to a polite nothing.

Actually, the caring about the polite nothing and throwing it back into someone's face in the first place is probably the real thing, etiquette-wise.

Isn't that a rather great amount of misanthropy? I don't believe that people, and especially close friends and acquaintances, will find it condescening if you've at least got an idea on how to express yourself. And especially not hostile.

Also, I'm somewhat tired, so thinking is a bit harder than usual, but I can't for my life make sense out of the second paragraph. Especially the "caring about the polite nothing" part.

Nope, I'm saying that a newborn baby has nothing to talk about it except for what it is, as it has not done anything unless it's tried to get itself killed, which is generally due to some defect inherent in the baby's heart or lungs or some other, worse, developmental kerfluffle.

As Keveak said. Also, how much of a conversation topic do you expect the sex to be anyway?

"What is it?"
"It's a boy/girl."
"Oh, isn't that a cute boy/girl."

At this point the conversation will drift over to something else, most likely regarding the looks, the parental toils or the future, i.e. what Keveak mentioned.

KenderWizard

2011-05-25, 11:32 AM

It's basically being rude to those showing polite social niceties to you, so I don't really see the point. Individual babies are quite boring and have no ability to be interesting in ways that don't mean that a given baby is either going to die or in huge risk of dying for a good period of time. Especially not as topics of conversation.

The pink vs. blue baby dichotomy is entirely up to what the parent gives to the child, not other people. Whether or not other people know the sex of the babby in question is irrelevant.

I don't think it's rude or boring. As Teddy says, the gender discussion doesn't go anywhere, except for making the person more likely to treat the baby the way they are conditioned to (strong boys, delicate girls, etc, like I was talking about before). In fact, saying "Oh, actually, it's a secret! I hope you don't mind, we just want to keep it to ourselves for the moment." is much more likely to result in a conversation than "It's a boy/girl." Anyway, babies do lots of stuff, they're all different! They're little humans, not just eggs or something. Some of them cry a lot, some of them sleep in funny ways, some of them are fascinated by keys, some of them are fascinated by noses.

And you hold a baby shower where the guests know the gender and see what gifts they bring. If I'm rich enough to refuse gifts of toys and blankets and stuff for the kid, I'll be very surprised. People play it "safe" with baby gifts. It's a boy? Better buy the blue teddy. Girl? Pink blanket. Babies actually find pastels boring, they can't distinguish them very well. They see red, black and white best.

Coidzor

2011-05-25, 05:33 PM

"What is it?"
"It's a boy/girl."
"Oh, isn't that a cute boy/girl."

That was my point. One is being rude to people over not wanting to have 2 more sentences with them and instead subjecting them to a full long and drawn out spiel about what one is doing and why that is weighted towards making one seem... sanctimonious or moralizing or even condescending to one's audience.

Teddy

2011-05-26, 06:25 AM

That was my point. One is being rude to people over not wanting to have 2 more sentences with them and instead subjecting them to a full long and drawn out spiel about what one is doing and why that is weighted towards making one seem... sanctimonious or moralizing or even condescending to one's audience.

You know, you don't have to subject them to the spiel unless they ask for it. Now, most scenarios I can think up would actually involve that they do ask why, because humans are curious creatures, but then it's all good, because then you've got them interested (or they've just walked themselves into a trap).

Lissou

2011-05-26, 06:49 AM

Yeah, I don't see why it couldn't be brought up in a way that's not rude. For instance I think "Oh, we've decided not to tell people for now because we don't want anyone to treat them differently just because of their sex." If someone told me that, I would find it very clever and would recognise my own gender bias just from asking.

But people have different concepts of rude. When strangers ask a pregnant woman if they can put a hand on her belly and she says no, some think she's rude. I think the stranger is rude for asking.

As for asking if it's a boy or a girl before birth, I've always found it a bit weird because it seems much better to me to have the surprise, and I don't understand parents who want to know beforehand. Provided you have a name picked for each (or a name that would work for either), that's pretty much the only preparation that needs to be different (unless you plan on circumcision for a boy I guess?). I think it's so much more emotional to discover the person being born as they're being born, what they look like, including genitals, without putting such a strong focus on the latter.

Scarlet Knight

2011-05-26, 10:58 AM

Mono Vertigo

2011-05-26, 11:27 AM

Anyone who treats a stallion and a mare the same way will seriously hurt the animal and themselves.

If I may comment on that specific part... unless someone can give me evidence of the contrary, animals don't suffer from such a thing as gender dysphoria. Humans, well, do. It makes sense to treat animals differently according to their physical sex. It is not the case for humans, because they also have the pesky, complicated notion of gender, and gender doesn't always correspond to sex.
Also, gender has much less of an effect in itself on a child's personality than the way they're treated due to their sex/gender. Whereas stallions and mares don't care about what society tells them. :smallwink:

I'm not exactly worried about the way a child will apply the gender stereotypes they see. However, I'm certain the experiment will eventually fail because society will try and force an identity on the kid, whether the parents want or not. People don't like being told they can't know something, especially if it is something as fundamental as gender (see the ridiculous heated debates on all TF2 forums about the Pyro's gender, despite it being an absolutely irrelevant detail). Storm will by called a boy by some people, a girl by some others, and will be treated accordingly.

KenderWizard

2011-05-26, 01:28 PM

I'm sorry, do you realize the futility of trying to hide a child's gender? And for what? The child WILL see gender stereotypes. Period.

Will the child never watch TV, see a billboard , or speak to another child? Gender will effect the child's personality whether you want to believe it or not. Anyone who treats a stallion and a mare the same way will seriously hurt the animal and themselves.

And if you think you can tell family and friends in any way, shape or form that you will not tell them your child's gender without kicking up a hornets nest? Well ....

Not trying to hide it forever, or keep it as some precious being outside culture. Gender doesn't matter for babies. The babies themselves, that is. When the child starts to forge its own identity, gender will be a part of that. I hope the grown-up people I associate with would be gracious enough to accept my decision. Friends and family close enough to do things like change the baby's nappy will find out, and hopefully the act of trying to reduce the effect of adults' gender biases on the baby will make them more aware of it.

I don't know, I'm not 100% sure about whether it'd be worth the effort or if the insidious gender bias only starts affecting the child when they're older, but writing off possible ways to ameliorate the situation won't get us anywhere!

vegetalss4

2011-05-26, 02:18 PM

out of curiosity, lets imagine that I was a stranger and somehow we began talking about your secret gender baby.
I ask: Is it a boy or an girl?

what do you answer?

Savannah

2011-05-26, 05:17 PM

out of curiosity, lets imagine that I was a stranger and somehow we began talking about your secret gender baby.
I ask: Is it a boy or an girl?

what do you answer?

Something along the lines of the two previously suggested answers?

"Oh, actually, it's a secret! I hope you don't mind, we just want to keep it to ourselves for the moment."

"Oh, we've decided not to tell people for now because we don't want anyone to treat them differently just because of their sex."

Salbazier

2011-05-26, 07:14 PM

Uh, well, i don't really have anything to say about the gender role stuff.

It just.. I read the linked stuff about David Reimer and I feel like crying. :smalleek: That's really horrible

Coidzor

2011-05-27, 12:59 AM

You know, you don't have to subject them to the spiel unless they ask for it. Now, most scenarios I can think up would actually involve that they do ask why, because humans are curious creatures, but then it's all good, because then you've got them interested (or they've just walked themselves into a trap).

If you don't, then you appear rude by stonewalling them for no apparent reason though.

KenderWizard

2011-05-27, 03:58 AM

Uh, well, i don't really have anything to say about the gender role stuff.

It just.. I read the linked stuff about David Reimer and I feel like crying. :smalleek: That's really horrible

I felt the same way, it's so awful. It seems he was failed over and over. Starting with a terrible decision but, perhaps more crucially, it seems he never got proper support to deal with it. At some point, he was going to find out, and he needed proper preparation and probably some kind of counselling to deal with everything that realisation was going to throw up.

Something along the lines of the two previously suggested answers?

Yeah, I'd say something along those lines, in a friendly way. I like chatting to strangers, so I wouldn't want to just shut the conversation down. Unless they seemed creepy, but we'll assume not.

absolmorph

2011-05-27, 04:18 AM

Probably she wanted to be fair. You know, men feel oppressed so easily - there are many who claim they're being oppressed because women now have the same rights.
With your illustrations, people (i.e. men) would probably have claimed the author was a man-hater and so on.

There are a thousand and one children's books where the girls are just there for decoration, but confront the boys with just one male character who isn't overly competent, and parents will complain you hurt their poor sons self-assurance.

Edit: Okay, since you live in Sweden, you might have gotten away with it. Swedish men aren't such wusses, it seems.
Sorry, what?
There has been one mention of men being a minority (which, technically, we are; there's a slight imbalance toward women in the human population) in this thread. Men complain because we don't know how women expect us to treat them. The current majority of the working class is still set on the stereotype of gentlemen and ladies, but expect to be treated as equals (which just does not work).
Furthermore, because the generation currently in charge has all of those gender roles set in its head, women are given benefits because people don't want to be accused of sexism but are not always given the corresponding responsibilities.
When you put that together with the societal obsession with keeping men from being "wusses" (hey, look, you're reinforcing the old gender roles that feminism has supposedly been trying to break) and the continued oppression of non-standard gender roles in general, men are actually getting a crappy deal with equality.

Zen Monkey

2011-05-27, 11:09 AM

I'd honestly like to know why, given the push for equal treatment, the fact that I'm a man means that I am expected to pay for a woman's lunch/dinner every time. Why is Valentine's Day just about men doing something to impress women? Why is 'anniversary' just code for "men are expected to move heaven and earth but women just have to sit there and receive gifts"?

I'm sure that there are women who do not feel this is the case, but I've never known any in real life, only heard of their existence via internet. I've never seen a woman stressing about coming up with some grand romantic gesture on v-day or an anniversary. I've never seen a woman pick up a check on a date or even offer to split. I've also never seen a man specify what gift a woman has to give him, yet I have to hear all too frequently about the specific cut, color, clarity, and carat that my female friends expect from their men.

It's difficult for me to balance "I deserve equal pay for equal work" with "If I'm in the presence of a man who likes me, then I shouldn't have to pay for anything." If we are to support the former (and I think we should), then we really need to drop the latter.

Murdim

2011-05-27, 11:37 AM

It's difficult for me to balance "I deserve equal pay for equal work" with "If I'm in the presence of a man who likes me, then I shouldn't have to pay for anything." If we are to support the former (and I think we should), then we really need to drop the latter.
Equal pay can be enforced politically. Mentalities, not so much. That's why you shouldn't hold your support of the former "hostage" of progresses that have to be made on the latter

THAC0

2011-05-27, 11:41 AM

Sorry, what?

Furthermore, because the generation currently in charge has all of those gender roles set in its head, women are given benefits because people don't want to be accused of sexism but are not always given the corresponding responsibilities.

Personally, I've never heard of a woman asking for that and would be insulted if that were the case.

Lissou

2011-05-27, 12:17 PM

I've also never seen a man specify what gift a woman has to give him, yet I have to hear all too frequently about the specific cut, color, clarity, and carat that my female friends expect from their men.

Putting aside the fact that you've been unlucky with women so far (and that I agree with your judgement on them), I would like to have someone tell me exactly what they want. Provided I can get it/afford it. It's a pain finding something when you're not given any hints whatsoever.
I've paid for dates, although if someone earns significantly more and/or asked me out, I expect them to pay. That goes for males and females, not just males. My reasoning for the latter is, I wouldn't have spent that much, but that person wants me to. Why should I be the one to pay when they're the one who want to go out?
If I'm actually dating someone, well in the past I had only one ex I didn't share finances with but in his case we pretty much paid every other time.

I also would never expect jewels from a guy. I don't see the point of them, and they cost way too much. Honestly, if someone gave me something like that, outside of symbolic reasons (for instance my boyfriend and I bought rings that we want to be our wedding rings once we get married but right now are "just" coordinated rings. We paid for each other's by the way) I would probably be more upset about everything else that the money could have gone into, and feel terrible about such a waste.
Not saying people aren't allowed to enjoy jewelry! It's just not my thing at all. I'm sure people would feel the same if they knew a lot of money went into something they really don't like.

Anyway. I believe you can't ask for the benefits and not take the bad with the good. And I dislike the fact that equality only went one way. Women are free to wear pants. Yay! But it's still much rarer for men to wear skirts and dresses. And don't tell me they don't want to, because some do. It's just not as accepted socially. Another thing is that it's fine to have things for women only, but it's considered sexist when it's for males only. That's annoying. One thing that annoys me too is how in French they created lots of female equivalent for words that only had male versions, but they never did the same the other way around. Words such as "sentinel", "victim" and even "person" don't have a masculine equivalent for instance.

I realise these can seem like small things (clothes, words), but I think they're representative of society. And if it was worth making it equal the other way around, it's not too small an issue suddenly just because it's not in women's advantage. I know women have been oppressed for centuries, and I know they still are at times, but if we want equality, we want equality, not revenge, you know?

THAC0

2011-05-27, 12:47 PM

Putting aside the fact that you've been unlucky with women so far (and that I agree with your judgement on them), I would like to have someone tell me exactly what they want. Provided I can get it/afford it. It's a pain finding something when you're not given any hints whatsoever.

Yeah seriously. I bug my husband about this all the time, so it's not that men can't specify, in my experience it's that they don't choose to for whatever reason.

Thanatos 51-50

2011-05-27, 12:58 PM

Perhaps she is sensitive to the needs of the new minority: males.

We need help here in the US ( I don't know about Sweden).

Because women live longer , they are the majority of the US population.

Because of the industries hit in the last financial crisis, women are the majority in the workforce.

And for many reasons, they are also the majority in college enrollment.

Please, leave us our competitive nature...it's all we have left...

Good sir, this is sociology we're talking about, not mathematics.
I haven't done any research into the subject, but although you may be correct from a mathematical point of view, you are decidedly incorrect sociologically.

Sociology isn't about math. The white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male is still, sociologically, the majority, despite what the numbers say.

absolmorph

2011-05-27, 02:00 PM

Personally, I've never heard of a woman asking for that and would be insulted if that were the case.
I live with one until I leave my parents for college :smallannoyed:

Putting aside the fact that you've been unlucky with women so far (and that I agree with your judgement on them), I would like to have someone tell me exactly what they want. Provided I can get it/afford it. It's a pain finding something when you're not given any hints whatsoever.
This is very true.

I also would never expect jewels from a guy. I don't see the point of them, and they cost way too much. Honestly, if someone gave me something like that, outside of symbolic reasons (for instance my boyfriend and I bought rings that we want to be our wedding rings once we get married but right now are "just" coordinated rings. We paid for each other's by the way) I would probably be more upset about everything else that the money could have gone into, and feel terrible about such a waste.
Not saying people aren't allowed to enjoy jewelry! It's just not my thing at all. I'm sure people would feel the same if they knew a lot of money went into something they really don't like.
Cost is actually why girls like guys to get them jewels; it's proof that the guy is willing to spend however much on her.

Anyway. I believe you can't ask for the benefits and not take the bad with the good. And I dislike the fact that equality only went one way. Women are free to wear pants. Yay! But it's still much rarer for men to wear skirts and dresses. And don't tell me they don't want to, because some do. It's just not as accepted socially. Another thing is that it's fine to have things for women only, but it's considered sexist when it's for males only. That's annoying. One thing that annoys me too is how in French they created lots of female equivalent for words that only had male versions, but they never did the same the other way around. Words such as "sentinel", "victim" and even "person" don't have a masculine equivalent for instance.
The technical definition of rape automatically disqualifies all men as victims.
Also, I would love to wear some of the dresses and skirts I've seen.

I realise these can seem like small things (clothes, words), but I think they're representative of society. And if it was worth making it equal the other way around, it's not too small an issue suddenly just because it's not in women's advantage. I know women have been oppressed for centuries, and I know they still are at times, but if we want equality, we want equality, not revenge, you know?

Good sir, this is sociology we're talking about, not mathematics.
I haven't done any research into the subject, but although you may be correct from a mathematical point of view, you are decidedly incorrect sociologically.

Sociology isn't about math. The white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male is still, sociologically, the majority, despite what the numbers say.
The definition of "majority" is "the greater number".
Women are technically the majority, but men (especially white men) are the dominant group.

THAC0

2011-05-27, 02:35 PM

I live with one until I leave my parents for college :smallannoyed:

Well, just because one person of a particular gender (heck, or several) are stupid isn't a reason to deny an entire gender equality.

Seeing a woman acting like that ought to trigger the "Wow, I wonder how I could show her that's hypocritical" thought rather than the "Wow, now I see that women shouldn't be treated equally" thought.

And that goes the other way too. When someone makes a misogynistic remark to me, I explain to them why it's insulting instead of saying "OMG all men are such bad people." or whatever.

Scarlet Knight

2011-05-27, 02:57 PM

Good sir, this is sociology we're talking about, not mathematics.
I haven't done any research into the subject, but although you may be correct from a mathematical point of view, you are decidedly incorrect sociologically.

Sociology isn't about math. The white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male is still, sociologically, the majority, despite what the numbers say.

I too, am not a sociologist. It is true that the highest levels of power are still male. But that is dropping everywhere in the US.

When women are the numerical majority in the workforce and in education , it is only a matter of time before they have top power.

It has already changed in subsets of our society as uneducated men are almost unhirable. In lower economic classes, men have become a burden and large numbers of women choose to live without them, even when starting a family. Breed & get out.

KenderWizard

2011-05-27, 03:25 PM

The technical definition of rape automatically disqualifies all men as victims.

What? The definition of rape is having sex with someone without their consent. If someone, male or female, has sex with a man without his consent, there it is. The combination of people, their biological sex, their gender identity, their gender presentation, being same sex or opposite sex, doesn't matter.

Anyway, men and women aren't equal, and both have their problems. Many of the problems are mirror images of one another, or closely related. For example, women are more harshly judged if they look slobby, while men can get away with it more. But men are presented as stereotypically slobby in the media, which is annoying to the many men who are well-presented. Men make up a majority of the prison population, which suggests that young men are being failed by the system at some point, leading them to crime. But women, while statistically convicted less often for major crimes like murder and abuse, are then statistically given longer sentences for comparable crimes, according to an article I read recently, and are seen as somehow worse than male criminals, because women aren't supposed to be criminals. Men have higher unemployment and are seen as weird if they stay home to raise their children, while women are caught between being labelled as old-fashioned and anti-feminist if they stay home to raise children, or bad mothers if they get back to work. Loads of fields of employment are still very gender biased.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is that gender equality drives, far from going "too far" and biasing things towards women, shouldn't be finished yet. It might take a reform of education systems, but achieving what feminism realistically aims for isn't impossible, and doesn't result in a world when men are oppressed.

Lissou

2011-05-27, 03:39 PM

The technical definition of rape automatically disqualifies all men as victims.

That's not true. Because forcing someone to give you oral sex is rape, men can be raped that way (whether by a male or a female). Because sodomy is rape, men can be raped that way (whether by a male or a female). And because human bodies can respond to physical stimulus despite the absent of consent, just like a woman getting wet doesn't nullify rape (nor does her getting an orgasm from rape, incidentally), a man getting erect doesn't either. And on top of that, you can even drug a guy to get erect.

There is a huge stereotype about men not being "rapeable", but they can be raped by both men and women, in many different ways, and nothing in the technical definition of rape nullifies that.

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-27, 04:05 PM

Sociology isn't about math. The white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male is still, sociologically, the majority, despite what the numbers say.

Speaking for Americana, everyone is a minority now. In the most recent Census, no one actually had more then 50% of the population. White's just happen to be the largest minority. (Yeah, I know that's confusing.)

That's not true. Because forcing someone to give you oral sex is rape, men can be raped that way (whether by a male or a female). Because sodomy is rape, men can be raped that way (whether by a male or a female). And because human bodies can respond to physical stimulus despite the absent of consent, just like a woman getting wet doesn't nullify rape (nor does her getting an orgasm from rape, incidentally), a man getting erect doesn't either. And on top of that, you can even drug a guy to get erect.

There is a huge stereotype about men not being "rapeable", but they can be raped by both men and women, in many different ways, and nothing in the technical definition of rape nullifies that.

He did say technical. Penetration must be involved in the technical definition. So yeah, men can be, but it's ... a lot less common. Something like less then 10 (I think around 5) if I remember a study from Health a while back.

Savannah

2011-05-27, 04:10 PM

Speaking for Americana, everyone is a minority now. In the most recent Census, no one actually had more then 50% of the population. White's just happen to be the largest minority. (Yeah, I know that's confusing.)

That's the mathematical majority. He was talking about the sociological majority, which is about who is the most powerful group and who has the privileges. (Not a technical definition; it's been ages since I took sociaiology...)

Lissou

2011-05-27, 04:21 PM

He did say technical. Penetration must be involved in the technical definition.

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure there are cases of women being raped by being given oral sex forcefully. In that case, there is no penetration. What definition says that a) penetration must occur and b) the victim is necessarily the penetrated?

The wikipedia definition I found is
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent.

While it does say it usually involves intercourse, it doesn't say it always does, nor that the raped party is necessarily the female when it's intercourse.

I do know there is a lot of prejudice that way, and I think it sucks. I can't imagine having to go through the experience of rape, and then being told you weren't and that it's not possible that you were. I do agree if the technical definition implies or blatantly says that, it's sexist and unfair and should be changed.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-27, 04:30 PM

I too, am not a sociologist. It is true that the highest levels of power are still male. But that is dropping everywhere in the US.

When women are the numerical majority in the workforce and in education , it is only a matter of time before they have top power.

It has already changed in subsets of our society as uneducated men are almost unhirable. In lower economic classes, men have become a burden and large numbers of women choose to live without them, even when starting a family. Breed & get out.

Neither a sociologist, although my educational focus is currently on Psychology, but I would like to point something out. :smallsmile:

Whether or not women are the majority in mathematical or social terms there is still a huge problem with inequality that has nothing to do with actual position; women are generally paid far less than their male counterparts even if their jobs are virtually identical.

I will in no way deny that there isn't prejudice against men as well, but the pay is a serious problem. Especially coupled with the attitude that women somehow have the sole responsibility to raise a child.
Granted, sexism is a huge pet peeve of mine and I am a feminist, so I may be generalising but there is a problem big enough to hit the national news where I live.

This has been Ranting Kobold Intermissions, we will return you to your regularly sheduled thread two seconds ago. :smallsmile:

AtlanteanTroll

2011-05-27, 04:31 PM

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure there are cases of women being raped by being given oral sex forcefully. In that case, there is no penetration. What definition says that a) penetration must occur and b) the victim is necessarily the penetrated?

The Justice Department.

"Rape - Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal or oral penetration by the offender (s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object such as a bottle. Includes attempted rapes, male as well as female victims, and both heterosexual and homosexual rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape."

Lissou

2011-05-27, 04:42 PM

The Justice Department.

"Rape - Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal or oral penetration by the offender (s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object such as a bottle. Includes attempted rapes, male as well as female victims, and both heterosexual and homosexual rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape."

So... if I stuff a bottle in a guy's mouth, it counts as rape. If I tie him up and give him oral sex, or give him the blue pill and ride on him, it doesn't. That's many kinds of screwed up.

Coidzor

2011-05-27, 10:52 PM

That's many kinds of screwed up.

Yeah. There's a couple of songs out about that bit. Kind of odd to find those in the first place.

Sociology isn't about math. The white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male is still, sociologically, the majority, despite what the numbers say.
Cue Grargrh:
Which is so weird, because it seems like it's been long enough that most white people have a significant amount of Irish and German in them rather than being predominantly-British in ancestry. :smallconfused:

Why am I an "Anglo-Saxon" if my ancestors were never bloody Anglo-Saxons? :smallannoyed:

Why is Koorly, a Welshwoman Cornish individual considered an anglo-saxon when her people are defined by the fact the anglo-saxons never significantly intermarried with them? :smallsigh:

absolmorph

2011-05-28, 01:25 AM

Well, just because one person of a particular gender (heck, or several) are stupid isn't a reason to deny an entire gender equality.

Seeing a woman acting like that ought to trigger the "Wow, I wonder how I could show her that's hypocritical" thought rather than the "Wow, now I see that women shouldn't be treated equally" thought.

And that goes the other way too. When someone makes a misogynistic remark to me, I explain to them why it's insulting instead of saying "OMG all men are such bad people." or whatever.
The woman in question attempts to talk over any dissenting argument, and any mildly forceful opponents will be derided as "rude" and she will get in a huff about how they're "getting in her face" and refuse to speak to them until they've satisfied her sense of self-importance.

What? The definition of rape is having sex with someone without their consent. If someone, male or female, has sex with a man without his consent, there it is. The combination of people, their biological sex, their gender identity, their gender presentation, being same sex or opposite sex, doesn't matter.

That's not true. Because forcing someone to give you oral sex is rape, men can be raped that way (whether by a male or a female). Because sodomy is rape, men can be raped that way (whether by a male or a female). And because human bodies can respond to physical stimulus despite the absent of consent, just like a woman getting wet doesn't nullify rape (nor does her getting an orgasm from rape, incidentally), a man getting erect doesn't either. And on top of that, you can even drug a guy to get erect.

There is a huge stereotype about men not being "rapeable", but they can be raped by both men and women, in many different ways, and nothing in the technical definition of rape nullifies that.
My apologies, it was starting to get late and I confused myself in forming the sentence.
The technical definition of rape is prefaced by "of a man" in every form I've seen. Again, this is the technical definition.
There's also a ton of social stigma that correspond with being a rape victim, which are enhanced by being a male rape victim (since men are still expected to be "strong").

Lissou

2011-05-28, 05:26 AM

The woman in question attempts to talk over any dissenting argument, and any mildly forceful opponents will be derided as "rude" and she will get in a huff about how they're "getting in her face" and refuse to speak to them until they've satisfied her sense of self-importance.

So... she's a pain. I'm sorry you have to live with that, but there is no need to generalise from her.

The technical definition of rape is prefaced by "of a man" in every form I've seen. Again, this is the technical definition.

If you mean, "of a woman" then it does eliminate men as victims, which is stupid. If you mean "by a man" it eliminates women as culprits, which is just as stupid. (And "of a woman by a man" would be even more restrictive).

There's also a ton of social stigma that correspond with being a rape victim, which are enhanced by being a male rape victim (since men are still expected to be "strong").

Absolutely, I think it would be harder for a man to talk about it, due to a bunch of people thinking it's impossible. Then for a straight guy I'm not sure if it would be worse to be raped by another man or by a woman (the latter probably causing people to make fun of you or say "I wish it was me" and dismiss your hurt, the latter probably hard in that it's not the gender you're attracted too, plus you might be worried people will now decide you're gay when you're not or something).
For a gay guy there will probably also always be the fear that if people do take you seriously, they'll just say it "turned you gay", nevermind the actual facts.

Knaight

2011-05-28, 05:37 AM

Coidzor

2011-05-28, 05:43 AM

THAC0

2011-05-28, 09:36 AM

Drascin

2011-05-28, 09:54 AM

So... if I stuff a bottle in a guy's mouth, it counts as rape. If I tie him up and give him oral sex, or give him the blue pill and ride on him, it doesn't. That's many kinds of screwed up.

It is really screwed up indeed. Not particularly surprising, though. Some laws on these matters, rape and abuse and stuff, are very schizophrenic in some countries.

Here in mine, for example. A friend of my uncle's was abused by his wife - the final straw that made him stop taking it was her throwing a pickle jar at his face hard enough to break it and leave his face full of cuts. So he decided to denounce it to the police, and asked my uncle to come. So he and my uncle went to the police station, and the guy who heard them out told them, paraphrasing, "here's the number for an abuse victim support organization, and I'll do like I didn't see you, because if I acknowledge a case of domestic abuse, under the law I'd have to arrest you. She'd probably get financial support. Sorry I can't be of help". Thankfully, the organization in question was willing to help him, and from what I hear he's rebuilding his life okay.

So, yeah. When my uncle told me the whole ordeal I was having a hard time to believe it, it seemed so dumb... :smallsigh:

Themrys

2011-05-28, 02:16 PM

It is really screwed up indeed. Not particularly surprising, though. Some laws on these matters, rape and abuse and stuff, are very schizophrenic in some countries.

Indeed, they are.

Of course it is good that the era of "if a woman is raped or abused, it is her fault" has ended in most countries...but assuming that a woman cannot commit such crimes is just as sexist.

Such absurdities could be prevented by laws that don't mention the sex/gender of the offender and victim, or takes both genders into account, I guess...political correctness IS good for something.

absolmorph

2011-05-28, 03:28 PM

So... she's a pain. I'm sorry you have to live with that, but there is no need to generalise from her.
Actually, I'm not generalizing from her alone.
I don't want to remember where I can find one right now, but pretty much every piece of chain-mail about how guys should treat their girlfriend (and there are a lot) perpetuates it.
Which isn't to say those are good sources of advice, but their existence and spread is a reflection of the desires of a section of the population.

If you mean, "of a woman" then it does eliminate men as victims, which is stupid. If you mean "by a man" it eliminates women as culprits, which is just as stupid. (And "of a woman by a man" would be even more restrictive).
No, rape is something the perpetrator does. It's a verb that you do, not a verb someone does to you.
Thus, if the definition of rape is prefaced by "of a man", then only men can be rapists.

Absolutely, I think it would be harder for a man to talk about it, due to a bunch of people thinking it's impossible. Then for a straight guy I'm not sure if it would be worse to be raped by another man or by a woman (the latter probably causing people to make fun of you or say "I wish it was me" and dismiss your hurt, the latter probably hard in that it's not the gender you're attracted too, plus you might be worried people will now decide you're gay when you're not or something).
For a gay guy there will probably also always be the fear that if people do take you seriously, they'll just say it "turned you gay", nevermind the actual facts.
A straight guy getting raped by a woman would be harder to get emotional support after, for exactly the reason you mentioned.

You can't classify people into groups without including some unsavory characters in both of them. Part of what equality is is recognizing that both groups have their unsavory characters, and not holding them against the group as a whole, as the division is arbitrary to begin with. It sounds like this is one of those people, and its hardly fair to assume that others who share a characteristic with her are similar in all ways.
Again, I never said it was a trait of women, I said it was a trait of this specific person and also the trait of a section of the populace.
Personal experience has shown me that most women are happy with me being polite and treating them as an equal.

If she's a sibling or some manner of kin to you, just torment her with petty cruelty as is right and proper and be done with it. After all, what else is family for other than making sure our heads don't get too big? :smallamused:

If she's a roommate, well, I wish you luck in your endeavors to put an end to your relationship.
Worse. She's my mother.

Indeed, they are.

Of course it is good that the era of "if a woman is raped or abused, it is her fault" has ended in most countries...but assuming that a woman cannot commit such crimes is just as sexist.

Such absurdities could be prevented by laws that don't mention the sex/gender of the offender and victim, or takes both genders into account, I guess...political correctness IS good for something.
Actually, that era hasn't quite ended (http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh6dxv05OV1qcas18o1_500.jpg). Unfortunately.

Knaight

2011-05-28, 03:32 PM

Worse. She's my mother.

That sucks. From what little I've seen, I'd say cut all ties as soon as possible, but there is no way I've seen anywhere near enough to advise anything that drastic.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-28, 03:45 PM

No, rape is something the perpetrator does. It's a verb that you do, not a verb someone does to you.
Thus, if the definition of rape is prefaced by "of a man", then only men can be rapists.

It's archaic terminology but "rape of X" can mean that X was raped. I believe it stems from the word previously signifying theft and not sexual assault, thus "The rape of the lock" is a story about a stolen lock (of hair, if my memory serves me) and not about horrible horrible deeds.

But for all I know, you may be right about the current terminology. If so, then just ignore me. :smallsmile:

rayne_dragon

2011-05-28, 04:05 PM

It's archaic terminology but "rape of X" can mean that X was raped. I believe it stems from the word previously signifying theft and not sexual assault, thus "The rape of the lock" is a story about a stolen lock (of hair, if my memory serves me) and not about horrible horrible deeds.

But for all I know, you may be right about the current terminology. If so, then just ignore me. :smallsmile:

If I recall correctly, "rape" used to mean "carry off." Thus when you used to say that a women was "raped" it actually refered to her being abducted and stolen like a piece of property (because that's how women used to be viewed in those times :smallannoyed:)... the situation would then lend itself to the evolution of the current meaning of the word.

Keep in mind that I'm no entymologist, so I may very well have my information wrong on this.

H Birchgrove

2011-05-28, 05:59 PM

Speaking of archaic terms and etymology...

For some reason I got the idea that "Rape of Nanking" (1937) meant "opening up" or simply "invasion" of Nanking... I think I read it at TV Tropes, so I went over to Wikipedia which seems to be somewhat better source.

I was wrong. :smalleek: The meaning was, it seems, quite literal... :smallfrown:

... and then I had to click on the link for the "War rape" article, despite knowing what it would be about. :smallfrown:

WHY? Why am I so stupid? Why is there so much evil in this world??? :smallfurious:

(I've read about military history and seen war documentaries for over a decade, and I think it's getting its toll on me. I'm getting sensitive or something.)

Teddy

2011-05-28, 07:14 PM

(I've read about military history and seen war documentaries for over a decade, and I think it's getting its toll on me. I'm getting sensitive or something.)

Well, at least it's proof that being a war nerd (or just knowledgeable) doesn't mean that you're insensitive to it.

KenderWizard

2011-05-29, 07:15 AM

Indeed, they are.

Of course it is good that the era of "if a woman is raped or abused, it is her fault" has ended in most countries...but assuming that a woman cannot commit such crimes is just as sexist.

Such absurdities could be prevented by laws that don't mention the sex/gender of the offender and victim, or takes both genders into account, I guess...political correctness IS good for something.

That era has generally ended in legislation, but not in social attitudes. A lot of people still think only carelessly drunk women wearing short skirts get raped, which puts the blame on the woman. "Well, if you didn't want some guy to take advantage of you, maybe you shouldn't have been out by yourself, wearing clothes that you like and partaking of alcoholic beverages." You know, like some kind of adult. Silly woman. When actually, like we've discussed, men get raped, and further, people of both genders are often raped at home, in their pyjamas, or when they're wearing work clothes, because mostly, rape is about power, not sex. In rape cases, the jury is still less likely to take the victim's account if they've had sexual partners before. Which is completely irrelevant. Their clothes are judged. If some jerk steals your car, there are many arguments the defense team can bring up, but the defense "Well, if you didn't want someone to steal you car, maybe you shouldn't have such a nice-looking car that you take good care of." isn't going to fly, nor is "You have previously let other people drive your car, so what did you expect?".

Reverent-One

2011-05-29, 12:51 PM

Here in mine, for example. A friend of my uncle's was abused by his wife - the final straw that made him stop taking it was her throwing a pickle jar at his face hard enough to break it and leave his face full of cuts. So he decided to denounce it to the police, and asked my uncle to come. So he and my uncle went to the police station, and the guy who heard them out told them, paraphrasing, "here's the number for an abuse victim support organization, and I'll do like I didn't see you, because if I acknowledge a case of domestic abuse, under the law I'd have to arrest you. She'd probably get financial support. Sorry I can't be of help". Thankfully, the organization in question was willing to help him, and from what I hear he's rebuilding his life okay.

Sorry to go a bit off topic, but I really would like to know the reasoning for this, if you know it. How can the victim of an assault be the one who gets arrested?

Lamech

2011-05-29, 01:01 PM

That era has generally ended in legislation, but not in social attitudes. A lot of people still think only carelessly drunk women wearing short skirts get raped, which puts the blame on the woman. "Well, if you didn't want some guy to take advantage of you, maybe you shouldn't have been out by yourself, wearing clothes that you like and partaking of alcoholic beverages." You know, like some kind of adult. Silly woman. When actually, like we've discussed, men get raped, and further, people of both genders are often raped at home, in their pyjamas, or when they're wearing work clothes, because mostly, rape is about power, not sex. In rape cases, the jury is still less likely to take the victim's account if they've had sexual partners before. Which is completely irrelevant. Their clothes are judged. If some jerk steals your car, there are many arguments the defense team can bring up, but the defense "Well, if you didn't want someone to steal you car, maybe you shouldn't have such a nice-looking car that you take good care of." isn't going to fly, nor is "You have previously let other people drive your car, so what did you expect?". The difference between say rape and car theft is if someone is found with a hot-wired car 500 miles away from where the owner left it, or the thief's prints are found in a hot-wired car 500 miles away from where the owner left it, you can conclude from that alone that the car was in fact stolen. No jury will believe that the owner gave it away especially if the thief can't actually show that he and the owner ever met.
When we get to rape, I don't hear the defense/explanation of "look at what she was wearing/her previous sexual partners*". I here the defense "(S)he is horrible person and lying. The sex was consensual." These are two vastly different defenses. The first defies logic, but I think we, or my social groups, have moved beyond it. Unfortunately sometimes people do lie about being raped. And its very easy to end up having no proof one way or the other. You find bodily fluids on someone and you can say, "This person had sex with this other person." But... you can't prove rape with just that.

*One small exception is when a previous and recent sexual partner is brought up to explain physical evidence. If a doctor says "she had sex on day X" you can't tell me its not important if, for example, the accuser had consensual sex on day X with her boyfriend. Of course, if this is the case neither the boyfriend nor the physical evidence needs to be brought up.

Lissou

2011-05-29, 04:10 PM

No, rape is something the perpetrator does. It's a verb that you do, not a verb someone does to you.
Thus, if the definition of rape is prefaced by "of a man", then only men can be rapists.

I know rape is what the rapist does, not the victim. But "theft of a car" doesn't mean the car stole something but that the car was stolen. I assumed similarly "rape of..." would be followed by the object, like "murder of..." is followed by the victim, not the murderer.

Kris Strife

2011-05-29, 04:24 PM

Sorry to go a bit off topic, but I really would like to know the reasoning for this, if you know it. How can the victim of an assault be the one who gets arrested?

Because he was the husband in a domestic violence incident.

Drascin

2011-05-29, 04:54 PM

Sorry to go a bit off topic, but I really would like to know the reasoning for this, if you know it. How can the victim of an assault be the one who gets arrested?

Basically, it's a matter of how the law is written. The domestic abuse law is not the same law as normal assault one - the domestic abuse one says (put simply - I'm not keen on translating the legalese to English) that in cases of domestic abuse, the first thing to do is to arrest the husband and put him into custody, and the wife will be provided with help and stuff. Because apparently the idea that a man could be the victim didn't occur to the people making the law, with how easy it would have been to make a neutral law. I sometimes wonder what the policemen are supposed to do in a case of two married lesbians.

But then, we've had a rather odd last few years in these matters. I mean, the news in here don't say "domestic violence" anymore, it's, translated, "male chauvinist violence". No, not kidding, that's the term used here in pretty much every newscast. I think it might have come straight from the Ministry for Equality we had a while back, for the short time until it imploded.

Themrys

2011-05-30, 08:36 AM

Basically, it's a matter of how the law is written. The domestic abuse law is not the same law as normal assault one - the domestic abuse one says (put simply - I'm not keen on translating the legalese to English) that in cases of domestic abuse, the first thing to do is to arrest the husband and put him into custody, and the wife will be provided with help and stuff. Because apparently the idea that a man could be the victim didn't occur to the people making the law, with how easy it would have been to make a neutral law. I sometimes wonder what the policemen are supposed to do in a case of two married lesbians.

Provide both with help and stuff?

Well, a married gay man could at least get his abusive husband arrested...for the cost of being arrested himself, I guess.
This is utter nonsense - do they really have to stick to the letter of the law?
Couldn't they just arrest the abusive wife for assault or whatever she has done?

But then, we've had a rather odd last few years in these matters. I mean, the news in here don't say "domestic violence" anymore, it's, translated, "male chauvinist violence". No, not kidding, that's the term used here in pretty much every newscast. I think it might have come straight from the Ministry for Equality we had a while back, for the short time until it imploded.

So they can't even talk about domestic violence against men? :smallconfused:

Borgh

2011-05-30, 08:43 AM

Drascin

2011-05-30, 08:55 AM

Provide both with help and stuff?

Well, a married gay man could at least get his abusive husband arrested...for the cost of being arrested himself, I guess.
This is utter nonsense - do they really have to stick to the letter of the law?
Couldn't they just arrest the abusive wife for assault or whatever she has done?

I dunno, honestly. I'm not a policeman, and not in the ins and outs of how it all works either, sadly.

So they can't even talk about domestic violence against men? :smallconfused:

They could, the term "domestic violence" is still perfectly valid by the rules of language - they just don't do it, not the ministry and not the news, was my point, sorry if I misexplained. Their choice to use such terms instead of the perfectly valid nautral ones rather highlights this refusal to acknowledge other possibilities, which is what makes it so annoying to me. It's like hiding one's head in the sand.

Salbazier

2011-05-30, 09:05 AM

Basically, it's a matter of how the law is written. The domestic abuse law is not the same law as normal assault one - the domestic abuse one says (put simply - I'm not keen on translating the legalese to English) that in cases of domestic abuse, the first thing to do is to arrest the husband and put him into custody, and the wife will be provided with help and stuff. Because apparently the idea that a man could be the victim didn't occur to the people making the law, with how easy it would have been to make a neutral law. I sometimes wonder what the policemen are supposed to do in a case of two married lesbians.

But then, we've had a rather odd last few years in these matters. I mean, the news in here don't say "domestic violence" anymore, it's, translated, "male chauvinist violence". No, not kidding, that's the term used here in pretty much every newscast. I think it might have come straight from the Ministry for Equality we had a while back, for the short time until it imploded.

Uhh. Politicians...

I guess the most exposed (and thus the one most people readily think when they hear 'domestic violence') is wife abuse by husband, which was the legislators had in mind to prevent when they made the law.

I can't understand what this nonsense about 'male chauvinist stuff' though.
Silly terms.

Wait, they allow gay/lesbian marriage in you area? If they can think liberal enough to allow, why haven't they thought to revise the laws to be more gender neutral? Weird.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-30, 11:18 AM

This is utter nonsense - do they really have to stick to the letter of the law?

To my knowledge, yes they do. The police are not supposed to have power over the law. If they did, then they could ignore crimes or deem actions inconvenient to them worthy of arrest. :smalleek:

To my knowledge, the letter of the law is supposed to be written as unambigious and clearly as possible to prevent hypothetical corrupt police members from taking such actions. :smallsmile:

Unfortunately, this particular law is not written very well. But that's a job for the politicians, not the police. :smallfrown:

Lissou

2011-05-30, 11:34 AM

Yeah, that's why laws like this normally get spotted, contexted, and you get them rewritten, but it's a long process and sometimes it just isn't done. I think right now what the people can do is write their political figures about this specific problem and hope something happens, but many politicians don't want to be the one asking for the law to include women who beat men (or any other non man-beats-woman case), for fear of being called sexist (or homophobic).
I know it's stupid, but that's the kind of things that happens all the time, they're too afraid of public reactions and how people would interpret it.
I think what you'd need to do is write to a female politician, as it's less likely she'll be afraid of being called sexist.

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 02:41 PM

When we get to rape, I don't hear the defense/explanation of "look at what she was wearing/her previous sexual partners*". I here the defense "(S)he is horrible person and lying.
You should probably try listening to a rape case then. That is in fact one of the defenses, colloquially termed the slut defense. It builds into the second defense, that she was lying. It works. It's part of many successful defense case where the prosecution can prove without a shadow of a doubt that the accused had sex with the victim.

Because you know, if the woman was a slut, she couldn't have said no to my client. And if she's had sex before, and enjoyed it, she's a slut. I have a standing black joke with one of my friends in law school about the legal elements of rape, and it goes a little along the lines of:
1) The defendant must have had sex with the accused
2) there is videotape of a weapon

OR

2) who must have been dressed in a fuzzy sweater and a long dress
3) and who has never personally thought about sex
4) and must not have had a sister, cousin, or mother who thought about sex

Because otherwise, the defendant is going to walk.

The first defies logic, but I think we, or my social groups, have moved beyond it.
You haven't, going by what works in a jury trial.

Unfortunately sometimes people do lie about being raped.
The rate of false rape reports is 1.8% in the states, if I recall correctly. The rate of false theft reports is 4.1%. Yet you, and society in general, only feels the need to keep this in mind in a case of rape. It says more about the state of things than you realize.

Most male rape victims are raped by men. Sorry to bust up the men's pity party on how much women rape men and all, but they predominantly don't. That's why when people start making suggestions on how women can avoid being raped, I point out the only effective one is to join a lesbian seperatist commune; because that would screen out the overwhelming majority of all potential rapists.

The technical definition of rape automatically disqualifies all men as victims.
There is no 'technical definition' of rape, there is a legal definition (which varies by state at least in the US) and a colloquial one. The legal definition can (But does not always) disqualify men as potential victims. Your problem is two fold; even when the legal definition makes it possible, the fact of the matter is that because society says men should be strong, and can't possibly turn down (Straight, anyway, which doens't hurt too much here) sex, men's rape cases work out just as poorly as women's, but for different reasons. Patriarchy hurts men too. With the exception of seperatists, I've never seen a feminist suggest this shouldn't be altered; It's a reason you should help feminists, not try to play the role of the oppressed hegemon.

The definition of "majority" is "the greater number".
No, it isn't, in a sociological context. In sociology, the majority is the group with greater power, period.

The Justice Department.
The Justice Department handles rape cases in Washington DC, to the best of my recollection. They certainly don't elsewhere. Change the laws, by all means, but keep in mind that if rape law specifies men as offenders, it is accurate in more than 90% of rape cases. Which doesn't change that it should be altered.

Regarding domestic assault laws:
I hate to point this out, but in reality they predominantly arrest the offender, not the victim. Yes, that's even when they're written to arrest men period. Yes, the laws should be rewritten despite that, because there's still male victims, but try to keep perspective.

Coidzor

2011-05-30, 02:54 PM

That's why when people start making suggestions on how women can avoid being raped, I point out the only effective one is to join a lesbian seperatist commune; because that would screen out the overwhelming majority of all potential rapists.

Separatist is the proper spelling. If one is willing to die social death to avoid rape, the least that could be done would be to actually work to improve the world rather than run away from it. :smallyuk:

Regarding domestic assault laws:
I hate to point this out, but in reality they predominantly arrest the offender, not the victim. Yes, that's even when they're written to arrest men period. Yes, the laws should be rewritten despite that, because there's still male victims, but try to keep perspective.

An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 03:21 PM

Separatist is the proper spelling. If one is willing to die social death to avoid rape, the least that could be done would be to actually work to improve the world rather than run away from it.
Working to change the world would make you a target, actually. I am reasonably sure board rules specify that I can not give you examples, so I won't, but it remains a fact. I, personally, can not fault ordinary people for making themselves safe over making themselves targets.

To give context you may need for my statement in general; There is a distressing tendency to give women all sorts of 'advice' to avoid rape. Go out in groups, don't go out with men you don't trust, don't go out at night, don't go out in 'bad neighborhoods', take 'self defense courses'...

None of those work. Most rapes are done by people the victim trusts (Acquaintance Rape), for instance, obviating the 'don't go out with men you don't trust' bit. In fact,t hat pretty much by itself obviates all advice, but there are other reasons. There is only one effective rape prevention method; leave normal society. Even the advice that doesn't work requires you to be something of a shut in except when conditions are right. But the simple fact is that joining a lesbian separatist commune would screen out enormous numbers of potential rapists, and is thus the only effective way not to be raped. Otherwise, it's a risk women have to live with. At least, until society is changed drastically.

An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.
What does that sentiment have to do with the reality that domestic assault laws written to specifically arrest men arrest the offender in the majority of cases, or the reality that those laws should still be changed?

Poison_Fish

2011-05-30, 03:33 PM

Neither a sociologist, although my educational focus is currently on Psychology, but I would like to point something out. :smallsmile:

Whether or not women are the majority in mathematical or social terms there is still a huge problem with inequality that has nothing to do with actual position; women are generally paid far less than their male counterparts even if their jobs are virtually identical.

I will in no way deny that there isn't prejudice against men as well, but the pay is a serious problem. Especially coupled with the attitude that women somehow have the sole responsibility to raise a child.
Granted, sexism is a huge pet peeve of mine and I am a feminist, so I may be generalising but there is a problem big enough to hit the national news where I live.

This has been Ranting Kobold Intermissions, we will return you to your regularly sheduled thread two seconds ago. :smallsmile:

I will speak here as a sociologist and anthropologist then. I'll write more of a general primer more then anything though, and it's largely influenced by my own model for viewing how things work (which is influenced by a number of theorists, a bit much to get into without a fair amount of theory on the part of the readers). What we are talking about here is inequality, but it's important to note that there are several different types of inequality. Additionally, we are talking about power in relation to these inequalities.

First of, I'd like to define the schema and level that I am looking at this from. I am looking at an institutional level, so a fair amount of economics are at play and so on. There are many levels one can look at the problem, but I'm doing a top down approach. Questions of "why do I have to pay for the dinner during a date" and so on are a mix of these levels, but primarily correspond to interactional and individual levels of society.

When looking at say, majority in number or the pay differences of gender (race, able, etc.) within the same industry, or the differences between gender (and everything else) in labor division, these are inequalities derived from a simple quantitative statistical information. Think of it as a snap shot picture we can take of how things are for a specific element right now. For instance, we have poverty rates, the gini index, etc. that all provide a quick picture to summarize for us. I'll refer to this as inequality of outcomes. Outcome can change for instance, as the scale of time is not on the statistical measure (Though there are plenty of nice studies out there that incorporate a time scale to show how position has changed as a measure of statistics). In a way, it is a positional starting point.

The next goal would be to figure out why there are those statistical inequalities. That, in essence, is creating a causal model with the dependent variable being the statistical measure, and any number of independent variables leading to the creation of it. This will lead into the other inequality we talk of, and that is inequality of opportunity. These are the social, economic, and other influences that help to create the outcomes or new outcomes within that time scale. A few quick examples may be the schooling one receives, the biological and visual characteristics of individuals and the identity politics that results from biological and visual categories, the neighborhood one grows up in, etc. These are all independent variables that will factor into the inequality of outcome that results.

Note, that some measures, independent and dependent variables, are stronger or more valid then others. That is to say, they carry a greater weight in influence then opposing or variables that may contradict it to construct an overall picture.

Let's create a harmless case example because mods don't like real life ones. Say you are all playing monopoly, a game of luck, essentially. In ordinary monopoly you all start with $1500 (assume other currency for non USAnian). To explain why someone wins or several players have all the money and others don't/are bankrupt, you can list luck as an independent variable, or Transaction Jacksons ability to negotiate and trick other players, or Johnny Applebottoms dipping into the bank to influence his wealth, and so on. Some factors here would be stronger then others. However, as we know, we don't all start out on the same playing field. Play a game of monopoly where Jackson starts with $3000, Johnny starts with $1500, 3 starts with $1000, and the rest have $500. Now we have a wealth of variables, on top of luck, where the statistical outcome can be measured by an influence of previous outcome positions on top of other factors.

Finally we get to what power means. There are a lot of definitions of power, but I'm going to go with a simple one. It is the measure of an entity's (social group, individual, etc.) ability to control the environment around it, which also includes the power to influence others. These are processes, such as utilizing force and violence, the ability to spend money to gain resources, and so on.

So, what does this huge list of things actually mean? Well, in relation to gender roles (as that is what we are discussing here) we know that structurally as a matter of institutions women are less equal then men. This is reflected not only in wage (http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2011/01/ted_20110124.png) gaps (http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2011/02/ted_20110216.jpg) but also that the work force itself (http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/05/02/job-segregation-by-sex-1972-2008/) is also gendered (For many, many reasons, biology not being a very strong reason btw). Additionally I'd like to point out there is a lot of intersectionality here, as other things like economic class, race, and ableist apply. The opportunities are not the same, be that forced institutionally or a more subtle discourse over prescribed gender roles and acceptable career paths (Look at the sciences and gender for instance).

Essentially it's very complicated, but let us TLDR it here. Gender wise, men still hold greater power then women. There may be excepted cased on individual or interactional levels, but they pale in comparison to the large trend of structural reality, as reflected by statistics above and the opportunity afforded to genders. Remember, it is not about mere numbers of people. It is about power.

Coidzor

2011-05-30, 03:37 PM

What does that sentiment have to do with the reality that domestic assault laws written to specifically arrest men arrest the offender in the majority of cases, or the reality that those laws should still be changed?

Because "try to keep perspective" in response to sentiments that the laws need to be changed makes you come off like you're saying that the injustice is an acceptable loss to make up for past wrongs by exacting retribution on the rare innocent human being who has already become a victim.

After all, no one was blaming women for the situation, so what perspective needed to be kept?

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 04:02 PM

Because "try to keep perspective" in response to sentiments that the laws need to be changed makes you come off like you're saying that the injustice is an acceptable loss to make up for past wrongs by exacting retribution on the rare innocent human being who has already become a victim.
It's in response to the tenor of the rhetoric. I similarly want male rape victims to have an actual shot at justice, but painting men as the oppressed minority because they never will is factually inaccurate. It's the same with domestic assault. The way the laws are written is a holdover of the same sexism that infects US society (and as near as I can tell, the rest of the world to varying, but still major, degrees) and keeps women in a lower position than men. They assume men are the problems because men are agents, and women are not because pft, women don't have agency. As a byproduct, they do serious damage to male victims. Both of these are reasons to rewrite the laws. Neither of these is a reason to act like men are the oppressed minority.

After all, no one was blaming women for the situation, so what perspective needed to be kept?
It isn't sufficient not to blame women directly. One must avoid transferring status as an oppressed group to those who simply don't have it.

Lissou

2011-05-30, 04:09 PM

It is not acceptable for part of a group to be punished because of the actions of others in the group. It's not acceptable for men to be arrested when they're a victim because men are less often the victim. The rarer these things are, the worst they are for the person involved (it's probably much harder for a man to live with having been beaten up by his wife than the other way around, psychologically). If on top of that they don't get the support they need, or worse they're the one who gets arrested, it's an incredible injustice, and I don't see how your post is making anything better.

Yes, the reason why these stereotypes exist is that more men rape women than the opposite. And the reason why it's hard to make these laws just is the same. But that doesn't make them suddenly unjust, and I've ran into a lot of feminists who are all "well it's not an important issue", and that kills me.
If there is one case of a woman getting raped, it's an important issue to them. But the fact that all male victims are left to the side, not helped and potentially punished isn't?
That's why I don't take these specific ones seriously. I don't think they really are for equality when the only things they fight with benefit women, and any try for equality that's the other way around is brushed off as unimportant.

As for the slut argument, it's ridiculous and annoying. It's like having a mugger walk off charge-free because the victim was wearing expensive clothes, and therefore "calling for it". Or because they handed their wallet when asked for it by the mugger, instead of resisting to the best of their abilities.

I realise there are false claims of rape, and I do think it's important that these people be found out when they're lying. But the "calling for it" defense is BS and has nothing to do with that. And the promiscuous defense is like saying someone who was mugged was known for spending a lot of money, so obviously the mugging can't be taken seriously.

Coidzor

2011-05-30, 04:26 PM

It's in response to the tenor of the rhetoric. Neither of these is a reason to act like men are the oppressed minority.

Then you're reading things into it that were not there.

If equality is to be served, then injustice against one cannot be viewed as less than injustice against another. Injustice must only equal injustice.

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 04:47 PM

If on top of that they don't get the support they need, or worse they're the one who gets arrested, it's an incredible injustice, and I don't see how your post is making anything better.
Then the feeling is mutual. I don't see how painting men as the oppressed minority, set upon by society, improves anyone's standing *because it's factually inaccurate*. In this case, men can suffer from the same sexism they typically benefit from, but women are still the majority of the victims of this sexism, even in this specific regard (Because they are the primary victim of domestic abuse cases). The laws should be changed; they hurt both men and women, in different ways. You won't find me disagreeing with that sentiment.

Yes, the reason why these stereotypes exist is that more men rape women than the opposite. And the reason why it's hard to make these laws just is the same.
Men are the overwhelming majority of sexual assault offenders. This is unfortunately not a stereotype.

That's not specifically why it's difficult to make the laws just. That is tied up in our sexist society. And frankly, just laws are only the first step, as you may have noticed with women and rape cases. The ultimate goal would have to be a society that takes rape seriously. One in which rape is not, for instance, considered 'just punishment' (As it is with prison rape).

But that doesn't make them suddenly just, and I've ran into a lot of feminists who are all "well it's not an important issue", and that kills me
assumed correction mine.

That's a shame, but it seems to mostly be "The issues are interrelated; solving one solves the other".

If there is one case of a woman getting raped, it's an important issue to them. But the fact that all male victims are left to the side, not helped and potentially punished isn't?
That's why I don't take these specific ones seriously. I don't think they really are for equality when the only things they fight with benefit women, and any try for equality that's the other way around is brushed off as unimportant.
Let me get this straight; you think people aren't for equality because they distribute their priorities based on who suffers more, both in actual numbers and in percentages of the population? That they personally are more easily moved to care about the cases that actually happen more, and more frequently? That seems messed up. It's one thing to say that because they specifically say "The plight of male rape victims isn't important, and it shouldn't be fixed", but rather another to do so based on saying "The plight of male rape victims isn't where I choose to focus my attention".

As for the slut argument, it's ridiculous and annoying. It's like having a mugger walk off charge-free because the victim was wearing expensive clothes, and therefore "calling for it". Or because they handed their wallet when asked for it by the mugger, instead of resisting to the best of their abilities.
Indeed. It's also not the only bit of sexist stupidity found within a court of law during a rape trial. I could sing you a paean that would contain all of the very messed up bits of case law regarding rape.

Then you're reading things into it that were not there.
Then we're even.

If equality is o be served, then injustice against one cannot be viewed as less than injustice against another.
Factually inaccurate. Not all injustices are equal. Take the unfairness of 'Lady's Night'. It really is unfair that only men have to pay for their drinks, no?

But can you REALLY say that the injustice of that is equivalent to any of the structuralized inequalities faced by women?

Poison_Fish

2011-05-30, 04:51 PM

Then you're reading things into it that were not there.

If equality is o be served, then injustice against one cannot be viewed as less than injustice against another. Injustice must only equal injustice.

How are you defining injustice? Is this specifically in relation to law? Is it perhaps a morality instead?

Coidzor

2011-05-30, 04:52 PM

Then the feeling is mutual. I don't see how painting men as the oppressed minority, set upon by society, improves anyone's standing *because it's factually inaccurate*. In this case, men can suffer from the same sexism they typically benefit from, but women are still the majority of the victims of this sexism, even in this specific regard (Because they are the primary victim of domestic abuse cases). The laws should be changed; they hurt both men and women, in different ways. You won't find me disagreeing with that sentiment.

Then why do you insist on saying that feeling the laws are unjust means we must therefore be painting men as an "oppressed minority?" :smallconfused:

And if that's not your intent, then, please, explain yourself so we can understand your real purpose here.

How are you defining injustice? Is this specifically in relation to law? Is it perhaps a morality instead?

Well, in this case I imagine it's addressing both.

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 04:59 PM

Then why do you insist on saying that feeling the laws are unjust means we must therefore be painting men as an "oppressed minority?"
Because it just comes on the tail end of "ZOMG MEN ARE THE OPPRESSED MINORITY LOOK AT RAPE LAW", and not a full week after a thread that specifically focused itself on that spawning from this one. It colors my view somewhat. The bits about rape law are right on the page preceding.

It is also amazingly common in general. If I appear to be too 'on guard', it is not a commentary on myself.

Poison_Fish

2011-05-30, 05:30 PM

Well, in this case I imagine it's addressing both.

In that case I disagree with you. By your statement (and depending on what you define as just or not) it is just as unjust to have someone move out of their home as a result of building a freeway over it, as it is unjust to have more efficient city planning that saves everyone their gas mileage. Yes, this is an interesting example, but such a statement ignores the factors within a situation. I'll give another, it is just as unjust to take money from the rich to bring up the bottom as the conditions of the bottom are unjust.

I am sure we can all agree here that equality is an ideal, certainly something to strive for. But what do mean here with equality? Are we meaning strict equality? Regardless of actual condition? Or do we mean equality of opportunity? Is equality access to a schema of basic rights and liberties? Resources perhaps to achieve success, is that a right? But is it not also inequality to redistribute wealth advantages (through taxation for instance) that ends up creating more equality through the use of social programs?

I'd be cautious making universal statements about how all unjustices are the same. Pregnancy leave has been considered 'unjust' and not 'equal' for instance by individuals. But is that the same 'injustice' as pregnancy discrimination within the workplace? Are both equally unjust, despite the former attempting to resolve the conflict of the latter? These function more as general questions to ask yourself, as I do not know your own schema of equality and justice and it's actually a fair amount to write out.

Lissou

2011-05-30, 06:00 PM

Then the feeling is mutual. I don't see how painting men as the oppressed minority, set upon by society, improves anyone's standing *because it's factually inaccurate*.

I don't want to say men are an oppressed minority. I mean to say that there are inequalities in both ways, and I want to fight all of them, and not dismiss some as unimportant simply because they're against males and not females. If you think it's supremely important to create a feminine equivalent to a male job title, but sneer when I suggest we create a male equivalent to a feminine word, you're being sexist in my opinion (the language here is French. These issues wouldn't be as common in English, which has a neutral form), because it's not comparing apples and oranges, it's comparing two similar things, one you don't care about because it's going one way, the other you're caring about because it's going the other way.
I don't mean you specifically, obviously. I have other people in mind.

That's a shame, but it seems to mostly be "The issues are interrelated; solving one solves the other".

It might be your experience, but I've been in situation when the rape of one female was considered more important to voice about than the rapes of all men ever raped, which, as small as it might be compared to the rapes of all women ever raped, is more than one.
And when the issue this is brushed for is not rape at all, but "which feminine form should we use for that masculine form, out of the two that are currently commonly used?" I would say that yes, changing mentalities about the fact that men can be raped is more important.

Let me get this straight; you think people aren't for equality because they distribute their priorities based on who suffers more, both in actual numbers and in percentages of the population?

No, I think they are wrong to reject the idea of fighting over sexism that affects men (since, as you said, ultimately all sexism is bad for everyone in various degrees), even preferring not doing anything at all rather than a specific, concrete project that's considered to help men more.

It also does annoy me when anything raised is met by "this will ultimately be solved when we change this patriarchal society!" because in my opinion, it's the other way around: by progressively raising awareness on various small issues and changing popular opinion on them, one can make society less patriarchal. It's a big undertaking if it's just "let's make society less patriarchal!" It has to have more concrete steps within.

And when you're about equality, I just don't get why you would decide to create huge campaigns about violence against wives, and refuse to consider phrasing it "conjugal violence" instead so that violence against men be included too. What, do you really have to exclude it purposely, when it's so easy to include it and it doesn't take anything away from the fact it also applies to women?

It's things like that that annoy me. If you want things to be equal, you do have to treat them equally, and I don't see a reason to purposely decide to help women and refuse to help men, instead of helping victims in general, especially if as you and they say, including men isn't going to give a much higher workload anyways.
Every time I see a society asking to donate for violence against women, I think "why not violence against people? Why are you excluding men on purpose? Because they're the minority of cases, you want to exclude them?" I never said they should focus on just men, but closing the door to them just makes no sense to me. These fliers might as well read "Give to prevent violence against spouses (unless they're male)" and I don't think that last part adds anything to the fight.

Not all injustices are equal.

But if it's the same injustice (conjugal violence, or rape, or sexual harassment, for instance) then it's equal, right? So to have plenty of places dedicated to helping female victims and pretty much zero that help male victims (doesn't have to be limited to them. Just to be willing to include them) is pretty unfair.

Murdim

2011-05-30, 06:20 PM

"The issues are interrelated; solving one solves the other".

"The plight of male rape victims isn't where I choose to focus my attention".
That's... interesting. How exactly are you supposed to conciliate those two statements? Do you really believe that every negative impact of patriarchy on men will magically disappear once those on women are solved?

In my humble opinion, the latter position is pretty much unjustified. If you fight for equality in every situation regardless of which category is discriminated against, you will already spend more time defending the rights of the underprivileged categories than those of the relatively privileged ones. Saying that because women are oppressed, women's problems should be deliberately prioritised over men's problems... well, I think it is every bit as bad and fallacious as saying that because the genders are equal, we should do exactly as much for men as we do for women.

The status of women as the oppressed gender comes from the fact that their issues are the most important overall. Not the other way around.

Coidzor

2011-05-30, 06:22 PM

I'd be cautious making universal statements about how all unjustices are the same.

I meant that all injustice must be held to be injustice. Not to be held to be acceptable because some other group has it worse. Not to be held as comeuppance simply because the victims of it have something in common with others who commit their own acts of injustice.

I'll admit, it was phrased a bit awkwardly, and I apologize for that.

In this case, equality means that a wrong being done to someone being viewed as wrong by others does not depend upon who said someone is.

Anima

2011-05-30, 08:11 PM

I wonder about the assumption that the rape of males is a rare occurrence. This study documents that 44% of interviewed male students at the age of 18 report to had forced sex. (http://www.equityhealthj.com/content/pdf/1475-9276-7-20.pdf) (This study was conducted in South Africa.)
There were also two studies, published in "Archives of Sexual Behavior", from 2003 that claim that 25% of adult males were victims of forced sex.

There are also a lot of studies (http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm) claiming that males are as often or even more often the victims of domestic violence as females.
One shouldn't forget that in quite a few cases booth partners are victim and aggressor at the same time.

Even if we have to consider the validity of these studies, should we really assume that sexual violence against males is a insignificant problem that deserves no special attention? Are we really free of prejudice when we make this assumption?
This is not merely a rhetorical question, I seriously do not know the answers. But I sure am glad that German law includes the rape of males by other males or females in it's definition of rape. As far as one can be glad about such matters.
If and how well this legislation is enacted is an other matter of course.

Poison_Fish

2011-05-30, 08:15 PM

Ah, that is a lot better then!

Though I'd state in my view that absolutist equality is difficult to gain. If there must be inequality, it going to the least advantaged is a positive use (which honestly applies more in an economic sense). But that is The Difference Principle in Rawls terms, and that is accepting other basic rights before that.

edit:
There are also a lot of studies claiming that males are as often or even more often the victims of domestic violence as females.
One shouldn't forget that in quite a few cases booth partners are victim and aggressor at the same time.

Please note that there are a lot of problems with the Annotated Bibliography by Martin S. Fiebert. See This (http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=198004). Essentially Fiebert's measures have to many methodological issues to be understood as effective measures. Additionally since I enjoy Michael Kimmel, and for a quick little gender and privilege 101, specifically related to men, watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgaOK74HqiA).

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 09:04 PM

I don't want to say men are an oppressed minority. I mean to say that there are inequalities in both ways, and I want to fight all of them, and not dismiss some as unimportant simply because they're against males and not females.
They're not unimportant. They are not, however, keeping the class as a whole down.

If you think it's supremely important to create a feminine equivalent to a male job title, but sneer when I suggest we create a male equivalent to a feminine word, you're being sexist in my opinion (the language here is French. These issues wouldn't be as common in English, which has a neutral form),
I would agree, but my concern would be that it'd be supporting the elimination of traditionally feminine jobs that perhaps oughtn't be (Not knowing what specific things your culture has decided are and aren't feminine).

And when the issue this is brushed for is not rape at all, but "which feminine form should we use for that masculine form, out of the two that are currently commonly used?" I would say that yes, changing mentalities about the fact that men can be raped is more important.
It's possible the assumption is derived from the same sexist assumptions that underwrote the law. In this case, you'd be correct; agency won't prevent rape. On the other hand/paw/tentacle, they may have consciously chose to ignore it to try to get their original discussion through and perhaps not focus on how the patriarchy hurts men too. It does not ultimately fall to women to open up the spaces for men to have those discussions. Yes, the patriarchy hurts men too; yes, noting how is important to addressing those situations. No, addressing that precise expression of that precise problem simply isn't always supposed to fall to women. It may, and women may choose to address it as individuals. But it doesn't by default become the responsibility of women to address it at every turn.

It also does annoy me when anything raised is met by "this will ultimately be solved when we change this patriarchal society!" because in my opinion, it's the other way around: by progressively raising awareness on various small issues and changing popular opinion on them, one can make society less patriarchal. It's a big undertaking if it's just "let's make society less patriarchal!" It has to have more concrete steps within.
You think society is going to become less patriarchal by focusing on men's problems as they relate to sexism? Does Not Compute.

And when you're about equality, I just don't get why you would decide to create huge campaigns about violence against wives, and refuse to consider phrasing it "conjugal violence" instead so that violence against men be included too. What, do you really have to exclude it purposely, when it's so easy to include it and it doesn't take anything away from the fact it also applies to women?
Personally, it's because I live in the United States, and I don't trust the populace to understand the word 'conjugal'. I usually see campaigns about it referred to as Domestic Violence though, not violence against wives. Perhaps this is more of a problem in France than I realize though.

It's things like that that annoy me. If you want things to be equal, you do have to treat them equally, and I don't see a reason to purposely decide to help women and refuse to help men, instead of helping victims in general, especially if as you and they say, including men isn't going to give a much higher workload anyways.
Every time I see a society asking to donate for violence against women, I think "why not violence against people? Why are you excluding men on purpose? Because they're the minority of cases, you want to exclude them?" I never said they should focus on just men, but closing the door to them just makes no sense to me. These fliers might as well read "Give to prevent violence against spouses (unless they're male)" and I don't think that last part adds anything to the fight.
If it helps oppressed people, it adds something. What you're discussing does, however, add less than I'd prefer.

That's... interesting. How exactly are you supposed to conciliate those two statements?
Victim relief is not a change to societal structure. Put another way, helping victims of either gender is not, strictly speaking, reducing the future number of victims; it's helping the immediate supply of them. They're manifold, so it's quite necessary. If you're focusing on the victims, you're not, however, focusing on solving the problem. Both need to be done, but what an individual chooses to do is their own choice. I can fault neither.

Nor can I fault people focusing their priorities on the larger supply of victims.

Do you really believe that every negative impact of patriarchy on men will magically disappear once those on women are solved?
Most, if not all, sexism that hurts men comes from assumptions that also hurt women. Draft is male only? Because women aren't fit for military service. Men with feminine expression are considered less than men? Well, that's because women are considered inferior. Men don't get paternity leave to take care of their kids? Because women are considered the default caretakers of children, not men.

In my humble opinion, the latter position is pretty much unjustified. If you fight for equality in every situation regardless of which category is discriminated against, you will already spend more time defending the rights of the underprivileged categories than those of the relatively privileged ones
This is factually inaccurate. The gay rights movement of the 60s and 70s is sufficient proof of this; It was focused on white men. Men of color were seen as exotic playthings for same, lesbians were ignored. For that matter, merely focusing on helping women is no guarantee I won't focus on white women, to the more or less exclusion of non-white women, or LGBT women, etc. Alternately, Second Wave Feminism.

You were raised in a society with a lot of screwed up beliefs. So was I, so was everyone else. You inadvertently take a lot of that in. The default person of society is the white, straight, able-bodied, cissexual, middle class male; it takes effort to make sure you're not perpetuating those as norms, even if you're trying to eliminate one. Just saying "Well fight for equality and you'll automatically prioritize the less advantaged" is not born out well by reality. This is unfortunate, but true. It helps the disadvantaged, but it doesn't mean that.

well, I think it is every bit as bad and fallacious as saying that because the genders are equal, we should do exactly as much for men as we do for women.
WEll, that's a less irksome formulation than normal, at least. Inaccurate, but still less irksome.

The status of women as the oppressed gender comes from the fact that their issues are the most important overall. Not the other way around.
I'm not impressed that you found the time to chide me for prioritizing the correct structural inequalities that oppress the correct people, for a perceived wrong reason, while not having two words to say to the people who have their priorities utterly skewed, for any of a number of reasons.

Lamech

2011-05-30, 09:06 PM

You should probably try listening to a rape case then. Have been! The IMF head case. One bunch of media pretty I read pretty much instantly said "he's guilty" in some way. (And saying "She was raped" or referring to her as a "victim" pretty much means they are saying he is guilty; she almost certainly wasn't victimized by a lookalike.) Another bunch of media used words like "alleged", and didn't conclude either way. The IMF head supporters seemed to jump to "victim of a plot by a supporter of the current french president", and the defense has been going with the "we have proof its a lie, and we can show she isn't credible". Not a whole lot of implying she was slutty in what I read. (And I'm sure if you read enough you could find someone somewhere on the internet, but the overwhelming majority of what I have read and heard had nothing to do calling her "slutty".

That is in fact one of the defenses, colloquially termed the slut defense. It builds into the second defense, that she was lying. It works. It's part of many successful defense case where the prosecution can prove without a shadow of a doubt that the accused had sex with the victim.

Because you know, if the woman was a slut, she couldn't have said no to my client. And if she's had sex before, and enjoyed it, she's a slut. I have a standing black joke with one of my friends in law school about the legal elements of rape, and it goes a little along the lines of:
1) The defendant must have had sex with the accuser
2) there is videotape of a weaponBolded is my correction, it was a "d". So what would you think is sufficient evidence for a rape conviction? It clearly can't be just "1)"...

The rate of false rape reports is 1.8% in the states, if I recall correctly. The rate of false theft reports is 4.1%. Yet you, and society in general, only feels the need to keep this in mind in a case of rape. It says more about the state of things than you realize. I keep both in mind actually. If you note my example theft case included a few elements, mainly a car got moved 500 miles and the person who moved the car didn't communicate with the owner. I think that is by definition theft or something. (Can you come up with some semi-reasonable way it isn't?) Obviously if someone makes a claim of theft make sure they have something to back it up.

Two where are these statistics coming from and the methodology used? According to this juries where only able to conclude that roughly 60% (http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates) of the non-randomly selected reports were indeed true. (Actually, I think that includes plea bargains in the convictions which would inflate the 60%...)

Let me get this straight; you think people aren't for equality because they distribute their priorities based on who suffers more, both in actual numbers and in percentages of the population? That they personally are more easily moved to care about the cases that actually happen more, and more frequently? That seems messed up. It's one thing to say that because they specifically say "The plight of male rape victims isn't important, and it shouldn't be fixed", but rather another to do so based on saying "The plight of male rape victims isn't where I choose to focus my attention".You should just focus on rape victims, or victims of domestic violence. Don't bring gender into it. If you start divvying up help based on gender why can't I do things for people based on gender too? Say pay all my male workers 15% extra to help with rising fuel costs? (Suppose if need be most of the males drive to work and most of the female ones walk.)

Flame of Anor

2011-05-30, 09:19 PM

I'm not going to let myself get drawn into this, but I'll just say this one thing: In this sort of situation, as with many situations of inequality, there are two ways to approach it.

First: to impose diametrically opposed inequality and hope things average out (examples: always arresting the man in cases of domestic violence, affirmative action, etc.)
Second: to make everyone actually equal under the law, and let time sort things out, assuming people to be basically good.

The first is inherently unjust, as it is by nature promoting inequality. However, it is sometimes justified, specifically when the existing injustice is severe (example: National Guard enforcing desegregation). In modern times, however, the first is overused. It's not right that the government or society doesn't see fit to give people a chance to be decent to each other.

Poison_Fish

2011-05-30, 09:36 PM

Have been! The IMF head case. One bunch of media pretty I read pretty much instantly said "he's guilty" in some way. (And saying "She was raped" or referring to her as a "victim" pretty much means they are saying he is guilty; she almost certainly wasn't victimized by a lookalike.) Another bunch of media used words like "alleged", and didn't conclude either way. The IMF head supporters seemed to jump to "victim of a plot by a supporter of the current french president", and the defense has been going with the "we have proof its a lie, and we can show she isn't credible". Not a whole lot of implying she was slutty in what I read. (And I'm sure if you read enough you could find someone somewhere on the internet, but the overwhelming majority of what I have read and heard had nothing to do calling her "slutty".

As much as we shouldn't talk about directly real world cases, I don't think you've been reading (http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/05/21/052111-opinions-oped-scandals-filipovic-1-2/) what I have been reading. (http://rapidsavr.com/french-publish-rape-accusers-name-major-media-commit-a-serious-breach-of-journalistic-ethics/) I'll leave it at that though.

You should just focus on rape victims, or victims of domestic violence. Don't bring gender into it. If you start divvying up help based on gender why can't I do things for people based on gender too? Say pay all my male workers 15% extra to help with rising fuel costs? (Suppose if need be most of the males drive to work and most of the female ones walk.)

You... are aware that is a very poor example, correct? I mean.. I can list at least 10 things already wrong with the assumptions you just made. Why are women walking while men are driving? Do they have a privilege of owning a car? do the women live closer to work? Why is living space then segregated in your example? What of the cases where men walk and women drive? Why do men only get a 15% pay raise? If it were rising fuel costs alone, that would also drive up the cost of inflated goods and imported food, so shouldn't there also be a corresponding pay raise for women as well? Shouldn't increasing pay be based on a scale of inflation, not just over fuel costs? This is one alien world I would not want to live in.

Instead I'll point out that gender is interrelated to sexual crime, specifically in the level of committed crimes and a statistically reality of what we are describing. To focus only on victims is to only deal with the outcomes rather then addressing the very issues and cases in which sexual crime occurs. Gender is involved. to what extent remains to be debated (nor am I particularly well versed in my knowledge of sexual crime, I have some but I consider it mediocre, my knowledge is stronger within economic stratification in relation to gender). However, approaching this issue gender-blind is a failure to understand the causal mechanisms that are related when sexual crime happens. Edit: Look back to discussions of domestic abuse that I linked earlier.

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 10:15 PM

Have been! The IMF head case. One bunch of media pretty I read pretty much instantly said "he's guilty" in some way. (
I haven't heard a single person say he's guilty. It's all been alleged, referring tot he maid as an accuser, etc. However, a realistic assessment by the media would be "If it's gotten to this stage, he probably did it", so I would be somewhat impressed if anyone flat out said it. What you usually see is a repeat of Roman Polanski or Kobe Bryant.

Bolded is my correction, it was a "d". So what would you think is sufficient evidence for a rape conviction? It clearly can't be just "1)"...
I already listed the elements of the crime. It's not what I think; it's the only way to have a decent shot at getting convicted.

If you mean what I think they should be, then the standards of evidence as theya re now are fine; the largest problem isn't that people aren't believed. That's probably the most horrifying part of the case law, if you read it; the testimonies sync up in a surprising amount of cases, and they wouldn't be good for the accused, if society were not profoundly messed up about rape. You don't really know what you're talking about, if you think testimony isn't at least sometimes accepted and itself believed.

The biggest problems in cases that actually get to trial are that judges move to protect men. Interesting fact: You can not withdraw consent after penetration has been achieved. "What man could control himself then?" That is written into the opinion, almost verbatim. Shouldn't you feel insulted about that? If the victim is trapped in the room, physically intimidated into remaining, and is verbally pressured into sex after it is clear she is not permitted to leave, this is considered 'informed consent'. It doesn't really get better from there.

THe more NUMEROUS problem is of course the discarding of testimony because pft, just a tart with regrets. Testimony seems to be just fine in numerous other functions of law. I'm not even asking that the victim's ability to recognize the attacker be taken without question, only that their testimony of events they portray be taken seriously.

Two where are these statistics coming from and the methodology used? According to this juries where only able to conclude that roughly 60% of the non-randomly selected reports were indeed true. (Actually, I think that includes plea bargains in the convictions which would inflate the 60%...)
That's slightly more than I'd expect.
I don't care about what juries found guilty and not guilty for the purposes of the discussion of false rape reports. If I did, I probably would have stopped well before finding something out. Juries are predominantly made up of the same idiots that make up our toxic culture that insists on not treating rape as a serious crime, or rape victims as actual victims. If you want an example of the inequalities here, more than 90% of cases that go to trial are found guilty, counting rape. An even larger number of the accused plead. That should raise your hackles by itself, but it doesn't. (Above are true for the US Justice system). What juries find guilty or not guilty is further influenced by legal barriers (Predominantly case law, though for the tiny minority of woman rapists, sometimes legislative as well), which are biased against the successful finding of a guilty verdict (It appears that people have continued to follow in the lead of one of the Star Court members who said, 500 years ago, that a false accusation of rape was totally more damaging than rape).

A quick look at wikipedia informs me that I misremembered. Unfortunate, but 3%. I do find your ability to look at a chart that points out that almost no rapists go to prison, as a negative, and say "Nah, the false report rape is clearly enormous, look here" inspiring though. Specifically, it inspires me to greater loathing of humanity in general.

You should just focus on rape victims, or victims of domestic violence. Don't bring gender into it. If you start divvying up help based on gender why can't I do things for people based on gender too? Say pay all my male workers 15% extra to help with rising fuel costs? (Suppose if need be most of the males drive to work and most of the female ones walk.)
Why should I focus my effort on the oppressed and not the hegemons? ARe you asking me seriously, or were you being facetious to make a point I am not grasping? Because I would think it would be obvious why anyone would want to focus on the people who are victimized more.

However, it is sometimes justified, specifically when the existing injustice is severe (example: National Guard enforcing desegregation). In modern times, however, the first is overused. It's not right that the government or society doesn't see fit to give people a chance to be decent to each other.
Existing injustices are still pretty severe.

Flame of Anor

2011-05-30, 10:41 PM

Existing injustices are still pretty severe.

But when do you stop trying to fix people by brute force? When everyone's perfect? It's not going to happen! Better to give people a chance to learn actual equality. After all, if the society says "Group A now or at some point hurt Group B, so we will punish Group A for the benefit of Group B", that's only reinforcing in people's minds that people are divided into Group A and Group B and that they are somehow opposed. I'm more willing to tolerate so-called "reverse discrimination" than regular discrimination, but only because I'm a member of the groups that are reverse-discriminated against, and I think that both kinds are equally wrong.

RPGuru1331

2011-05-30, 11:15 PM

But when do you stop trying to fix people by brute force?
When equality is more than a fever dream generations down the line, I imagine. When equality of opportunity exists on more than paper, even if it isn't perfect.

I'm more willing to tolerate so-called "reverse discrimination" than regular discrimination, but only because I'm a member of the groups that are reverse-discriminated against, and I think that both kinds are equally wrong.
So called because it's the opposite of the direction we're SUPPOSED to discriminate in.

Put bluntly, most claims of "reverse discrimination" are privileged people who can't handle not being More Equal. The rare few cases wherein there might be a point, they tend to be agreed with by activists. Like here, with rape law and domestic violence enforcement. Most of them are more like "OMG We can't have affirmative action! We're being denied 10% of the seats! Never you mind we get the other 90%, which is more than our population demands! We're losing out on 10% of the seats! That's JUST AS BAD as everyone else never getting a chance!" To call that 'equally wrong' is somewhat akin to saying it's just as wrong to be punched in the kidney as it is to not get a hug.

Lamech

2011-05-30, 11:48 PM

As much as we shouldn't talk about directly real world cases, I don't think you've been reading (http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/05/21/052111-opinions-oped-scandals-filipovic-1-2/) what I have been reading. (http://rapidsavr.com/french-publish-rape-accusers-name-major-media-commit-a-serious-breach-of-journalistic-ethics/) I'll leave it at that though. On the second link: I don't read french publications. The first link: this is weird, first we have a bunch of examples of attacking her credibility in various ways, or saying IMF-head is beyond reproach for some idiotic reason. We have a few non-sequitors: she is pretty/ugly and implications she has HIV/AIDS*. Her single-motherhood. I suppose the HIV/AIDS thing, might count, but I had thought we had moved beyond thinking that HIV/AIDS means your slutty, and same thing for single motherhood. (IIRC she is a widow actually.) Then their was some stuff about french media which I don't read.
Then the first link goes on to say that what you are wearing, your number of partners ect. has nothing to do with your likelihood of being raped, and stops talking about the media.
So... not a whole lot in the U.S. news calling her promiscuous. Unless you think the HIV/mother thing was implying sluttiness.
*She doesn't have it.

You... are aware that is a very poor example, correct? I mean.. I can list at least 10 things already wrong with the assumptions you just made. Why are women walking while men are driving? Do they have a privilege of owning a car? do the women live closer to work? Why is living space then segregated in your example? What of the cases where men walk and women drive? Why do men only get a 15% pay raise? If it were rising fuel costs alone, that would also drive up the cost of inflated goods and imported food, so shouldn't there also be a corresponding pay raise for women as well? Shouldn't increasing pay be based on a scale of inflation, not just over fuel costs? This is one alien world I would not want to live in.
Why are women walking when men drive? Randomness. If it was of any large size it would need to be small numbers of employees and randomness. And no, I did not carefully analyze the economic issues involved in terms of how rising fuel affect other goods, and percentage other prices. If you really need to assume its some cost that has out of randomness disproportionately affected the male workers.

Instead I'll point out that gender is interrelated to sexual crime, specifically in the level of committed crimes and a statistically reality of what we are describing. To focus only on victims is to only deal with the outcomes rather then addressing the very issues and cases in which sexual crime occurs. Gender is involved. to what extent remains to be debated (nor am I particularly well versed in my knowledge of sexual crime, I have some but I consider it mediocre, my knowledge is stronger within economic stratification in relation to gender). However, approaching this issue gender-blind is a failure to understand the causal mechanisms that are related when sexual crime happens. Edit: Look back to discussions of domestic abuse that I linked earlier.Hmm... I guess that sort of makes sense. If their is a strong component based on gender its okay to focus based on gender? Then would it be okay to say... give the male workers extra money prostate exams and female workers extra money for prenatal care? Hmm... actually this is a fairly interesting question, if we consider the actions of insurance companies.

I haven't heard a single person say he's guilty. It's all been alleged, referring tot he maid as an accuser, etc. However, a realistic assessment by the media would be "If it's gotten to this stage, he probably did it", so I would be somewhat impressed if anyone flat out said it. What you usually see is a repeat of Roman Polanski or Kobe Bryant.Here we are (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/05/27/2011-05-27_le_pervs_prayer.html?r=news). And again saying "she is a victim" is very nearly the same as saying "he is guilty". And IIRC the charges against Kobe Bryant got dismissed. The U.S. hasn't gotten its hands on Polanski and I truly doubt the U.S. mis-place Strauss-Kahn now. I also distinctly recall a certain case at Duke with Lacrosse players, that got far beyond this.

If you mean what I think they should be, then the standards of evidence as theya re now are fine; the largest problem isn't that people aren't believed. That's probably the most horrifying part of the case law, if you read it; the testimonies sync up in a surprising amount of cases, and they wouldn't be good for the accused, if society were not profoundly messed up about rape. You don't really know what you're talking about, if you think testimony isn't at least sometimes accepted and itself believed.I'm sorry what exactly are you saying here? Are you saying the accuser says "I didn't consent and he raped me anyway", the jury believes it and they don't convict? What?

The biggest problems in cases that actually get to trial are that judges move to protect men. Interesting fact: You can not withdraw consent after penetration has been achieved. "What man could control himself then?" That is written into the opinion, almost verbatim. Shouldn't you feel insulted about that? If the victim is trapped in the room, physically intimidated into remaining, and is verbally pressured into sex after it is clear she is not permitted to leave, this is considered 'informed consent'. It doesn't really get better from there.What was the case specifically? And that is rather insulting. And most laws should say consent can't be coerced; if they weren't written well they should be changed.

Why should I focus my effort on the oppressed and not the hegemons? ARe you asking me seriously, or were you being facetious to make a point I am not grasping? Because I would think it would be obvious why anyone would want to focus on the people who are victimized more.There is no group more victimized by X then victims of X. I'm pretty sure that is tautologically true. So focus on helping "victims of X", not "victims of X with qualifier Y". So focus on victims of domestic violence, not female victims of domestic violence.
Also helping victims is distinct from stopping perpetrators. I think that might be where some of the disconnect is coming in. If its stopping the perpetrators from doing it again I.E. arresting them that is simple. Arrest the perps, when you have enough evidence and its feasible, regardless of other factors. Stopping people from doing it the first time is much more complicated, and I'm not sure how to go about it...

I don't care about what juries found guilty and not guilty for the purposes of the discussion of false rape reports. If I did, I probably would have stopped well before finding something out. Juries are predominantly made up of the same idiots that make up our toxic culture that insists on not treating rape as a serious crime, or rape victims as actual victims. If you want an example of the inequalities here, more than 90% of cases that go to trial are found guilty, counting rape. An even larger number of the accused plead. That should raise your hackles by itself, but it doesn't. (Above are true for the US Justice system). What juries find guilty or not guilty is further influenced by legal barriers (Predominantly case law, though for the tiny minority of woman rapists, sometimes legislative as well), which are biased against the successful finding of a guilty verdict (It appears that people have continued to follow in the lead of one of the Star Court members who said, 500 years ago, that a false accusation of rape was totally more damaging than rape).

A quick look at wikipedia informs me that I misremembered. Unfortunate, but 3%. I do find your ability to look at a chart that points out that almost no rapists go to prison, as a negative, and say "Nah, the false report rape is clearly enormous, look here" inspiring though. Specifically, it inspires me to greater loathing of humanity in general.There are a bunch of different studies on wikipedia ranging from 3%-41%. (I seriously question the 41% since it involved a polygraph.) If the legal system determines 60% as true and can dredge up enough evidence to show 8% (or whatever) false whats the methodology for deciding between the other cases? And with any luck I can inspire a general distrust of random strangers. :smallsmile:

RPGuru1331

2011-05-31, 12:47 AM

Here we are. And again saying "she is a victim" is very nearly the same as saying "he is guilty". And IIRC the charges against Kobe Bryant got dismissed. The U.S. hasn't gotten its hands on Polanski and I truly doubt the U.S. mis-place Strauss-Kahn now. I also distinctly recall a certain case at Duke with Lacrosse players, that got far beyond this.
Kobe Bryant settled out of court. For Rape. Which less than 10% of rapists go to jail for. Granted, he's black, and the Justice System is not kind or fair to black people, so this may be a case of intersectionality that I'm dismissing needlessly. Regardless, the woman was made a mockery of (Of course she was; Kobe was famous!) Duke Lacrosse did in fact slam the girl. In that one case, it was deserved. Roman Polanski was treated as the martyr'd victim every step of the way by the media. Whoopi Goldberg famously said it wasn't rape-rape about that one. Rape trials are about the victim. An 8 year old was gang-raped and her local news media (Indeed, many that covered the story that were national) cast aspersions on her character and her intelligence. 8. If an 8 year old can't consistently be assumed to at least not be a lying slut, can you really retain this assumption that rape victims are believed? Or at least not disparaged routinely?

Why are women walking when men drive? Randomness. If it was of any large size it would need to be small numbers of employees and randomness. And no, I did not carefully analyze the economic issues involved in terms of how rising fuel affect other goods, and percentage other prices. If you really need to assume its some cost that has out of randomness disproportionately affected the male workers.
So you invented a BS example you can't justify and are wondering why it isn't equivalent to helping the actually disparate numbers of victims disparately?

I'm sorry what exactly are you saying here? Are you saying the accuser says "I didn't consent and he raped me anyway", the jury believes it and they don't convict? What?
I'm saying that sometimes the defendant more or less admits that what the accused said really happened, but it wasn't rape because she was asking for it.

This is a real defense. Well, it's a real defense in that it works. It's not 'supposed to', but if it gets the Jury to acquit, it works and it's a real defense. And it usually works, if the accused wasn't dressed in a fuzzy sweater and long dress, has thought about sex in the past ever, or is related to a woman who has thought about sex. The victim is the defendant in a rape trial because of this.

What was the case specifically? And that is rather insulting. And most laws should say consent can't be coerced; if they weren't written well they should be changed.
I don't mind doing your research for you.
You're looking for Maouloud Baby v. State of Maryland.

There is no group more victimized by X then victims of X. I'm pretty sure that is tautologically true. So focus on helping "victims of X", not "victims of X with qualifier Y".
This is untrue. That's why I pointed you at the gay rights movement of the 60s/70s, and second wave feminism, for examples. Within a group of victims, there will be people more victimized, as a class, than others. You should actually look at Poison Fish's links. The professor's lecture sums it up surprisingly well;
"All women have the same experience as women. All women face the same oppression as women. All women are similarly situated in patriarchy. And therefore, all women have a kind of intuitive solidarity, or sisterhood."
"I don't think so. ...To me, Race is visible. But to you, it's invisible..."

There are a bunch of different studies on wikipedia ranging from 3%-41%. (I seriously question the 41% since it involved a polygraph.) If the legal system determines 60% as true and can dredge up enough evidence to show 8% (or whatever) false whats the methodology for deciding between the other cases? And with any luck I can inspire a general distrust of random strangers. The legal system is completely useless as it is now for the determination of rape. I just quoted case law opinions that demonstrate this, and you still care about what trial %s say? Dear God, Why? This is the same population that thinks rape is funny, or equivalent to being sniped in Halo. What a Jury has to say about 'false rape accusations' is less than useless. I find it amazing that anyone would still care what the justice system thinks after learning that half of all accusations aren't even taken seriously enough for an arrest.

The methodology would be examining to see who drops the charges, and interviewing them why they did (Because there are numerous pressures to drop charges on this crime from the community, regardless of their accuracy). Unless that would be more traumatizing than I'm giving credit for, which is possible.

Flame of Anor

2011-05-31, 01:05 AM

When equality is more than a fever dream generations down the line, I imagine. When equality of opportunity exists on more than paper, even if it isn't perfect.

And that will only happen when society stops forcing over-heightened awareness of distinctions on us!

{Scrubbed}

And as for your 90% of the seats, if a more than proportional amount of a certain group (the majority, apparently) is highly qualified for a certain position, then give it to them! The position will not be better filled by minority applicants who are less qualified, even if this ends up with a disproportionate amount of the majority group with these positions. The real problem here is why is the minority on average less qualified? And the answer is usually: education. That's why the solution to this problem is NOT to have quotas of minority recruitment, but to improve schooling for everyone who is at an educational disadvantage. It's what W.E.B. Du Bois said, and he was right!

RPGuru1331

2011-05-31, 01:42 AM

And that will only happen when society stops forcing over-heightened awareness of distinctions on us!
You think we're going to solve widespread social inequality by not thinking about it? We called that the 80s. It didn't work.

{Scrubbed}

And as for your 90% of the seats, if a more than proportional amount of a certain group (the majority, apparently) is highly qualified for a certain position, then give it to them!
That's how structural inequalities continue. Why should we do that? THe primary reason that, for instance, more white children are better prepared for college is that more of them are from a better economic background. THat gives them access to better schools (A major factor in the moving decisions of many parents who have the means to do so).

Past college (Which is one of the few places this happens), qualifications have little to nothing to do with who actually gets a job.

http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2003/pagerajs.pdf
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf

off the top of my head. It's also based on who you know; who you know is based on who's like you.

That's why the solution to this problem is NOT to have quotas of minority recruitment, but to improve schooling for everyone who is at an educational disadvantage. It's what W.E.B. Du Bois said, and he was right!
If WEB Dubois thought that was enough, the evidence bears out that he is wrong.

Poison_Fish

2011-05-31, 02:52 AM

On the second link: I don't read french publications. The first link: this is weird, first we have a bunch of examples of attacking her credibility in various ways, or saying IMF-head is beyond reproach for some idiotic reason. We have a few non-sequitors: she is pretty/ugly and implications she has HIV/AIDS*. Her single-motherhood. I suppose the HIV/AIDS thing, might count, but I had thought we had moved beyond thinking that HIV/AIDS means your slutty, and same thing for single motherhood. (IIRC she is a widow actually.) Then their was some stuff about french media which I don't read.
Then the first link goes on to say that what you are wearing, your number of partners ect. has nothing to do with your likelihood of being raped, and stops talking about the media.
So... not a whole lot in the U.S. news calling her promiscuous. Unless you think the HIV/mother thing was implying sluttiness.
*She doesn't have it.

I'm not sure you understood the point of those links, but I just skimmed through AP, Business Insider, NY Post, and a quick google search. They are still on the importance of the HIV/AIDS, even though it has no bearing on the case. Also please note, The Daily Beast is an American publication that has some French writers. I'd point out that we haven't really moved beyond this form of questioning the victim, because these points are somehow news worthy. Pro-tip though, just because you don't read it (or notice it, as the case may be) doesn't invalidate what is commonly done in many previous cases by media organizations. Yes the French media has been worse in this case (Sex Scandals are much more common within France to my knowledge then American ones), but it is happening within ours as well.

Why are women walking when men drive? Randomness. If it was of any large size it would need to be small numbers of employees and randomness. And no, I did not carefully analyze the economic issues involved in terms of how rising fuel affect other goods, and percentage other prices. If you really need to assume its some cost that has out of randomness disproportionately affected the male workers.

Got it, you gave a terrible example that isn't within the realm of plausibility. Don't use that.

Hmm... I guess that sort of makes sense. If their is a strong component based on gender its okay to focus based on gender? Then would it be okay to say... give the male workers extra money prostate exams and female workers extra money for prenatal care? Hmm... actually this is a fairly interesting question, if we consider the actions of insurance companies.

I was suggesting that going gender-blind was a poor idea. Your further suggestions seems rather ignorant of how health care/payment/employment rights function, so I suggest you read up before attempting to make those conclusions. In what we were discussing, there is strong evidence that demonstrates rape and domestic abuse have gendered roles within them that deal with power. If your wanting to look at equal access to gendered health rights that is obtained through employment... well, your looking in the wrong place at employment. Such benefits packages are typically within a unionized setting or part of the attraction of middle class work. That only covers a smaller subset of the population.

Anything else, I'll suggest reading here (http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/), since I'd rather not have to do a 101 here.

Edit: As for education being a factor, it is one of the many factors (one with high validity in fact) that results in the inequality of outcome that we experience. But do keep in mind, there is a wealth of independent variables. Do not forget social capital as RPGuru has mentioned with their links as another major independent variable.

Flame of Anor

2011-05-31, 04:12 AM

You think we're going to solve widespread social inequality by not thinking about it? We called that the 80s. It didn't work.

Hey, any decade that gives us Blade Runner is a success in my book. :smallwink:

{Scrubbed}

That's how structural inequalities continue. Why should we do that? THe primary reason that, for instance, more white children are better prepared for college is that more of them are from a better economic background. THat gives them access to better schools (A major factor in the moving decisions of many parents who have the means to do so).

Gee, if only I had thought of emphasizing the need for making good education available to all economic backgrounds. Oh, wait! I did! :smallannoyed:

Say you have one white kid and one black kid. They have equal potential, but the white kid works hard in school and gets good grades, whereas the black kid doesn't put much effort into it and gets not great grades. Now, if you consider that societal influences made this disparity likely to happen, then you can't necessarily say it's the black kid's fault for not being as educated as the white kid--especially if s/he went to a bad school--but s/he still does not have the right to be preferred by an educational or occupational institution over the white kid just because s/he is black. Doing that is treating the symptom, and not very well, either. We need to treat the disease, which is to say minority early undereducation.

If WEB Dubois thought that was enough, the evidence bears out that he is wrong.

The evidence? How can there be evidence if we've never bloody tried what he said?

RPGuru1331

2011-05-31, 04:40 AM

Hey, any decade that gives us Blade Runner is a success in my book.
The 80s was fun and all. But pretending society is color and gender blind doesn't make it so. Really, only white people have the opportunity.

{Scrubbed}

Gee, if only I had thought of emphasizing the need for making good education available to all economic backgrounds. Oh, wait! I did!
Too bad you thought that was the only time it mattered.

--but s/he still does not have the right to be preferred by an educational or occupational institution over the white kid just because s/he is black
Why? He or she got screwed earlier. Why /not/ give the kid preferential treatment in educational seating, at the very least? Yes, a minimum level of competence is still necessary to get the benefit, but if they have that chance, why not? You're the one putting it all on education, and you won't even give them a preference THERE? How do you propose to help the current generation of teenagers?

Doing that is treating the symptom, and not very well, either. We need to treat the disease, which is to say minority early undereducation.
You oversimplify by putting it solely as a matter of education. That's not the only factor in this. Education is part of it. It's an early closed door for many racial minorities (And in a number of fields, women). It's not the only one. Even with the same qualifications, including education, white people and men receive preferential treatment compared to non-white people and women, both in hiring decisions and promotion decisions. This effect is so strong it makes the 10% typically given by most Affirmative Action measures trivial in comparison. This has a cumulative effect. People tend to hire and promote those like them; With fewer minorities in a position of sufficient power to hire or promote people, the cycle will continue to perpetuate itself. The idea behind affirmative action measures, in a business setting, is to ensure a minimum amount of diversity, which hopefully will distribute itself into those minorities hiring and promoting people like them (who even if equally qualified wouldn't be as likely to get a shot from a white male). This may be optimistic, but it has far more to do with treating the disease than you appear to give it credit for. If it were about symptoms, the quotas would be more like 20 or 30%.

The evidence? How can there be evidence if we've never bloody tried what he said?
I do not link to lolcats, nyancat, stalking cat, keyboard cat, or other varieties of cats. They are to actual resources, typically relevant to the discussion.

http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publ...3/pagerajs.pdf
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/fac.../emilygreg.pdf

Same qualifications (which includes education, especially for the second experiment), different races, very different results. A similar effect is typically found for gender, though some jobs have opposite reactions there. If Dubois thought education was sufficient, he was wrong. It is part of it. It's not enough.

Asta Kask

2011-05-31, 04:49 AM

End Women's Suffrage! Sign a Campaign to End this Injustice Now! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uPcthZL2RE)

Which is why I don't trust petitions.

Flame of Anor

2011-05-31, 05:14 AM

{Scrubbed}

Too bad you thought that was the only time it mattered.

What the !@#$ are you talking about?

Why? He or she got screwed earlier. Why /not/ give the kid preferential treatment in educational seating, at the very least? Yes, a minimum level of competence is still necessary to get the benefit, but if they have that chance, why not? You're the one putting it all on education, and you won't even give them a preference THERE? How do you propose to help the current generation of teenagers?

Ah, this is probably what you mean: that I'm saying if the black kid isn't well-educated by the end of high school, just throw him or her out on the streets. Well, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we need to make good education more widespread everywhere, including college, but that admission to opportunities which require the utmost skill should be granted on merit alone. And if, at some point in the future, white people have a disproportionately small percentage of these opportunities, then I will be saddened on their behalf, as I am at this moment saddened on black people's behalf, for having fallen behind their potential, but I would not suggest that white people should be given a minimum percentage of these opportunities.

You oversimplify by putting it solely as a matter of education. That's not the only factor in this. Education is part of it. It's an early closed door for many racial minorities (And in a number of fields, women). It's not the only one. Even with the same qualifications, including education, white people and men receive preferential treatment compared to non-white people and women, both in hiring decisions and promotion decisions. This effect is so strong it makes the 10% typically given by most Affirmative Action measures trivial in comparison. This has a cumulative effect. People tend to hire and promote those like them; With fewer minorities in a position of sufficient power to hire or promote people, the cycle will continue to perpetuate itself. The idea behind affirmative action measures, in a business setting, is to ensure a minimum amount of diversity, which hopefully will distribute itself into those minorities hiring and promoting people like them (who even if equally qualified wouldn't be as likely to get a shot from a white male). This may be optimistic, but it has far more to do with treating the disease than you appear to give it credit for. If it were about symptoms, the quotas would be more like 20 or 30%.

I do not link to lolcats, nyancat, stalking cat, keyboard cat, or other varieties of cats. They are to actual resources, typically relevant to the discussion.

http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publ...3/pagerajs.pdf
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/fac.../emilygreg.pdf

Same qualifications (which includes education, especially for the second experiment), different races, very different results. A similar effect is typically found for gender, though some jobs have opposite reactions there. If Dubois thought education was sufficient, he was wrong. It is part of it. It's not enough.

We have to give it time. It seems to be the case that people are naturally wary of people who are different in some way from themselves, but they do not naturally hate them. With good education all around, and society not continually reinforcing either the "we're good, they're bad" or the "we're bad, they're good" mentality, we could in as little as a generation come to a society where gender and race distinctions matter not a whit more than they naturally should (i.e. very little, esp. racially). The problem with your cited works is that they are analyzing situations within our current society. The society as a whole needs to change in the way I propose for things to change in the way I suggest they will.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-31, 05:17 AM

The 80s was fun and all. But pretending society is color and gender blind doesn't make it so. Really, only white people have the opportunity.

Excuse me if I misunderstand this debate, which I probably do, but wasn't the argument that we shouldn't let race or gender factor into our treatment of someone and not that we should pretend that we did?

Also, could you explain why having experienced racism makes you a better judge in cases involving it? Wouldn't it cloud your judgement just like having a case that mimics a personal experience can cause bias toward the accused?

Teddy

2011-05-31, 06:19 AM

Regarding the low amounts of rape convictions (I don't feel like quoting):

The problem in rape cases is that as far as technical evidence goes, you can usually only prove whether or not they've had sex and whether or not there has been any violence involved. Due to the intimate nature of rape (as with sex in general), there usually won't be any first hand witnesses either. This leads to any jury's nightmare: words stand against words.

In this case, it's easy to say "It's obvious, he raped her" (as "male rapes female" is the most common case), but unless it's possible to prove the accuser reliable enough to say that she (as is the common case) speaks the truth, and the defendant unreliable enough to say that he (se above) doesn't, the defendant is to be aquitted, because otherwise you'll break rule number 1 of a fair justice system: the accused is innocient until the opposite has been proved.

This doesn't exclude other problems as well, but it's worth noting.

cycoris

2011-05-31, 06:41 AM

{Scrub the post, scrub the qutoe}

Bolded for emphasis.

I'm not sure that's true at all. Going out a bit on a limb here, I'm going to wager that she meant her experiences of being oppressed (as a result of being Latina) give her insights or advantages. The very experience of being oppressed is not available to white men, assuming that they have privilege in most other areas of their life, (as I'm sure her peers in this situation do).

RPGuru1331

2011-05-31, 06:48 AM

{Scrubbed}

We have to give it time.
The eternal refrain of those who do not suffer now.

With good education all around, and society not continually reinforcing either the "we're good, they're bad" or the "we're bad, they're good" mentality, we could in as little as a generation come to a society where gender and race do not matter
"Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me."

Evidence plox. Affirmative action measures are demonstrated to work, over time, to some degree. This fairy song of yours pretends that people raised in a society that is a stew of -isms can raise perfectly non- -ist children by pretending not to be -ist. We tried it. We called it the 80s and 90s. The current generation and its children stand as evidence to the contrary that merely pretending society is color blind will make it so. Education alone is demonstrably insufficient to overcome this, because at least some minorities have attained that education and DESPITE your claims STILL suffer in a crop of people who weren't raised to believe in a specific us and them mentality. It's not enough. Seriously, in a generation? The people who'll be in power are the ones who are in their 20s, 30s, and for some, 40s, RIGHT NOW. They'll be the most responsible for passing out the promotions, the hires, setting policy, and the like. Nobody alive now has the remotest idea of what a truly gender, or race, or otherwise blind society would even look like. You think they'll set everything up for the now grown up kids just right on the first try? If we could even convince all of them (Every single last one of them) that there was a need? No, no, I don't think so.

Excuse me if I misunderstand this debate, which I probably do, but wasn't the argument that we shouldn't let race or gender factor into our treatment of someone and not that we should pretend that we did?
You are mistaking is and ought in asking me this. I would like for society to be gender blind, to be race blind. This is possibly a pipe dream, and it is surely impossible within my life time. I would like for people to not factor in gender constructs, to not consider race, for gender identity and sex and sexual orientation and a manner of other things to be irrelevant.

In the real world, the one we have now, none of this is true. Ameliorating that requires recognizing it, and taking steps to specifically correct it. We can't pretend our society is blind to all these factors; that will merely cause us to continue to perpetuate them, all while saying this is what a society without structural -isms looks like (What a depressing thought that would be for those who suffer the everyday realities of them, that what they experienced was as good as it could ever get). My parents' generation, and it seems my own, have been pretending everything's fine; it's not. It won't be, for a very, very long time, I suspect. I'd love to be proven wrong, but the evidence suggests I will not be. That's fine. If society becomes less sexist, less racist, than it was when I started, I'll still be happy.

Also, could you explain why having experienced racism makes you a better judge in cases involving it? Wouldn't it cloud your judgement just like having a case that mimics a personal experience can cause bias toward the accused?
Well, it can be something of a stretch. People generalize hideously poorly even when they have a suitable basis on which to judge, oftentimes. For instance, second wave feminism was pretty much just about white women; there COULD have been generalization to perhaps understand where black people, or gay people, etc, were coming from, but there wasn't. But assuming a more or less similar pattern and a lack of need to generalize for a moment, no. Race matters for white people. White people are raised to believe it does not; As a class, they go on to undervalue how much race matters in the lives of others. Someone who hasn't experienced -ism requires much more striking evidence of a clear pattern. It is much more difficult, for those not raised with it, to recognize subtle forms of -isms. For a subtle one that is fairly pervasive amongst nerds, most men don't recognize the reason why the 'Nice guys finish last' meme, when applied to women, is sexist. It's just the way it is; women prefer bastards, and that's obviously not me.

And DESPITE this lack of recognition (See, for instance, Poison Fish's link to Professor Kimmel talking to see a better explained example), society says white people (and men, and straight people, and cissexual people, and able-bodied people, etc) are *neutral* on matters on race (and gender, and sexual orientation, and gender identity, and disability...)! Poppycock, piffle, and pshaw. All it means is they're not used to being the victim, not that they're 'neutral'.

Lissou

2011-05-31, 07:57 AM

I would agree, but my concern would be that it'd be supporting the elimination of traditionally feminine jobs that perhaps oughtn't be (Not knowing what specific things your culture has decided are and aren't feminine).

I'm not sure what you mean. The elimination of traditionally feminine jobs, do you mean by that the whole job is eliminated? Or that men are allowed to do these jobs too? Because I think women have fought enough to be allowed to do traditionally male jobs, I fail to see how they could say some jobs shouldn't allow men into them and keep a straight face.
Either way, all the words in question are already commonly used to refer to males despite being feminine. I don't have a complete list but I remember "sentinel" as one of them.

No, addressing that precise expression of that precise problem simply isn't always supposed to fall to women. It may, and women may choose to address it as individuals. But it doesn't by default become the responsibility of women to address it at every turn.

No, it's the responsibility of everyone to fight against injustice. And I fail to see where the "women" came out of. I mentioned feminists, who aren't necessarily female.

You think society is going to become less patriarchal by focusing on men's problems as they relate to sexism? Does Not Compute.

Nooo, I think society is going to become less patriarchal as a result of getting used to dealing in matters of victims vs culprit without constantly emphasizing gender, and therefore helping rape victims or domestic violence victims should be done with gender blindness, as focusing on only one gender only emphasizes the idea that life is a fight between genders, rather than lived between individuals who often happen to belong to one gender or the other.
I am no saying "focus on male victims!" I'm saying "focus on helping victims, and stop adding "except males" to that! Just help whichever victims you encounter"

Personally, it's because I live in the United States, and I don't trust the populace to understand the word 'conjugal'. I usually see campaigns about it referred to as Domestic Violence though, not violence against wives. Perhaps this is more of a problem in France than I realize though.

Sorry, "violence conjugale" is the term in French for domestic violence. It's the equivalent and understood just as much as "domestic violence" would be in the US.

Nor can I fault people focusing their priorities on the larger supply of victims.

The larger supply is the one that includes all of them rather than only those who fit your preferred gender. Focusing their priorities on the larger supply of victims is what I want them to do.

I feel these people are just too used to dealing in binary. They don't see people, they see gender everywhere. They're constantly thinking "what helps women" and not "what helps people?" They keep assuming that if they include men it means they're picking men over women or something. I'm just asking for equal treatment here. A beaten up victims comes to your center, you provide them with help and support as the first reaction, rather than as the first reaction checking what's between their legs first.

I am saying "don't go the extra step of adding restrictions". An association dedicated to helping rape victims does not need to add "female" to that any more than they need to add anything else. For instance, let's assume that, say, black women are raped more than other ethnicities of women. I don't know if that's the case, it's the assumption.
Do you think it makes sense to have call centers, hosting places, etc, all dedicated to "black women who were raped" and have the non-black ones be rejected if they show up? Would it really make sense to say "they're the bigger group, of course everyone focuses on them, why would you focus on white women who are the victims much less often?"

Nobody is suggesting you focus on one ethnicity. It makes little sense. It might be okay for one specific center provided equivalent centers are provided for other ethnicities as well, but still, that's segregation. So they just provide help to women who were raped or beaten or whatever. They never go "wait, you're white, sorry, we can't help you there".

Does it make more sense now? My point is very simple. If you want society to be gender-blind, favouring the group who is usually not favoured isn't the way to go. Being gender-blind yourself is the way to go. Otherwise you just add to the idea of "us vs them" or the idea that there are enough differences to justify different treatment.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-31, 08:18 AM

You are mistaking is and ought in asking me this. I would like for society to be gender blind, to be race blind. This is possibly a pipe dream, and it is surely impossible within my life time. I would like for people to not factor in gender constructs, to not consider race, for gender identity and sex and sexual orientation and a manner of other things to be irrelevant.

Well what are you arguing about, then? It looks like you and Anor wish for the same thing. You just seem less optimistic about it's possibility.

By the way, if it is indeed impossible in our lifetimes, should we not then fight for it to happen as soon afterward as possible?

Well, it can be something of a stretch. People generalize hideously poorly even when they have a suitable basis on which to judge, oftentimes. For instance, second wave feminism was pretty much just about white women; there COULD have been generalization to perhaps understand where black people, or gay people, etc, were coming from, but there wasn't. But assuming a more or less similar pattern and a lack of need to generalize for a moment, no. Race matters for white people. White people are raised to believe it does not; As a class, they go on to undervalue how much race matters in the lives of others. Someone who hasn't experienced -ism requires much more striking evidence of a clear pattern. It is much more difficult, for those not raised with it, to recognize subtle forms of -isms. For a subtle one that is fairly pervasive amongst nerds, most men don't recognize the reason why the 'Nice guys finish last' meme, when applied to women, is sexist. It's just the way it is; women prefer bastards, and that's obviously not me.

And DESPITE this lack of recognition (See, for instance, Poison Fish's link to Professor Kimmel talking to see a better explained example), society says white people (and men, and straight people, and cissexual people, and able-bodied people, etc) are *neutral* on matters on race (and gender, and sexual orientation, and gender identity, and disability...)! Poppycock, piffle, and pshaw. All it means is they're not used to being the victim, not that they're 'neutral'.

My apologies, but I do not believe you. I am what you would call white and I am rather insulted that you think that means I do not understand or directly undervalue the effect of racism in others. While I don't think race should matter, I am fully aware that society as a whole treats it as if it does.

I don't think I am blind to subtle -ism either, and could give a detailed speech on it consider that doing so was part of curriculum, but I will refrain from arguing since I have no idea what that meme is or what it has to do with sexism... Sorry?

Also never heard society say that about neutrality, but I will agree. I think. I'd say one can be objective-ish no matter what background one has, but I am not sure if that's what they mean. :smallredface:

Murdim

2011-05-31, 08:30 AM

Victim relief is not a change to societal structure. Put another way, helping victims of either gender is not, strictly speaking, reducing the future number of victims; it's helping the immediate supply of them. They're manifold, so it's quite necessary. If you're focusing on the victims, you're not, however, focusing on solving the problem. Both need to be done, but what an individual chooses to do is their own choice. I can fault neither.
Radical feminism, right? I can't say the underlying idea isn't perfectly valid, but the actual conclusions leave me dubious. Everyone has their own idea on which problems are the most directly linked to the roots of sexism, and which are only peripheral and should be ignored. In the end, radical feminism seems rather arbitrary to me, and a good way to leave out entire aspects of patriarchy.

Nor can I fault people focusing their priorities on the larger supply of victims.
Victims don't come in "supplies". You have to go out of your way to ignore a subcategory of victims based on a criterion such as gender. Though I can understand there are some situations where it's justified to do so, such as women's shelters.

Most, if not all, sexism that hurts men comes from assumptions that also hurt women. Draft is male only? Because women aren't fit for military service. Men with feminine expression are considered less than men? Well, that's because women are considered inferior. Men don't get paternity leave to take care of their kids? Because women are considered the default caretakers of children, not men.
I entirely agree with you. I'll even go on to say that while those assumptions harm both men and women on a personal scale, their implications on the societal level are actually beneficial to the male gender and detrimental to the female gender. Patriarchy may hurt men too, but the central issue of power imbalance is (almost?) exclusively feminine.

But all of this doesn't mean that you can dismiss some issues as "men's problems", and expect that those will solve of their own once we've dealt with the "real issues". Double standards are more tenacious than that. Women are now encouraged to work full time, but that didn't make it socially acceptable for men to stay at home and look after the kids. And as a result, women are now expected to be the perfect worker, the perfect mother and the perfect wife, all at the same time. Both genders still suffer, because social expectations on men are an integral part of what keeps women down as a gender.

This is factually inaccurate. The gay rights movement of the 60s and 70s is sufficient proof of this; It was focused on white men. Men of color were seen as exotic playthings for same, lesbians were ignored. For that matter, merely focusing on helping women is no guarantee I won't focus on white women, to the more or less exclusion of non-white women, or LGBT women, etc. Alternately, Second Wave Feminism.

You were raised in a society with a lot of screwed up beliefs. So was I, so was everyone else. You inadvertently take a lot of that in. The default person of society is the white, straight, able-bodied, cissexual, middle class male; it takes effort to make sure you're not perpetuating those as norms, even if you're trying to eliminate one. Just saying "Well fight for equality and you'll automatically prioritize the less advantaged" is not born out well by reality. This is unfortunate, but true. It helps the disadvantaged, but it doesn't mean that.
:smallfrown: Well, I guess you are right. My little theory does assume people to be unbiased, which they are not. We're all a bunch of hypocrites, and as you've shown, good intentions are very quickly warped by hypocrisy.

On the other hand, I still think we should keep that "ideal" of equal treatment in some corner of our mind. The (white, male) Enlightenment philosophers that proclaimed all human beings to be equal might have been hypocrites who mainly thought about white men, but the ideals behind the bigotry are still being effectively held up - often against those very same forms of bigotry Voltaire & co displayed.

WEll, that's a less irksome formulation than normal, at least. Inaccurate, but still less irksome.
Well, I was talking about misguided egalitarians, not... Those Other Ones. :smallannoyed:

I'm not impressed that you found the time to chide me for prioritizing the correct structural inequalities that oppress the correct people, for a perceived wrong reason, while not having two words to say to the people who have their priorities utterly skewed, for any of a number of reasons.
Chiding you? It wasn't chiding, it was arguing. :smallbiggrin:

I have two words to say to those people. It's just that the first of those words is generally not considered to be very polite, especially when combined with the second one. Also, I've found that actually trying to argue with them is fairly depressing, never enriching for either interlocutor, and almost always leads to forum-inappropriate topics and/or behaviours. It can be quite funny, though.

Lissou

2011-05-31, 08:53 AM

Wait, does that mean you're not allowed to have an opinion on anything unless you're a black asian handicapped jewish atheist gay woman or something?

I've never seen society say people are neutral. Nobody's completely neutral, we all have experiences that affect who we are. Etablishments can strive to be neutral though. And really, why would that be a problem? If as you say 99% of the victims are female, then 99% of the people helped will be women, because that's who will show up (unless it's proven one category shows up for help less often than another, in which case campaigns should strive to make that person ask for help more).

See, for instance, if there is a flyer that says "raped, beaten, assaulted? Call us for help in support", in French you'll systematically see the flyer use the feminine form for "raped", "beaten" and "assaulted". Using the feminine forms means it doesn't apply to men.
There is a way that's commonly used everywhere to make words apply to both. My suggestion is to use these words. It's not a huge difference, it doesn't mean it doesn't apply to women. All it does is say "that counts for men too". You'd be surprised how outraged people are by the idea.
Why? Why purposely say "we won't help you if you're male"? When it's just a matter of adding parentheses so that everyone is included?

Similarly, in English contexts, would using the word "person" instead of "woman" be that offensive? Or using neutral forms to make sure it's clear everyone is included? It's not like suddenly you're contractually obliged to help one man for every woman you help. You just help whoever asks for help.

Why make everything a gender issue? By talking about them as gender issues, you're perpetuating sexist stereotypes, too.

EDIT: what I mean is that it all contributes to men taking on that aggressive role, the Tough Guise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI), and being considered less off a man if they're the victim and more of a man if they're the aggressor. Not recognising men as potential victims, saying victims are necessarily females, contribute to making male victims out to be "girls" or "sissies" and contributes in the idea that men need to be strong and by extension the aggressor.
Tough Guise is a very interesting documentary about all of these issues, I really recommend you look into it.

It doesn't seem stupid to me: if men are the aggressor most of the time, shouldn't you deal with men and their image so that they realise they don't have to be the aggressor? Or are you saying men are and will always be violent and that it cannot change?
We can't work at preventing victims from being victims, because they don't cause it. We can help the victims, all the victims, and make them confident in their self worth as a human being, and as a woman or as a man.
And we can prevent more future violent acts by letting men know it's okay to be "a sissy" (I guess phrasing it better than I just did). Just like we have shown women it's okay for them to be strong and tough, and that they don't have to be violent to achieve that.

Really, I can't recommend the documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI) enough.

And yes, it's a white guy talking. He does talk about the issue of race too, though.

RPGuru1331

2011-05-31, 09:27 AM

Well what are you arguing about, then? It looks like you and Anor wish for the same thing. You just seem less optimistic about it's possibility.
Flame of Anor's expected method of success is overly simplistic. I actually am quite an optimist; I really do think that society can become gender blind, raceblind, orientation blind, etc. This is extremely optimistic based on the best data we have. My SO thinks it's crazy, and is also a feminist. I also recognize it won't happen for many lifetimes. Flame of Anor isn't just optimistic; he's wrong. About extremely important things that affect a lot of people. If he merely thought we could be non-racist in a generation, it'd be harmless; he also advocates an approach that has been proven not to work, and that has been given 20 years to demonstrate this in. It's a complex problem, the solutions are many-faceted, difficult to implement, and typically lengthy.

My apologies, but I do not believe you. I am what you would call white and I am rather insulted that you think that means I do not understand or directly undervalue the effect of racism in others.
Just saying that makes me doubt you. That you would have a problem with my pointing out that privileged people, as a class, don't recognize their privilege (which is part of the point) makes me extremely wary of claims that you really, truly get it. That you, personally, feel insulted by my saying that white people, as a class, do not generally understand racism as they don't deal with it? Constitutes exceptional evidence to the contrary of your claims.

Privilege is invisible to those who have it. It's what allows a white student to consider the opinions of their white professors on race relations to be objective, while the black professors are clearly biased. It's why I had to sit through a tirade by a white classmate of mine on how Undercover Brother was horrible and racist (against white people) because it was a glorious parody and homage of Blaxploitation films. It's why the gay rights movement, for 20 years, failed to include non-white gay men (And gay women of all colors). People fail to recognize privilege where they have it, as a whole. White people are privileged; part of that means they don't know what BS non-white people go through. It's a joke, like black people getting stopped by traffic cops.

I don't think I am blind to subtle -ism either, and could give a detailed speech on it consider that doing so was part of curriculum, but I will refrain from arguing since I have no idea what that meme is or what it has to do with sexism... Sorry?
You just made a conversation about racism about you as a white person, so no, actually, you're not so perceptive as you think. Which is something you need to get used to. None of us is. You do your best, say your sorries, and learn from your mistakes, but I've never met someone who doesn't make 'em.

Also never heard society say that about neutrality, but I will agree. I think. I'd say one can be objective-ish no matter what background one has, but I am not sure if that's what they mean.
nnnngh. No. White people are objective on race. Men are objective on gender. Straight people are objective on sexual orientation. That's what society raises people to think, and it tends to be internalized. It's also flatly wrong.

I'm not sure what you mean. The elimination of traditionally feminine jobs, do you mean by that the whole job is eliminated? Or that men are allowed to do these jobs too? Because I think women have fought enough to be allowed to do traditionally male jobs, I fail to see how they could say some jobs shouldn't allow men into them and keep a straight face.
I was unclear. I meant that by ignoring female-dominated jobs, they were contributing to their devaluation, or appear to be so to me.

No, it's the responsibility of everyone to fight against injustice. And I fail to see where the "women" came out of. I mentioned feminists, who aren't necessarily female.
I would say that man rape victims are necessarily men; the comparison was that it simply can not always be the job of women to create spaces for them to discuss their issues. Certainly not at their own expense (As derailing a discussion on sexism against women onto male rape victims would be).

Nooo, I think society is going to become less patriarchal as a result of getting used to dealing in matters of victims vs culprit without constantly emphasizing gender, and therefore helping rape victims or domestic violence victims should be done with gender blindness, as focusing on only one gender only emphasizes the idea that life is a fight between genders, rather than lived between individuals who often happen to belong to one gender or the other.
Why would you want the process of helping them to be gender blind? They don't have the same travails to begin with. I mean this in strictly one-dimensional terms; the support needed from a support group that a male rape victim needs is likely not going to be identical to the support from a support group that a woman needs, because how society treats each is different. Both are horrid, but they're horrid in different ways that necessitate somewhat different help. Though, that's an unexpert's opinion, so I may be mistaken on this particular point.

The larger supply is the one that includes all of them rather than only those who fit your preferred gender. Focusing their priorities on the larger supply of victims is what I want them to do.
And yet, your first point of concern was men. Why do I not believe you?

feel these people are just too used to dealing in binary. They don't see people, they see gender everywhere.
It's almost as if they live in a society that seeks to remind them of it, day in and day out.

Do you think it makes sense to have call centers, hosting places, etc, all dedicated to "black women who were raped" and have the non-black ones be rejected if they show up? Would it really make sense to say "they're the bigger group, of course everyone focuses on them, why would you focus on white women who are the victims much less often?"
Let's further assume that there is a difference in experiences here; it sounds plausible to me, at least, and serves as an assumption.

I don't expect any rape victim center to turn away any rape victim. I expect them to be geared to what they see, and to gently suggest, that while they can help, another center, which they helpfully provide, may be better tuned to them.

As a non rape victim, and as a non counsellor, I would also, perhaps expect that a woman victim would be less comfortable discussing their vulnerabilities with a non-family male in the audience. If this assumption holds true, I would damn well expect gender-segregated support groups. If it doesn't, then I wouldn't necessarily do so.

Does it make more sense now? My point is very simple. If you want society to be gender-blind, favouring the group who is usually not favoured isn't the way to go. Being gender-blind yourself is the way to go. Otherwise you just add to the idea of "us vs them" or the idea that there are enough differences to justify different treatment.
Your opinion, as a generality, is factually inaccurate. Pretending you're blind to current -isms is a good way to perpetuate the status quo. I repeat: 80s, 90s. Did it. Didn't work.

Lamech

2011-05-31, 09:44 AM

So you invented a BS example you can't justify and are wondering why it isn't equivalent to helping the actually disparate numbers of victims disparately?
Okay, you do under stand the concept of hypothetical questions? If I were to ask you, "would you push a fat man in front of a train to stop it and save ten other people?" would you attack the plausibility?

I'm saying that sometimes the defendant more or less admits that what the accused said really happened, but it wasn't rape because she was asking for it.

This is a real defense. Well, it's a real defense in that it works. It's not 'supposed to', but if it gets the Jury to acquit, it works and it's a real defense. And it usually works, if the accused wasn't dressed in a fuzzy sweater and long dress, has thought about sex in the past ever, or is related to a woman who has thought about sex. The victim is the defendant in a rape trial because of this.When you say "she was asking for it", you mean the defense claims she was wearing revealing clothing, not consenting to sex? Because if that is the case its just stupid.

I don't mind doing your research for you.
You're looking for Maouloud Baby v. State of Maryland.
I assume you knew the case you were referencing. I really don't have the ability to hunt through all of the court cases. Also However, the court ruled that consent could be withdrawn at any time, even if the victim had initially consented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maouloud_Baby_v._State_of_Maryland). Edit: Although the article on the whole was rather confusing, and the judge didn't declare the guy innocent he said the jury instructions were wrong. It sounds like its some fine legal point. If rape is defined as "A", according to common law and precedent, when it really should be "A+B", we can't simply convict people for "B". We need to change the law.

This is untrue. That's why I pointed you at the gay rights movement of the 60s/70s, and second wave feminism, for examples. Within a group of victims, there will be people more victimized, as a class, than others. You should actually look at Poison Fish's links. The professor's lecture sums it up surprisingly well;No the victimization rate of victims of X by X is 100%; there is no higher rate of victimization. This is tautological.
If you want to focus on only the most victimized people in the group of victims of X, then help the {whatever number you can help} most victimized victims of X. Or only help someone if they suffer to a certain degree. Really its still "help victims of X", but victims of X is "sufficiently nasty domestic violence" instead of "domestic violence."
Still no need to bring gender, or race, or any other details about the victim other that what they suffered from.

The methodology would be examining to see who drops the charges, and interviewing them why they did (Because there are numerous pressures to drop charges on this crime from the community, regardless of their accuracy). Unless that would be more traumatizing than I'm giving credit for, which is possible. ...okay, examining a non-randomly selected group people won't be generalizable. It might give a decent estimate, a semi-coherent starting point, or be better than nothing. But... interviewing people? If they lied about it, they will in all likelihood continue to lie, and not open themselves up to a lawsuit and criminal charges. We are trying to find the dishonest ones. You can't check for dishonesty by asking the person if they are dishonest. Or am I missing something?

Similarly, in English contexts, would using the word "person" instead of "woman" be that offensive? Or using neutral forms to make sure it's clear everyone is included? It's not like suddenly you're contractually obliged to help one man for every woman you help. You just help whoever asks for help.While not specifically "person" instead of "woman" We do specifically have gendered pronouns he and she. It can be awkward not to use them, and the "neutral" one is he. Ditto his/her Which can result in some groups using she. Which is meh IMO

Lissou

2011-05-31, 10:37 AM

While not specifically "person" instead of "woman" We do specifically have gendered pronouns he and she. It can be awkward not to use them, and the "neutral" one is he. Ditto his/her Which can result in some groups using she. Which is meh IMO

Well it's possible to use "she or he", "he or she", "(s)he", "s/he", "one", "they" or use only one but in a general change and switch them every so often (D&D manuals do that, using "he" for the descriptions of some classes and "she" for some other, in a way that seems to have been randomly decided).

I don't think "he" really is "neutral", I think it can be used as neutral and so can "she", but there isn't really something that makes it more neutral. I'm not more likely to read "he" as meaning "everyone" as I am to read "she" in the same sense.

I do remember too using "man" to mean "human" and being corrected at school, notably when I wrote "mankind" and was corrected with "humankind", a word which I didn't actually know. French does use the word "man" to mean human, or really, it's the other way around, the word for "human" developed to mean man as well (and the word for "woman" and "wife" is the same one, while "husband" isn't the same word as "man"). Sometimes there are connotations in languages you can't easily get rid of, because you cannot just change language drastically and hope people will follow.
Some words though lose their earlier connotations and people forget about them. I've always wondered why with so many language modifications, feminism never suggested another word so that "woman" and "wife" not be the same one.

And yet, your first point of concern was men. Why do I not believe you?

What do you mean? I'm not only concerned by males. There is a lot of inequality that women are the victims of, too, still most of it nowadays even though it's much better than it used to be. My point was that there is help for them, which is good, and I wish there was help for men as well, and I dislike that it's not politically correct to point it out.

Your opinion, as a generality, is factually inaccurate. Pretending you're blind to current -isms is a good way to perpetuate the status quo. I repeat: 80s, 90s. Did it. Didn't work.

I'm not talking about being blind to -isms. I certainly don't think people should be blind to sexism, or pretend men and women are victims in similar proportions when they aren't. I just don't think the decision to help a victim should be made based on their gender, but on what they're a victim of and how much they need help.

As a non rape victim, and as a non counsellor, I would also, perhaps expect that a woman victim would be less comfortable discussing their vulnerabilities with a non-family male in the audience. If this assumption holds true, I would damn well expect gender-segregated support groups. If it doesn't, then I wouldn't necessarily do so.

That's a possibility, although gender segregation doesn't work if you're abused by someone of your same sex. I think people need to be put in environment they deem safe and with people they're comfortable around, but I don't fully understand why a woman abused by a white man would become afraid of all men rather than all white people, for instance, or even people in general. At any rate, when registering for a support group, I would expect people to specify if they want to be in a group devoid of (other) males, (other) females, or if they don't care, or if they prefer being with both, or something (that would be asked when registering), and the groups to be formed based on that data. As a result, if all women want to be away from males, the support groups will indeed be segregated. If some don't care, some of the groups would include both. If all women want to be away from men and there is only one man, who therefore can't be in any of the current support groups, he'd get individual help, I guess?

RPGuru1331

2011-05-31, 11:05 AM

Wait, does that mean you're not allowed to have an opinion on anything unless you're a black asian handicapped jewish atheist gay woman or something?
No.

I've never seen society say people are neutral. Nobody's completely neutral, we all have experiences that affect who we are. Etablishments can strive to be neutral though. And really, why would that be a problem? If as you say 99% of the victims are female, then 99% of the people helped will be women, because that's who will show up (unless it's proven one category shows up for help less often than another, in which case campaigns should strive to make that person ask for help more).
Oh, then let me fix that for you. Disney made Tangled about Flynn so that it would be Gender Neutral. That was their stated intent in taking a story about a princess, and making it about her rescuer (In the process removing Rapunzel's agency). And it was well received for it.

THere's Poison Fish's excellent link to Professor Kimmel's talk; I'll reproduce that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgaOK74HqiA

There's the general lack of ruckus around white heads of state, white people in a position of power, etc.

There is a way that's commonly used everywhere to make words apply to both. My suggestion is to use these words. It's not a huge difference, it doesn't mean it doesn't apply to women. All it does is say "that counts for men too". You'd be surprised how outraged people are by the idea.
Why? Why purposely say "we won't help you if you're male"? When it's just a matter of adding parentheses so that everyone is included?

As part of a general campaign, yes, I would expect gender neutral posters.

Why make everything a gender issue? By talking about them as gender issues, you're perpetuating sexist stereotypes, too.
No, by approaching gendered issues as gendered issues, you stand a chance at challenging sexist stereotypes. By pretending society is fair and not -ist, you perpetuate the status quo (Which is not those things).

Tough Guise is a very interesting documentary about all of these issues, I really recommend you look into it.
Yes, I've seen it.

And yes, it's a white guy talking. He does talk about the issue of race too, though.
Yes, I specifically wrote outs in for sociologists, anthropologists, and hte like for a very important reason. It isn't actually impossible for privileged people to get it (Which was a completely understandable message I remember seeing in South Park, offhand). It only requires substantial effort and study, much more than the average person can afford to give (Both in time and in money), to get it.

Okay, you do under stand the concept of hypothetical questions? If I were to ask you, "would you push a fat man in front of a train to stop it and save ten other people?" would you attack the plausibility?
You were asking me to lend equal weight to an absurdity you constructed from wholecloth as I do to facts born out of statistical evidence. No, I think not.

When you say "she was asking for it", you mean the defense claims she was wearing revealing clothing, not consenting to sex? Because if that is the case its just stupid.
Are you new to rape trials? Even LnO gets this right, and there's precious little they do. Wearing revealing clothing = consent for sex in the mind of most juries. I don't know why this is difficult for you. Defense Attorneys do a very good job of reminding juries of all the sexist BS we teach about rape, like that wearing revealing clothes is 'inviting men's attentions', so the women were /asking/ for it. When they're not outright saying the victim is a tart with regrets (I believe that precise choice of terms is reserved for Australia during its annual cricket season after the inevitable and perennial allegations of sexual assault which are ignored, but the sentiment remains more or less globally), anyway.

And it works. It's part of what prosecutors pre-screen what goes to trial for, /because it's effective/.

That is good since it takes me a few hours to read every decision ever. Also However, the court ruled that consent could be withdrawn at any time, even if the victim had initially consented.

http://www.law.umaryland.edu/academics/journals/mdlr/print/articles/68_4-409.pdf
Ineffectively, negating the should-be simplicity. Even recently reversed, that the first court of appeals could make such a laughably stupid judgement should be beyond the pale. It's not. It keeps happening. Rape is not taken seriously.

No the victimization rate of victims of X by X is 100%; there is no higher rate of victimization. This is tautological.
Yes, it's tautological. It's also useless. It assumes there are no gradations of victimization, that all victims are equally victimized. It's in factual error, the definition of wrong. If your premise is wrong, your conclusions flowing from it are.

Still no need to bring gender, or race, or any other details about the victim other that what they suffered from.
About individual victims, anonymity remains the rule. Always.

In speaking about systems, this is just more wishful thinking. If I pretend -isms don't exist, I won't perpetrate them!

...okay, examining a non-randomly selected group people won't be generalizable. It might give a decent estimate, a semi-coherent starting point, or be better than nothing. But... interviewing people? If they lied about it, they will in all likelihood continue to lie, and not open themselves up to a lawsuit and criminal charges. We are trying to find the dishonest ones. You can't check for dishonesty by asking the person if they are dishonest. Or am I missing something?
Yeah, you are missing something. I'm not sure if I have the patience to continue. Well, a bit more.

You're beginning by assuming dishonesty; you'll notice that I only said we'll start by asking people who dropped the charges. Really, if you don't have any idea why that might be aside from dishonesty, I don't have the inclination to explain it all to you. It's too painful to think about, let alone explain in mind numbing detail to someone who has no idea what they're talking about yet has amazingly strong opinions on the matter. I just can't sort out every mistake, and the other errors are much less painful to talk about.

Radical feminism, right? I can't say the underlying idea isn't perfectly valid, but the actual conclusions leave me dubious. Everyone has their own idea on which problems are the most directly linked to the roots of sexism, and which are only peripheral and should be ignored. In the end, radical feminism seems rather arbitrary to me, and a good way to leave out entire aspects of patriarchy.
As opposed to?

Victims don't come in "supplies". You have to go out of your way to ignore a subcategory of victims based on a criterion such as gender. Though I can understand there are some situations where it's justified to do so, such as women's shelters.
Hm, that is a dehumanizing way to put it, now that it's read back to me.

Regardless, when they make up less than a quarter of assault victims, you really don't have to go 'out of your way' to help the others.

On the other hand, I still think we should keep that "ideal" of equal treatment in some corner of our mind. The (white, male) Enlightenment philosophers that proclaimed all human beings to be equal might have been hypocrites who mainly thought about white men, but the ideals behind the bigotry are still being effectively held up - often against those very same forms of bigotry Voltaire & co displayed.
Specifically, as an ideal that we simply won't attain within our lifetimes. That doesn't make it a less worthy end goal, it merely underscores to our progeny that they have a long road to walk as well. Well, your progeny; the prospect of spawning is unappealing on a number of levels, personally.

Lissou

2011-05-31, 11:40 AM

I was joking about the person who's part of a bunch of minorities, by the way. I do understand your point, because I've experienced it too, but sometimes it's used as a dismissal I don't like. The idea that being a man, or white, or straight and so on dismisses your points is annoying, and I think people can make valid points without requiring a degree, and that someone who is part of a minority can be full of sh-t.

@Keveak: the point isn't "you're white so you personally can't know what it's like". It's "white people don't experience the racism towards non-white directly every day, therefore it takes effort on their part to understand or realise what it's like". There might be things you don't see, don't experience or don't notice that are very meaningful, you just don't know the meaning of them. I myself learned a word recently that starts with a k and is an insult to Jewish people. I'm sure Jewish people are usually aware of that term before they're 26, even if they might not all hear it directed at them on a regular basis.

Personally, I would say that for instance monogamous people aren't aware of the long list of monogamous privileges (http://www.eastportlandblog.com/?p=9176), because they don't experience not having them. I am very aware of not having these privileges, though. I'm also very aware of the fact that not all minorities are equal - some are more discriminated against or more violently so, for instance, so please don't see this as a "woe is me" thing on my part. I just realise that there is probably such a list for all minorities I'm not a part of that I'm not fully aware of.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-31, 11:47 AM

Flame of Anor's expected method of success is overly simplistic. I actually am quite an optimist; I really do think that society can become gender blind, raceblind, orientation blind, etc. This is extremely optimistic based on the best data we have. My SO thinks it's crazy, and is also a feminist. I also recognize it won't happen for many lifetimes. Flame of Anor isn't just optimistic; he's wrong. About extremely important things that affect a lot of people. If he merely thought we could be non-racist in a generation, it'd be harmless; he also advocates an approach that has been proven not to work, and that has been given 20 years to demonstrate this in. It's a complex problem, the solutions are many-faceted, difficult to implement, and typically lengthy.

I see. thank you for clarifying. :smallsmile:

Just saying that makes me doubt you. That you would have a problem with my pointing out that privileged people, as a class, don't recognize their privilege (which is part of the point) makes me extremely wary of claims that you really, truly get it. That you, personally, feel insulted by my saying that white people, as a class, do not generally understand racism as they don't deal with it? Constitutes exceptional evidence to the contrary of your claims.

Ah, sorry. Misread you. I have no objection to you saying that white people as a class undermine the effects of racism on people with different skin tones, other than the idea of white people being a class. But that my very well be the sad truth in America, you'd know better than me.

I was offended because you said "White people are raised to believe it does not" before talking about what the class does, I took that as kind of a racist remark. If it was intended to be included under the class discussion, then I apologise for that. :smallsmile:

Poor wording on my part, I guess. It happens. :smallredface:

Privilege is invisible to those who have it. It's what allows a white student to consider the opinions of their white professors on race relations to be objective, while the black professors are clearly biased. It's why I had to sit through a tirade by a white classmate of mine on how Undercover Brother was horrible and racist (against white people) because it was a glorious parody and homage of Blaxploitation films. It's why the gay rights movement, for 20 years, failed to include non-white gay men (And gay women of all colors). People fail to recognize privilege where they have it, as a whole. White people are privileged; part of that means they don't know what BS non-white people go through. It's a joke, like black people getting stopped by traffic cops.

Would like to go out on a psychological tangent here but if it helps, nobody doubted our Danish-Etiopian teacher's objectivity on the subject of racism. Some doubted the white professional speaker, but none her. :smallsmile:

Anyway, back on topic; I think your wording here is why I got confused earlier. You say that it is invisible in your first sentence but add "as a whole" later. My brain tends to get confused over that kind of stuff, so my apologies again.

I am not sure I follow that last part, but any joke that depends on racism makes me cringe. Especially when the joker uses "I'm black" to justify it. Which I'd consider as evidence that being white has nothing directly to do with it, at least. Being spoiled may, but I'm that too and I didn't find it funny. But I assume you don't mean white people fundamentally are that way. :smallsmile:

You just made a conversation about racism about you as a white person, so no, actually, you're not so perceptive as you think. Which is something you need to get used to. None of us is. You do your best, say your sorries, and learn from your mistakes, but I've never met someone who doesn't make 'em.

Never said I was completely objective, that's impossible. I may mistakes all the time. Stop saying I need to get used to it! I am! >_<
I kind of never considered myself a white person. Not that I don't have light pinkish skin, but simply in the same vein as I don't give my hair colour a thought. Which would include a lot more suprise at looking in a mirror if I had short hair. Which is why I argue againt assumptions about people based on physical characteristics. I sounded quite defensive, though. So I apologise again. :smallsmile:

nnnngh. No. White people are objective on race. Men are objective on gender. Straight people are objective on sexual orientation. That's what society raises people to think, and it tends to be internalized. It's also flatly wrong.

Indeed it is, but I just never encountered that opinion. Different society or social obliviousness, I guess.

EDIT:
@Lissou: I know that, but I just don't think it means that everyone who hasn't been subjected to racism or sexism will be clueless, nor that everybody who has will know every slur. Some learn by being treated horribly, others learn by the victims' stories. Does that make sense?

Lissou

2011-05-31, 11:56 AM

I kind of never considered myself a white person. Not that I don't have light pinkish skin, but simply in the same vein as I don't give my hair colour a thought.

That's kind of the thing. People from a minority have it emphasised enough in daily life that they can't forget they're part of it. They will constantly be reminded that they're black, or asian, or latino, or mixed or anything like that. The fact we can forget about it is because we're part of the majority and can be comfortably so.
We see it as neutral, because we don't give skin colour a thought. But that still makes us privileged, being able not to give skin colour a thought.

Lamech

2011-05-31, 12:14 PM

Are you new to rape trials? Even LnO gets this right, and there's precious little they do. Wearing revealing clothing = consent for sex in the mind of most juries. I don't know why this is difficult for you. Defense Attorneys do a very good job of reminding juries of all the sexist BS we teach about rape, like that wearing revealing clothes is 'inviting men's attentions', so the women were /asking/ for it. When they're not outright saying the victim is a tart with regrets (I believe that precise choice of terms is reserved for Australia during its annual cricket season after the inevitable and perennial allegations of sexual assault which are ignored, but the sentiment remains more or less globally), anyway.

And it works. It's part of what prosecutors pre-screen what goes to trial for, /because it's effective/.That defense defies all logic. And facts. It hurts my brain that it could work.

Ineffectively, negating the should-be simplicity. Even recently reversed, that the first court of appeals could make such a laughably stupid judgement should be beyond the pale. It's not. It keeps happening. Rape is not taken seriously.According to your link the court said that the law says rape is the act of penetration. I'm not an expert on Maryland law, but if Maryland law says that rape is the act of penetration, then a) the law needs to be changed b) the court was right. Of course, it could simply be the court had a moronic judge.
There is still a huge problem no matter if it was with the court or with the law itself.

Yes, it's tautological. It's also useless. It assumes there are no gradations of victimization, that all victims are equally victimized. It's in factual error, the definition of wrong. If your premise is wrong, your conclusions flowing from it are.
About individual victims, anonymity remains the rule. Always.

In speaking about systems, this is just more wishful thinking. If I pretend -isms don't exist, I won't perpetrate them!So... what do you disagree with? And no I never said their are no gradients/subsets or that you can't use subsets in deciding who to help. Domestic abuse is itself a subset of violent crime. Which is a subset of crime. Which is a subset of...
My points are:
-When helping victims do so with out regards to the victims, gender, race, class ect. Only take into consideration what they are a victim of. You might make an organization to help people who are victims of crimes, victims of violent crimes, victims of domestic abuse, or victims of domestic abuse that inflicts high level of injury ect. Don't take into consideration the gender/race/class ect. Is that the point of contention?
-When punish perpetrators again only take into consideration of the crime, and the feasibility of doing punishing them. (Do note that if you want the punishment to be a deterrent that is the next point.) Do you contend with this?
-When stopping them from doing it the first time the issues are a lot more complex, and probably need a whole lot of studies to unravel what to do... but I'm not a trained psychologist/sociologist, so don't ask me. I'm going to facepalm if you disagree with my not being a valid source for figuring out how to solve it.

Yeah, you are missing something. I'm not sure if I have the patience to continue. Well, a bit more.

You're beginning by assuming dishonesty; you'll notice that I only said we'll start by asking people who dropped the charges. Really, if you don't have any idea why that might be aside from dishonesty, I don't have the inclination to explain it all to you. It's too painful to think about, let alone explain in mind numbing detail to someone who has no idea what they're talking about yet has amazingly strong opinions on the matter. I just can't sort out every mistake, and the other errors are much less painful to talk about.No. I am not assuming that the cases are all dishonest. I am assuming that they are either honest or dishonest. This is tautological, if defined well. Now I am saying how do we figure out which cases are honest and which are dishonest? If we ask a honest person if they are honest they will likely answer yes. If we ask a dishonest person if they are honest they will likely answer yes. Therefore any person asked if they are honest will likely answer yes. So asking people about their honesty does not get us any info. I don't think interviewing people will tell us anything about their honesty.

Mina Kobold

2011-05-31, 12:26 PM

That's kind of the thing. People from a minority have it emphasised enough in daily life that they can't forget they're part of it. They will constantly be reminded that they're black, or asian, or latino, or mixed or anything like that. The fact we can forget about it is because we're part of the majority and can be comfortably so.
We see it as neutral, because we don't give skin colour a thought. But that still makes us privileged, being able not to give skin colour a thought.

That is very horrible, and I know that. I was just saying that I wasn't arguing as a white person, but as a random layman on the Internet.

I'm not really sure what your argument is, by the way. I know I'm privileged, what does it matter if I want to prevent racism? More resources should mean I can do more, shouldn't it? Metaphorically speaking, not literal resources.

Lissou

2011-05-31, 12:49 PM

I'm not really sure what your argument is, by the way. I know I'm privileged, what does it matter if I want to prevent racism? More resources should mean I can do more, shouldn't it? Metaphorically speaking, not literal resources.

Of course! The point is simply that when you're privileged and don't realise you are, it's harder to understand or realise what happens to other people. You and I realise we're privileged, but people who don't can cause discrimination to perpetuate because they'll do nothing to stop it.

Really, it doesn't mean we can't do anything, it's just something to keep in mind, some people say racism is a thing of the past, but they don't realise they don't see it happen because they're not a victim of it, etc.

Flame of Anor

2011-05-31, 01:07 PM

Welcome to reality.

So that's just okay with you, then?

Being society's default doesn't do you any favors in understanding the positions and general life experiences of others. You're told everyone else's life is just like yours. That isn't an idea that can to be taught to minorities. If they somehow forget that there exists the possibility to not be subject to racist tomfoolery, they can just turn on the TV and watch white people's simulated lives, and their lack of racist tomfoolery. That's why the only white males I've seen who had any remotely decent understanding on the subject had to be exhaustively taught these differences; hopefully self or within college, usually by oppressed people.

Now, if you want to say that being a white male is an advantage in actually getting that job, then this is true, but it's not going to get you shouted down by non-white males, as a rule.

I have to say, I am deeply offended by your implication that the only good thing about being a white male is that people will be biased in favor of you. There is no race or gender that is better than any other. Hard though this may be for you to grasp, this means it is not better to be a minority than white, and it is not better to be female than male. They are simply different. Having a more natural comprehension of prejudice is an advantage to being of a minority, I will grant you, but if you're not a minority, and you aren't learning as much of that, then it's just as likely that you're learning something else important that the minority person didn't learn as much of. It's sad that not everyone has every advantage, but that's just how things are--any situation (in this case being of a certain group) will have its advantages and disadvantages.

And yes, being a white man gives an advantage. All the time, if not at empathy. It's called not being raised to believe you're inferior, and not having it demonstrated by a society that hates you, at every turn, just because you're a white man.

Advertisements and pop culture tell me every day that, because I'm a man, I'm boorish and insensitive and I think only about sex, and because I'm white, I'm not "diverse" or "vibrant" or something. I'm honestly not complaining, because it's only annoying, but don't try to say that there isn't a part of society that casually insults white men.

Evidence plox. Affirmative action measures are demonstrated to work, over time, to some degree. This fairy song of yours pretends that people raised in a society that is a stew of -isms can raise perfectly non- -ist children by pretending not to be -ist. We tried it. We called it the 80s and 90s. The current generation and its children stand as evidence to the contrary that merely pretending society is color blind will make it so.

Did I say it could be accomplished in a generation from the 70's? No, I didn't. We are miles ahead of where we were in the 70's. And guess what decades it must have happened in...

No, it's the responsibility of everyone to fight against injustice.

...

Nooo, I think society is going to become less patriarchal as a result of getting used to dealing in matters of victims vs culprit without constantly emphasizing gender, and therefore helping rape victims or domestic violence victims should be done with gender blindness, as focusing on only one gender only emphasizes the idea that life is a fight between genders, rather than lived between individuals who often happen to belong to one gender or the other.
I am no saying "focus on male victims!" I'm saying "focus on helping victims, and stop adding "except males" to that! Just help whichever victims you encounter"

...

I feel these people are just too used to dealing in binary. They don't see people, they see gender everywhere. They're constantly thinking "what helps women" and not "what helps people?" They keep assuming that if they include men it means they're picking men over women or something. I'm just asking for equal treatment here. A beaten up victims comes to your center, you provide them with help and support as the first reaction, rather than as the first reaction checking what's between their legs first.

I am saying "don't go the extra step of adding restrictions".

...

Does it make more sense now? My point is very simple. If you want society to be gender-blind, favouring the group who is usually not favoured isn't the way to go. Being gender-blind yourself is the way to go. Otherwise you just add to the idea of "us vs them" or the idea that there are enough differences to justify different treatment.

Thank you ever so much for this breath of fresh air.

My apologies, but I do not believe you. I am what you would call white and I am rather insulted that you think that means I do not understand or directly undervalue the effect of racism in others.

I agree...understanding how things affect other people is what we call education.

H Birchgrove

2011-05-31, 01:35 PM

Bolded for emphasis.

I'm not sure that's true at all. Going out a bit on a limb here, I'm going to wager that she meant her experiences of being oppressed (as a result of being Latina) give her insights or advantages. The very experience of being oppressed is not available to white men, assuming that they have privilege in most other areas of their life, (as I'm sure her peers in this situation do).

Lolwhut? What about Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans or Slavic-Americans, for example? They're white, and have faced prejudice long into the 20th if not the 21th Century. (Even Scandinavian-Americans were used, and possibly abused, in the 19th Century. The phrase "stupid Swedes" came to be simply because many newly immigrated Swedes didn't understand or couldn't talk English, and because they were seen as being naive/gullible. Ironically, the "naive" Scandinavians later created strong communities thanks to being able to trust each other.) :smallconfused:

Anecdotal evidence: The Slovak side of my family was declared 100 % Aryan by the Nazi officials during WWII. But my mother's uncle was still sent to do forced labour. His face is still lame on one side, "thanks" to working in windy, raining, cold weather. :smallfurious:

Poison_Fish

2011-05-31, 02:02 PM

A lot to post here.

Here are some (http://tjlp.org/privilege101.pdf) links on (http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146) Privilege (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc) that'll help contribute. Though it seems some of the confusion has been solved.

Some words though lose their earlier connotations and people forget about them. I've always wondered why with so many language modifications, feminism never suggested another word so that "woman" and "wife" not be the same one.

My French is pretty meh, and my experience with linguistic applications of activism aren't that great, but I've come across a few peer reviewed articles in my time addressing this very issue. One of the things with activism against other isms is that there is so much that can be addressed, that a lot of the smaller minor things out there don't get noticed.

That is very horrible, and I know that. I was just saying that I wasn't arguing as a white person, but as a random layman on the Internet.

On an interesting side note, and the last time I talked about privilege on these forums, this "random layman on the internet" identity was a big deal back when Blizzard attempted to implement their forums with everyone identified with their real names. One of the criticisms was that because they forced identity onto their player base, reactions to posters would then further reflect the world.

I have to say, I am deeply offended by your implication that the only good thing about being a white male is that people will be biased in favor of you. There is no race or gender that is better than any other. Hard though this may be for you to grasp, this means it is not better to be a minority than white, and it is not better to be female than male. They are simply different. Having a more natural comprehension of prejudice is an advantage to being of a minority, I will grant you, but if you're not a minority, and you aren't learning as much of that, then it's just as likely that you're learning something else important that the minority person didn't learn as much of. It's sad that not everyone has every advantage, but that's just how things are--any situation (in this case being of a certain group) will have its advantages and disadvantages.

Man, wouldn't that be a great world? Sadly it is not true. The problem is that you are constructing a narrative that indicates that despite advantages and disadvantages between groups, they are equal or do not provide more weight then the other. First off, ideally, that would be great. I'm in agreement with you that it'd be nice if we could eliminate race, for instance, as a social construct. The problem with this however is your construction creates the idea that there aren't actually stronger advantages and disadvantages. Let me be specific here, in practice and in the results of outcome, we know for a fact that social groups are not equal, and that some are in a more advantaged position then others. This gets reflected not only in the statistical outcomes of say, income, education, etc. but is further refined by the discourse created as a result of those outcomes, which then in turn reinforces the outcomes (See, Michel Foucault). Feel free to be offended by such an implication, but it isn't the implication I am seeing. I'm not sure you understand what privilage is, so I'll highly suggest you read previous links on it.

Advertisements and pop culture tell me every day that, because I'm a man, I'm boorish and insensitive and I think only about sex, and because I'm white, I'm not "diverse" or "vibrant" or something. I'm honestly not complaining, because it's only annoying, but don't try to say that there isn't a part of society that casually insults white men.

Is your complaint of a sub-sect of pop culture equally as valid as having a better fast track through school or a more likely chance of being hired? No, not really. Even on a pop culture level, I'd comment that the amount of allowable roles for those that are not considered 'neutral' are greatly limited. See some of these (http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/05/20/race-and-representation-in-hollywood/) links (http://www.racebending.com/v4/).

Now don't get me wrong, I believe that a great way to solve a lot of problems, specific to intersectionality, is to approach issues from an socioeconomic perspective. Bringing up the bottom would have an inordinate benefit for the least advantage. It isn't precise, there certainly some issues with it, but it is effective. That being said, the issue here is that pretending to be gender-blind/race-blind/etc. on issues that are specifically related to gender/race/etc. is detrimental to any discussion or solution to them.

On to a separate note that got lost here with your posts Flames. Your belief in education as a factor to help create more equality is a great thing. But as I have stated previously, it is not the only independent variable that creates our system of inequality. Social capital, which is a different independent variable greatly influences hiring practices beyond simple qualifications. Many other factors contribute to the socioeconomic inequality. Lack of jobs within neighborhoods, access to basic health care, and so on. The criticism I have of your points is you create it as if education were the only solution. Never mind that your not specific that it's not simply just providing more education, but also creating better access to resources for teachers, smaller class sizes, basic health care/quality of food which leads to better education rates, access to jobs to further support education, proper transportation/safe transportation where school becomes a safe zone. I can go on for awhile as to a list of independent variables just influencing education alone, and let me assure you there is more then just education.

If you are a reader of W. E. B. Du Bois you'd note that he has also stated that education alone isn't the only solution. It is simply the most obtainable and realistic solution that could be afforded to people of color at the time to bring up their income and standard of living. The law had failed to continue civil rights, and blacks didn't have as effective representation within the law structures. This is exemplified in his book The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. Education was one of his chief points, but it wasn't his only point. Political rights and other basic rights are listed. His discussion of the Veil, for instance, is an earlier form of looking at the differences in privilege that different social groupings have when looking at reality.

Lolwhut? What about Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans or Slavic-Americans, for example? They're white, and have faced prejudice long into the 20th if not the 21th Century. (Even Scandinavian-Americans were used, and possibly abused, in the 19th Century. The phrase "stupid Swedes" came to be simply because many newly immigrated Swedes didn't understand or couldn't talk English, and because they were seen as being naive/gullible. Ironically, the "naive" Scandinavians later created strong communities thanks to being able to trust each other.)

Yes, they have. As someone Jewish myself, my family has also faced prejudices. However, the last link in my first paragraph addresses this. Divide and conquer has always been at play in these cases. Further edit: It is also deeply complicated, but looking at it from a historical point of view can help.