Whenever you're talking about issues concerning groups of people. It's important to make the distinction between a group and an individual. Yes, you can make collective judgement about a group based on a correlation. For example black people are more prone to committing violent crime compared to other groups. However, it doesn't mean you should label an individual a criminal based on the colour of their skin. Likewise, if I see a black person whose really good at basketball. It doesn't mean I believe all black people are good at or even into basketball. When you said women can be just as useful in any job. The key words were "can be". Most women are not as good firefighters as men are. Only about 5% of them are good enough to do such a job, because of the strength, endurance and mental capacity to do the job. Having someone whose only doing the job purely as the result of some form of affirmative action is putting other peoples lives in danger. Put it this way, if you're floundering in the sea. Would you rather have Pamela Anderson or David Hasselhoff come and save you? I think from a practical standpoint most people would want the latter.
Interesting you bring up Saudi Arabia. What people forget in these kind of deeply conservative societies is that men are equally oppressed too, but in much less obvious ways. This mainly relates to the fact that men are financially obligated to take care of their wife and children. Whereas if a women is earning money its considered entirely hers to do with as she pleases. So any money a women makes is considered to be hers and any money a man makes is considers to be theirs. This can cause problems if a women doesn't pay her taxes or runs up debts, because the responsibility and consequences ultimately fall on the man.
Eighty percent of women don't identify with modern feminists. Yet, these so called modern feminists are the ones who have the platform and the loudest voice. They tend to be the unattractive, undesirable types, or the heavily career driven types, but it's mostly the latter. However, I'll give a quick run down of my fundamental issues I have with it...
1. It's about man hating.
2. It's about telling women how to think and feel.
3. It claims to speak on the behalf of all women.
4. It tells women that they need to be more masculine.
5. It's about gaining handouts and special privileges via the violence of the state, without taking on any additional responsibilities.
6. It denies the differences between men and women.
7. It's Marxism with boobs.
And not all critics argue in a civilized manner with actual arguments, there are many people on the internet, as well as the real world, that are nothing but misogynists or trolls.
I have never met an actual misogynist, not in real life nor online. I'm sure they exist, ie. men who think that women are somehow mentally and physically inferior and should be treated differently, like second-class citizens, that women are incapable of many things that men are, that women shouldn't hold positions of power, and so on. But I have never met any such person.
Feminists really love to use the word "misogynist" as a generic insult. But in their parlance it's pretty much a synonym for "someone who doesn't agree with me". Basically invariably when I know or find out what the target of the insult has said to earn that classification, it has absolutely nothing to do with hating women or considering them inferior or anything even remotely of the sorts. I have yet to encounter an example where the word is actually being used accurately. (Again, I'm sure there are, but I have yet to see such cases.)
If there is anybody who is misogynist, it's those feminists who infantilize women and remove all agency and independence from them, who think that women need "safe spaces" that are pretty much kindergartens, and who make them fear their own shadow using distortions, false statistics and exaggerations. That is the kind of attitude that says that women can't stand up for themselves nor handle their own life, and need special treatment and pampering.
In most countries men are more likely to commit suicide than women. The vast majority of people aren't even aware of this statistic, nor care about it even if they are. AFAIK no social movement or funding is done to find the cause and try to fix it.
That's just a natural difference between being a man and being a woman. Men generally have a little harder lives, which is why men commit more suicides, but this "hardness" of life is also what makes men hard/men. That's also why the IQ of men varies more than it does between women, because of hardships and risks that men have to take. Women have more balanced lives, and men have more imbalanced lives, but that imbalance is the reason why almost all great inventions for example were done by men.
This is not meant to diminish the gravity of injustices committed against women. My intent is to point out the clear double standard in our society. We, as a society, are more protective of women, and thus we pay more attention to and care about cases where women are being mistreated, and pay little to no attention to cases where men are being mistreated (especially when the perpetrator is a woman). The existence of this double standard is seldom even acknowledged, or taken seriously. On the contrary, it's often claimed to be in the other direction.
Again, this is a natural difference between men and women. Women need to be protected, because they are are women. It's natural. Too much protection of men can be problematic, because it makes men more feminine.
I have never met an actual misogynist, not in real life nor online. I'm sure they exist, ie. men who think that women are somehow mentally and physically inferior and should be treated differently, like second-class citizens, that women are incapable of many things that men are, that women shouldn't hold positions of power, and so on. But I have never met any such person.
It's interesting that a couple of hundred years ago, such thoughts used to be the norm. You can wonder what has changed since then (?); were men really "misogynists" back then (?), and now suddenly are not misogynists anymore? Why? What would cause such a change?
That's just a natural difference between being a man and being a woman. Men generally have a little harder lives, which is why men commit more suicides, but this "hardness" of life is also what makes men hard/men. That's also why the IQ of men varies more than it does between women, because of hardships and risks that men have to take. Women have more balanced lives, and men have more imbalanced lives, but that imbalance is the reason why almost all great inventions for example were done by men.
Do you really want reduce all differences between men and women to something purely biological? Don't you think society has an influence? When people tell me "almost all great inventions were done by men", I ask them if women really ever got the same chance to make those inventions. Because I don't think that's the case.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Do you really want reduce all differences between men and women to something purely biological? Don't you think society has an influence? When people tell me "almost all great inventions were done by men", I ask them if women really ever got the same chance to make those inventions. Because I don't think that's the case.
Is it possible that, on average, men and women have different interests and different psychology? It may have a biological reason behind it.
Men are, on average, more stoic, more propense to taking risks, more competitive, and more aggressive. This is not a cultural thing, but a biological one. Innate instincts and hormones, and probably has an evolutionary cause behind it.
A good example of this is the fact that in most countries, only men are required to serve in the military. I find this unacceptable in a modern society, it should either be mandatory for anyone or no one. Everyone is well aware that this is obvious discrimination, yet it's still ignored around the world, it's just that one thing that "doesn't count". .
Just like most things feminists complain about, it's all based on the fallacy that things should be in any way equal between sexes in the first place. Men and women are different (by definition), and any good scientist will tell you that if you use different input, you'll get different output.
Men are physically stronger than women, have more testosterone, and actually have a mindset which facilitates aggression. Women's bodies are smaller, weaker, have less aggression hormones, and have a mindset built for nurturing our species versus destroying it. Needless to say, that makes women far less suitable for the job of fighting. Society figured this out thousands of years ago, nature itself figured this out millions of year ago, what's taking feminists so long?
So not only would you be hiring less suitable people, but it's bad for population growth as well. You can use a man for the army, while his pregnant partner remains at home. If the father dies in war, np, the pregnancy can still continue and our population can sustain itself. Now imagine the man staying at home, and pregnant women marching into battle (waddling into battle?). If the woman dies, so does the child, and thus the population CANNOT sustain itself if we use women for the job. That's not 'discrimination' or whatever, that's just the way biology works. EG 1 man and 5 women can have 5 children simultaneously. 5 men and 1 woman can only have 1 child simultaneously. The two situations are NOT comparable, and thus there's no reason whatsoever to suggest there should be in any way an equal representation of both scenarios.
Equality is a lie, please don't fall for it.
"Equality does not mean everyone gets the same thing because we are all inherently different. Equality is recognizing differences and making sure everyone gets the same opportunity based on those differences, which isn’t always 'equal'."
This is something I saw on the Internet some time ago, and it's one of the best arguments I have ever seen.
"Equality" is surely an overused term. Sometimes it's used to mean "fairness", and at other times it's used to mean "being the same." These two things are completely different.
"Equality does not mean everyone gets the same thing because we are all inherently different. Equality is recognizing differences and making sure everyone gets the same opportunity based on those differences, which isn’t always 'equal'."
This is something I saw on the Internet some time ago, and it's one of the best arguments I have ever seen.
"Equality" is surely an overused term. Sometimes it's used to mean "fairness", and at other times it's used to mean "being the same." These two things are completely different.
Humanism seeks equality of opportunity. Feminism (the modern "progressive" "intersectional" kind) seeks for equality of outcome. It looks at outcomes, sees differences, and then seeks to forcefully equalize them, even if that means resorting to favoritism, discrimination and quotas bases on gender and race. Thus you get things like this. Somehow racial discrimination has become acceptable in the last few years, even though as a society we fought for decades to get rid of it.
The problem is that just 'seeking equality of opportunity' is not going to bring it about. So many aspects of society and culture and institutions are biased against women, against people of colour, against transgender people, etc. either explicitly or via an aggregation of unconscious biases.
For example:
When men and women are in a group together, men tend to talk 70% of the time but think they are talking just as much as women. In addition, when a women is perceived to be 'overly talkative' via this metric, perception of their competence drops ( http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2015-10-in-mixed-gender-groups-can-you-guess-who-talks-the-most/ , links many sources)
When a woman submits her cover letter and opening pages of a novel to agents, she found that if she used a male pen name instead of her real name, agents were 8x as likely to be interested ( http://www.themarysue.com/female-novelist-male-nom-de-plume/ )
When a resume is submitted for a job application, if the resume is otherwise identical but the name is male, they are more likely to be accepted and offered a higher starting salary ( http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf )
Congressional groups, CEOs, managers, and many other groups are disproportionately white males.
(I don't know if this is true for women vs men or not, but) black people are far more likely to be sentenced and given harsher sentences for identical crimes as white people, especially for things like drug possession.
(This is not an exhaustive list by any means!)
For reasons like this, just seeking equality of opportunity will not cause true equality. This is why it is important to identify as a feminist not as an egalitarian, which makes it sound like you think not contributing to the problem will cause it to eventually sort itself out.
Until such time as these institutional and unconscious biases no longer exist, we have to have systems that counterbalance them and explicitly favour the minority group, due to the additional obstacles that stand in their way to achieve the same outcome as the non-minority group.
And as I've hinted at, it's not exclusive to women vs men - it's people of color vs white people, transgender people vs cisgender people, homosexual/bisexual/asexual people vs heterosexual people and so on, all in different sectors, to different extents and for different reasons.
BTW, John Oliver (of Last Week Tonight) has a great video on the wage gap here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsB1e-1BB4Y
It should also be noted that there is a wage gap for black people vs white people, a wage gap for black women, etc. Again, it is not exclusive to women vs men.
---
Warp wrote:
andypanther wrote:
Do you really want reduce all differences between men and women to something purely biological? Don't you think society has an influence? When people tell me "almost all great inventions were done by men", I ask them if women really ever got the same chance to make those inventions. Because I don't think that's the case.
Is it possible that, on average, men and women have different interests and different psychology? It may have a biological reason behind it.
Men are, on average, more stoic, more propense to taking risks, more competitive, and more aggressive. This is not a cultural thing, but a biological one. Innate instincts and hormones, and probably has an evolutionary cause behind it.
Women were also discouraged to become educated and even if they did get accomplishments, they were downplayed by their male peers, erased and taken credit for by men. So no, it's not just because men and women are physically different, it's because men forged the culture and the rules. Good examples at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130519-women-scientists-overlooked-dna-history-science/
---
nfq wrote:
Warp wrote:
In most countries men are more likely to commit suicide than women. The vast majority of people aren't even aware of this statistic, nor care about it even if they are. AFAIK no social movement or funding is done to find the cause and try to fix it.
That's just a natural difference between being a man and being a woman. Men generally have a little harder lives, which is why men commit more suicides, but this "hardness" of life is also what makes men hard/men. That's also why the IQ of men varies more than it does between women, because of hardships and risks that men have to take. Women have more balanced lives, and men have more imbalanced lives, but that imbalance is the reason why almost all great inventions for example were done by men.
This is actually really interesting! Men and women have suicidal thoughts at the same rate, but men are more likely to actually commit suicide successfully. Part of the reason why is because men and women choose different methods to try and commit suicide - men prefer hanging, carbon monoxide poisoning and firearms, women prefer drug overdose. As a result, men are more successful on average.
In addition, which gender commits suicide the most seems to have cultural roots. In China it's actually women who commit suicide more.
So it's definitely not as cut and dry as 'men are more suicidal and imbalanced'. I'm not sure what it actually means.
You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide
The problem is that just 'seeking equality of opportunity' is not going to bring it about.
That's a really old, tired, and completely contradictory argument.
"Seeking equality of opportunity does not work because there is no equality of opportunity currently."
Uh... That's exactly why we should aim for equality of opportunity. You saying that there still exists inequality of opportunity in no way invalidates the goal. On the very contrary. It's a silly argument.
It's like saying "seeking for women's suffrage is useless because there are still countries where women can't vote." That's a completely nonsensical argument.
When a resume is submitted for a job application, if the resume is otherwise identical but the name is male, they are more likely to be accepted and offered a higher starting salary
The reason for that is because of all these laws which make it risky to hire women. You have all these anti-discrimination laws which make it risky to employ women. On the basis she may try to sue you in the event she gets fired or doesn't get promoted. On top of that you have these paternity laws to deal with. This is why a business owner will always favour employing a man over a women. Unless that women is so much better that she's worth the risk.
When a resume is submitted for a job application, if the resume is otherwise identical but the name is male, they are more likely to be accepted and offered a higher starting salary
The reason for that is because of all these laws which make it risky to hire women. You have all these anti-discrimination laws which make it risky to employ women. On the basis she may try to sue you in the event she gets fired or doesn't get promoted. On top of that you have these paternity laws to deal with. This is why a business owner will always favour employing a man over a women. Unless that women is so much better that she's worth the risk.
1) How would you explain http://www.themarysue.com/female-novelist-male-nom-de-plume/ ? This isn't a matter of employment, it's literally 'agents don't think chicks can write books'.
2) I assume you're referring to laws in the US specifically. How about countries besides the US? Do the same laws and legal problems exist? If they don't, does the same problem (of equally qualified women being less likely to be hired than men) exist?
Do you really want reduce all differences between men and women to something purely biological? Don't you think society has an influence? When people tell me "almost all great inventions were done by men", I ask them if women really ever got the same chance to make those inventions. Because I don't think that's the case.
It's true that women didn't have the chance to contribute to those inventions, because women had a different role back then, because the inventions didn't exist yet. It was all the inventions and technology which made it possible for both men and women to be freed from our natural gender roles.
But of course, there are also biological and mental differences between men and women, which prevent men and women from doing/achieving the same things. But technology blurs those differences more and more all the time too. Even biological sex isn't entirely fixed anymore, because it can be changed through hormones and surgery. As technology progresses, I think the differences will become even fuzzier.
(It goes beyond gender too, because technology blurs the differences between nations, cultures, languages, races, classes, biological and machine etc. but that's another story.)
When a resume is submitted for a job application, if the resume is otherwise identical but the name is male, they are more likely to be accepted and offered a higher starting salary ( http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf )
Women have natural limitations, such as pregnancy, which is one reason they are less likely to get jobs. It's discrimination, but it's fair, natural and understandable. But it also depends a lot on what kind of job it is. If you apply for a job as a cashier, you're more likely to get the job if you're a woman, because stores want pretty faces in their stores. It's discrimination, but it's fair and understandable. Men and women have different bodies, which have advantages and disadvantages.
It's not natural for women to do manly jobs in the first place, because women should be at home taking care of children. But today we live in an unnatural world, because of technology, so that has changed things, forever. The same rules don't apply anymore. So many children today become disturbed, like the Joker, because they don't have enough connection to their mother and father, because we don't live naturally anymore. But there's no turning back now.
In addition, which gender commits suicide the most seems to have cultural roots. In China it's actually women who commit suicide more.
Yeah, China is a strange country. Naturally/generally men commit more suicides, but China has adopted unnatural practices like the one-child-policy, which leads to more female suicides. Also unfair discrimination against women and the gender imbalance contributes to that.
Women have natural limitations, such as pregnancy, which is one reason they are less likely to get jobs. It's discrimination, but it's fair, natural and understandable.
How is discrimination in any form or way fair, natural, and understandable? Plus it's not like every single person who happens to be a woman is also pregnant.
nfq wrote:
But it also depends a lot on what kind of job it is. If you apply for a job as a cashier, you're more likely to get the job if you're a woman, because stores want pretty faces in their stores. It's discrimination, but it's fair and understandable. Men and women have different bodies, which have advantages and disadvantages.
Do you have proof of this? Like a website link or something to support your claim?
nfq wrote:
It's not natural for women to do manly jobs in the first place, because women should be at home taking care of children. But today we live in an unnatural world, because of technology, so that has changed things, forever. The same rules don't apply anymore. So many children today become disturbed, like the Joker, because they don't have enough connection to their mother and father, because we don't live naturally anymore. But there's no turning back now.
lol
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
I respect wanting to bring the discussion around to sexism in general, but can you please either start another topic, or get back on track here?
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Sure. Well, the wikipedia article for it is pretty good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_the_United_States#Explaining_the_gender_pay_gap
It notes that women are both less likely to negotiate for pay rises AND more likely to be penalized if they do, that the wage gap doesn't disappear if you control for education level, and that if you control for things like hours worked/years experience/marital status and so on, the wage gap STILL doesn't disappear. Studies like this support the wage gap being a real thing, and not just an artifact of how we measure it.
Besides management of companies (which tend to be male dominated) institutionally or unconsciously discriminating against women, another problem that might lead to the wage gap existing is the 'Leaky STEM pipeline', where at all levels of education and training women are discouraged from continuing via a variety of factors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields#Leaky_pipeline
You are seriously using a blog post, on tumblr of all places, as evidence of... well, anything? And a blog post that uses the word "terrorism" in its title?
The problem with ideologues is that when they have been trained, and trained themselves, to see sexism and racism everywhere, they will see sexism and racism everywhere. Everything, no matter how minor, will be blown out of proportions in their minds, and they will actively seek out such examples, and filter everything else out.
It's the same thing that happens with news reporting: If the press suddenly starts reporting even minor cases of some particular crime, perhaps because such reporting has become popular for some reason, people easily get the impression that said crime is on the rise, that significantly more cases are happening now than in the past. When the reality is more probably that the crimes are publicized more by the press than before, giving it more prominence and visibility.
It's the reason why we believe that eg. violent crime is nowadays more prevalent than it was decades ago, even though statistics show the exact opposite trend. Nowadays violent crime is reported by the sensationalistic press more than before, which is why we get the false impression that it happens more than before. It's the reason why we think that women are more likely to be assaulted when walking alone on the street than men, even though statistics show the exact opposite.
If you have trained yourself to see sexism everywhere, you will see sexism everywhere, even in situations where there is none. You will interpret events as sexist because you will have a biased perspective.
I don't believe for a second that propaganda against the board gaming community. It sounds no different than the propaganda against the video gaming community. (Sure, individual cases probably happen. They happen in all communities in existence. But judging the entire community by a few examples is just propaganda.)
How is discrimination in any form or way fair, natural, and understandable?
Because people are naturally different, you can't always treat everyone the same. If you would treat everyone the same, it wouldn't be fair, because a pedophile for example would get a job at a daycare.
Plus it's not like every single person who happens to be a woman is also pregnant.
Right, but there's the possibility.
Do you have proof of this? Like a website link or something to support your claim?
It notes that women are both less likely to negotiate for pay rises AND more likely to be penalized if they do, that the wage gap doesn't disappear if you control for education level, and that if you control for things like hours worked/years experience/marital status and so on, the wage gap STILL doesn't disappear. Studies like this support the wage gap being a real thing, and not just an artifact of how we measure it.
Maybe one reason the wage gap exists is because women can still get a man very easily who takes care of her financially, so jobs still aren't as important as they are for men. But they are of course more important than in the 1800s, when women didn't need to work outside the home or educate themselves.
But when you think about it, it's pretty sexist that in the 1800s men had to do all the work and education, and women could just be at home and take care of the children. Not saying that there's necessarily anything wrong with sexism. Sexism just means that men and women have different roles in society. How different those roles should be depends on how much technological progress has erased the differences between genders/sexes.
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
The problem with feminism is that it refuses to acknowledge that we are a dimorphic species. It's one of its (mostly unstated) core tenets. Therefore, if there is any difference in averages between men and women, it absolutely must be because of discrimination. They will not hear any other explanation; they will not accept any other explanation. They will put their fingers in their ears and shout "lalalalaa! I can't hear you!"
On average, men and women think differently, and have different interests. This is both innate, and because of biological differences (such as differences in hormone production). But feminists cannot and will not accept this. They will take any difference they can see, and use it as "proof" that there is discrimination, no matter what.
Directly related to that is that they just cannot accept that men are, on average, naturally more stoic, competitive, prone to taking risks, and aggressive. They will blame society and the "toxic culture of masculinity" for that. They are reversing cause-and-effect here. (It's not culture that makes men stoic and competitive. It's the other way around. It's men being stoic and competitive by nature that shapes our culture.)
Ironically, and contradictorily, they hold the view that everybody should be accepted as they are, and their wishes respected, while at the same time trying to force everybody onto the same mold. They want to, for example, force women into becoming interested in the STEM fields, even if they don't want to (and, hypocritically, without leading by example and going into the STEM fields themselves.) Likewise they want to force men to act against their own innate personalities and become less stoic.
This thread is an embarrassment to this website.
I'll spare you all a long diatrabe and I'll try not to divulge my own viewpoints, which are actually quite nuanced. I'll just say that all of us-- men, women, whatever you identify as-- should work to make the world a more equal place for everyone. Men (since there seem to be quite a few vocal men in this thread), please heed my advice: stick your necks out just a little bit for women. Try to recognize some of the difficulties that women face in your communities. Ask them what you can do to help. Get out of your comfort zone and make a small but earnest effort to address women's issues. It doesn't have to be about the wage gap, which I know is quite controversial. It could be about reproductive rights or rape or anything else.
And you don't need to identify as a feminist either. I think feminism gets a bad rap these days, but some criticisms towards it are quite valid. I myself find the movement to be nebulous and unfocused, but most of the critiques I see here (I'm looking at you, Mitjitsu and Warp) are far off-base or paint it with too broad a brush. There are extensive discussions within the feminist movement about where it should stand on just about every issue and although you don't see them and they're not integral to Tumblr feminism doesn't mean they aren't hotly debated.
I don't want to go too off topic, but permit me to make an analogy. I recently saw a popular article about a Super Mario World speedrun that achieved code injection to jump to the ending. The comments in that article came mostly from non-speedrunners and they said something to the effect of, "It's neat, but I wouldn't say it actually beat the game. Rather, it reprogrammed the game to jump to the ending." Of course they're entitled to their opinion, but I wanted to scream to them that what does or does not constitute beating a game is very thoroughly debated within speedrunning communities and their input isn't particularly valuable.
That's what you're doing when you assert that feminism collectively believes one thing or another.