Got Feminism?
 

I'm wondering, whether or not you lovely people believe that feminism is still needed? Some might say that men and women generally are equal in regards to work and opportunities.

The other debate I'd like to propose is, what really defines a feminist? Can it be defined?

I believe that it's not about burning bras and hating men. It's about women becoming empowered and empowering their own to be what they want to be. Yes women can do anything these days, but it doesn't mean it's easier. We are expected to run households, look after children, manage finances, have a career and a husband. No wonder they can't cope. No wonder rates of depression are so high. With all the benefits of equal rights has come a LOT of responsibility.

Were women really destined to be carers and child bearers? Is it really in the Earth's best interests to produce any more children? I don't believe it is. I think tighter controls should be enforced and more focus be on feeding the people that already exist who live in dire situations. I may be rambling but I really think people put down feminism without realising what it has done for women in the past and what it could still do presently to improve women's welfare.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TRcQCuP2b5...t+ads+0412.jpg

This is going to end in a ban. I can just feel it.

Sorry, carry on.

Personally I get a little ticked when women complain about a right they may not have (nothing in particular) yet they still dont have the "right" to get drafted. Now I realize men are typically physically more capable but its not like every job in the military is ripping through dessert sands wielding an m16 and field gear.

What, me being banned? If people can listen to each other and not make things personal there should be none of that.

It's not like all women are tiny and dainty who cannot lift a weapon. So yeah, they should definitely be able to get drafted.

I did not mean they are, hence I said typically not always. For instance the average weight of a male is more so than a female.

Yip I'm sure it is. But if a women of substantial weight and fitness could handle it then they should go for it. Like anything, you need to be sure of what you're getting yourself into.

There are inequalities that still exist, and likely more for women than men, but by and large equality has been achieved in most civilised societies. What still has to be achieved is the more backwards misogynist societies catching up in that regard, and in places like japan, a cultural shift away from misogyny is taking a long time to really take hold. The younger generation are starting to get it, but among the more violent youth and the old timers, its still a prevalent social attitude that women should be a certain way and act accordingly.

Bear in mind we want to avoid positive discrimination but we should also take into account that for a large number of things women are simply different. An example would be politics. There are less women in politics, but that by and large seems to be because women don't WANT to be in politics. Canada has a scheme whereby women are given cash incentives in the forms of higher salaries and benefits, if they choose to work in fields where women are currently 'underrepresented', but these cash incentives in my mind are a terrible idea, because they work on the assumption that all things should have a 50/50 gender split, which will result in women being coerced by cash incentives, into careers and jobs that they're not interested in and not suited for. (And, according to a canadian friend of mine, already has)

^ I'm with this. I think there are jobs and careers suited to certain mindsets, physical builds, mental makeups. In general, some of these jobs are better done by women, and others better done by men, and I'm not talking about housecleaning and caring for one and everything else for the other, before anyone calls me up on that. Women (in general) have a greater sense of empathy, and social ability: I don't know about you, but I'm at best OK at birthdays, ages and names, but my sister can remember the names of all 27 of our cousins, the ages of most of them and the birthdays of most of those, despite the fact that we only see 11 of them on anything approaching a regular basis. Those sort of abilities are well suited to HR type situations, or charity groups, as just two of many examples that could be given.

Now, there are however always exceptions: women who are good at "male" ways of life, and vice versa, which is why I think that jobs shouldn't be gender specific, but that people going into them should be aware that in areas that are very much dominated by one gender, they will be an exception to the rule, because they are exceptional people. Trying to force people that don't fit the bill properly into a job just to equal out the gender balance is just plain silly. There are areas that will be equal, because they aren't gender or mentality specific, but especially things like serving in the army, most positions in the army will be male orientated, because protecting the tribe has always been one of the primary jobs of the male population.

I realise i'm rambling a little here, but am I making sense?

In essence, I don't believe that balance should be forced for the benefit of a gender balance, as then people who are not right for the job will end up doing it in the place of someone better suited, but neither should jobs be gender orientated: The criteria for any job should be based on mental and physical makeups, depending on what is needed, not gender, regardless of how often the two coincide.

I realise I also haven't really approached my views on Feminism at all in this post really, remind me to do that at some stage :P

No not you specifically. People on here just take this feminism stuff really personal and just hoping it won't turn ugly.

Try hanging out on an IRC channel full of lesbians, gays, straights, bisexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, nonsexuals, and transgender lesbians.

Then tell them that you really can't be bothered keeping track of everyones preferred pronouns, and that unless they happen to be a particularly memorable person, they'll be referred to as 'he' for simplicity.

Just quote Rule 30. Chances are most of em are hes anyway.

Actually 46% of the internet is now female.

See, that's a skewed statistic. 46% of the internet is female... provided you stay within the bounds of popular sites and social networking. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. are massively skewing the stats towards equality. If you stray outside the most popular areas, into say, IRC, I'd be willing to bet there are just as few girls as always.

I doubt that actually, every IRC channel I'm in has a reasonable number of confirmed gurlz.

yeah, but not almost 50%, surely? I have played a fair few online games, and the number doesn't even approach 1/4.

On top of that, I'm on the moderation team of one, and of the 6 "girls" (confirmed, with pictures) that were on the team, 4 of those turned out to be guys who'd just been a little more inventive with their cover stories.

Feminism is built around the proposition that men are pigs and that women are equal to men.

Umm no
Radical feminism doesn't equal all feminism

I wondered wether or not I should emphasize the irony with an apt smiley, but of course I wasn't serious. In fact, I nicked it off another entry.

Good then
I just saved you a thirtiesgirl lashing

You really shouldn't have. I would have needed one of those. :bonkhead:

Both of my (female) housemates think feminism is silly. They believe that there are certain duties and responsibilities that women have, and will always have, that men don't. They believe that the two sexes will never be completely equal. I guess they just kind of accept these things.

This rings quite false to me. More like, people in dire situations should have the basic sense of responsibility not to have children that they cannot look after. It is laughable that people in privileged circumstances feel such sympathy for starving people in areas highly prone to drought and famine. They brought it upon themselves for creating a population size that was not sustainable given the resources available. If people wish to be, in practical terms, suicidal, then that is their prerogative and they must bear the consequences. A much smaller population would have had no trouble surviving in even the most challenging of climates.

As for whether it is in the earth's interests to produce more children, of course it is. This is how we as a species evolve and become stronger and superior to our ancestors. The strong prevail over the weak. That's the rule of nature. That's why any of us exists today. Because there was person after person after person in our ancestry who was strong and robust and attractive enough to be able to reproduce. Limiting reproduction would prevent this natural process from occurring, the weak would start to outnumber the strong, and our entire species would be doomed.

I think it's important to have people fighting for female rights as well as male rights to ensure that the interests of both sexes are taken care of in society. I also don't really mind systems that promote/ensure women and males are somewhat equally represented in politics. Men and women are different and if a country is made up of 50/50 men and women, then women's interests may be underrepresented if the government is made up by 90% men.

There's a lot of wrongishness in this, some basic assumptions which are incorrect.

The most important is an error also hinted at by Vanilla in her first post. Instinctively, we don't care about our species. Evolution does not reward you for choosing not to have children for the greater good. Actually, it would punish such a decision, hence it's generally not adaptable. The idea that we base our choices on what's good for humanity is false. We generally don't and those who do have arrived at these conclusions and managed to convince themselves emotionally based on rationality. Such people are few in the grand scheme of things.

Agree!

Evolution simply doesn't apply to an individual level at any given time, and I cannot see the point of hanging on to that thread whenever it comes to issues like why we act in a certain way as human beings (or the myth of overpopulation, which is hinted in the post you cited above). It's at the very core of human nature to adjust the surroundings rather than adjust to the surroundings in order to overcome problems along the way. The notion of "survival of the fittest" among human beings is just so 19th century. At best.

My point was, if there were to be some sort of interventionist approach, then it would not be control measures to limit the number of children being born in developed countries. This makes no sense. Actually, if anything it isn't even an issue. The most advanced nations have ever diminishing birth rates already. Perhaps we ought to be having more children rather than less, in order to avoid the aging population outstripping the working population and all the huge problems that will result from that.

As for the problem of people starving in undeveloped countries, then my point was that it is largely self-wrought. Those areas have the resources to support a population - just not on the scale to which they reproduce. They overpopulated themselves. So if there were to be an interventionist approach, then surely it would be to counter the hazards of overpopulation in regions which cannot support it - and NOT limiting developed nations' populations in order to feed those regions.

On the topic of the workforce, I don't think that women should be pressured or bribed into fulfilling roles they would otherwise have no interest in, but should be supported and treated equally if they so choose to partake in it.

I like you, you're sane.

I think at this point in history in many first world countries, or at least the one I live in, the idea of trying to reach equality by only focusing on one gender is myopic and counterproductive. There are many areas in which I think things need to be improved for women (like better representation in politics and business) but I also think there are areas concerning men that need to be improved as well (such as a legal system that's biased against them and a higher incidence of homelessness). What we should be doing is trying work on all these things, not just half of them.

I couldn't agree more. I was going to say something similar, I'm glad you brought it up.

I'm no feminist myself but to be fair I reckon that today's take on feminism is not concerned with legal rights like it was up until the mid-20th century or so, along with the civil rights movement and all that. It's more of a philosophical "movement" (a very loosely coherent movement at that, hence the quotation marks) more keen on casting light on certain gender-related presumptions and social patterns rather than taking direct political action. It's not so much of an issue about wether women "should" be at home with the kids or pursue a career or whatever, but more about trying to explain why women and men in general are associated with certain phenomena and expectations in the eyes of the world.

I sorta figured you were a dude.
A feminist dude would be... Different.

I know feminist men. You can be male and support the equality of women, same as you can be white and support equality of race. The fact that you think it's weird for a male to be feminist is perhaps a sexist expectation of men in and of itself. ;)

I am not saying that it's misogynist to believe only women should stand up for women's rights, I'm merely pointing out that there are social inequalities for BOTH men and women that you may not have considered.

I don't think equality is about letting women become men, it's about acknowledging that everyone is equivalent to one another, whether that's achieved by women remaining unshaven, or men taking pride in being stay at home dads and enjoying yoga.

Ah, I think that women should have the same rights, indeed.
But I guess men and woman are not equal. I mean, they do differ.
There's always exceptions, but it's not like it's a good idea to treat my male friends like I treat my female friends and the other way around. And I don't mean that in a sexual way.

I'd sure love to illustrate my thoughts on this, but I can't find the right words (again).

I completely agree with this.

Well, technically, statistically most college graduates are women, and there's been very little to match the wage gaps. So, yes, there is still a place for feminism. Even if society is legally fair to women, there always has to be a force to encourage, and support, and push for women to strive harder.

Apart from that, I am kind of iffy on some feminist values. I feel that sometimes feminist people tend to be incredibly irony illiterate, and overly preachy. I've seen to the point of trying to construe the word "bitch" as some sort of sexist epitome.

However, there are some values I do agree with. One I definitely see is the struggle against the cosmetic/tabloid industry. An industry that profits off of creating an image of feminine beauty that is literally unattainable(Plastic surgery, starvation, camera tricks, photoshop enhancement) yet consistently wants to push women to attempt to reach paying hand over fist to enhance themselves to this illusion of perfection to attract mates that it's statistically proven men don't even expect them to strive for.

Worse yet, from this, there are so many women who obviously conform to this standard of beauty in order to achieve some level of mainstream exposure (entertainers across the board, pretty much. From Jan the weatherlady to Jessica Alba) who turn around and try to defend their "beauty" of which obviously they've attained only to procure economic success, as some sort of skewed pro-feminine viewpoint.

For reasons like mentioned above, I think there's very much a need for feminism, and always will be, really.

Well Vanilla, ya jackass, I was writing out a traditionally incendiary response to this question when none other than my Feminist girlfriend asked what it was that I was working on.

I started writing that 90 ****ING MINUTES AGO. This is the last time I do anything like this when she's home.

This is one of few, if not the only, entries here that actually approaches what is asked for in the thread start.