Devolution
Member
The majority of rapists are men, why shouldn't we be talking directly to them? I don't even get this thread.
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The Nation: Ending Rape Illiteracy
- Thread starter Mumei
- Start date
- Status
NovemberMike
Member
What is feminism then? The actual study of the issues generally falls under Women's Studies as far as I know. Also, using a prescriptive definition of a term that almost nobody uses is kind of dumb.
What scares you about X and X good stuff is just bad arguing if your first intent is to convince someone else, it makes the target feels like he is accused and guilty and sets of defensive instinct. It feels like you are trying to catch someone in a gotcha and see how "I knew you were a X because there is no way you would disagree with the agenda otherwise". Mumei's arguments where he uses statistics, explains things in a less accusatory way I saw other times it is better way to confront people.
Necromanti
Member
I've already shared the definition that I and many others are referring to when we use the term "feminism". As I said, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. In the end, it doesn't really matter.
NovemberMike
Member
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
Go to pages 19 and 20. Rape doesn't include female perpetrated rape, for that you want to look at "made to penetrate". 12 month totals are nearly identical across genders.
NovemberMike
Member
I'm sorry, I tried looking through your other posts and I didn't see a definition. Do you mind reposting?
Necromanti
Member
Since I'm lazy, I'll just use what's on Wikipedia. A feminist to me is someone who is "an advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women". That's it. They could be part of the feminism movement. They could be misandrists. But I see it as a desire for equal rights between genders.
Seriously?
I think you're confusing this with the ideal of removal of existing rights. Giving additional new rights to women is the same thing.
VAWA original form legislated the false idea that only men are perpetrators and only women are victims. My over arching point was there are *some* feminists who genuinely believe this it true. I find it hard to come to terms with the refusal to see this.
The defence in this thread that 'feminism' just means moderate, equality for all modern feminism, and the less saviour, and certainly not egalitarian, views of some feminists are just straw man inventions or slurs.
NovemberMike
Member
So you're defining it for the first time in this thread? That's not a terrible definition. I don't think it's perfect, and I'd probably at least get rid of the 'equality' bit since feminism doesn't tend to slavishly commit their political capital to "equality' rather than gaining rights for women, but it's not a terrible definition.
I don't agree with this. While I do think those attitudes you mention can be found in feminists, giving rights to women that ended certain oppression against them is a positive even if at the same time you don't get the same rights for men. Which should happen and it is one of the negatives of feminism that focus on one group instead of both. The positive is that they are pro rights of a group that is much better than apathy.
To better explain we have a negative situation where both men and woman lack certain rights or certain protection by the law but by the law you end one of it, one that is considered worse. I can't see that to not be positive even if not ideal. Also when you do that, you open the road to end the other one as well.
You should not have phrased it as a "zero sum" game then. That would mean giving rights to one group and removing rights from another group.
Edit: wait, let me read this a second time. Giving additional new rights is the same thing as removing existing rights? Am I reading that correctly? WTF?
NovemberMike
Member
It's exactly zero sum game. One party gains, the other party loses.
Party A (women) gain a right under law, Party B (men) explicitly get that right denied in law.
Necromanti
Member
I don't think I stated it explicitly outside of a roundabout way in one post. I would still count it as falling under equality if it gave women rights that they should have had but didn't previously. But nothing is perfect, I suppose. I want men to be equally protected when it comes to rape and sexual assault. There will always be oversights, though, and people will fight for that which matters the most to them. It seems most of us more or less want the same things in this thread when it comes to the ambiguous concept that is "equality", though.
This is the problem with making long posts. Everyone grabs a part. 
And I apologize if anyone said anything after Reuenthal; I am at my grandmother's and this computer is painfully - agonizingly - slow.
I was very specific in my question because I wanted to be clear that I was interested in people's concerns with things that I advocate; I don't want to defend or explain views that aren't my own, after all.
I honestly do not see how my tone was accusatory; he suggested I ask them what scares them about it. I was not sure what "it" was in this case, so I asked what scared people about my position (which I explained) and asked, if what I was saying was not the issue, then what was it that scared them.
I don't really see why people are reading condescension or accusations in to the question, but I can only say that I did intend to communicate either of those things when I posed the question. It actually was posed in all sincerity.
If you mean your post in #245 where you talk about wanting to increase the sentence for a false accusation of rape to one to two decades, as I understand it filing a false police report for a felony crime such as rape could result in 2 to 10 years for that alone, and I assume that perjury could be added on top of that, which could easily get you to around those numbers you were advocating. If it can be demonstrated that someone knowingly filed a false police report, then I agree that this should be prosecuted.
I wouldn't advocate that for every case; if a fifteen year old girl lied about rape because she was afraid of what her parents would do if they found out she had sex, I think it would be cruel to then send her to prison for 20 years. And I do worry about the potential deletrious effects on reporting if women believe that there is a danger that legitimate rape victims will be prosecuted as having filed a false rape report. But I'm not opposed in principle to the idea of harsh punishments for filing a false rape report, and the potential for these already exists on the books.
And I apologize if anyone said anything after Reuenthal; I am at my grandmother's and this computer is painfully - agonizingly - slow.
I was very specific in my question because I wanted to be clear that I was interested in people's concerns with things that I advocate; I don't want to defend or explain views that aren't my own, after all.
I honestly do not see how my tone was accusatory; he suggested I ask them what scares them about it. I was not sure what "it" was in this case, so I asked what scared people about my position (which I explained) and asked, if what I was saying was not the issue, then what was it that scared them.
I don't really see why people are reading condescension or accusations in to the question, but I can only say that I did intend to communicate either of those things when I posed the question. It actually was posed in all sincerity.
If you mean your post in #245 where you talk about wanting to increase the sentence for a false accusation of rape to one to two decades, as I understand it filing a false police report for a felony crime such as rape could result in 2 to 10 years for that alone, and I assume that perjury could be added on top of that, which could easily get you to around those numbers you were advocating. If it can be demonstrated that someone knowingly filed a false police report, then I agree that this should be prosecuted.
I wouldn't advocate that for every case; if a fifteen year old girl lied about rape because she was afraid of what her parents would do if they found out she had sex, I think it would be cruel to then send her to prison for 20 years. And I do worry about the potential deletrious effects on reporting if women believe that there is a danger that legitimate rape victims will be prosecuted as having filed a false rape report. But I'm not opposed in principle to the idea of harsh punishments for filing a false rape report, and the potential for these already exists on the books.
NovemberMike
Member
No it isn't. Zero sum implies that there is a pie, and whenever you give anything to one person nobody else can have that bit. Saying "let's not be an asshole to Joe" doesn't imply that you have to be an asshole to Bob because it's not a zero sum game. You can probably make some kind of argument about how funding is zero sum, but I'm not seeing the point you're trying to make.
Necromanti
Member
Are we talking about the right to rape?
Devolution
Member
Equal protection.
NovemberMike
Member
Clearly, federal grants plan into this. Grants that would only go to women domestic violence groups.
NovemberMike
Member
No, that's not quite it either. Federal grants are largely determined by the power of the political groups around them. Feminism tends to be fairly powerful as far as these things go and can get quite a bit of money, but the grants wouldn't default to shelters for male victims or anything.
Ok, cool, I remember a more strong disagreement in the past but I might had misremembered.
I think it is better to communicate by explaining yourself and then asking in a less direct way why they would disagree. For example you explain a lot of positive things and ask what is the negative about them.
However an argument that starts with the assumption of guys my agenda is perfect why would you be scared with it is making one feel accused because they feel that they are about to be caught in a gotcha. Another problem is that they might do disagree with you on something, but describing something as great and asking why someone would disagree does not allow much discussion from which people can see the opposite point of view. You prove your agenda by explaining it basically and not claiming that it does X and X and ask people why they are scared. People who are already suspicious are not so easily convinced by claims.
travisbickle
Member
Quote from the PDF:
Now I would say this could be defined as rape (the report separated it under sexual violence) but I think you should look at some of the previous posters in this topic and ask them if they think drunk sex with your girlfriend could be rape. You could also ask if willingly going home with your work colleague after a party could lead to rape.
Devolution
Member
Also how about all those threads where male posters have no problem with teachers doing it to students.
Being the sole voting block and deciders of legislation. I'm really not quite sure how you can not see that. ALL changes in power structures are zero sum, that isn't a value judgement and you should stop taking it as such.
SPE was talking about rights. Being the sole voting block or being able to own slaves aren't really rights. Although after awhile I think SPE meant the term in a broader meaning, but I'm not sure. It did seem like SPE was making a value judgment based on the supposed zero sum nature, though. *shrugs*
Anyways, I still disagree that all changes are zero sum. Legalizing gay marriage, for example, would provide rights to homosexuals without negatively impacting others.
(Edit: Strictly speaking, giving the women the right to vote wasn't zero sum unless men lost the right to vote. But I see your point anyway.)
(Edit2: Sorry for all the edits
)Devolution
Member
He didn't say they lost power, he said they lost rights. Of course there is a shift in the balance of power but that was not was he was specifically arguing in terms of rights being lost by the majority.
travisbickle
Member
It's like some people lack any, or enough, education in these matters, like they are illiterate some may say.
I wonder by what definition one goes when it comes to "being made to penetrate."
Once I went out to a club in Seoul and this really drunk Korean girl picked me out early and started making advances, but I politely refused as I didn't really think she was cute. I had 0 to drink, I was tired and just accompanying a friend at his request. She kept bothering me over an hour or so and eventually forcefully grabbed me and we started making out. She was completely shit faced. Anyway I was turned on enough by this that I didn't refuse her when she dragged me out and we went to a Love Hotel for a half hour or so, where after getting railed she vomited on the bed and we went our separate ways. I don't speak any Korean and the only English she seemed to know was "come on."
I don't feel like I was raped I feel like I made a crappy decision but having been forcibly aroused, it'd be hard to make a different choice. I could see how one person would call this "made to penetrate" and another would say that it's entirely my call, but reversing the roles, if I was a woman and she was a drunk man, this would definitely be rape. Yet somehow I can't disagree with this double standard I hold and I can't find a comfortable way to explain why I think it's okay to protect one gender and not the other from specific instances.
It's such a hard subject to talk about. You can come out looking like an insufferable white knight or a vile rapist.
I don't think you misremember; I used to feel more opposed to it than I do now and I've argued that before. I still have some of the same concerns I had before, but I'm not opposed in principle the way I was. And there are probably people who disagree with me but aren't saying anything.
I see.
Well, I wasn't meaning to give the impression that it was a gotcha question.
Nobody complaining about supposed lost rights can even name what rights are being lost.
Amibguous Cad
Member
Jackben
bitch I'm taking calls.
No. And neither is the feminism that was initially discussed in this thread.
I don't understand why the point of the difference between rights and privileges keeps being ignored in this thread despite being brought up repeatedly.
This is wrong and I don't understand why you keep arguing it without addressing any of the people calling you out. People aren't losing rights from gender equality nor would traditional marriage lose any rights where gay marriage is allowed. What may be lost are special privileges above and beyond the kind of basic rights feminist and gay rights activists are trying to secure that are only enjoyed through the denial of these basic rights by the dominant group.
Am I just crazy in my thinking here, or is this really a hard thing to understand?
Dumb people don't know they're dumb, news at 11.
But I agree with the last point, and I would imagine it's no stretch that those who don't directly agree with the gaffes still view it as a non-issue. Just as bad.
SPE is propagating an anti-feminist / MRA myth about VAWA that insists that it was an misandrist bill because, well, the title of the bill is about protecting women and doesn't mention men, despite the fact that men are covered under the bill. It is named the Violence Against Women Act because the vast majority of the victims of domestic abuse are women. It is claimed by some anti-feminist and men's rights groups that men are as much victims of domestic violence as women are, though this is specious and based on false equivalencies:
Such assertions are not supported by empirical research at all, and the inferences drawn from them are even more unwarranted. For example, in the original study of "The Battered Husband Syndrome," sociologist Susan Steinmetz surveyed fifty-seven couples. Four of the wives, but not one husband, reported having been seriously beaten. From this finding, Steinmetz concluded that men simply don't report abuse, and that here must be a serious problem of husband abuse, and that some 250,000 men were hit every year - this, remember, from findings that no husbands were abused. By the time the media hoopla over these bogus data subsided, the figure had ballooned to twelve million battered husbands every year!
One problem is the questions asked in the research. Those studies that found that women hit men as much as men hit women asked couples if they ever, during the course of their relationship, hit their partner. An equal number of men and women answered yes. The number changed dramatically, though, when they were asked who initiated the violence (was it offensive, or defensive), how severe it was (did she push him before or after he'd broken her jaw?), and how often the violence occurred. When these three questions were posed, the results looked like what we knew all along: the amount, frequency, severity, and consistency of violence against women is far greater than anything done by women to men - Lorena Bobbitt notwithstanding.
Another problem stems from who was asked. The studies that found comparable rates of domestic violence asked only one partner about the incident. But studies in which both partners were interviewed separately found large discrepancies between reports from women and men. The same researchers who found comparable rates have suggested that such results be treated with extreme caution, because men underreport severe assaults. (Perhaps it is felt to be equally unmanly to beat up a woman as to be beaten up by one, since "real men" never need to raise a hand against a woman.
A third problem results from when the informants were asked about domestic violence. The studies that found comparability asked about incidents that occurred in a single year, thus equating a single slap with a reign of domestic terror that may have lasted decades. And while research is clear and unequivocal that violence against women increases dramatically following divorce or separation, the research that found comparable results excluded incidents that followed separation or divorce. About 76 percent of all assaults take place then, with a male perpetrator more than 93 percent of the time.
Finally, the research that suggests comparability is all based on the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), a scale that does not distinguish between offensive and defensive violence, equating a vicious assault with a woman hitting her husband while he is, for instance, assaulting their children. Nor does it take into account physical differences between women and men, which lead to women being six times more likely to require medical care for injuries sustained in family violence. Nor does it include the nonphysical means by which women are compelled to remain in abusive relationships (income disparities, fears about their children, economic dependency). Nor does it include marital rape or sexual aggression. As one violence researcher asks, "Can you call two people equally aggressive when a woman punches her husband's chest with no physical harm resulting and a man punches his wife's face and her nose is bleeding and broken? These get the same scores on the CTS."
One problem is the questions asked in the research. Those studies that found that women hit men as much as men hit women asked couples if they ever, during the course of their relationship, hit their partner. An equal number of men and women answered yes. The number changed dramatically, though, when they were asked who initiated the violence (was it offensive, or defensive), how severe it was (did she push him before or after he'd broken her jaw?), and how often the violence occurred. When these three questions were posed, the results looked like what we knew all along: the amount, frequency, severity, and consistency of violence against women is far greater than anything done by women to men - Lorena Bobbitt notwithstanding.
Another problem stems from who was asked. The studies that found comparable rates of domestic violence asked only one partner about the incident. But studies in which both partners were interviewed separately found large discrepancies between reports from women and men. The same researchers who found comparable rates have suggested that such results be treated with extreme caution, because men underreport severe assaults. (Perhaps it is felt to be equally unmanly to beat up a woman as to be beaten up by one, since "real men" never need to raise a hand against a woman.
A third problem results from when the informants were asked about domestic violence. The studies that found comparability asked about incidents that occurred in a single year, thus equating a single slap with a reign of domestic terror that may have lasted decades. And while research is clear and unequivocal that violence against women increases dramatically following divorce or separation, the research that found comparable results excluded incidents that followed separation or divorce. About 76 percent of all assaults take place then, with a male perpetrator more than 93 percent of the time.
Finally, the research that suggests comparability is all based on the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), a scale that does not distinguish between offensive and defensive violence, equating a vicious assault with a woman hitting her husband while he is, for instance, assaulting their children. Nor does it take into account physical differences between women and men, which lead to women being six times more likely to require medical care for injuries sustained in family violence. Nor does it include the nonphysical means by which women are compelled to remain in abusive relationships (income disparities, fears about their children, economic dependency). Nor does it include marital rape or sexual aggression. As one violence researcher asks, "Can you call two people equally aggressive when a woman punches her husband's chest with no physical harm resulting and a man punches his wife's face and her nose is bleeding and broken? These get the same scores on the CTS."
And unfortunately because of lobbying in opposition to the bill's reauthorization, not just by men's rights groups but also by groups who opposed the Senate bill's added protections for undocumented immigrants, Native American people, and LGBT victims of domestic violence (though there is a great deal of overlap between these groups, as you can imagine), the reauthorization of the bill has become a contentious issue, and the bill has been watered down to the point where the bill which passed the House has stripped those protections due to House Republican intransigence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Bindel
Specifically, she campaign for, and was almost successful in getting it legislated, mitigating factors as a defences in murder cases to be denied to men, but enshrined to women. The goal was to allow a heat-of-the-moment self defence for women trapped in domestic violence, while also explicit deny the same right for men. It would have meant being a female victim of domestic abuse would be a legal reason to kill a male abuser, effectively granting the death penalty. She also has written extensively in the Guardian and elsewhere on why male-to-female transgenders are not real women and should be treated (legally and socially) as men (and also written on why she hates all men).
There is a Daily Mail story (sorry, horrific paper) written by Erin Pizzey, a campaigner for domestic abuse victims, that goes into great detail why the Bindel / Harriet Harman proposal and is awful.
http://www.*****************/news/a...estic-abuse-away-murder-affront-morality.html
Trying to pretend like bigots like this woman don't exist and actively lobby for legislation is at best naive. At no point have I said that these view are in any way mainstream or representative of all Feminism. I have stated the opposite. But these views still exist under the broad umbrella of feminism, which goes back to my original point that you're all jumping down my throat and playing at semantics.
I know this, and have not claimed this at all. The people calling me out have either incorrectly inferred my meaning, or just not read what I've written.
As I've stated a bunch of times, I all strongly in favour of equality for all, regardless of gender, race, sexuality etc. My original point are there are those within single issue political movements that don't want or campaign for equality for all, but just for the demographic they are part of. There is a vein of, at best mistrust and at worst hatred, of women amongst the Mens Rights movement. There are radial man hating feminists. There are lesbian campaigners who hate gays or trans, there are gay campaigners who hate bisexuals and heterosexuals. None of these are mainstream within their respective movements, but they all exist.
Hence my reservation for ever wanting to view myself as a Feminist, as Mens Rights Activist or any other ideology, even if at the basic level, I agree entirely with their goals.
When I first read what you wrote, I thought to myself, "Well, that sounds terrible. I wonder what he's talking about!" So I went and clicked on her Wikipedia page that you linked and I saw this:
Since the death of Emma Humphreys, who she helped to get released from prison, Bindel had sought to get a law changed that had historically protected men and penalised women. If men murdered a partner in the heat of the moment, an appeal to 'provocation' had been admissible in mitigation. Such an appeal was not practical for women trapped in violent relationships, because murders carried out in the context of ongoing subjection to violence tended not to occur in the heat of the moment, but would be often be calculated as a solution which provided an escape from violence. Bindel's campaign against violence against women on the one hand sought to resist the mitigation men could appeal to when partners were murdered, and allow the sustained violence women could be subjected to act as a mitigating factor if they murdered their partner.
In other words, men were able to murder their partners and make an appeal towards "provocation" and have that supposed provocation be admissible in mitigation, whereas women who were trapped in long-term abusive relationships could not use that long-term abuse as a mitigating factor in sentencing. This arrangement clearly advantaged abusers, and I can see why she would want to change that. I do not see any evidence for the notion that this ability to use evidence of long-term abuse in mitigation would not be available to men who had suffered long-term abuse, but perhaps there is something about that elsewhere.
Then I read the DailyMail piece, and it served as confirmation for why banning it was a good idea - for future reference, if a link becomes asterisked it is a banned site. In particular, Erin Pizzey writes:
Ms Bindel displayed her lack of balance in a recent article in the Guardian newspaper, entitled Why I hate men.
One of her sentences read: I will say loud and proud, yes, today I hate men, and will tomorrow and the day after.
One of her sentences read: I will say loud and proud, yes, today I hate men, and will tomorrow and the day after.
This is patently dishonest. The full title of that article was "Why I hate men:
At least those who perpetrate crimes against women and those who do nothing to stop it."
The full context of that quote from the article was " I will not be holding my breath, but in the meantime, I will say loud and proud, yes, today I hate men, and will tomorrow and the day after. But only the men who perpetrate these crimes against my sisters, and those who do nothing to stop it. Are you in either one of those categories? If so, then I despise you."
What's more, Erin Pizzey is someone who argues that men are as likely to suffer from domestic abuse as women, but as I have explained this is based on a false equivalency that says that "when a woman punches her husband's chest with no physical harm resulting and a man punches his wife's face and her nose is bleeding and broken" that these are both equal, or that "studies that found comparability asked about incidents that occurred in a single year, thus equating a single slap with a reign of domestic terror that may have lasted decades." The idea of most domestic abuse being reciprocal involves deliberately ignoring the differences and making false equivalencies, and it is unfortunate that a woman who started one of the first women's shelters would make these false equivalencies or would write an article so manifestly dishonest.
And I have no defense for Bindel's bigoted attacks and ignorant comments on transgender people, but on the charge of misandry particularly I am not seeing it from the evidence you provided, particularly given that that evidence has been deliberately misleading.
I started reading Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape partially because of this topic; I have had it out from the library for a few weeks but hadn't gotten around to it yet. I'm finding a lot to like, and some stuff that I'm not so sure I agree with. And some things where I think it sounds a bit ridiculous, but as I read further I see that it is something I agree with.
These are two passages I particularly liked, from A Love Letter from an Anti-Rape Activist to her Feminist Sex-Toy Store and Why Nice Guys Finish Last:
There's a lot of great stuff; it is more of an anthology of essays on a number of subjects (e.g. consent, youth sexuality (developing healthy sexual identities free of violence, shame, and media manipulation), queer sexuality, masculinities, race relating, what we're up against institutionally, and so forth. I particularly like the essay "Toward A Performance Model of Sex' which contrasts a performance model (where sex is constructed as a collaborative performance between two or more people where nothing is lost) with a commodity model put forth by the abstinence movement ("Girls have a wonderful gift to give, and we don't want them to give all of themselves away. What we want to do is present themselves as a rose to their husband with no blemishes," as one purity ball volunteer puts it), those on the other end of the scale who also see sex as a commodity but simply want women to allow men to "exploit it more freely" ("My skills have gotten pretty good, and I've seduced two girls this past week, and immediately after it happened, I wasn't attracted to them anymore. I feel like, how can she be a high-valued female if she was THAT easy to get in to bed" / "Too bad she's still a depreciating and often damaged asset" as one illustrative PUA forum conversation put it), and "Nice Guys" (not to be confused with actual nice guys; it is a term used in the feminist blogosphere "to refer to passive-aggressive hetero men who complain that they are refused sex in favor of other men when, apparently, they deem themselves deserving. Usually their belief system revolves around the idea that other men, who treat women badly, are much more appealing to women, and that they they themselves are disadvantaged in a sexual marketplace by their refusal to abuse or trick women in certain ways. Their entire worldview depends on the commodity model, and on a corollary view of their own entitlement: that there must be some "proper" way for them to act and "get" sex; that if they do all the "right" things, they will unlock the lock and get laid.").
These are two passages I particularly liked, from A Love Letter from an Anti-Rape Activist to her Feminist Sex-Toy Store and Why Nice Guys Finish Last:
Love Letter said:
Nice Guys said:
There's a lot of great stuff; it is more of an anthology of essays on a number of subjects (e.g. consent, youth sexuality (developing healthy sexual identities free of violence, shame, and media manipulation), queer sexuality, masculinities, race relating, what we're up against institutionally, and so forth. I particularly like the essay "Toward A Performance Model of Sex' which contrasts a performance model (where sex is constructed as a collaborative performance between two or more people where nothing is lost) with a commodity model put forth by the abstinence movement ("Girls have a wonderful gift to give, and we don't want them to give all of themselves away. What we want to do is present themselves as a rose to their husband with no blemishes," as one purity ball volunteer puts it), those on the other end of the scale who also see sex as a commodity but simply want women to allow men to "exploit it more freely" ("My skills have gotten pretty good, and I've seduced two girls this past week, and immediately after it happened, I wasn't attracted to them anymore. I feel like, how can she be a high-valued female if she was THAT easy to get in to bed" / "Too bad she's still a depreciating and often damaged asset" as one illustrative PUA forum conversation put it), and "Nice Guys" (not to be confused with actual nice guys; it is a term used in the feminist blogosphere "to refer to passive-aggressive hetero men who complain that they are refused sex in favor of other men when, apparently, they deem themselves deserving. Usually their belief system revolves around the idea that other men, who treat women badly, are much more appealing to women, and that they they themselves are disadvantaged in a sexual marketplace by their refusal to abuse or trick women in certain ways. Their entire worldview depends on the commodity model, and on a corollary view of their own entitlement: that there must be some "proper" way for them to act and "get" sex; that if they do all the "right" things, they will unlock the lock and get laid.").
kame-sennin
Member
This argument gets trotted out all the time in debates about social issues and it's always nonsense. Every system of oppression for one group results in corresponding privilege for another. Campaigning for the equal rights of the privileged is redundant as they have both equal treatment, and an unearned advantage. On the other hand, advocating for equal rights for the oppressed automatically pushes us towards equal rights for all because the rights of the privileged were never in jeopardy in the first place.
I think in actuality you are correct, but perceptually this disconnect goes back to what you mentioned here, particularly "[T]rue gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women."
And a good example of that:
Simple enumeration of equality may not be the answer. One teacher told journalist Peggy Orenstein that after learning that teachers paid more attention to boys than girls, she explained to the class henceforth she was going to call on both sexes exactly equally, and to make sure she did, she would hold the attendance roster in her hand. What happened next surprised her. "After two days the boys blew up" she told Orenstein. "They started complaining and saying that I was calling on the girls more than them. I showed them that it wasn't true and they had to back down. I kept on doing it, but for the boys, equality was hard to get used to; they perceived it as a big loss."
(Of course, equality is virtually always seen as a loss by the privileged group. If a teacher gives exactly equal time to heterosexuality and to homosexuality, to people of color as to white people, to women and to men, he or she is invariably going to be criticized as being biased in favor of the minority group. When one is used to being the center of attention all the time, being out of the limelight for a moment or even an hour can feel like complete rejection.)
(Of course, equality is virtually always seen as a loss by the privileged group. If a teacher gives exactly equal time to heterosexuality and to homosexuality, to people of color as to white people, to women and to men, he or she is invariably going to be criticized as being biased in favor of the minority group. When one is used to being the center of attention all the time, being out of the limelight for a moment or even an hour can feel like complete rejection.)
- Status