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*looks around, taps chin softly
I thought this was a thread where we could all joke and have fun! Where is the fun gone?!
*runs away hands waving wildly in the air
AHHHH, I'm coming to join you fun!
8-p
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Blarg: I was a big supporter of feminism at first. No longer. It has been too twisted and corrupted from its original mission and insight. What a shame. What once had us moving forward now has us moving backward. Some of us treating each other worse than ever. Yet again.
I'm personally a fan of transformative feminism, but most of the more recent forms are way too focused on bettering women whether or not it unfairly harms men. The original goal and process was admirable, rebalance society and reduce the suffering of all people.

That hasn't happened in recent years and the gender roles available to straight men actually appear to be shrinking.
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hedwards: ...
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Yumi: I might sound incoherent, sorry in advance, it's past 2 am here and I'm very tired...

Eh I don't really see career and mental capability as being less important than your points. But anyway; I have to read about selective service sometime, I saw that it's basically applying for the army? I do not know how the army functions in america, nor about the ways for women to get financial aid. Also when you say financial aid I can only think of college (I'm ignorant...). If there are special scholarships offered for gay people (and I know there are, my friend was seriously angry about that), of course there will be those for women. From what I know women were not allowed to attend ivy league schools until sometime in the 80s? So actually it comes as no surprise. And honestly you can't really expect every single woman to be forced to get into the army. I mean of course, there are women who do it, like it, and are physically fit for it. But most women aren't really fit for the army. We are physically weaker (which is why we are inferior to men in sports) and that's a biological fact we can't change. The fact that they're forcing you to join the army to get financial aid is something you should blame your government for, and the patriarchal society throughout history. But there are other ways to get financial aid.
Selective service is registering with the government so that in the case of WWIII breaking out they have a comprehensive list of all individuals eligible for the draft. These are people who are being forced to sign up for conscription and failure to do it means that they aren't eligible for any scholarships. In a similar way to foreign students being unable to get any financial aid due to federal regulations which come into play.

The issue here is that it's compulsory for men, but women don't have to do it. I had a friend who back in the '60s was in college sitting with the men each weak when they were drawing the numbers on TV of who was going to be forced to go to Vietnam. And it was heartbreaking for her, because they had so much life to live and were being forced to join the military whether or not they believed in the cause.
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Yumi: Heh reproductive rights. As far as abortion is concerned, I'm afraid as a female I can't offer my sympathies ^^; I would be able to if pregnancy was something that involved the female body just as much as it does the male one. It's our body, it's us who go through those 9 months experiencing all kinds of unpleasant symptoms and it's us who give birth. To be honest I get seriously angry when I hear a man talking how abortion should be forbidden. And if any man wants to complain about it, complain to mother nature. I'd gladly give up on my ability to give birth, but alas I'm stuck unless I undergo surgery.
However, if a woman decides to give birth to a child, and the man doesn't want it, that woman should not count on the help of the father in any way, nor try to force him. Why can't you trust the hospital staff? It's absurd. You can try several hospitals if you don't trust just one. The birth certificate issue is serious...
Abortion is a special case, I can't imagine any scenario under which forced abortion would be OK, but men don't have the right to put a baby up for adoption without the consent of the mother and are routinely forced to pay child support.

The problem here is that women have numerous options available with regards to pregnancy, abstinence, the pill, female condoms, abortion, adoption and keeping the child. Men, at least in the US, have a say on precisely zero of those decisions. And yet we're expected to pay child support regardless of whether or not we wanted the child to begin with. So, if we get raped, tricked or coerced into sex, there's absolutely nothing we can do legally to get out of it.


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Yumi: Women-only meetings are absurd and clearly discriminating. Women-only gyms...now that's something I can't say I don't understand. Several of my friends, and especially my sister got seriously harassed by older men in gyms quite a few times. But yes, there should be some male-only gyms too, if there are women-only ones. No such things here.
I understand why women want women only gyms. I can't blame them given how little attention they receive at normal gyms. I'm not sure whether the solution is to let men have men's only gyms or to reform sexual harassment legislation, but I don't think that it sets the right tone to have it be exclusively a right granted to women.

Personally, I do think that there should be a few places where women aren't allowed and a similar number and type in which men are not allowed. For better or for worse it's necessary for folks to be able to talk about certain things without having to deal with people that don't get it.
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Yumi: The girl's bathrooms you're mentioning, that, well you were TOLD about it, didn't see it with your own eyes. The stall doors, did you guys complain and demand for it to be fixed ? Girls would do that instantly. You probably broke it yourselves though ^^; (which is something girls wouldn't really do) I remember when I was in elementary school (I think it would be junior high in america), a group of guys tried to get in our change room while we were changing for PE and they broke the door lol. Btw my high school had unisex toilets. So does my university. Which is why I have no inhibitions about using male toilets, I don't even perceive them as male XD
Actually, it doesn't matter who broke the facilities. The point is that we're expected to put up with that sort of garbage treatment. I remember taking the bus when I was in college and the rest rooms were out of order for maintenance the workers would let the women into the men's restroom to do their business, but refused to let men use the women's restroom when they had gotten to that portion of work.

In this part of the country we have a very serious problem with women sexually abusing boys, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how it's OK for women to use the men's room if it's not OK for men to use the women's room.

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Yumi: Aren't males more likely to be murdered because they are more likely to join gangs and get into seriously violent fights among themselves?

I am not entirely convinced, but there are some valid points and some things should definitely be changed. And I have to admit that some women there really exaggerate...
This is hard to really answer in a way which is fair and accurate. There's a surprising number of women in gangs in the US. But it's in general it's more dangerous to be a man. By the time you get to black men the only word I've seen which justifies the rate at which they're disappearing is genocide.

Typically men are expected to take care of themselves and the threshold of violence and danger necessary to justify help is significantly higher than it is for women. From personal experience, it pretty much takes a bullet would or knife mark under normal circumstances to justify coming forward as the typical societal response is pretty much to just stop whining about it.
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Yumi: SNIP
But if I remember correctly from the other thread about feminism, there were people blaming things such as these on the feminist movement. Which is unfair to a certain extent. "He argued that virtually every society that survived did so by training a cadre of its sons to be disposable—in war, and in work. The paradox of masculinity, he proposed, is that the very training for traditional masculinity that created a healthy society created unhealthy boys and men." (from wikipedia entry on w.farrell, the part about the myth of male power). As he says, basically it's your own fault. And I don't mean it in any malicious way.
Honestly, this gets really complicated. It really depends on what precisely you mean when you say feminism. If you mean radical feminism, then yes they really are that bitchy and misandrous, if you mean transformative feminist, then it's unlikely that any male bashing from them is anything other than an honest misunderstanding and can usually be worked out with honest debate.

There are others such as equal opportunity feminism which are more complicated. Theoretically it should be threatening to men, but in the absence of anybody to stick up for the male side of the issue it tends to get pretty distorted.

I remember "feminists" who thought that it was perfectly acceptable to punish rape with castration. The biggest issue there, other than the constitutional one, is the presumption that female rapists cause less harm to the survivor than male rapists do.
Post edited May 27, 2011 by hedwards
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Yumi: Aren't males more likely to be murdered because they are more likely to join gangs and get into seriously violent fights among themselves?

I am not entirely convinced, but there are some valid points and some things should definitely be changed. And I have to admit that some women there really exaggerate...
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hedwards: This is hard to really answer in a way which is fair and accurate. There's a surprising number of women in gangs in the US. But it's in general it's more dangerous to be a man. By the time you get to black men the only word I've seen which justifies the rate at which they're disappearing is genocide.

Typically men are expected to take care of themselves and the threshold of violence and danger necessary to justify help is significantly higher than it is for women. From personal experience, it pretty much takes a bullet would or knife mark under normal circumstances to justify coming forward as the typical societal response is pretty much to just stop whining about it.
I don't remember if it was this Warren Farell or someone else, but they claimed by age 20 a male (or female) has watched 20,000 deaths in television and movies and well over 90% of those deaths would be male. In the US vaginas are sacred (which makes sense from a tribal perspective, a few penises can repopulate a tribe while a few vaginas cannot) and it's not just that the safety of men is largely not considered or even scorned, it's that there's this re-inforced message over and over again that devalues you. And to be honest people like the gal in the OP link re-inforce this idea that no matter what you do you are scum and therefor value-less. It's terribly sick.

And most of the research indicates male participation in the gang related stuff you mention is a symptom rather than a cause.
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orcishgamer: I don't remember if it was this Warren Farell or someone else, but they claimed by age 20 a male (or female) has watched 20,000 deaths in television and movies and well over 90% of those deaths would be male. In the US vaginas are sacred (which makes sense from a tribal perspective, a few penises can repopulate a tribe while a few vaginas cannot) and it's not just that the safety of men is largely not considered or even scorned, it's that there's this re-inforced message over and over again that devalues you. And to be honest people like the gal in the OP link re-inforce this idea that no matter what you do you are scum and therefor value-less. It's terribly sick.

And most of the research indicates male participation in the gang related stuff you mention is a symptom rather than a cause.
I've seen similar numbers. And what it reflects is the objectification of men. It's not as well advertised as the problems associated with objectifying women, but it's more or less endemic at this point. I know a lot of feminists seem to think that war movies are a good thing, but they turn men into objects in terms of the audience more than they make heroes.

A lot of "feminists" don't seem to have any trouble red shirting men, but get outraged whenever a women are objectified.
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Salsa_Shark: So would it not be better if rape were seen as something trivial? If it's going to stay with you forever and is going to be brought up over and over again wouldn't it be better if it were just considered a nuisance and not the grave crime it is now? That's just my opinion. i may be wrong but i can't help but think that if rape was something trivial everyone would be better off, victims and rapists(not that this matters and i feel a little bad for saying it).
Salsa_Shark gropes toward something interesting that has crossed my mind at times:

(Bear in mind that this is mostly reasoned speculation; I am not a doctor or a psychologist. I am not claiming the line of thought below as the absolute fact of the matter, but I do think that it bears serious consideration.)

A significant portion of the power of rape over the psyche stems from an utterly misogynistic perspective: the notion that women are valuable only for sexual purposes and that rape somehow permanently devalues a woman or renders her worthless.

On a physical level, the violence involved in rape does not seem especially permanent: the physical abuse involved is akin to any other violent crime (such as a beating, etc). Pregnancy can be prevented with immediate contraceptives; possible transmission of disease is the only lasting concern in regards to the body.

I'd speculate that most heterosexual males would rather be raped by a burly man than have an arm cut off. Why? To be blunt, our butts will heal but our arms won't grow back. Is that not a reasonable perspective? Yet we allow women to suscribe to this utterly archaic, misogynistic belief that rape somehow permanently devalues their worth.

Again, rape = bad = let's beat and then violate rapists* with a nightstick.

(Actual rapists; I'm skeptical of the objectivity of our courts regarding sexual crimes, but that is another issue).

But, at the same time, let's stop with the "rape is worth than death" bullshit that only increases the power of rape over the psyche.

EDIT: Snipped/shortened some of the middle as it strayed somewhat from the point, should (hopefully) read with more clarity now.
Post edited May 28, 2011 by ddmuse
@ddmuse sorry but i beg to disagree. and i stand firm by saying that I'd rather die than be raped. i'd rather have my arm cut off than be raped. the way I see it it's not about devaluation or feeling worthless. honestly, that is something that is achieved much, MUCH better when it's purely verbal/psychological. this is about feeling powerless, weak and dirty. both psychologically and physically. maybe promiscuous and older people get over it more easily, being more experienced, having had more partners, being more mature, and stronger psychologically. but when you're younger and less experienced it's not the same.

@orcishgamer

This is simply personal speculation, isn't the ideal body something that every person wishes to have to be attractive to the opposite sex? Women don't really find such male bodies attractive, in fact we're more likely to laugh at them because they can't walk properly or use their hands properly etc. I guess it has to do with feeling stronger and more powerful than the other males.

The stuff about the (false) fatherhood is extreme. So is the adoption part. Don't know what to say, why is it so difficult to write "father unknown" on the birth certificate?

@hedwards

ouch, the selective service is pure blackmailing with not being eligible for any scholarships. i do stand behind what i said about women and the army, but this is simply unfair. all guys used to be forced to serve a military term here (we had a war in the 90s), whether just getting trained or doing civil service. i think south korea does something like that too. women weren't forced. however from my perspective that fact isn't unfair, partly because of what i've said. the part of being forced to regardless of whether you want it or not is.
very often i find myself to be the only girl in the company of several males (not the same ones), so i've noticed one thing about guys, and that is a huge inexplicable fascination with weapons. you will never hear that in female only groups. i am not saying that all males show that trait, nor that there are no women who show it, but it's so prominent i find it fascinating. same goes with the fascination for wars, but weapons as such seem to be more prominent. is it something that is inherent in males, possibly due to testosterone? I don't know. But I do think that wars as we know them are largely a male thing. Sure women fight too, but they usually prefer the lower, devious, back-stabbing ways, males resort to violence as a rule. And yes I know that there were female rulers who didn't act differently, but they were living in a patriarchal society, and the way of war was the way to do. With reversed roles, who knows...i do not wish to state explicitly my harsh and cold conclusion with regards to women being forced to war, but you can pretty much guess it.

the vietnam war, and all the wars afterwards, i do feel sorry for guys being forced to do it. but it was your government decision, a government i am guessing was pretty much male-only at the time. a decision by males for males. for a war that was fought on another continent. why didn't all guys, army or not, simply say no together. that's how you make change. when i told that to my dad (who served in the army) he said you can't because there's always someone above you. do not take it the wrong way, but the way i see it it's because that someone at some point will end up being someone who likes it.
and to be honest this selective service pisses me off, just stay away from other countries' business and you won't have to deal with it at all.

for the life of me i can't imagine why men and women should have separate places to talk. i mean if it's business both need to participate, if it's private you have parks, bars, your own homes...

actually it can matter who broke the facilities. because if it was done repeatedly, it's possible that the school simply decided to give up because they didn't want to spend money anymore. or to teach you a lesson.

now with the toilet part, you got me wrong, but it's my fault because i didn't really explain. as i said, both my high school and university have/had toilets which are to be used by both girls and guys. actually one toilet at the university is supposed to be male but no one perceives it as such. boys and girls use them at the same time, boys and girls go to the toilets together to smoke and chitchat because we're all buddies. once when i was at a uni party (we would get to use only the 1st floor) since all the toilets were taken and one drunk guy couldn't hold it in, he peed in the sink. in front of everybody - boys and girls. ok it was disgusting and i didn't want to use that sink for a long time, but no one got upset over it. we all had a good laugh. if it was america i guess everyone would be screaming sexual harassment or whatever. of course, if i find myself in a restaurant or a hotel or any serious place i will wait my turn and use the female toilet, but when i find myself in a loose, friendly environment where everyone is under 30 i won't care. nor will guys. trust me, they have no inhibitions about using female toilets either, and we don't mind :)
another different example, in high school there was a time when we had no gym available, so we went running outside. we changed in some random classroom that was available, and boys and girls changed at the same time and it was our decision. if someone was particularly shy they would just wait, or use the toilet. again, no one ever complained because we were buddies. i can't vouch that it's like that in the whole country, but in my region it is. we're at sea so seeing each others in swimming suits is the norm, so maybe that helped too. maybe such a mindset that younger generations have will bring about the needed change. also i wonder if a richer/more developed/industrialized country means more anal and fussy people. i think this is the first time that i actually feel happy about growing up here...

ok i'm seriously too tired to write anything more(lack of sleep), and i think i've written more than enough...

ohh EDIT - the part about the army here. it's not just that women weren't forced. they weren't allowed either (at least as far as I know). however they were allowed when the war was raging

and edit2 - I hope I didn't come off as being for forcing men to go to war in spite of them not wanting it, because of course as every normal person I think that's seriously unfair too.
Post edited May 27, 2011 by Yumi
Funny article.

everything she said could be also said about women so her point is that humanity is pro-rape.
http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp183/sogi-ya/chuck-norris-thumbs-up-1.gif
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Blarg: I was a big supporter of feminism at first. No longer. It has been too twisted and corrupted from its original mission and insight. What a shame. What once had us moving forward now has us moving backward. Some of us treating each other worse than ever. Yet again.
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hedwards: I'm personally a fan of transformative feminism, but most of the more recent forms are way too focused on bettering women whether or not it unfairly harms men. The original goal and process was admirable, rebalance society and reduce the suffering of all people.

That hasn't happened in recent years and the gender roles available to straight men actually appear to be shrinking.
Equality was an admirable goal, trying to be the new ruling class is somewhat sick (and is what some people have subverted the cause to).

I've heard people say when talking about a louse of a man in a relationship, "But women deserve better!" No, they don't, not automatically. Some women are dirtbags too, there's nothing magical about being born a woman that absolves you of acting decent in order to earn decency in return. Some women deserve better, yes, and they deserve it the same way men do, by their actions.

Anyway, the link in the OP was nothing more than hate speech, feminism is just a convenient vehicle for it.

Eh, the founder of MADD watched her organization perverted to the point that she had to leave in disgust, it happens.
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lukaszthegreat: Funny article.

everything she said could be also said about women so her point is that humanity is pro-rape.
Don't tell her that though or she'll close her ears whilst going "nyah nyah nyah nyah." and try to disprove you or sidestep your comment entirely. If she even allows comments again that is.
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Yumi: This is simply personal speculation, isn't the ideal body something that every person wishes to have to be attractive to the opposite sex? Women don't really find such male bodies attractive, in fact we're more likely to laugh at them because they can't walk properly or use their hands properly etc. I guess it has to do with feeling stronger and more powerful than the other males.

The stuff about the (false) fatherhood is extreme. So is the adoption part. Don't know what to say, why is it so difficult to write "father unknown" on the birth certificate?
Well, that's the thing, they're idealized, as in hyper masculine or hyper feminine. An extremely small portion of the human population will ever look like that, they're merely characters that accentuate traits that we wish we had more of.

A high prize is put on a male's ability to fend off other, aggressive males. Some women may laugh at you if you looked like Duke Nuken but you'd still get sex and most males would leave you alone as you are so obviously alpha. Given the choice of looking like a 250 pound truck driver and Duke Nukem, most people (if there were no effort involved) would pick Duke Nukem.

There's huge pressure on welfare systems to recoup costs, one of the ways they do so is by cutting benefits to women who have children and can't or won't identify the father. So they make one up (often someone they've met).

As for the hospital it's widely believed that a fatherless child will be a large disadvantage (probably a correct belief) and so staff will pressure a man who they know can't be the father (due to hair color or eye color, or whatever) to sign it. Doing otherwise could break up a marriage or remove any father figure from the child's life as well as open the hospital up to possible tort litigation (you can sue for mental distress in the US).
@GameRager
Not really, because some people bring that kind of argument in the comments and she doesn't claim it isn't so, just that a) because some else does it, doesn't make the whole thing right if you do it too b) there are enough other lists who point out the things women do.
Post edited May 27, 2011 by Laverre
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Laverre: @GameRager
Not really, because some people bring that kind of argument in the comments and she doesn't claim it isn't so, just that a) because some else does it, doesn't make the whole thing right if you do it too b) there are enough other lists who point out the things women do.
Still, she deflects, which is just as bad.
moon over june