# Are you a feminist?



## thephantommenace (Aug 4, 2012)

So what is your views on feminism?


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## Chirp (May 27, 2012)

No, I just can't identify with feminists in the slightest.
I'm all for equal rights, but feminists really don't stand for equal rights at all.


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

I'm feminine in the sense that I would wear girl clothes if the opportunity came up.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

Dissonance said:


> I'm feminine in the sense that I would wear girl clothes if the opportunity came up.


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

OP needs to define the word first.


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## Lil Sebastian (Feb 26, 2012)

Chirp said:


> I'm all for equal rights, but feminists really don't stand for equal rights at all.


Doesn't that mean you're a feminist, and the people you're calling feminists aren't?

"*Feminism* is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women" says the Wikipedia, therefore it must be true. And I'm all for that.


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## Chirp (May 27, 2012)

Lil Sebastian said:


> Doesn't that mean you're a feminist, and the people you're calling feminists aren't?
> 
> "*Feminism* is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights *for women*" says the Wikipedia, therefore it must be true. And I'm all for that.


I'm not sure if you're joking or if I'm just stupid. Probably the latter. D;

I'm for equal rights, not equal rights specifically *for women*. That definition (and a lot of others) just makes it sound like only women have issues with politics, economics and social rights and that simply isn't true, so I choose not to identify as a feminist.


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## Lil Sebastian (Feb 26, 2012)

Chirp said:


> I'm not sure if you're joking or if I'm just stupid. Probably the latter. D;
> 
> I'm for equal rights. Not equal rights specifically *for women*, that definition just makes it sound like only women have issues with politics, economics and social rights and that simply isn't true, so I choose not to identify as a feminist.


Haha nah, ain't joking for once here. You're not being stupid either. It's just hard for me to know what the definition is these days. Is it something you choose to identify as, or is it a title you earn by default if your beliefs are in line with it? I agree that equal rights should be for all, but I also think it's good people focus on specific inequalities to highlight particular issues for certain groups, as long as it isn't abused.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

Lil Sebastian said:


> Doesn't that mean you're a feminist, and the people you're calling feminists aren't?
> 
> "*Feminism* is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women" says the Wikipedia, therefore it must be true. And I'm all for that.


on the surface


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## life01 (Feb 20, 2013)

im not a feminist, i believe all human beings are equal and should have equal rights and opportunities. Whats the point in having equal rights if you starve to death because your born poor?


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## Chirp (May 27, 2012)

Lil Sebastian said:


> It's just hard for me to know what the definition is these days. Is it something you choose to identify as, or is it a title you earn by default if your beliefs are in line with it?


I'm tempted to say it's a little bit of both and it depends on who you're talking to, but I'm honestly not sure.

A lot of people I know identify as feminists but are _very_ selective about the parts of it that they actually agree with. It irks me a little bit in all honesty, but that's probably down to the fact that it has so many different definitions. At the same time, if your beliefs are in line with feminism, it's kind of hard to not earn that title regardless of what you view yourself as.



Lil Sebastian said:


> I agree that equal rights should be for all, but I also think it's good people focus on specific inequalities to highlight particular issues for certain groups, as long as it isn't abused.


I think with feminism, it is _kind of_ being abused though. Maybe it isn't really their intention, but a lot of the time when I'm talking to people who consider themselves to be feminists, they tend to disregard a lot of men's issues as if they aren't relevant or don't exist.

/shrug.

And with that, it's time for beddy-byes.


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## Cerberus (Feb 13, 2005)

According to the strict definition of feminism, sure. Am I a feminist with all the baggage usually accompanying such a label? No.


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## zonebox (Oct 22, 2012)

I stay away from politics, and to me, feminism is all about politics. In day to day life, I try to treat everyone equal.


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

"Feminism is the idea that we can make both sexes equal by focusing solely on the issues of one of them."


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

SomebodyWakeME said:


> "Feminism is the idea that we can make both sexes equal by focusing solely on the issues of one of them."


the amazing athiest?


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

illmatic1 said:


> the amazing athiest?


Indeed. Not a fan, but i like the quote.


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## TheAzn (Jan 13, 2012)

Not the extremist kind, but the moderate kind I am.


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

TheAzn said:


> Not the extremist kind, but the moderate kind I am.


The radical feminist are actually causing a backlash against the movement. People are afraid to define themselves as "feminist" for fear of being associated with the radical (bash all men, fight the patriarchy, all sex is rape) kind of feminism. I would call myself an original feminist in that I support equal rights for everyone and equal pay for equal work. However, the word has been so corrupted that it's best not to use it anymore.


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## Barette (Jan 17, 2012)

I'm for equality. I've never labeled myself as a feminist.


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## lyssado707 (Oct 29, 2004)

Yeah i'm just not a very good one cuz of SA. I can't be outspoken about anything.


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## diamondheart89 (Mar 21, 2011)

I've never labeled myself as a feminist because most people immediately call you a man hater (as evidenced by many threads here). But here we go, yes I stand by feminism as defined by that wikipedia definition.


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## diamondheart89 (Mar 21, 2011)

Sin said:


> you hate men :b


:whip


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## komorikun (Jan 11, 2009)

Yes, I am.


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## Owl-99 (Mar 7, 2012)

komorikun said:


> Yes, I am.


You tell them sister. :teeth


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## WineKitty (Nov 26, 2004)

Most overused word on SAS for the last 4-6 months: FEMINIST.


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## panopticon (Nov 14, 2010)

Yes, but in the style of Irigaray. Vive la différence and all that.


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## Owl-99 (Mar 7, 2012)

We all know that women are trying to take mans jobs wherever they can, and doing a mighty fine job at it as well.


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

WineKitty said:


> Most overused word on SAS for the last 4-6 months: FEMINIST.


don't forget "misogyny"!


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## life01 (Feb 20, 2013)

agree with above ^


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## Milco (Dec 12, 2009)

I don't agree with some of the tenets/axioms of feminism (regarding patriarchy and the causes of inequality), but I completely support equality.


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## kast (Nov 22, 2012)

I believe in gender equality, so technically I'm a feminist. But I don't like politics and I shy away from most things ending in "ist".  I'm not really the activist type; there is too much emotion and drama involved for me. :|

If I tell someone "I'm a feminist", I would expect to be pulled into a very emotional, political discussion about activism. I wouldn't enjoy it whether they were feminist or anti-feminist, or it would only hold my interest for a few minutes. Politics tire me and I prefer to keep the discussion calm and logical. I'm against whaling, but I'm not going to join the Sea Shepherds and throw acid at fishing trawlers.


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

I am an academic feminist, not a feminist activist. A lot of people conflate the two.

It's oh so tempting to just refer to myself as an egalitarian instead, to avoid the stigma associated with radical feminism, but it just feels like giving in, you know? 

The message is equality. A discourse has arisen around the message but that discourse is not the message.


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

SomebodyWakeME said:


> don't forget "misogyny"!


are you really this willfully ignorant?


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

fingertips said:


> are you really this willfully ignorant?


 It is an overused word on this forum. Especially considering people don't even use it correctly. Now elaborate on your lame little cheap shot.


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

yes. but at least i don't dismiss genuine claims of misogyny!


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

fingertips said:


> yes. but at least i don't dismiss genuine claims of misogyny!


what genuine claim did i dismiss exactly? you just felt like chiming in with something that didnt make the slightest bit of sense just to start an argument? grow up.


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

i'm _suggesting _that _maybe_ the word is used fairly often because there's a whole lot of sexist garbage on these forums!!


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

fingertips said:


> i'm _suggesting _that _maybe_ the word is used fairly often because there's a whole lot of sexist garbage on these forums!!


good for you. maybe next time you can suggest something without your childish "willfully ignorant" garbage. it didn't even make sense. "oblivious" would have been the correct term but then you'd have to assume i don't think it happens at all, and you'd be wrong again. 
you know what...you should give me an example of something you think is misogyny just to confirm my suspicions that you have no idea what that word means either.

is this troll on somebodywakeme day or something?


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

SomebodyWakeME said:


> you know what...you should give me an example of something you think is misogyny just to confirm my suspicions that you have no idea what that word means either.





> When we finally perfect these sex robots then women will finally become irrelevant to most men. Oh you all know its true which is why a certain group will make it is as hard as possible to do and possibly outlaw it due to "disrespectful to women" reasons
> 
> Only when we have our robots then gender will be irrelevant until then we have to pretend women's sports is worth anyones time and pretend to care about what women have to say. So until then yeh we equal bish but we both know that I can knock you out if I choose to do so


actual sas post. now, feel free to confirm what _i've_ been thinking.


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

fingertips said:


> actual sas post. now, feel free to confirm what _i've_ been thinking.


oh please .. When you find a thread supporting taking away women's rights or forcing them into slavery, get back to me. When you find that thread titled "Why is raping women so taboo?" then you may have a point. Good day sir.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Chirp said:


> No, I just can't identify with feminists in the slightest.
> I'm all for equal rights, but feminists really don't stand for equal rights at all.


I love you :mushy !

My thoughts on the matter entirely. Each gender is advantaged or disadvantaged in certain contexts. Feminism in general seems to be about benefiting women in all circumstances regardless, which is not really my idea of parity to be honest.

I am willing to conceede though that women face more problems than men on average nowadays, and I will side with a Feminist endorsed cause when it is a well though out one. Saying that though I'm not prepared to ever fully drink the Kool aid, because some of them are just down right nutty. (the radicals mainly)


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

SomebodyWakeME said:


> oh please :lol When you find a thread supporting taking away women's rights or forcing them into slavery, get back to me. When you find that thread titled "Why is raping women so taboo?" then you may have a point. Good day sir.


so you really are that willfully ignorant. you could have just admitted it straight off the bat.



Paper Samurai said:


> Feminism in general seems to be about benefiting women in all circumstances regardless, which is not really my idea of parity to be honest.


i always thought it was more about recognising disadvantages women face and trying to rectify them.


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

SomebodyWakeME said:


> wow good point once again! :roll


if you won't accept a clearly anti-woman post as an example of misogyny, what am i supposed to do?

actually, welcome to my ignore list.


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

fingertips said:


> if you won't accept a clearly anti-woman post as an example of misogyny, what am i supposed to do?
> 
> actually, welcome to my ignore list.


I wouldn't consider someone saying they had no need/interest for something any kind of hatred or "anti" anything.

Does this mean i won't have the pleasure of talking to you anymore?


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## Soilwork (May 14, 2012)

I believe in gender equality for men and women, both under the law and in the social sphere. I don't like the term Feminist because of what it is associated with and how it focuses only on one gender.


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## tbyrfan (Feb 24, 2011)

I believe in equal rights for all. I don't focus on the rights of one gender.


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## Chirp (May 27, 2012)

diamondheart89 said:


> I've never labeled myself as a feminist because most people immediately call you a man hater (as evidenced by many threads here). But here we go, yes I stand by feminism as defined by that wikipedia definition.


So going by that definition, you're for equal rights, but only for women?
I simply don't understand how you can think that's perfectly acceptable.



Paper Samurai said:


> I love you :mushy !


Awww, shucks!


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## HilarityEnsues (Oct 4, 2012)

Yep, Feminism is nothing more than stomping your feet and flailing your arms around while crying "Waaahhhh, Life isn't fair".


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## Unkn0wn Pleasures (Nov 24, 2011)

I support gender equality but believe most women who call themselves feminists are just dogmatic man-haters.

Feminism in _academia_ - now that's a different thing altogether. I have the utmost admiration for feminist sociologists and their work.


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

Chirp said:


> So going by that definition, you're for equal rights, but only for women?
> I simply don't understand how you can think that's perfectly acceptable


But that makes no sense at all, I don't understand how you could make that distinction. 'Equal rights for women', in a literal sense, is nonsensical. Of course it's talking about gender equality, what else could you possibly think it means?! That only women are equal to each other and men are just disregarded by feminism?

The feminist movement was borne out of a focus on raising awareness for women's rights (arguably beginning with suffrage) and eventually moved on to encompass gender equality in general. Just because some feminists focus solely on women's rights doesn't negate the objectivity of the academic construct as a whole.

Historically, advocates of racial equality have focused on the rights of the non-white demographic because they were the ones faced with the most discrimination. That doesn't mean they were anti-white.

The arguments against feminism are so arbitrary it beggars belief.


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## Lil Sebastian (Feb 26, 2012)

Chirp said:


> So going by that definition, you're for equal rights, but only for women?
> I simply don't understand how you can think that's perfectly acceptable.


Aha! Maybe that's where our misunderstanding took place last night. I took that definition of feminism to mean that it's for equality for both men and women, but focuses on specific areas where women currently don't have equality. I'm all for that. From a male perspective it can be easy to accidentally overlook things that aren't equal, never having the first hand experience of that discrimination. So having women highlight the issues they personally encounter can only be a good thing when used to improve things for everyone. Men btching about it can do the same, if they feel discriminated in any way.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

kiirby said:


> The feminist movement was borne out of a focus on raising awareness for women's rights (arguably beginning with suffrage) and eventually moved on to encompass gender equality in general. Just because some feminists focus solely on women's rights doesn't negate the objectivity of the academic construct as a whole.
> 
> Historically, advocates of racial equality have focused on the rights of the non-white demographic because they were the ones faced with the most discrimination. That doesn't mean they were anti-white.


This is pretty much why I would call myself a feminist. I don't hate men and I realize men have their own challenges they face in society. Feminism is also the side of the argument least represented here on SAS where anything and everything seems to be blamed on women. It's also a huge spectrum and I definitely don't agree with all feminists about all things. That would be.... literally impossible. I generally focus my efforts on those issues faced by women (as opposed to men) since they're the ones I have the most experience with and the ones I happen to be more passionate about changing.

I don't feel any need to apologize for that any more than someone working to save the polar bears should apologize to someone for not working to save the rainforest. They have the same overarching goal but are working towards it from different perspectives and issues.

As for the mens rights issues I could get behind a lot more of them if the advocates weren't so insistent on minimizing (and outright denying) a lot of womens issues. I don't have much sympathy for someone upset about child custody inequality who rattles on about how the statistics about violence against women are "wrong" or that the issue of rape is overblown. I happen to think custody is often biased, but I won't lend my voice to the cause as long as that means also supporting the idea that "rape's really not all that common".


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## Alas Babylon (Aug 28, 2012)

I'm for equality, and I mostly support a lot of feminist actions. 
However, I think the worldview, and understanding of history,geopolitics and anthropology that some radical feminists have is essentially fiction.I may agree with some of their opinions, but I don't agree with their fallacies.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

kiirby said:


> I am an academic feminist, not a feminist activist. A lot of people conflate the two.
> 
> It's oh so tempting to just refer to myself as an egalitarian instead, to avoid the stigma associated with radical feminism, but it just feels like giving in, you know?
> 
> The message is equality. A discourse has arisen around the message but that discourse is not the message.


As an aside, have you started dating a Feminist recently or something along those lines ? I remember your posts from way back, and I can't say I 've ever noticed this fascination you seem to have with women's issues. Maybe I've not been too observant all this time :stu


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

Paper Samurai said:


> As an aside, have you started dating a Feminist recently or something along those lines ? I remember your posts from way back, and I can't say I 've ever noticed this fascination you seem to have with women's issues. Maybe I've not been too observant all this time :stu


I'm totally just trying to impress chicks, yo.

People change. I'd like to think I've developed intellectually in the past few years. I don't have a fascination with women's issues, I am just passionate about equality in every respect. I try my best to put rationality and objectivity before anything else.

Definitely I comment more on gender issues now than I used to; it's only because I willfully blinded myself to them before. I trivialised misogyny, I told myself that feminism was just man-hating lesbians complaining about nothing (AFTER ALL IT HAS 'FEM' IN THE NAME, RIGHT GUYS?!). You know, once you actually open yourself to the possibility that misogyny is as institutionalised as it really is, you will see its prevalence and you will find yourself mentioning it in every thread. It's like when you first discover atheism you start to realise how ridiculous religion really is.

I don't mean this to sound so condescending, and I apologise, but I suppose it is an inevitability. I have a lot of intellectual respect for you and I do think this is mainly a dispute of semantics rather than any real moral disagreement. At least, I hope it is.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

A lot of people seem confused over the definition of a feminist, particularly the idea that they are only trying to help one gender, which isn't true. 

You are a feminist if you believe in equality between genders.


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## estse (Nov 18, 2003)

I'm a riot grrrl. Arriate.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

kiirby said:


> *I'm totally just trying to impress chicks, yo.
> *
> People change. I'd like to think I've developed intellectually in the past few years. I don't have a fascination with women's issues, I am just passionate about equality in every respect. I try my best to put rationality and objectivity before anything else.
> 
> ...


lol sorry too, I'm guilty of projecting a little here. I knew a guy in my second year of uni and he was probably the most un-PC guy around (toilet humour, racist/sexist jokes) but he soon met up with a Feminist lass, and before you knew it all he could talk about most of the time was Patriarchy Theory. :sus Not that I'm saying that's your deal, but I do think there's almost an osmosis effect when you're around someone a lot and they're really into something.


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## estse (Nov 18, 2003)

I just call myself a humanist. I know that term also has further meaning, but it makes more sense with less ambiguity.


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## Still Waters (Sep 18, 2008)

I'm for equality -but I still want men to carry the heavy things and do the stinkier jobs -Oh,and the whole "no shave" thing doesn't really work for me either.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Paper Samurai said:


> I love you :mushy !





Chirp said:


> Awww, shucks!


No **** / pedo though mind :teeth :


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## estse (Nov 18, 2003)

Still Waters said:


> I'm for equality -but I still want men to carry the heavy things and do the stinkier jobs -Oh,and the whole "no shave" thing doesn't really work for me either.


No shave on her? or him? I think you mean her.

I'm into cleanliness and proper grooming on both men and women, being next to godliness, but I see a woman's right to go shave-free.

Oh, but stinkier jobs? Women should always be the ones to clean the toilet.


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## estse (Nov 18, 2003)

Come on, I wasn't the last one to post here. Someone's deleting!


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## diamondheart89 (Mar 21, 2011)

Chirp said:


> So going by that definition, you're for equal rights, but only for women?
> I simply don't understand how you can think that's perfectly acceptable.
> 
> Awww, shucks!





kiirby said:


> But that makes no sense at all, I don't understand how you could make that distinction. 'Equal rights for women', in a literal sense, is nonsensical. Of course it's talking about gender equality, what else could you possibly think it means?! That only women are equal to each other and men are just disregarded by feminism?
> 
> The feminist movement was borne out of a focus on raising awareness for women's rights (arguably beginning with suffrage) and eventually moved on to encompass gender equality in general. Just because some feminists focus solely on women's rights doesn't negate the objectivity of the academic construct as a whole.
> 
> ...


What he said, don't know why that's difficult for you to understand, chirp.


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## Still Waters (Sep 18, 2008)

Sin said:


> what?


Just having a little fun with the whole stereotypical "feminist" image -The masculine looking woman with hairy pits and legs!:boogie


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## komorikun (Jan 11, 2009)

I wish men would shave their armpits. Armpit hair grosses me out.


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## northstar1991 (Oct 4, 2011)

Absolutely! Men and women should have the right to live their lives how they want and be who they truly are rather than being forced into a box of what society considers appropriate for their gender.


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## monotonous (Feb 1, 2013)

no and i think feminism these days are so boring


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## Rainbat (Jan 5, 2012)

I think the idea of equality is nice but women will always have power over men because of their sex appeal. They're the desired and the pursued, so they're always inherently above men in that regard. They have complete dominance over all reproduction, recreational sex, and relationships in general.

"But men have higher paying jobs!"

Big whoop. We need _something_ to be happy about.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

Rainbat said:


> I think the idea of equality is nice but women will always have power over men because of their sex appeal. They're the desired and the pursued, so they're always inherently above men in that regard. They have complete dominance over all reproduction, recreational sex, and relationships in general.
> 
> "But men have higher paying jobs!"
> 
> Big whoop. We need _something_ to be happy about.


 Interesting spin on the gender power dynamics of the world......


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## gollum22 (Mar 14, 2013)

Yup I am for equal OPPORTUNITY for everybody, but not fixing the outcome by affirmative action, or forcing places to hire women etc. Big difference a lot of feminists don't understand. This means nobody get's denied any opportunity but we don't pretend that men and women are equal in advance. So all doors should be open but we shouldn't be forcing people through any of those doors. And standards should be based on the job not on who might be applying that IS sexist.


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

kiirby said:


> But that makes no sense at all, I don't understand how you could make that distinction. 'Equal rights for women', in a literal sense, is nonsensical. Of course it's talking about gender equality, what else could you possibly think it means?! That only women are equal to each other and men are just disregarded by feminism?
> 
> The feminist movement was borne out of a focus on raising awareness for women's rights (arguably beginning with suffrage) and eventually moved on to encompass gender equality in general. Just because some feminists focus solely on women's rights doesn't negate the objectivity of the academic construct as a whole.
> 
> ...


Lol, no.



Rainbat said:


> I think the idea of equality is nice but women will always have power over men because of their sex appeal. They're the desired and the pursued, so they're always inherently above men in that regard. They have complete dominance over all reproduction, recreational sex, and relationships in general.
> 
> "But men have higher paying jobs!"
> 
> Big whoop. We need _something_ to be happy about.





Chirp said:


> No, I just can't identify with feminists in the slightest.
> I'm all for equal rights, but feminists really don't stand for equal rights at all.





SomebodyWakeME said:


> "Feminism is the idea that we can make both sexes equal by focusing solely on the issues of one of them."





Milco said:


> I don't agree with some of the tenets/axioms of feminism (regarding patriarchy and the causes of inequality), but I completely support equality.





Mercurochrome said:


> I just call myself a humanist. I know that term also has further meaning, but it makes more sense with less ambiguity.


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## WhoDey85 (Sep 6, 2006)

arnie said:


> Lol, no.


Interesting video. I somewhat agree with what she is saying. Here's what I don't understand. Everyone is for equality right? Men and Women should be treated as equals? Well then why is it most of the time that women are the ones who should become more like men to make things equal. We expect them to put themselves in harm's way like men have been doing. We expect them to be able to "take a hit like a man" (when the physical differences are obvious) like that silly picture in the other thread. We expect them to start approaching men and taking more initiative. We expect them to be less emotional and more stoic like men are. Well maybe that is the whole problem, maybe the men should start coming over to the women's side on things. Men are shunned by other men when they show/share their emotions/weaknesses not by women. The women's video I posted telling men that they should "nut up" and approach women was a poor example of the way most woman feel about the subject. I realize that now. I, because of this, am thinking most women don't feel entitled to that seat in the life boat any more then a man now a days.

From my own experience with my parents my father brought home a paycheck and that was all that he thought he had to do as far a raising me and my siblings as a parent. Meanwhile my mother worked, almost as much as he did, and she raised me and my siblings by herself. My dad would come home from work every night, drink and then go to bed. How many dead beat dads are there compared to moms that walk out on their kids? So in that regard women are way more valuable then men are. A lot of them raising the next generation by themselves. I think men have a lot of catching up to do with their roles in raising the children and becoming more "motherly" if we are fighting for equality.


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## komorikun (Jan 11, 2009)

Has Arnie become a men's rights activist or something? :lol


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## northstar1991 (Oct 4, 2011)

arnie said:


> Lol, no.


Oh this video again..


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

northstar1991 said:


> Oh this video again..


Is there a specific problem you have with the video?


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## arealghost (Feb 20, 2013)

Don't like feminists cos they're out of tough with reality, it is infinitely much safer for a woman to walk the streets than it is for a guy to walk the streets.


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

arealghost said:


> Don't like feminists cos they're out of tough with reality, it is infinitely much safer for a woman to walk the streets than it is for a guy to walk the streets.


There are more male victims of violent crime than female victims. ( 25.1 vs 19.4 per mil) and men are *twice* as likely to suffer violence at the hands of a stranger.

So the question is: Why do we have the "Violence against women act". Shouldn't it be the "Violence against everybody act"?


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

arnie said:


> There are more male victims of violent crime than female victims. ( 25.1 vs 19.4 per mil) and men are *twice* as likely to suffer violence at the hands of a stranger.
> 
> So the question is: Why do we have the "Violence against women act". Shouldn't it be the "Violence against everybody act"?


More likely to be harassed by police too...i hate that.


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

Still Waters said:


> I'm for equality -but I still want men to carry the heavy things and do the stinkier jobs -Oh,and the whole "no shave" thing doesn't really work for me either.


In other words: all the benefits of equality. None of the downsides.

It's why men make up 95% of all work place deaths. We're expected to do the more dangerous jobs.


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## Still Waters (Sep 18, 2008)

arnie said:


> In other words: all the benefits of equality. None of the downsides.
> 
> It's why men make up 95% of all work place deaths. We're expected to do the more dangerous jobs.


I'm pretty sure I'm okay with that.


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## Soilwork (May 14, 2012)

arnie said:


> In other words: all the benefits of equality. None of the downsides.
> 
> It's why men make up 95% of all work place deaths. We're expected to do the more dangerous jobs.


And men are still expected to pay for dates. No, wait, the person who does the asking should be the one to pay...

... which just happens to be the man in the vast majority of cases. That's quite lucky for women huh?


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

I finally watched that video. I've been putting it off for so long because well... 16 minutes!

Anyways. Some good points. I think the idea of the disposable male exists especially in wartime, the lifeboat thing, they usually do more dangerous work (although they are also stronger and the more dangerous work is almost always more physically suited to men). I do agree with her points on that.

She is wrong though about who eats first. In almost every culture the men eat first and eat the most. The custom has essentially died out among the WASPs of North America but its still practiced the world over and in minority cultures of NA.

Its also a little weird how she treats the study of workplace injury. The makers of the study were upset that injuries for women increased (no mention as to why, presumably if there were fewer men in the workplace there would be fewer women too). Injuries for men decreased (good news) injuries for women increased (bad news) why is it weird to be upset about the bad news? Would she feel better if the researcher were upset about the _decrease_ in injuries for men?

It also sounds like her and the feminists have common ground when they say that women should be treated as fully responsible for their actions like anyone else. They also both agree that limiting women's freedom, ability to work and self-determine is a relic and not the mark of a successful society. So, not sure what the problem is there...

She extends it to a wrong conclusion though. Women's _humanity_ has not been more highly prized throughout the ages. Freedom, strength, ability to self-determine are _essential_ aspects of humanity. Women have been kept (and prized) as property for centuries. Men - especially poor, young men - have been used as disposable tools of warfare. Women (of all ages and social classes) have been used as tools of sex, status and reproduction. But its not the women who have perpetuated that 'disposable male' dynamic. Its other men (richer, more powerful men). And women haven't really enjoyed heightened status as a person in society. Just heightened value as an object.

I wonder what ethnic group and nationality her study about baby girls being better attended comes from. Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen would wonder how thats possible considering the 100 million women missing from the world (more recent estimates put it at 50 million in India alone). It either happens through selective abortion, tending the baby girl poorly and letting it die of disease or outright abandonment. Its a common practice in India to name your baby Nakusa or "Unwanted" because the myth goes that will help you conceive a boy next time.
http://news.yahoo.com/285-indian-girls-shed-unwanted-names-122551876.html

So her baby argument is essentially bull****. Any knowledge of gender dynamics (and family dynamics) in the developing world show clearly that boys are more prized and better cared for from day one. I'm not sure circumcision is a great idea. The hygiene benefits seems marginal and I've heard there are slight differences in sexual function. Not really comparable to the female version which entails cutting off the clitoris entirely so the woman can feel no pleasure from sex and sewing the vagina shut completely leaving a small hole for blood and pee. Life threatening infections are commonplace and a risk throughout their lifetime. The worst part is the wedding night which often involves a knife, to "cut open" his bride and consummate the marriage.

So it does make sense that there is less outcry about circumcision. Still, I'm not sure that makes circumcision a good idea either.

I think her and the feminists have a lot more common ground than she seems to think. Most feminists want women to be able to enter the military and applaud women working physically demanding and often dangerous jobs. She should be thrilled about that.

The other BIG argument she ignores is that the "cookies" we're struggling over nowadays have nothing to do with survival. Its money, power, jobs, politics and education. All fields where men have historically been more highly prized than women. Sure it was lucky for women to get the lifeboats first and in caveman days women were spared the danger of chasing a mammoth. But nowadays the overwhelming majority of jobs have nothing to do with physical risk. So that "advantage" is somewhat (a lot) overstated. And the idea of the protector, warrior, provider of a man can die with the idea of the helpless, weak, beautiful baby-making machine of a woman.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

arnie said:


> So the question is: Why do we have the "Violence against women act". Shouldn't it be the "Violence against everybody act"?


Have you read the actual language of the act? Its gender neutral.


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## 9mm (Feb 12, 2013)

thephantommenace said:


> So what is your views on feminism?


It's adorable


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## Earl of Lemongrab (May 15, 2012)

You all seem to have forgotten that the West isn't the world. Feminism is necessary in non Western countries (which only comprises like 85% of the world, but I guess that whole area is irrelevant)


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

trisquel said:


> You all seem to have forgotten that the West isn't the world. Feminism is necessary in non Western countries (which only comprises like 85% of the world, but I guess that whole area is irrelevant)


Totally agreed. In third world countries women are denied basic rights and feminism is totally necessary. We are talking about original feminism in this case which is what most people mean when they refer to the word.

However in more modern countries, feminism has jumped the shark and become severely radicalized to the point where it's not about equality anymore so much as a female supremacist group dedicated to bashing all men and getting offended by everything.


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## 9mm (Feb 12, 2013)

I think feminism today is a bunch of middle-class white women with too much time on their hands.


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## Nekomata (Feb 3, 2012)

I'm not a feminist. My boyfriend said he'd kill me if I was anyway <.< he's a huge Men's Rights activist... which is also pretty bad and pisses me off so.... yeah....


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

Nekomata said:


> I'm not a feminist. My boyfriend said he'd kill me if I was anyway <.< he's a huge Men's Rights activist... which is also pretty bad and pisses me off so.... yeah....


That's a tight leash.


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## iAmCodeMonkey (May 23, 2010)

Dissonance said:


> I'm feminine in the sense that I would wear girl clothes if the opportunity came up.


So you are a cross-dresser? XD :lol


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## blackangel (Mar 23, 2013)

Feminism is not a coherent ideology, rather a collection of movements; further, its various schools of thoughts are often at odds with one another. I avoid the word Feminist entirely.


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## extremly (Oct 25, 2012)

I want an old fashioned girl


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## renegade disaster (Jul 28, 2009)

fingertips said:


> i'm _suggesting _that _maybe_ the word is used fairly often because there's a whole lot of sexist garbage on these forums!!


indeed. which is why the moderators have taken it upon themselves to lock threads in the past which either started as or devolved into sexism.



SomebodyWakeME said:


> oh please .. When you find a thread supporting taking away women's rights or forcing them into slavery, get back to me. When you find that thread titled "Why is raping women so taboo?" then you may have a point. Good day sir.


so you think disrespecting women and hating them is fine? because that is what that post he quoted was saying. clearly the post comes from the perspective of finding the female gender worthless and the posters hatred is defined in wanting to replace them with robots! if you can't see that as some form of misogyny then you clearly have an issue with perspective.



> mi·sog·y·ny [mi-soj-uh-nee, mahy-] Show IPA
> noun
> hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.


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## The Dark Knight (Nov 16, 2012)

Infractions have been issued and posts deleted. Please keep your personal issues with other members out of this thread.


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## T-Bone (Oct 1, 2010)

galaxy1 said:


> so you think disrespecting women and hating them is fine? because that is what that post he quoted was saying. clearly the post comes from the perspective of finding the female gender worthless and the posters hatred is defined in wanting to replace them with robots! if you can't see that as some form of misogyny then you clearly have an issue with perspective.


Yea i think it's a poor example of "hatred", for sure. Even if it did fall under the definition of misogyny it truly doesn't even sound like a post meant to be taken seriously. It's not like those types of opinions are popular on SAS like "fingertips" claims anyways. I've seen the term "misogyny" is being used to describe just about every opinion about women there is, even if it isn't a negative one.


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## renegade disaster (Jul 28, 2009)

SomebodyWakeME said:


> Yea i think it's a poor example of "hatred", for sure. Even if it did fall under the definition of misogyny it truly doesn't even sound like a post meant to be taken seriously. It's not like those types of opinions are popular on SAS like "fingertips" claims anyways. I've seen the term "misogyny" is being used to describe just about every opinion about women there is, even if it isn't a negative one.


well I haven't used it that way certainly. I don't want to be perpetuating negativity but it has appeared to me in the short time i've been back here that there is a lot of generalized hatred where a poster forms an opinion to hate the opposite gender,distrust them or dislike all of them. simply due to their negative interactions and experiences. that is misogyny imo. I also don't think we should let things escalate to get as out of control as allowing people to discuss taking away womens rights or raping women before we consider it misogyny, that isn't in accordance with wanting fairness and equality,which most people in this thread seem to agree to think we should be striving for. the idea of equality is to keep things equal and balanced,that means nipping things in the bud before they go too far .i'm sure there has also been some instances of misandry too that I may have missed.


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## Paul (Sep 26, 2005)

I tend to agree with feminists because I'm for women's rights, and don't care if someone wants to call me a feminist, but I don't use that label because it ignores the larger picture of what actually motivates me. I'm an individualist, I guess: I believe in everyone's right to self-determination, their chance to be unique and escape societal expectations, and to be given a fair opportunity like anyone else. That means I care about men's issues, men who don't want to follow male gender roles, about GLBT people, rights of minority religions, etc. Supporting women's freedom is just a natural part of supporting human freedom, not a separate thing for me (though I appreciate the need for people who concentrate on just that one part of the problem politically, given the level of discrimination against women in the world today).


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## Saintly (Dec 28, 2012)

I agree with the feminism of yore (perhaps only imagined), about equal rights, laws and whathaveyou.

I alos believe that men and women are different and that pretending they are not hurts everyone, so I don't quite fit in with the feminists either.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Just thought of something else I want to add. Society still does value members who make great personal sacrifices in the name of safety of others (police, firefighters, military). Those jobs command _huge _respect. So I think its a little ridiculous to suggest that the average guy who works in HR is worthy of the same level of respect simply because he is a man.

Perhaps in prehistoric times men everywhere were expected to make personal safety sacrifices just by the nature of their gender. But those practices are long since over for the average male. For the places they still exist they're worthy of great respect (the jobs listed or an individual who risks his life to help others) and that respect is given. But its no longer true that the average man risks life and limb on a daily basis to protect women. And I think that kind of respect should be given not on the basis of gender but individual merit and accomplishment.


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## moments (Mar 5, 2013)

I used to shy away from the feminist label but now I embrace it happily.

I think that feminists have a lot of really great critiques about the world and the ways that it is engendered. And I use feminism in my own practice as a way to empower both men and women.

Feminism can be very empowering for men for, as much as women are molded into a certain gender identity so are men. When we critique the labels then both genders can gain the benefits.


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## DreamerInSlumberland (Mar 6, 2013)

Yes, I'm bit of a feminist. I believe women should have equal right, be true to themselves, and proud of who they are. I don't think women should have more rights than men, just like I don't think any other group should have more rights. It's about equality, which is what true feminism is about.

In fact, I live all living things should be equal.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

no


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## llodell88 (May 15, 2011)

I didn't realize how important feminism it is until I stumbled upon an MRA website. Really I never thought much about it.


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## Mousey9 (Dec 27, 2012)

Do I want women to have equal rights? sure
Do I care enough to waste my breath or energy on it? nope


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## MusaRed (Mar 24, 2013)

Chirp said:


> No, I just can't identify with feminists in the slightest.
> I'm all for equal rights, but feminists really don't stand for equal rights at all.


I agree, but I still want to be called a feminist. There are so many things wrong with modern feminism that I don't even think they care about equal rights anymore. They talk about how women should do whatever they want with their bodies but then turn around and say that we shouldn't want to be thin or shouldn't be on diets. They are VERY hypocritical and feminism is not what it used to be. I wish we can go back to focusing on equal rights rather than worrying about trivial things that isn't even anyone's business anyway.


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## diamondheart89 (Mar 21, 2011)

9mm said:


> I think feminism today is a bunch of middle-class white women with too much time on their hands.


Well, you think wrong.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

MusaRed said:


> I agree, but I still want to be called a feminist. There are so many things wrong with modern feminism that I don't even think they care about equal rights anymore. They talk about how women should do whatever they want with their bodies but then turn around and say that we shouldn't want to be thin or shouldn't be on diets. They are VERY hypocritical and feminism is not what it used to be. I wish we can go back to focusing on equal rights rather than worrying about trivial things that isn't even anyone's business anyway.


 the problem here is that you are assuming a homogeneous "they". Which isn't the case in reality.


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## MusaRed (Mar 24, 2013)

Donnie in the Dark said:


> the problem here is that you are assuming a homogeneous "they". Which isn't the case in reality.


Okay so maybe not all feminists are the same, but the most I've met are.


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## MusaRed (Mar 24, 2013)

Saintly said:


> I agree with the feminism of yore (perhaps only imagined), about equal rights, laws and whathaveyou.
> 
> I alos believe that men and women are different and that pretending they are not hurts everyone, so I don't quite fit in with the feminists either.


They might be different that they receive different rights and privileges(which isn't right) but they are not that different. Females and Males are not different species just different genders. Both should be equal.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

MusaRed said:


> . Females and Males are not different species just different genders. Both should be equal.


 That is Feminism right there.


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

Donnie in the Dark said:


> That is Feminism right there.


False. That's egalitarianism, not feminism.


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

arnie said:


> False. That's egalitarianism, not feminism.


Feminism, as academic theory, is simply egalitarianism with more of a focus on gender.


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

MusaRed said:


> They talk about how women should do whatever they want with their bodies but then turn around and say that we shouldn't want to be thin or shouldn't be on diets.


what.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

arnie said:


> False. That's egalitarianism, not feminism.


 Gender equality=Feminism


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## MusaRed (Mar 24, 2013)

fingertips said:


> what.


I guess I'm just mostly talking about Tumblr feminists.


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## CrimsonTrigger (Jun 28, 2011)

I stand up for human rights, not just for women's rights. So I guess I'm an equalist and not a feminist.


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## cozynights (Mar 19, 2013)

Yes, I can consider myself a feminist and I'm proud of that fact.


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## NoHeart (May 5, 2012)

Although I stand for equal rights for both man and woman, I'm not ignorant enough to acknowledge that women have had it worse throughout history.

I ****ing hate this species.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

CrimsonTrigger said:


> I stand up for human rights, not just for women's rights. So I guess I'm an equalist and not a feminist.


 Feminist= for equal rights. You can be a Feminist and stand up for both genders. I'd say that whilst things are as they are, both genders suffer. I don't think that Feminism prioritises women necessarily, other than by practical need.


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## Milco (Dec 12, 2009)

Donnie in the Dark said:


> Feminist= for equal rights.


I've seen many things labelled feminism that wasn't about equal rights at all.
You yourself said there isn't only one branch of feminism, so I don't understand how you can say it is the same as equal rights.
Or.. I suppose people just have different ideas of what equality is, but that almost renders the word meaningless.

My personal definition, though, is that "feminist" means someone who believes in/subscribes to feminist theory - like it is with the many other -isms - and as such it holds more than just a belief that people should be equal.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

Milco said:


> I've seen many things labelled feminism that wasn't about equal rights at all.
> You yourself said there isn't only one branch of feminism, so I don't understand how you can say it is the same as equal rights.
> Or.. I suppose people just have different ideas of what equality is, but that almost renders the word meaningless.
> 
> My personal definition, though, is that "feminist" means someone who believes in/subscribes to feminist theory - like it is with the many other -isms - and as such it holds more than just a belief that people should be equal.


this


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## millenniumman75 (Feb 4, 2005)

life01 said:


> im not a feminist, i believe all human beings are equal and should have equal rights and opportunities. Whats the point in having equal rights if you starve to death because your born poor?


Dang...that last part is a downer! :rain


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## life01 (Feb 20, 2013)

millenniumman75 said:


> Dang...that last part is a downer! :rain


 agree


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Donnie in the Dark said:


> Gender equality=Feminism


As Milco has already said, it's not that simple. Feminism is not just equal rights, it's a whole unique branch of theory and to some even a particular world view.

It would be far more accurate therefore to describe Feminism as the idea that women are at a natural disadvantage, and in order to rectify this (to gain 'equality') they need to be raised to the same standard as men. And here, at least in my opinion is where the problem lies. Both men and women have advantages in a given context, so the aggressive pursuit of added benefits for solely women (often at the expense of men) is not particularly fair.

I also feel that separating people based on gender is not useful anyway, we should be striving to treat and see others as individuals rather than encouraging this tit for tat battle of the sexes that some Feminists seem obsessed about.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

Paper Samurai said:


> As Milco has already said, it's not that simple. Feminism is not just equal rights, it's a whole unique branch of theory and to some even a particular world view.
> 
> It would be far more accurate therefore to describe Feminism as the idea that women are at a natural disadvantage, and in order to rectify this (to gain 'equality') they need to be raised to the same standard as men. And here, at least in my opinion is where the problem lies. Both men and women have advantages in a given context, so the aggressive pursuit of added benefits for solely women (often at the expense of men) is not particularly fair.
> 
> I also feel that separating people based on gender is not useful anyway, we should be striving to treat and see others as individuals rather than encouraging this tit for tat battle of the sexes that some Feminists seem obsessed about.


 I think redressing the imbalance between genders is to everyone's advantage.
I don't see how anyone can claim to be for gender equality but not a Feminist(in some way).
I agree that it would be better not to separate people on gender, but it is easy to use that kind of sentiment as an excuse not to look too hard at how the female "gender" is treated.

It seems to me some people think Feminism generally is too forthright, but to me that seems natural- Feminism is about power and suppression, a lot like Marxism. 
And we live in a Patriarchy, even if a lot of men and women can't/won't see that.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

MusaRed said:


> Okay so maybe not all feminists are the same, but the most I've met are.


How can you say that "most feminists are the same" but call yourself a feminist and insist that you're different? You have just proven to yourself that a vast array of people call themselves feminists and often have differing views on various issues.



> I suppose people just have different ideas of what equality is


I think that is completely true and I don't think it necessarily renders the word meaningless. Most people have different ideas about how to achieve abstract concepts.



> Feminism as the idea that women are at a natural disadvantage


Not a natural disadvantage. An artificial disadvantage in many aspects of society. Feminists have never thought that women were more stupid than men (and they aren't) but for some reason there aren't many women in engineering or sciences. Rather like there used to be no women in universities. People like yourself who refuse to acknowledge that a gender bias exists are wrong. I honestly don't see how people can fail to see patriarchy in a society where almost all powerful positions are filled by men.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> Not a natural disadvantage. An artificial disadvantage in many aspects of society. Feminists have never thought that women were more stupid than men (and they aren't) but for some reason there aren't many women in engineering or sciences. Rather like there used to be no women in universities. People like yourself who refuse to acknowledge that a gender bias exists are wrong. I honestly don't see how people can fail to see patriarchy in a society where almost all powerful positions are filled by men.


There aren't many women in engineering and sciences, because they do not gravitate towards those subjects. It's basically a numbers game, if you have very few women pursuing degrees in those areas, then how do you expect them to be equally represented in the workforce later on. Then you factor in the fact that just because you have a degree in said subject doesn't mean you'll get the related job at the end of it and it's easy to see why women are under represented. (rarely anything to do with sexism I'm afraid)

You're also a little guilty of putting words in my mouth, for I've never said that gender bias doesn't exist. It does, but not nearly to the extent that yourself or the rest of the Feminist sorority seems to think it does. We have a much bigger problem with class distinction (at least here in the UK) and over in America racism is a much more important issue. No offence but I think your problems are very slight in comparison relatively speaking.

Finally, I'm glad you mentioned Patriarchy - a pillar of Feminist thinking that underpins all that you seem to want to do. Most people in the world, including the most esteemed academics and free thinkers do not agree with the concept of Patriarchy Theory (and I include myself amongst them) You'd be hard pressed to find any compelling source outside of Feminist Literature that even acknowledges it - mainly because we lived in what could loosely be described as a Patriarchy 200 odd years ago, it has long been abolished.


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

Milco said:


> I've seen many things labelled feminism that wasn't about equal rights at all.





Paper Samurai said:


> As Milco has already said, it's not that simple. Feminism is not just equal rights, it's a whole unique branch of theory and to some even a particular world view.


This entire dispute is centered around a mislabelling of feminism and a blurring of the definitions of academic feminism and feminist activism. I feel like a broken record repeating this so incessantly, but surely it isn't that difficult a distinction? The issue you have is with the feminist movement. Every movement veers from its principles. That does not negate those principles.

Feminism is distinct from other academic theories in that it is so rarely respected in itself. Feminists do not represent the value of feminism just as those who support democracy do not represent the value of democracy. To further the comparison, using radical feminist activists to discredit feminist principles is just as nonsensical as using crazed republican voters to discredit democracy.



Paper Samurai said:


> It would be far more accurate therefore to describe Feminism as the idea that women are at a natural disadvantage, and in order to rectify this (to gain 'equality') they need to be raised to the same standard as men. And here, at least in my opinion is where the problem lies. Both men and women have advantages in a given context, so the aggressive pursuit of added benefits for solely women (often at the expense of men) is not particularly fair.


This is just ignorance of the reality of feminist theory. It focuses on the recognition of privilege in general, not just male privilege. To deny the fact that, in a general sense, male societal privilege far exceeds female societal privilege is pretty silly. And to take that aspect of feminism to mean that discrimination faced by men is unimportant is equally as silly.

Is it so hard to just say 'I hate radical feminists' rather than 'I hate feminism'?


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

Paper Samurai said:


> we lived in what could loosely be described as a Patriarchy 200 odd years ago, it has long been abolished.


:sus

Have you looked at the world's governments? The world's financial institutions? Even Academia.

As for Patriarchy not being mentioned outside of Feminist thought........ obviously it isn't much mentioned outside of Feminist thought! It is not in the interests of non-Feminists to draw attention to it. Although it should be obvious anyway........


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

kiirby said:


> This entire dispute is centered around a mislabelling of feminism and a blurring of the definitions of academic feminism and feminist activism. I feel like a broken record repeating this so incessantly, but surely it isn't that difficult a distinction? The issue you have is with the feminist movement. Every movement veers from its principles. That does not negate those principles.
> 
> Feminism is distinct from other academic theories in that it is so rarely respected in itself. Feminists do not represent the value of feminism just as those who support democracy do not represent the value of democracy. To further the comparison, using radical feminist activists to discredit feminist principles is just as nonsensical as using crazed republican voters to discredit democracy.
> 
> ...


I think one of the main problems you have is that there is such low barriers of entry to calling yourself a Feminist. You only have to go to somewhere like tumblr (populated mainly by women in their teens/20's) and you'll see many angry young women who seemingly just want a cause to identify with. I would safely hazard a guess btw, that very few of them have picked up a piece of Feminist literature and had a look at it's contents. Even I, someone who's relatively opposed have at least skimmed the likes of The Feminine Mystique and SCUM Manifesto.

It's that sort of audience - if I'm to go with your particular interpretation and not the one I've gathered over the years - that dilute Feminism to just basic masculinity shaming and benefit seeking.


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

Paper Samurai said:


> There aren't many women in engineering and sciences, because they do not gravitate towards those subjects.


What do you mean by this? It seems an awful lot like you're implying that they aren't very good at it.



Paper Samurai said:


> It's basically a numbers game, if you have *very few women pursuing degrees in those areas*, then how do you expect them to be equally represented in the workforce later on. Then you factor in the fact that just because you have a degree in said subject doesn't mean you'll get the related job at the end of it and it's easy to see why women are under represented. (rarely anything to do with sexism I'm afraid)


But this is precisely the point! Rationalising an under-representation of women in engineering and science positions with "women don't choose to study engineering or science degrees" is moronic. Of course that's why it is. The issue that needs to be addressed is why not! To answer that with "well they obviously aren't very good at or interested in it" is absolutely sexist. My mother is a pharmaceutical biochemist and my aunt is a chemical engineer, both at a very high level, and I'm sure they'd be oh so amused to listen to your theories. It is not an explanation. Discrepancies like these are not without reason. The reason is that our society is structured in a way that, to some extent, actively discourages women from pursuing degrees in those areas.

It is only extremely recently, in relative terms, that it has become acceptable for women to pursue such academic paths which were previously reserved for men; this kind of discrimination *does not simply disappear*. It is culturally ingrained and apologist mindsets like yours absolutely further it.



Paper Samurai said:


> You're also a little guilty of putting words in my mouth, for I've never said that gender bias doesn't exist. It does, but not nearly to the extent that yourself or the rest of the Feminist sorority seems to think it does. We have a much bigger problem with class distinction (at least here in the UK) and over in America racism is a much more important issue. No offence but I think your problems are very slight in comparison relatively speaking.


But feminism so rarely advocates the notion that gender discrimination is the worst form of discrimination, nor does it negate the harm of other prejudices. Besides, is it really a surprise that the 'feminist sorority' focuses on gender issues?! I think to attempt to weigh up which issues are worse is a futile endeavour. I believe in intersectionality. Discrimination is inherent, and oppression among all types of identity is interrelated.



Paper Samurai said:


> Finally, I'm glad you mentioned Patriarchy - a pillar of Feminist thinking that underpins all that you seem to want to do. Most people in the world, including the most esteemed academics and free thinkers do not agree with the concept of Patriarchy Theory (and I include myself amongst them) You'd be hard pressed to find any compelling source outside of Feminist Literature that even acknowledges it - mainly because we lived in what could loosely be described as a Patriarchy 200 odd years ago, it has long been abolished.


You are probably referring to patriarchy in its most basic sense, in terms of male inheritance lineage and such irrelevancies. I'd like to know who you include among your 'esteemed academics and free thinkers' (other than yourself, scoff scoff).


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Donnie in the Dark said:


> :sus
> 
> Have you looked at the world's governments? The world's financial institutions? Even Academia.
> 
> As for Patriarchy not being mentioned outside of Feminist thought........ obviously it isn't much mentioned outside of Feminist thought! It is not in the interests of non-Feminists to draw attention to it. Although it should be obvious anyway........


Take a look again, most positions of power are circulated either between the upper classes or family dynasties. The illusion of apparent sexism is just a side effect of that and not the main issue.


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

Paper Samurai said:


> I think one of the main problems you have is that there is such low barriers of entry to calling yourself a Feminist. You only have to go to somewhere like tumblr (populated mainly by women in their teens/20's) and you'll see many angry young women who seemingly just want a cause to identify with. I would safely hazard a guess btw, that very few of them have picked up a piece of Feminist literature and had a look at it's contents. Even I, someone who's relatively opposed have at least skimmed the likes of The Feminine Mystique and SCUM Manifesto.
> 
> It's that sort of audience - if I'm to go with your particular interpretation and not the one I've gathered over the years - that dilute Feminism to just basic masculinity shaming and benefit seeking.


Tumblr feminists are crazy, man.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

Paper Samurai said:


> Take a look again, most positions of power are circulated either between the upper classes or family dynasties. The illusion of apparent sexism is just a side effect of that and not the main issue.


 Upper class men. I'm not saying Gender is bigger here than class. But maybe it is.....


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## Milco (Dec 12, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> I think that is completely true and I don't think it necessarily renders the word meaningless. Most people have different ideas about how to achieve abstract concepts.


Far most people surely support their own idea of what equality is.
So rather than asking whether people support equality, we should ask what they think would be equal.



kiirby said:


> To further the comparison, using radical feminist activists to discredit feminist principles is just as nonsensical as using crazed republican voters to discredit democracy.


These people have not been considered "radical" by others, but rather viewed as quite mainstream.
But I agree that the actions of individuals of a movement shouldn't disqualify the tenets of the movement itself.
I just disagree with some of the ideas in feminism and I'm skeptical of the notions of equality set forth in at least the Danish public debate.



kiirby said:


> But this is precisely the point! Rationalising an under-representation of women in engineering and science positions with "women don't choose to study engineering or science degrees" is moronic. Of course that's why it is. The issue that needs to be addressed is why not! To answer that with "well they obviously aren't very good at or interested in it" is absolutely sexist. My mother is a pharmaceutical biochemist and my aunt is a chemical engineer, both at a very high level, and I'm sure they'd be oh so amused to listen to your theories. It is not an explanation. Discrepancies like these are not without reason. The reason is that our society is structured in a way that, to some extent, actively discourages women from pursuing degrees in those areas.


Nobody has said women aren't very good at engineering or science.. at least not here. Yes, that would be a sexist statement, but suggesting men and women choose differently of their own 'free will' (as much as we have any) is not.
I find it hard to say that it's oppression if people choose the things they like to do. It seems to only be when people are being forced against their will that something is really wrong - though you would expect there to be many cases of that at early ages if the differences in choices were due to being brought up differently, social conditioning and adapting to cultural expectations.
But it's important to remember that people are different and that even if there were psychological, biological differences between men and women, it would not be a rigid system.
Some men do choose to go into traditionally female dominated fields and vice versa, and that's absolutely great, but I don't see it as a worthwhile goal in itself to have equally many men and women in all fields.
It ought to be about what people want and then whatever the outcome of that is, that's where it ends up.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

kiirby said:


> What do you mean by this? It seems an awful lot like you're implying that they aren't very good at it.
> 
> ...
> 
> ...


Wait a minute, do you think that women don't go into science, maths and I.T. solely because of 'male oppression' / stigma ? I'm going to be blunt to the point of crudeness here; but I know of some white guys that can play basketball, doesn't mean that the entire white race is as good as your average back guy !

Do you deny the commonly held belief that men have a natural advantage when it comes to logic (maths, science, I.T) and that women have their's mainly in expression (writing, foreign languages) ? This doesn't mean women can't go into those subjects, but it does mean the majority as I said earlier gravitate towards other things.



kiirby said:


> But feminism so rarely advocates the notion that gender discrimination is the worst form of discrimination, nor does it negate the harm of other prejudices. Besides, is it really a surprise that the 'feminist sorority' focuses on gender issues?! I think to attempt to weigh up which issues are worse is a futile endeavour. I believe in intersectionality. Discrimination is inherent, and oppression among all types of identity is interrelated.


I never said that all feminists say that, that wasn't the intended point anyway- but you have to understand that as someone who does not have a foot in your particular camp, can you honestly not see why I'd rather humanity focuses on racism and possibly even class discrimination over gender ? I'm going to be blunt again, but if we were to take the average American Feminist - a white, middle class, college educated woman - can you honestly say that the average black man in America can indulge in more rights and privileges ? This is where the idea of patriarchy falls down for me, because clearly he doesn't (despite being a male in an apparent male dominated society). And no, sadly I do not consider all discrimination to be in any way inter-related.



kiirby said:


> You are probably referring to patriarchy in its most basic sense, in terms of male inheritance lineage and such irrelevancies. I'd like to know who you include among your 'esteemed academics and free thinkers' (other than yourself, scoff scoff).


LOL, I just read that back, I didn't mean to group myself in there.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

> No offence but I think your problems are very slight in comparison relatively speaking.


Sure. And all of our problems are pretty slight in comparison to someone who is starving or living in a war-torn country or dying of AIDS... your point? If you are deciding what is or isn't a problem based on what is most severe I suggest you focus your efforts there. But you won't because this issue is immediate to you and therefore important to you (likewise me). Its also completely disingenuous to say that because racism is worse gender bias doesn't exist (or rather "doesn't exist to the extent I believe it does"). You could make the argument that I'm seeing things which don't exist but racism doesn't negate sexism. They're just different forms of the same thing, discrimination.

I won't address the education issue because kiirby did a good job of it. I read a study recently about gender in test scores for math and science but frankly I don't want to dig it back up. Actually an old teacher of mine is doing her thesis in gender bias in math and science among elementary school kids.



> Yes, that would be a sexist statement, but suggesting men and women choose differently of their own 'free will' (as much as we have any) is not.


Even choice is not always free. Cultural and familial expectation are powerful forces. The incident that springs to mind for me (I referenced it somewhere recently) is a story about Female Genital Mutilation performed on the author Ayaan Hirsi Ali when she was a little girl. It was her grandmother who had it done to her. Her mother didn't want it done but the grandmother insisted. She believed, truly that it was a mark of honor. She told her granddaughters that if they were raped it was because they were stupid enough to be seen and caught by men and that their family would have to beat her to restore their honor. She truly believed those things.

Her culture and her family shaped those ideas. They started as expectations and _became choices_. So even personal choice is deceptive.

As for the Patriarchy issue its pretty ridiculous to think it has no more bearing. Professions dominated by men (especially at the upper echelons) politics, law, business, banking, resources, defense, academia, engineering, sciences, medecine.... the list goes on and on and on. When my mum was applying for jobs her employer asked her what method of birth control she used (they thought it was their business if she was going to have a baby or get married). She was given a credit limit literally ten times lower and with a cosigner for literally the same job and a better credit score than my dad. My grandmother had to apply for a license _from a panel of men_ to get her tubes tied. This was in the 80s!! Its not ancient history.

Nowadays there is still _massive_ pressure on planned parenthood and the abortion debate. There was a big push to take contraceptives out of insurance coverage - again as if sexual health wasn't an integral part of overall health. And then of course there are the infamous Republican rape quotes.  Here's a best of if you missed them. And of course there is the 1 in 4 statistic that no one here believes despite the fact that the ballpark number (1 in 4-6) has been confirmed by many studies from different sources.

I wouldn't say its an 'exaggeration' to be upset about those things. It weirds me out that all you egalitarians aren't equally upset about those things. So no. I wouldn't say the issue disappeared 200 years ago. Especially considering it hasn't even been a hundred years since women got the right to vote and this whole ball got rolling.

But whatever. This whole debate has gone round and round. It mostly boils down to this for me; if you want to pursue mens rights (and a lot of members here fall in that camp even if they call themselves egalitarians) and fight against inequalities for men I don't have a problem with that. I do think some exist. I DO have a problem when people who claim to be egalitarian minimize or outright deny obvious instances of inequality against women. As egalitarians you should be just as upset about those as I am.

You can't legitimately use that label unless you _actually do_ get upset about inequalities faced by both genders equally.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

> Do you deny the commonly held belief that men have a natural advantage when it comes to logic (maths, science, I.T) and that women have their's mainly in expression (writing, foreign languages) ? This doesn't mean women can't go into those subjects, but it does mean the majority as I said earlier gravitate towards other things.


And here it is. Milco, many do actually believe these ridiculous things.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Paper Samurai, I'm going to suggest you go start up a thread about racism if you believe its what we all should really be talking about. Its an important issue, why not? If 'egalitarianism' is so much less important to you then you should focus your efforts elsewhere. No one is stopping you.

Ugh. With that I'm done.

Glad we stripped away that ridiculous egalitarian idea and got to the core of your beliefs. That men and women are not equal. That we are illogical, unscientific minds who aren't represented in important or powerful professions because we're just too busy with our creative writing.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

By all means, take my quotes out of context Isabelle lol. If you would pause for second and actually read what I wrote you may be a little less susceptible to lashing out like you are - it's obvious to me however that you're too emotionally invested in this topic to meaningfully discuss it without making these silly accusations.

Oh well, but lets get some actual science involved in all this:



> Men are typically systemisers. That is they're better at investigating how a system works. They like to get deeply involved in activities such as car repair, computing or building up an extensive music collection.
> 
> On average women are empathisers. They are better at accurately guessing other people's emotions and responding appropriately. They would be more likely to comfort you in a time of crisis.


But there are of course exceptions to this 'rule' :



> Baron-Cohen isn't saying that one sex can do things that the other cannot. He's saying that on average there are significant differences between the sexes - one tends to be more empathic and the other more systematic.
> 
> However, many men and women have a brain that differs from their sex. Baron-Cohen's laboratory has found that about 17% of men have a female 'empathising brain' and 17% of women have a male 'systemising brain'.


Another interesting experiment that seems to support what I've been saying:








> I won't address the education issue because kiirby did a good job of it. I read a study recently about gender in test scores for math and science but frankly I don't want to dig it back up. Actually an old teacher of mine is doing her thesis in gender bias in math and science among elementary school kids.


That study could be interesting and it would be great if you could fish it out. I have much less time however for your friend's thesis. Elementary school learning is little more than rote memorization where the students are not engaging much conscious thought (they simply do not have the capacity at that age) In other words, 'learning' for them is simply a test of memory and with that being the case I'm going to predict she will find no correlation between the genders when it comes to certain subjects. Go up a couple of age brackets and you would have a study infinitely more useful.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

^ please source your "actual science"

Considering we haven't found the chemical or structural basis for depression or anxiety (diagnosable medical conditions), can't identify the physiological link between cognition, structure, chemistry and behaviour and had our entire conception of the brain disproven in the last 20 or so years its pretty amazing we've been able to categorically identify an 'empathising brain' and a 'systematizing brain' as inherently male and female.

As neither of us are neuroscientists we aren't qualified to even have the debate let alone draw far-reaching social policy from theories which have yet to be proven and science (on autism) which is still in its infancy.

I said I was done with this thread and I'm going to stand by it. There are a lot of reasons why we can't say "men are inherently more logical" not the least of which is that the E-S E-Q_ theory_ hasn't been proven or fully substantiated.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> ^ please source your "actual science"
> 
> Considering we haven't found the chemical or structural basis for depression or anxiety (diagnosable medical conditions), can't identify the physiological link between cognition, structure, chemistry and behaviour and had our entire conception of the brain disproven in the last 20 or so years its pretty amazing we've been able to categorically identify an 'empathising brain' and a 'systematizing brain' as inherently male and female.
> 
> ...


'Done' eh, so you're not prepared to even listen to the other side's point of view in a discussion - isn't that somewhat ignorant ? Why join in at all then. The right thing to do here is to acknowledge that you were wrong.

A lot of your post is inaccurate I have to say, neither of us are indeed neuroscientists, but I at least have some credibility citing studies to your word of mouth. Show me anything that disproves what I've said in this thread or even back up your assertion that conventional knowledge of the brain has been disproven in the last 20 years. Indeed also check my last source below, a Nobel Prize winner from 1981 that proved that female and male brains develop differently in the womb via very clear chemical processes.

And btw, we have discovered what causes depression/anxiety - Serotonin imbalance. Which is what SSRI's (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors) are for.

The two main quotes above were from :



> Professor Simon Baron-Cohen at the Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University


ALSO:

journal _NeuroImage (http://www.livescience.com/3808-men-women-differently.html)_


> The results from this study may help explain why men and women excel at different types of tasks, said co-author and neuropsychologist Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico. For example, *men tend to do better with tasks requiring more localized processing, such as mathematics*, Jung said, while women are better at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions of the brain, which aids language skills.





Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2002 
(http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-07-22-memory_x.htm)




> Turhan Canli, an assistant professor of psychology at State University of New York Stony Brook, said the study shows that a woman's brain is better organized to perceive and remember emotions.
> "The wiring of emotional experience and the coding of that experience into memory is much more tightly integrated in women than in men," said Canli, the lead author of the study. "A larger percentage of the emotional stimuli used in the experiment were remembered by women than by men."
> Other authors of the study are John E. Desmond, Zuo Zhao and John D. E. Gabrieli, all of Stanford University.





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


> In 1981 Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel prize in medicine and physiology for his study on how the brain works in male and female babies. Dr. Sperry discovered that between the 16th and 26th week of gestation male babies have a chemical reaction in their brain that female babies do not have. Two chemicals are released that slow down the development of the right side of the brain, the caring side.
> ...
> A man's left dominant brain prefers logic and simplifies a subject to a short concise point while a woman with her right dominant 'caring' brain can easily remember a list of events because of the emotion she attaches to them.​


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Thanks for citing the sources, I'll take a look and maybe check back later. My first pass it seems that the bulk of the EQ scores come from evaluations subject's parents filled out. Also, that the focus of the research is autism. So, perhaps not applicable to the whole population. Also, unfortunately science has a long history of being twisted to suit preconceived notions of race and gender. It goes back to Aristotle and continued recently with Nobel Prize Winner James Watson's remarks that Africans are naturally intellectually inferior. Cursory search shows this book by PhD Cordelia Fine thats highly critical of Baron-Cohen's work. I might add it to my booklist as I'm sure it has a lot more content than the summary here...


> What routinely characterises such claims is their naive collapsing of gender - which above all is a statement of relationships between men and women in a given society - into a "hardwired" statement about sex differences in brain structures encoded during foetal and early child development.For example, Fine subjects University of Cambridge psychologist and popular author Simon Baron-Cohen's claims to have identified the "essential difference" between male and female brains - and hence men and women's minds and relationships - to devastating methodological criticism. Baron-Cohen derives this "essential difference" from responses to a questionnaire, on the basis of which he calculates an "Empathy Quotient" (a female marker) and a "Systematising Quotient" (obviously male). Questions include agreeing or disagreeing with statements such as "I really enjoy caring for people" versus "When I read the newspapers, I'm drawn to tables of information such as football league scores or stock market indices."
> To suggest that responses to these ill-defined and socially biased questions help indicate brain sex is deeply unconvincing. For instance, which people are we talking about caring for? I can be profoundly uncaring about illegal warmongers, religious fundamentalists and human-rights abusers. Similarly, while I know that football has become fashionable among middle-class men and more and more women, it was in the past a working-class male passion. And let's not think about rugby, even though it is a fair bet that this was the game for a significant section of the current Cabinet. For that matter, reading stock-market reports is something of a class issue, and is unlikely to be of significance to the growing number of women and men thrown out of work as a result of bankers' greed. Fine's deconstruction of Baron-Cohen's methodology is a joy and, unusually for an academic book, it had me chuckling as I read it.


Another excellent critique of his method. My favorite part....


> *Half of women do not have "female brains" and half of men do not have "male brains," *according to research of Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues. See Table 1 of Goldenfeld, Baron-Cohen, & Wheelwright, 2005, Empathizing and systemizing in males, females and autism, _Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 2_, 338-345. More details are below.


Essential problems with the study (and they're hugely glaring)
- the sample size for this study was only 277 people - generalizing from that to 6 billion is crazy 
- The sample may not have been random
- The sample was confined to people from England and Canada - can't be generalized worldwide
- The findings were self-reported. Meaning he never actually met these people at all, just accepted whatever evaluation the subject gave of themselves. Not very scientific.

Half of women don't have "female brains"? Half of men don't have "male brains"? Isn't that... y'know, a _problem_ with this theory?

A third critique in the November 2011 scientific journal Nature. Highlights....


> Baron-Cohen's critics, however, are sceptical of these surveys, in which subjects answer questions about themselves such as: 'I notice patterns in things all the time' and 'I would rather go to a library than to a party'. "Whether those self-perceptions, as with any of our self-perceptions, are accurate is questionable," says Francesca Happé, a cognitive neuroscientist at King's College London.
> It would be more objective, say Happé and others, to test children with and without autism on their abilities to understand systems, and then compare the scores. "Rigorous studies are still missing," says Uta Frith, a developmental psychologist at University College London. "At the moment, he has people saying, 'yes, I'm a person interested in details', as opposed to actually observing them on tasks.".....
> 
> Earlier this year, Liz Pellicano, a developmental psychologist at the Institute of Education in London, tested how a group of children with a wider range of ASD compare with a control group in figuring out a system. Her team designed a small room in which the floor was arrayed with 16 identical green lights. The children were asked to find the one light that, when pressed, would turn from green to red. The target light was on the same side of the room 80% of the time. Children with autism, including Asperger's syndrome, were much worse at figuring out this system than the children in the control group7. "They weren't systematic," says Pellicano. "When they were searching, they were unbelievably haphazard." In her view, she says, *studies such as this show that Baron-Cohen's theory "isn't standing up to empirical tests"*


Really.... one study of 227 people with huge methodological errors is being held up as "proof" that women are less logical and rational than men? I thought you were supposed to be the rational one here?


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

As for your claim about Depression and Anxiety I just want to ask one question. What exactly is the proper balance for Serotonin? And how did you manage to figure this out personally since we can't measure neurotransmitter levels while the subject is alive or even name all the neurotransmitters?


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## SOME (Jul 13, 2009)

Dissonance said:


> I'm feminine in the sense that I would wear girl clothes if the opportunity came up.


lol


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> Thanks for citing the sources, I'll take a look and maybe check back later. My first pass it seems that the bulk of the EQ scores come from evaluations subject's parents filled out. Also, that the focus of the research is autism. So, perhaps not applicable to the whole population. Also, unfortunately science has a long history of being twisted to suit preconceived notions of race and gender. It goes back to Aristotle and continued recently with Nobel Prize Winner James Watson's remarks that Africans are naturally intellectually inferior. Cursory search shows this book by PhD Cordelia Fine thats highly critical of Baron-Cohen's work. I might add it to my booklist as I'm sure it has a lot more content than the summary here...
> 
> Another excellent critique of his method. My favorite part....
> 
> ...


So basically you were able to cast some skepticism to only one of the studies that I posted. (mainly due to sample size) You completely ignore the most crucial one - the Nobel Prize winner that categorically proved that male and female babies have different brain development due to different chemical processes.

And to top it off you make a fuzzy appeal to emotion when you state "science has a long history of being twisted to suit preconceived notions of race and gender". Something that you can't actually prove, and something that I'm not prepared to even intellectually acknowledge.

The humble thing to do now is to admit you were wrong. You were far to quick to call me sexist when I simply stated something that conventional science has long accepted. And it doesn't even matter btw that women are less logically minded (if that's your angle) it doesn't make women inferior, it just means their natural proficiencies lie in other areas.

And again, if you can post me anything scientific that disputes what I've said then I would love to see it. (& NOT hear say like you have been doing) This is the de-facto opinion held by the vast majority of scientists around the world, until something else ground breaking comes along that turns this idea on it's head then this is something that just has to be accepted (that's how science works)


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Well, if you're not going to read my posts its kindof pointless for me to put them up but for anyone else who might actually read I'll continue. Not sure how you think 3 separate scientific and peer-reviewed sources and studies could be hearsay but whatever. Considering the fact that Mr. Baron-Cohen never even met the subjects of his study and relied on their own analysis of their brain function and that later studies are unable to replicate the result (quite an important pillar of science if you remember), I consider that quite effectively debunked. You go ahead and keep drinking that cool-aid though.

For the other items you cited I'm going to go one by one instead of a novel post. Since you view the last one as pivotal I'll address that first.

You didn't get that quotation from your cited source. Wikipedia (which you seem to believe is a more reliable source than published work by a PhD.... okay). Anyways, it actually says this....


> In his Nobel-winning work, Sperry and Gazzaniga tested four out of ten patients who had undergone an operation developed in 1940 by William Van Wagenen, a neurosurgeon in Rochester, NY.[10] The surgery, designed to treat epileptics with intractable _grand mal_ seizures, involves severing the corpus callosum, the area of the brain used to transfer signals between the right and left hemispheres. Sperry and his colleagues tested these patients with tasks that were known to be dependent on specific hemispheres of the brain and demonstrated that the two halves of the brain may each contain consciousness. In his words, each hemisphere isindeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel
> -Roger Wolcott Sperry, _1974_​


That his Nobel Prize work wasn't on babies development but on seizure patients about severing the link between the left and the right hemispheres. So not about gender differences at all. If you're suggesting that men and women use mostly one side or the other (if you're actually saying that I'd like some sources) the theory has this to say about that idea... 


> Broad generalizations are often made in *popular* psychology about one side _or_ the other having characteristic labels, such as "logical" for the left side or "creative" for the right. These labels need to be treated carefully; although a lateral dominance is measurable, both hemispheres contribute to both kinds of processes,[1] and experimental evidence provides little support for correlating the structural differences between the sides with such broadly-defined functional differences.[2]



*^* Toga, A. W.; Thompson, P. M. (2003). "Mapping brain asymmetry". _Nature Reviews Neuroscience_ *4* (1): 37-48. doi:10.1038/nrn1009. PMID 12511860. edit

I know where you _actually _got your quote though. Its from this...


> In 1981 Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel prize in medicine and physiology for his study on how the brain works in male and female babies. Dr. Sperry discovered that between the 16th and 26th week of gestation male babies have a chemical reaction in their brain that female babies do not have. Two chemicals are released that slow down the development of the right side of the brain, the caring side. *This confirms what most women already knew. That your man was born with brain damage. Seriously this left brain right brain feature can affect every part of your relationship*


Notice that last line there? Nice scientific source. Its like the factually inaccurate Cosmo of neuroscience. So I'll just respond in kind with another popular science article. This one quotes the Director of the Mind Brain and Education program at Harvard University.


> MYTH BUSTING
> *- Some people are left-brained and some are right-brained.* "This is total nonsense," says Fischer, "unless you've had half of your brain removed." This may have emerged from a misunderstanding of the split-brain work of Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry, who noticed differences in the brain when he studied people whose left and right brains had been surgically disconnected.
> - *Male and female brains are radically different.* Though there may be subtle differences between male and female brains, there is absolutely no significant evidence to suggest that the genders learn or should be taught differently. This myth might stem from a misinterpretation of books such as _The Essential Difference: Men, Women, and the Extreme Male Brain_, which focused largely on patients with autism.
> 
> - Kurt Fischer, founding president of the International Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) Society and director of the MBE graduate program at Harvard University.


In fact I can't find anywhere that Roger Sperry conducted a study on fetus development comparing male and female brain function. Seems almost like it doesn't exist. So I'll need you to source the actual study involving babies and the scientific conclusions about gender if you want to claim scientific integrity. Thanks.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

I can't believe brains are being discussed. It really isn't relevant. The only thing that is relevant to gender is society and socialisation.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Just in case you doubt your own source here is it from the horses mouth.


> Important as his work on neurospecificity was, it was not this for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981, but his discoveries on split brains.


http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1981/sperry-article.html

Both these quotes are from the Nobel organization itself.

So maybe you're talking about his experiments on neurospecificity.


> Sperry's first major scientific work - one which occupied him for over a decade - was to disprove a widely accepted theory that had been advanced by his professor at the University of Chicago, Paul Weiss. According to this theory, the vast neural network that connects the sense organs and muscles to the brain originates as an undifferentiated and unspecified mesh of randomly connected nerve fibers which is later transformed, under the influence of experience and learning, into the highly coordinated, purposeful system that is actually seen in animals. Plasticity and interchangeability of function were the key ideas. This theory did not come out of the blue, of course, but was based on careful experimental work that Weiss had performed, but misinterpreted.
> 
> In a series of experiments that have become famous, Sperry showed that the actual state of affairs is precisely the opposite of that imagined in Weiss' theory. Instead of being composed of interchangeable parts, the circuits of the brain are largely hardwired, in the sense that each nerve cell is tagged with its own chemical individuality early in embryonic development; once this happens, the function of the cell is fixed and is not modifiable thereafter.


He didn't do a study involving babies (or gender in any way). He did a study amphibians which proved that the sensory network is largely hardwired and rearranging nerve structures failed to restore sight in Amphibians.

So..... How does that have anything to do with gender in humans?



> I can't believe brains are being discussed. It really isn't relevant. The only thing that is relevant to gender is society and socialisation.


I agree that I can't believe someone honestly thinks there is scientific evidence to prove that men are more logical than women but when someone tries to twist science to their own ends and make outrageous claims I think its pretty important not to let it stand. Its false information and incredibly damaging socially.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

From your first source
http://www.livescience.com/3808-men-women-differently.html


> The brain is made primarily of two different types of tissue, called gray matter and white matter. This new research reveals that men think more with their gray matter, and women think more with white. *Researchers stressed that just because the two sexes think differently, this does not affect intellectual performanc*e.


Right from the very study you claim proves your theory!

Their own interpretation of their work...


> Haier and Jung have made some of the seminal findings in intelligence studies. In a 2004 study, they found that regions related to general intelligence are located throughout the brain and that a single "intelligence center," such as the frontal lobe, is unlikely. And in a 2005 study, they found that while* there are essentially no disparities in general intelligence between the sexes*, women have more white matter and men more gray matter related to intelligence test scores,* suggesting that no single neuroanatomical structure determines general intelligence and that different types of brain designs can produce equivalent intellectual performance*.


So while the structures appear to be different it doesn't have an effect on intellectual performance.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Okay! On to the last source.


> In the study, Canli and his colleagues individually tested the emotional memory of 12 women and 12 men using a set of pictures. Some of the pictures were ordinary, and others were designed to evoke strong emotions.
> 
> All the test subjects returned to the lab three weeks later and were surprised to learn that they would now be asked to remember the pictures they had seen. Canli said they were not told earlier that they would be asked to recall pictures from the earlier session.
> In a memory test tailored for each person, they were asked to pick out pictures that they earlier rated as "extremely emotionally intense." The pictures were mixed among 48 new pictures. Each image was displayed for less than three seconds.
> "For pictures that were highly emotional, men recalled around 60% and women were at about 75%," said Canli.


So among 12 women and 12 men (tiny sample size) there was a 10% difference (rather small don't you think) in accuracy of recollection for emotional events. I would imagine between 12 people it would be strange if there _wasn't_ a small discrepancy in memory. This study is not nearly on a large enough scale to generalize worldwide.

Also, since they didn't study overall recollection (and only looked at emotional memories) its completely possible that number is simply a reflection of better memory for women overall. Even if we take your conclusion at face value the study shows that its possible some women recall emotionally charged events with 10% greater accuracy than male counterparts. How you got from there to "women are less scientific than men" seems _a bit_ of a leap.


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## enfield (Sep 4, 2010)

someday, i will read this thread.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> From your first source
> http://www.livescience.com/3808-men-women-differently.html
> Right from the very study you claim proves your theory!
> 
> ...


Oh jesus lol. I never said women are intellectually inferior, I claimed logic my dear, which you clearly seem to be lacking ironically enough.

What I have however 'learnt' from this little exchange with you:

- There is a scientific conspiracy against women, which disproves every study done.

- Throw around sexist allegations when you're losing an argument.

- When you claim you're done in a thread, it means you're actually going to persist - mostly by twisting the other person's words.

I don't think I'm going to engage you any further, you twist what I say, conjure up trivial counter arguments and won't listen to anything that goes against what you already believe. In short, having an in-depth discussion with you is like attempting to lick my own balls, even on the off chance that I actually make any head way, I would feel pretty stupid regardless.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Now just in case anyone was wondering why thinking like Paper Samurai's is damaging. Here is some scientific evidence of that.


> In the early 1990s, Claude Steele, in collaboration with Joshua Aronson, performed the first experiments demonstrating that stereotype threat can undermine intellectual performance.
> 
> More than 300 published papers show the effects of stereotype threat on performance in a variety of domains
> 
> ...


Stroessner, Steve; Good, Catherine. "Stereotype Threat: An Overview". _www.dingo.sbs.arizona.edu_. Reducing Stereotype Threat.org. Retrieved 6 March 2011.

Inzlicht, M.; Ben-Zeev, T. (2000). "A Threatening Intellectual Environment: Why Females Are Susceptible to Experiencing Problem-Solving Deficits in the Presence of Males". _Psychological Science_ *11* (5): 365-371. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00272. ISSN 0956-7976.

Gupta, V. K.; Bhawe, N. M. (2007). "The Influence of Proactive Personality and Stereotype Threat on Women's Entrepreneurial Intentions". _Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies_ *13* (4): 73-85. doi:10.1177/10717919070130040901. ISSN 1071-7919

Steele, Jennifer; James, Jacquelyn B.; Barnett, Rosalind Chait (2002). "Learning in a Man's World: Examining the Perceptions of Undergraduate Women in Male-Dominated Academic Areas". _Psychology of Women Quarterly_ *26* (1): 46-50. doi:10.1111/1471-6402.00042. ISSN 0361-6843.

When we tell people they will fail they are _more likely to fail_. Thats why these unfounded stereotypes are so damaging. Because like Ayaan Ali's grandmother women eventually buy into the oppression, believe it and make it true for themselves and others.

We simply don't have the scientific data to say things like "men are more logical than women" or that fun one Paper Samurai never responded to "depression and anxiety are caused by serotonin imbalance". All we actually know is that in some situations one group is disadvantaged or not performing as well as the other. There are fewer women in the sciences. *But that is not because women have been proven to have less ability or aptitude in that area.

*To assume that it has been is patently false, unscientific and disingenuous. Not to mention wildly offensive, demeaning and oppressive.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

enfield said:


> someday, i will read this thread.


Not worth it lol. I have got stupider if anything by being a part of this idiocy

: P


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

So.... A summary.

The pivotal argument Paper Samurai puts forward (The supposed Nobel Prize work of Roger Sperry) actually does not exist. A second study was actually about autistic children has glaring methodological errors and more recent studies have disproven it. The third one suggests that men have more grey matter while women have more white matter but it has no effect on intellectual performance. The fourth shows a possible 10% difference in accuracy of reflection of emotional events for women and may simply show better memory overall for women (as that variable wasn't tested we don't know).

Add it up for yourselves I guess, Paper Samurai is too busy trying to lick his balls.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> So.... A summary.
> 
> The pivotal argument Paper Samurai puts forward (The supposed Nobel Prize work of Roger Sperry) actually does not exist. A second study was actually about autistic children has glaring methodological errors and more recent studies have disproven it. The third one suggests that men have more grey matter while women have more white matter but it has no effect on intellectual performance. The fourth shows a possible 10% difference in accuracy of reflection of emotional events for women and may simply show better memory overall for women (as that variable wasn't tested we don't know).
> 
> *Add it up for yourselves I guess, Paper Samurai is too busy trying to lick his balls.*


An act that's a lot more dignified / less embarrassing to do in public when compared to talking to you : P

Keep indulging in your delusions though Isabelle, keep thinking that the only reason that women are not represented in STEM fields is because of the oppressive 'Patriarchy' or what ever reason that comes up in that head of yours. Every piece of anecdotal evidence, every study (despite your protests to sample size) and even just plain and simple observation concludes that women (on average) have less natural ability in logical problem solving. I'm not saying that it can't be taught or fostered in an individual, but most of the time this natural advantage is enough of an offset that women are put off and gravitate to things they are naturally good at instead. It's really not rocket science.

I'm also vaguely amused at your idea that I'm making up Serotonin imbalance. Why do you think doctors prescribe SSRI's to long term chronic depressives/anxiety sufferers. Do you think they are doing it for some sort of placebo effect or something?


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Paper Samurai said:


> *An act that's a lot more dignified / less embarrassing to do in public when compared to talking to you : P *
> 
> Keep indulging in your delusions though Isabelle, keep thinking that the only reason that women are not represented in STEM fields is because of the oppressive 'Patriarchy' or what ever reason that comes up in that head of yours. Every piece of anecdotal evidence, every study (despite your protests to sample size) and even just plain and simple observation concludes that women (on average) have less natural ability in logical problem solving. I'm not saying that it can't be taught or fostered in an individual, but most of the time this natural advantage is enough of an offset that women are put off and gravitate to things they are naturally good at instead. It's really not rocket science.
> 
> I'm also vaguely amused at your idea that I'm making up Serotonin imbalance. Why do you think doctors prescribe SSRI's to long term chronic depressives/anxiety sufferers. Do you think they are doing it for some sort of placebo effect or something?


Whatever gets you off I guess.

I didn't say serotonin imbalance didn't exist. I said we haven't yet figured out the cause (and therefore cure) for depression. Studies indicate that serotonin is likely involved (in some patients) as is Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Gaba, BNDF and a whole host of other chemical factors (leaving aside _structural factors_) that we haven't even identified yet. And thats just in the brain, there are many other places depression manifests physically and is fueled by.

You may find some interesting reading the medication forum about depression and the complexity of neurotransmitter levels, the kind of necessarily indirect science which fuels their study and maybe from other sources the influence of behaviour, environment and trauma. Suffice to say that if we've found the cause and cure for depression its a shame no one told my psychiatrist about it.

I think this tantrum of yours is a little childish, but if you can't respond to the science I put forward I'm not really interested in insulting you the way you are me.


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## Milco (Dec 12, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> Even choice is not always free. Cultural and familial expectation are powerful forces.


We get to a very interesting point, but one that's hard to address.
I fully realise people do to some extent internalise the social expectations around them and can be forced to do many things. But my point was that that is the point of abuse/oppression rather than when people later on choose something they enjoy to do.
So if a girl is forced to play with dolls and disallowed to play with her favourite toy the truck, that's the problem - the problem isn't if that kind of treatment later makes her love to do nursing or teaching, for example.
But I'm not sure it quite works that way in most societies. I don't think there is that kind of totalitarian culture in which no deviation is possible. Most people can choose quite freely what they want to be and there'll still be people who accept them and where they can fit in.

Again, my point isn't that culture has no influence on us or that it never does us any harm, but I simply say that I don't think we're blank slates that are completely without predispositions.
And yes, I suspect there are some gender differences in predispositions.
If that is true, then people cannot be made to choose the same things without some being forced against their will.
What I am against is exactly people being forced against their will and not that some statistics aren't 50/50.



Donnie in the Dark said:


> I can't believe brains are being discussed. It really isn't relevant. The only thing that is relevant to gender is society and socialisation.


That's a rather bold statement.
It's quite remarkable that you would say the human brain has no influence on gender identity. Would you make the same claim about animals and their 'gender identity'? Is that also purely something they adapt from their culture?


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## arnie (Jan 24, 2012)

**yawn**

oh and:


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

> Again, my point isn't that culture has no influence on us or that it never does us any harm, but I simply say that I don't think we're blank slates that are completely without predispositions.


I actually agree with this. I think its pretty likely that biological differences exist in the brains between the sexes.

What I don't agree with is claiming that we know what they are and know what they mean (not that you have). We simply don't. The science isn't there to support the idea that men are more logical, rational or scientific than women.

And that invalid and unsupported idea has been used for centuries to justify oppression. All we know right now is that one group is under-represented and under-performing another, and we should try to fix that. I'll see if I can find the study which found that gender neutral education lifted girls' math score to the same level as boys. I think I sourced it a while ago.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> Whatever gets you off I guess.
> 
> I didn't say serotonin imbalance didn't exist. I said we haven't yet figured out the cause (and therefore cure) for depression. Studies indicate that serotonin is likely involved (in some patients) as is Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Gaba, BNDF and a whole host of other chemical factors (leaving aside _structural factors_) that we haven't even identified yet. And thats just in the brain, there are many other places depression manifests physically and is fueled by.
> 
> ...


One more golden nugget I can add from this thread: Doctors really don't know what they're doing when they prescribe SSRI's, they're doing it for the lulz.

I love also how you're attempting to gain the morale high ground right now, when it was your hysterical accusations of sexism that started this whole episode in here. You also derailed another thread of mine recently by making that a gender issue when it wasn't one (and being equally pig headed in that as well) So no, you're as far removed from angelic as it can get, so stop attempting to paint yourself as some morality martyr.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Meh. Just keep going since you want to make this about me personally and not the science or the issue at hand.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> Meh. Just keep going since you want to make this about me personally and not the science or the issue at hand.


Well if you insist, I will indeed keep going - I have grown weary of discussing anything with you from the last couple of exchanges we've had on this forum - as I've pulled up sources, you've in turn pulled stuff out of your ***. (to put it nicely)

There are Feminists on this board that are more hard line than you who've I had decent conversation with; because we both can concede a point, we don't make hysterical accusations and we don't twist things to serve some ulterior motive. All I can say from all this, is that you have much to learn.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

suicide rates...


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Well, I guess we're done with the pretense that this is about anything other than your personal dislike for me

I can live with your disapproval.

Its convenient how you opted out of any kind of rationality as soon as you were challenged and instead started in ad hominem but I guess that's pretty typical of a weak argument.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

illmatic1 said:


> suicide rates...


Hmm.... What about them?


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## Milco (Dec 12, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> All we know right now is that one group is under-represented and under-performing another, and we should try to fix that. I'll see if I can find the study which found that gender neutral education lifted girls' math score to the same level as boys. I think I sourced it a while ago.


You don't need to find a source for that. Girls do just fine in most math classes - even outperforming boys in some areas. The only area where I've heard that boys outperform girls is in spatial tasks.

But I agree that we should try to address issues of under-representation and under-performance. One problem we face otherwise is the lack of role-models, which can be quite important.
But I wouldn't say it's only one group under-performing. There are many boys that are doing very poorly in school and something needs to be done about that as well. While the business and political elites are mostly men, so is the social bottom, so the picture is quite complicated.
That, incidentally, is a problem dismissed by prominent European feminists (no, not considered to be radical ones), who argue that as long as men hold the majority of power, there can be no institutional problems against men.

There are some areas where it makes sense to make changes and regulations based on gender, but for the most part, I think we 'just' need to consider people in their own rights and become better at accepting diversity of people in general.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> Well, I guess we're done with the pretense that this is about anything other than your personal dislike for me
> 
> I can live with your disapproval.


Funnily enough I don't dislike you, I just find your thoughts borderline ridiculous and the way you interact on occasion when discussing something kinda repugnant...

Other than that though, I'm sure you're a swell person.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

Isabelle50 said:


> Hmm.... What about them?


mens suicide rates are like 4 times as high as women's (or something like that i cant remember)... i just dont see why men are killing them selves so much, relative to women, if we are so advantaged like feminism would have one believe...


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Milco said:


> But I wouldn't say it's only one group under-performing. There are many boys that are doing very poorly in school and something needs to be done about that as well. While the business and political elites are mostly men, so is the social bottom, so the picture is quite complicated.
> That, incidentally, is a problem dismissed by prominent European feminists (no, not considered to be radical ones), who argue that as long as men hold the majority of power, there can be no institutional problems against men.
> 
> There are some areas where it makes sense to make changes and regulations based on gender, but for the most part, I think we 'just' need to consider people in their own rights and become better at accepting diversity of people in general.


I wouldn't say there are no institutional problems against men. That seems a little silly. Men have been bound by gender stereotypes just as much as women. I went to a bit of a hippy elementary school and a lot of the policy and atmosphere was great for me, but not really for my brother. There was a huge emphasis on peacenik stuff and not much of an outlet for the boys.

Really I think kids in general could use a better physical outlet in school than gym. Kids overall are being raised to be pretty sedentary.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

illmatic1 said:


> mens suicide rates are like 4 times as high as women's (or something like that i cant remember)... i just dont see why men are killing them selves so much, relative to women if we are so advantaged like feminism would have one believe... ...


I really don't think that argument follows... Men aren't killing themselves because of feminism. Thats really a mental health issue and I doubt you or I could say with any certainty why they killed themselves. Definitely worth looking into though.

I've never heard the suicide rate was higher for men, do you remember where you read it?


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## AllToAll (Jul 6, 2011)

Damn right. And I'm a radical feminist, too. You know, the type that believes this crazy notion that there's still no equality between the sexes and that women are a disadvantage in the system. Crazy. Like believing racism still exists or something type of crazy. Those damn radical human rights activist... :roll


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

AllToAll said:


> Damn right. And I'm a radical feminist, too. You know, the type that believes this crazy notion that there's still no equality between the sexes and that women are a disadvantage in the system. Crazy. Like believing racism still exists or something type of crazy. Those damn radical human rights activist... :roll


Yeah racism still exists and it's not so bad in some places. Yeah sure people will always be untrustworthy of certain races, but that's life you trust no one. But over all that hasn't stopped people of different nationalities stop them from being successful and prove they have a lot more to give then most people ever will. The difference is people of color learn to live with it and live life despite the mass amount of hostility towards them. We have made progress in both race and gender inequality. You all radical feminists fear a patriarchy that doesn't even exist, I'd say Radical Feminism is the new Religion, where it's filled with crazy nutters.

I don't see women getting more time in prison just because they're women, a Hispanic is more likely to get a greater sentence, and a woman is more likely to get away with child molestation or killing newborns without a hitch.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

illmatic1 said:


> mens suicide rates are like 4 times as high as women's (or something like that i cant remember)... i just dont see why men are killing them selves so much, relative to women, if we are so advantaged like feminism would have one believe...


 I think most Feminists would make the point that Patriarchy is also damaging to men.


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## Milco (Dec 12, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> I really don't think that argument follows... Men aren't killing themselves because of feminism. Thats really a mental health issue and I doubt you or I could say with any certainty why they killed themselves. Definitely worth looking into though.
> 
> I've never heard the suicide rate was higher for men, do you remember where you read it?


I don't think the point was to say that this is due to feminism.
But just that.. it seems there generally is more 'mobility' (for better and for worse) in males than in females. The could be due to a more competitive atmosphere or more risk-taking behaviour in men.
Whether that is due to nature or culture doesn't really matter.
If that's true, then you would need to foster the same kind of behaviour in women in order to expect equally many women succeeding.
There have been some studies on job safety here and they show women to be generally working in public sector jobs, and one of the reasons given for this is the job safety those jobs offer.
But if women acted like men, then you would also expect more women to end up at the bottom.
I'm not sure that's a much better system, though it definitely would be a more equal system, if you measure solely gender vs gender.

I'd rather lift the bottom up and, not remove the incentives to take risks as such, but limit the price paid for failed risk-taking.
If women could take more risks in their careers without possibly losing their livelihood and losing the ability to support their children (which seems to be one reason why women often choose secure jobs), then I think we'd see more women making it to the top.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

Isabelle50 said:


> I really don't think that argument follows... Men aren't killing themselves because of feminism. Thats really a mental health issue and I doubt you or I could say with any certainty why they killed themselves. Definitely worth looking into though.
> 
> I've never heard the suicide rate was higher for men, do you remember where you read it?


 Never said it was feminisms fault... What I am saying is that the notion that men are really all that privilidged is false... And seeing as how feminism believes that men are privilidged it would be contradictory of me to be a feminist considering I disagree with their main belief... The reason I brought up suicide rates is because I believe that if men are privilidged as much as feminism would have people believe than men should be happier with their lives... Happy enough to not end their lives 4 times as frequtly as women ... I'm not blaming feminism... I am saying that their beliefs are a bit off ... Sorry for any typos... I'm on my phone right now....

.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

Dissonance said:


> Yeah racism still exists and it's not so bad in some places. Yeah sure people will always be untrustworthy of certain races, but that's life you trust no one. But over all that hasn't stopped people of different nationalities stop them from being successful and prove they have a lot more to give then most people ever will. The difference is people of color learn to live with it and live life despite the mass amount of hostility towards them. We have made progress in both race and gender inequality. You all radical feminists fear a patriarchy that doesn't even exist, I'd say Radical Feminism is the new Religion, where it's filled with crazy nutters.
> 
> I don't see women getting more time in prison just because they're women, a Hispanic is more likely to get a greater sentence, and a woman is more likely to get away with child molestation or killing newborns without a hitch.


Women are paid less. Women rarely hold positions of power. The female body is commodified, fetishised and politicised in a way that the male body almost never is.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Milco said:


> You don't need to find a source for that. Girls do just fine in most math classes - even outperforming boys in some areas. The only area where I've heard that boys outperform girls is in spatial tasks.


Milco, you have to ask yourself what does a decent grade in your average maths class really mean for the most part. Up until Higher education (+ maybe latter end of Highschool), all it shows is an ability to do well in an exam. It really doesn't emphasize much if at all in the area of true understanding.

Some what related (but admittedly very anecdotal) I've never met a good female programmer in person and I've been to two universities, and a number of tech events/conferences. And the only criteria I mean btw, is to know several languages, know all but advanced programming theory & basic Computer Science. I have however talked to two who fit the bill over the internet (one in America, one in Singapore) And they are almost demi-gods in their knowledge - so yes there are clear exceptions.

At what point then do we admit that maybe it's not stigma / unequal opportunity and maybe it is neurological. Personally I think it's an idea at least worthy of mention without being accused of being sexist (like I have).


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## Snow Bunny (Jan 28, 2009)

I consider myself a bit of a feminist. It started when I was 13 and involves blood and pain.


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

Donnie in the Dark said:


> Women are paid less. Women rarely hold positions of power. The female body is commodified, fetishised and politicised in a way that the male body almost never is.


Women are paid less because at any moment a woman can become pregnant and thus they are down one worker, get real if a woman truly worked everyday of her life the wage difference wouldn't be there. On top of that everyone is paid terribly I mean holy hell not even men get paid well, the only people making any good money are the people who run giant corporations, we're basically ALL slaves in a sense that a large amount of the money is not even distributed evenly between the wealthy, the middle class and the poor. The difference between poor and middle class are barely there. "Rarely hold position of power". Bloody hell, go read a history book why don'tcha? There's plenty of females in power even to this day. I won't even bother getting examples because Oprah doesn't like me mentioning her name, for starters. Yes and all those commercials of every single product men with muscular bodies is surely to stroke my eagle and not to make me feel like crap and give in to something that I believe will make me more attractive to the opposite sex. Surely men aren't given a standard of beauty to live up to at all. Yes men are never made into sex objects, sure keep dreaming white knight.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Paper Samurai said:


> I just find your thoughts borderline ridiculous and the way you interact on occasion when discussing something kinda repugnant...


I feel exactly the same way. Of course it wasn't me who turned this from a scientific debate into a personal attack.

Considering your pivotal argument turned out not to exist I can see how that would make you a little bitter towards me. Oh well, I'll learn to cope.


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## AllToAll (Jul 6, 2011)

Dissonance said:


> Yeah racism still exists and it's not so bad in some places. Yeah sure people will always be untrustworthy of certain races, but that's life you trust no one.


Perhaps we'll never trust other people (although I'm certain that doesn't apply to everyone as it stands), but I'm hoping that at least we'll get to a point where race/gender isn't a determinant of whether we do or don't trust others, because race and gender are simply social constructs that don't define us.



> But over all that hasn't stopped people of different nationalities stop them from being successful and prove they have a lot more to give then most people ever will. The difference is people of color learn to live with it and live life despite the mass amount of hostility towards them.


Actually, racism and sexism do stop people from achieving success or their full potential. It's no coincidence that people who live below the poverty level consist of mostly women of color. That's not coping with the situation; it's called having no choice. As much as we'd like to believe life is like a Disney movie, we don't always get what we want no matter how hard we work for it.



> We have made progress in both race and gender inequality. You all radical feminists fear a patriarchy that doesn't even exist, I'd say Radical Feminism is the new Religion, where it's filled with crazy nutters.


We have made advances, but why stop now? I simply see you as a defeatist. We'll talk about patriarchy not existing when women make up 50% of the people in congress, when the US media doesn't ask the question "can America handle a female president?" And we can joke about being a post-race country when people don't make jokes about the white house being renamed the black house because we have a black (who isn't actually 100% black) president. 
I wish feminism were the new religion. **** would already be done.



> I don't see women getting more time in prison just because they're women, a Hispanic is more likely to get a greater sentence, and a woman is more likely to get away with child molestation or killing newborns without a hitch.


That right there that you're describing is systemized racism/sexism. And _you're_ the one preaching against both movements. Please, go read a book.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> I feel exactly the same way. Of course it wasn't me who turned this from a scientific debate into a personal attack.
> 
> Considering your pivotal argument turned out not to exist I can see how that would make you a little bitter towards me. Oh well, I'll learn to cope.


Must you start this up again Isabelle, I was revelling in the peace of not having to respond to you (and it sounds like you feel the same way about me)

So why then are you acting like the metaphorical turd that won't flush with these repeat messages of yours ?


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## AllToAll (Jul 6, 2011)

illmatic1 said:


> Never said it was feminisms fault... What I am saying is that the notion that men are really all that privilidged is false... And seeing as how feminism believes that men are privilidged it would be contradictory of me to be a feminist considering I disagree with their main belief... The reason I brought up suicide rates is because I believe that if men are privilidged as much as feminism would have people believe than men should be happier with their lives... Happy enough to not end their lives 4 times as frequtly as women ... I'm not blaming feminism... I am saying that their beliefs are a bit off ... Sorry for any typos... I'm on my phone right now....
> 
> .


Stating that (white) men are privileged in our society isn't equal to stating men's lives are easy. No one's life is easy. Still, there are systematical issues facing women that men don't face. (i.e. reproductive injustice, unequal pay). And people of color fare even worse.


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

AllToAll said:


> Perhaps we'll never trust other people (although I'm certain that doesn't apply to everyone as it stands), but I'm hoping that at least we'll get to a point where race/gender isn't a determinant of whether we do or don't trust others, because race and gender are simply social constructs that don't define us.
> 
> Actually, racism and sexism do stop people from achieving success or their full potential. It's no coincidence that people who live below the poverty level consist of mostly women of color. That's not coping with the situation; it's called having no choice. As much as we'd like to believe life is like a Disney movie, we don't always get what we want no matter how hard we work for it.
> 
> ...


You're such a hypocrite, you say "Oh man I wish gender and race didn't matter but golly I sure wish half of the congress were female and looking out for myself interests!" It doesn't take a female to identify the issues that women face to come to a better conclusion. I personally don't care what gender someone is in congress as long as they are looking out for the well being of everyone. Like I've said before there really isn't much difference between everyone except the poor and rich, middle class is barely a step above poor. It's not just the poor that's suffering everyone is pretty much getting their **** wrecked. I can identify with the fact that where you come from does somewhat determine where you go in life but it's not jus women suffering everyone is. We all have problems. It's not just women, blacks, hispanics, asian it's not one specific type of people who have it rough we all have it rough.

I don't give a crap Obama being black he can be a martian for all I give a damn as long as he knows what he's doing, I don't care if it's female either. Yeah people will call him out on a lot of things, but in the end he's still president racism is there, idiots will still be idiots.

Yeah and it needs to stop, quite frankly I don't care what anyone calls it, as long as there is a person in the way of true and equal fair court system I don't care about the terms and small details. I only care about what's fair for all people. I'd read a book but my depression kills my ability to read anything thanks.

Sure add females to congress I'm not even against the idea.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

> Must you start this up again Isabelle, I was revelling in the peace of not having to respond to you (and it sounds like you feel the same way about me)


I decided not to quote the more charming part of your post. I guess it was too much to hope you could respond to my criticism of your argument. I had missed that lovely gem of a post a few pages back and I felt it was worthy of a response (really who doesn't love being called ridiculous and repugnant).

But by all means. Keep ignoring the science (and the obvious). I'll just keep being radical over here suggesting that women have as much logical and rational ability as men.

EDIT: Alltoall - there is really no rational support for their ideas so they jump straight to irrational ones instead (personal attacks or defeatist "racism and sexism will always exist you can't stop it!!!")


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## AllToAll (Jul 6, 2011)

Dissonance said:


> You're such a hypocrite, you say "Oh man I wish gender and race didn't matter but golly I sure wish half of the congress were female and looking out for myself interests!" It doesn't take a female to identify the issues that women face to come to a better conclusion.


I'm a hypocrite because I care about the issues facing women and I happen to have a vagina? No, that makes me a human being worried for her future and that of her female friends/family. 
Having women in congress isn't necessary because I think they'd make better decisions for women (Sarah Palin, anyone). It's because women represent half of the population, so it should be mirrored in our government.



> I personally don't care what gender someone is in congress as long as they are looking out for the well being of everyone. Like I've said before there really isn't much difference between everyone except the poor and rich, middle class is barely a step above poor. It's not just the poor that's suffering everyone is pretty much getting their **** wrecked. I can identify with the fact that where you come from does somewhat determine where you go in life but it's not jus women suffering everyone is. We all have problems. It's not just women, blacks, hispanics, asian it's not one specific type of people who have it rough we all have it rough.


Amen. That's why I voted for Obama, but the truth is, when there's a huge disparity in who has power and money in the world, it's not because "well, some people work harder or some people are more interested than others". It's because we live in a country that doesn't provide equal support to everyone.



> I don't give a crap Obama being black he can be a martian for all I give a damn as long as he knows what he's doing, I don't care if it's female either. Yeah people will call him out on a lot of things, but in the end he's still president racism is there, idiots will still be idiots.


Great. You're the exception. Pat yourself on the back there, bud. Racism is still there, and idiots will be idiots, but it doesn't have to be that way and we shouldn't allow it to be that way.



> Yeah and it needs to stop, quite frankly I don't care what anyone calls it, as long as there is a person in the way of true and equal fair court system I don't care about the terms and small details. I only care about what's fair for all people. I'd read a book but my depression kills my ability to read anything thanks.


You stated in your first post that racism "isn't really that bad," and not you're all for equality? Pick a side and stay with it.
Only illiteracy kills your ability to read. Don't make any excuses for yourself; lazy person, ignorant ideologies.


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## Donnie in the Dark (Mar 15, 2011)

Dissonance said:


> Women are paid less because at any moment a woman can become pregnant and thus they are down one worker, get real if a woman truly worked everyday of her life the wage difference wouldn't be there. On top of that everyone is paid terribly I mean holy hell not even men get paid well, the only people making any good money are the people who run giant corporations, we're basically ALL slaves in a sense that a large amount of the money is not even distributed evenly between the wealthy, the middle class and the poor. The difference between poor and middle class are barely there. "Rarely hold position of power". Bloody hell, go read a history book why don'tcha? There's plenty of females in power even to this day. I won't even bother getting examples because Oprah doesn't like me mentioning her name, for starters. Yes and all those commercials of every single product men with muscular bodies is surely to stroke my eagle and not to make me feel like crap and give in to something that I believe will make me more attractive to the opposite sex. Surely men aren't given a standard of beauty to live up to at all. Yes men are never made into sex objects, sure keep dreaming white knight.


1) Women being paid less because employers are worried about maternity leave is not okay.
2) I'm well aware of the situation regarding corporations and wages.
3) I disagree, there are shockingly few females in positions of power (relatively speaking)
4) I am also concerned about wealth distribution
5) I didn't say men are never commodified, just much much much less and with much less in the way of severe, endemic and violent consequences.
6) If you think that discussing social justice and oppression in society is "white-knighting" then I feel sorry for you. Plus I would point out that Patriarchy hurts men too, it is in everyone's interests to destroy it.


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

If having the same amount of women makes you feel better then sure, I don't mind, you just need the right people in there as you stated.

I don't care about equal support to everyone, I only care if everyone has equal opportunity for everyone. Everyone should have the chance to lose and win it all, no matter what, no one should willing stay in poverty, if they are able to at least use what they have and make their own living, then again there are the disabled (or whatever) and maybe they do need support.

Well then how about I rephrase it, at least it you won't get killed for being black at least we don't have segregation, I'm just appreciating that racism isn't so bad as it used to be. Though there is still room for improvement, but I think those changes will happen with the support of all people in equal agreement in time. Oh wow you must not suffer from depression at all, what I'd kill to give you an ounce of my misery and let you experience the same of what I am going through, your lack of sympathy is noted. Though then again you must be quite privileged.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Isabelle50 said:


> I decided not to quote the more charming part of your post. I guess it was too much to hope you could respond to my criticism of your argument. I had missed that lovely gem of a post a few pages back and I felt it was worthy of a response (really who doesn't love being called ridiculous and repugnant).
> 
> But by all means. Keep ignoring the science (and the obvious). I'll just keep being radical over here suggesting that women have as much logical and rational ability as men.
> 
> EDIT: Alltoall - there is really no rational support for their ideas so they jump straight to irrational ones instead (personal attacks or defeatist "racism and sexism will always exist you can't stop it!!!")


Do you even notice the delicious irony of your posts sometimes ? You first start off by claiming that your delicate sensibilities stop you from quoting my turd zinger (heh) from my last message. Then you end things by trying to provoke and stir things up with AlltoAll, (which I'm doubting she'll fall for btw) Your attempt at making this tribal is very misguided.

Because, like I said earlier btw there are Feminists on here capable of discussing stuff without being unscrupulous like you've been. (AlltoAll, Kiirby, Komorikun, Au Lait etc.) and I don't mind talking to them at all. You can learn a thing or two from them in fact.


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

Donnie in the Dark said:


> 1) Women being paid less because employers are worried about maternity leave is not okay.
> 2) I'm well aware of the situation regarding corporations and wages.
> 3) I disagree, there are shockingly few females in positions of power (relatively speaking)
> 4) I am also concerned about wealth distribution
> ...


1) I don't know if we lived in a different world, maybe it wouldn't matter so much for these people to be more worried about money. But as it stands to them it seems like a waste to pay someone who could become unable to work. 
3) I don't care who is in power as long as they aren't hurting the interests of everyone.
5) In what do you mean severe and violent consequences?
6)Sure.


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## AllToAll (Jul 6, 2011)

Dissonance said:


> If having the same amount of women makes you feel better then sure, I don't mind, you just need the right people in there as you stated.


Thank you. Oh my god, all we needed was your approval.



> I don't care about equal support to everyone, I only care if everyone has equal opportunity for everyone. Everyone should have the chance to lose and win it all, no matter what, no one should willing stay in poverty, if they are able to at least use what they have and make their own living, then again there are the disabled (or whatever) and maybe they do need support.


Equal support is equal opportunity. Christ. NO ONE IS WILLING TO STAY IN POVERTY. Some people don't have a way out.



> Well then how about I rephrase it, at least it you won't get killed for being black at least we don't have segregation, I'm just appreciating that racism isn't so bad as it used to be. Though there is still room for improvement, but I think those changes will happen with the support of all people in equal agreement in time. Oh wow you must not suffer from depression at all, what I'd kill to give you an ounce of my misery and let you experience the same of what I am going through, your lack of sympathy is noted. Though then again you must be quite privileged.


My lack of sympathy? Mr. Racism Isn't that Bad, Equal Support Isn't Necessary, really? _I'm_ the one who lacks sympathy? I'm just as ****ed up as you. I'm simply not jaded. Your depression doesn't excuse ignorance.


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

AllToAll said:


> Thank you. Oh my god, all we needed was your approval.
> 
> Equal support is equal opportunity. Christ. NO ONE IS WILLING TO STAY IN POVERTY. Some people don't have a way out.
> 
> My lack of sympathy? Mr. Racism Isn't that Bad, Equal Support Isn't Necessary, really? _I'm_ the one who lacks sympathy? I'm just as ****ed up as you. I'm simply not jaded. Your depression doesn't excuse ignorance.


So suddenly agreeing but not actually caring is suddenly me giving my approval? I'm not giving you permission I just see it pointless to have a equal amount of males to females. We might as well put at least one of every ethnicity in there while we're at it because surely that black congressman doesn't comprehended the issues of the Asians.

Well then there won't be a problem, though I think you're overlooking something but I'm too tired to care.

Yes that should be my new name Racism isn't that bad. because that's totally what I said. Excuse me while I go murder all these different colored folk which is completely okay because genocide is still fair game.
Okay lady, I shouldn't even have brought it up, I didn't know you were suffering at all. I thought you were just looking to further your feminist agenda.


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Paper Samurai said:


> Do you even notice the delicious irony of your posts sometimes ? You first start off by claiming that your delicate sensibilities stop you from quoting my turd zinger (heh) from my last message. Then you end things by trying to provoke and stir things up with AlltoAll, (which I'm doubting she'll fall for btw) Your attempt at making this tribal is very misguided.
> 
> Because, like I said earlier btw there are Feminists on here capable of discussing stuff without being unscrupulous like you've been. (AlltoAll, Kiirby, Komorikun, Au Lait etc.) and I don't mind talking to them at all. You can learn a thing or two from them in fact.


Good job! You made a poop joke!

I guess a response to the evidence is just a little too much for you to manage. Don't worry, you can still make poop jokes, or even another reference to your ball-licking chronicles instead.

My remark to AlltoAll was just a comment to a friend, no need to get your panties in a knot over it. If you want to actually talk about Sperry's work or the problems with Baron-Cohen's, I'll be around.


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## AllToAll (Jul 6, 2011)

Dissonance said:


> So suddenly agreeing but not actually caring is suddenly me giving my approval? I'm not giving you permission I just see it pointless to have a equal amount of males to females. We might as well put at least one of every ethnicity in there while we're at it because surely that black congressman doesn't comprehended the issues of the Asians.
> 
> Well then there won't be a problem, though I think you're overlooking something but I'm too tired to care.
> 
> ...


I see you have a hard time detecting sarcasm... You must be a tad bit full of yourself to believe my statement was serious. :roll


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## Dissonance (Dec 27, 2011)

AllToAll said:


> I see you have a hard time detecting sarcasm... You must be a tad bit full of yourself to believe my statement was serious. :roll


Okay.


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

AllToAll said:


> 1.)*Stating that (white) men are privileged in our society isn't equal to stating men's lives are easy.* No one's life is easy.2.)* Still, there are systematical issues facing women that men don't face. *(i.e. reproductive injustice, unequal pay).3.)* And people of color fare even worse.*


1.)no, stating that men are privilidged does not = their life is easy... but a privilege is a right that makes one's life easier, no? therefore by saying a group is privileged ur saying that they have a _easier_ life, even if it is still not an easy life... and it just doesnt make sense that the group u target as the most privileged was the most likely to feel that their life was not worth living... unless you believe that this group is weaker than other groups?

2.) there are also systematical issues men face that women dont... the genders may not face the same issues but that doesnt mean that one has it harder than the other... that just means that the issues they face are different

3.) same thing i said in number one applies here if u replace gender with race....sure, a white guy can get a job much easier than i can, but at the same time i can get a scholarship much easier than he can get one, simply because i am black


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## AllToAll (Jul 6, 2011)

illmatic1 said:


> 1.)no, stating that men are privilidged does not = their life is easy... but a privilege is a right that makes one's life easier, no? therefore by saying a group is privileged ur saying that they have a _easier_ life, even if it is still not an easy life... and it just doesnt make sense that the group u target as the most privileged was the most likely to feel that their life was not worth living... unless you believe that this group is weaker than other groups


Eureka, you got it. How do you know that the group I "targeted" is the most likely to feel their life is not worth living? You can't measure that by suicide rates. In fact, you can't measure that at all.



> 2.) there are also systematical issues men face that women dont... the genders may not face the same issues but that doesnt mean that one has it harder than the other... that just means that the issues they face are different


And here's where you talk about alimony, I suppose. You do realize that depriving women of reproductive choices is depriving them of a common right based on their gender, right? A right that impacts financial decisions and the life of many women.



> 3.) same thing i said in number one applies here if u replace gender with race....sure, a white guy can get a job much easier than i can, but at the same time i can get a scholarship much easier than he can because i am black


Yes, and the reason why you can get that scholarship is because of the lack of men of color in colleges...


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

Well, since none of us know why these men killed themselves its not very respectful of us to guess or to ascribe it to our own political agenda.


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## F1X3R (Jul 20, 2009)

kast said:


> I believe in gender equality, so technically I'm a feminist. But I don't like politics and I shy away from most things ending in "ist".  I'm not really the activist type; there is too much emotion and drama involved for me. :|
> 
> If I tell someone "I'm a feminist", I would expect to be pulled into a very emotional, political discussion about activism. I wouldn't enjoy it whether they were feminist or anti-feminist, or it would only hold my interest for a few minutes. Politics tire me and I prefer to keep the discussion calm and logical. I'm against whaling, but I'm not going to join the Sea Shepherds and throw acid at fishing trawlers.


Just watched this today and this quote stood out to me:

"Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus but it still wouldn't change the fact that I don't own a car!"

- Ferris Bueller​


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

AllToAll said:


> 1.)*Eureka, you got it. How do you know that the group I "targeted" is the most likely to feel their life is not worth living? You can't measure that by suicide rates. In fact, you can't measure that at all.
> *
> 
> And here's where you talk about alimony, I suppose. 2.) * You do realize that depriving women of reproductive choices is depriving them of a common right based on their gender, right?* A right that impacts financial decisions and the life of many women.
> ...


1.) u targeted white men... white and asian men between the ages of 17-25 are the most likely to kill themselves out of anyone... and i think its pretty safe to say that if u commit suicide, u feel that ur life is not worth living due to hardship... aside from ritual self sacrifice (which hardly ever happens anymore), is there another reason to commit suicide other than feeling that life is not worth living?if there is another reason for committing suicide i havent heard of it

2.)how am i denying you a reproductive right? you can **** who ever u want to whenever u want to... and have kids with who ever u want to whenever u want to... and have abortions whenever, wherever u want to... your body your choice...



> A right that impacts financial decisions and the life of many women.


and u do realize that u called many women common gold diggers and prostitutes with this part right?

3.) whats your point?


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

Isabelle50 said:


> Well, since none of us know why these men killed themselves its not very respectful of us to guess or to ascribe it to our own political agenda.


People commit suicide because their troubles surpass thier ability to cope, thus life becomes to hard to continue on

what other reasons are there in the modern western world for a person to commit suicide? last time i checked people dont commit suicide for fun...they do it to escape a life too miserable to bear...i havent heard of a epidemic of ritual self sacrifices large enough to effect any statistical data on suicides....id really like to hear another reason

and i like how u say im using it to support my political agenda even though i said in my second post that i dont blame the suicides on feminism...i even said my point was that men are not as privileged as many feminist believe if they are so readily taking their own lives... not that feminism was causing them so much misery as to compel them to commit suicide...

but since u wanted to say that, ill say whats on my mind.... i do think that you want to ignore this because i doesn't fit your political agenda...


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## Isabelle50 (Nov 19, 2012)

illmatic1 said:


> People commit suicide because their troubles surpass thier ability to cope, thus life becomes to hard to continue on
> 
> what other reasons are there in the modern western world for a person to commit suicide? last time i checked people dont commit suicide for fun...they do it to escape a life too miserable to bear...i havent heard of a epidemic of ritual self sacrifices large enough to effect any statistical data on suicides....id really like to hear another reason
> 
> ...


I haven't said anywhere I want to ignore it. I actually said exactly the opposite, that its worth really investigating why. I stand by that.

There are all kinds of reasons people might kill themselves. Mental illness is the biggest (its definitely worth looking into diagnosis statistics among men that age). Personal loss (like a family member), poverty, violence. Any number of things probably all different for each individual.

What it doesn't do is disprove any feminist issues. Suicide rate among men 17-25 doesn't have much to do with the number of women in politics, business, academia etc. It doesn't have much to do with violence against women statistics or issues of objectification, reproductive rights or women's health.

I would bet it does show that mental illness has a much higher incidence among men of that age but thats not really a political issue so much as a medical one. Its possible the suicides are linked to poverty, personal tragedy or any number of factors. The fact that women are often discriminated against doesn't mean men are immune to despair or illness.

Obviously, its worth finding out and fixing (people are dying). But I think its a little manipulative to claim that it has much to do with feminism or to speculate about the cause of something we literally have no information on. They died, we should have the respect to really find out why before we start guessing.


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## komorikun (Jan 11, 2009)

I've read that women are more likely to try to kill themselves but men are more successful at it. Men are more likely to use guns.


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