njlauren
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Joined: 10/1/2011
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Part of the problem with the term 'feminist' is douchebags like Rush Limbaugh and the like have so twisted its meaning, that it makes it sound like a feminist is some ugly woman with a bad haircut who goes around promoting 'herstory' and 'womyn's rights' and the like, and it is bullshit. Yeah, the old radical feminists are still around (most of them, quite thankfully, are getting old enough to die out), but they also don't represent what feminism is. Feminism is supposed to be about equality, and it is also about erasing stereotypes (that hurt men as well as woman, more on that in a second)....It is also about wiping out the biases that still exist against women. Not withstanding the stupid bitch who got upset by a dumb joke at a geek convention who got some guy fired for making jokes about dongles (jeez, I wonder what they do at publishing conventions, with dangling participles), there are serious issues. Larry Summers (one of the chief architects of the current financial mess), then head of Harvard, made a statement there weren't more women in science because they lacked aptitude for it, studies of classrooms have shown that teachers in math and science have inherent biases towards the boys in the classroom (what is interesting is in supposedly misogynistic societies like Iran, Malasia and other places, women make up half the science and engineering students graduating). It is in companies assuming that women will have children, and shuffling them into jobs with little future, and so forth and this is all quite real.
And yes, men are hurt by this, big time. For example, most women these days who are married work outside the home, more then a few of them make more than their husbands, yet in a divorce action it is highly unlikely there would be alimony the other way. Worse, let's say a wife cheats on the husband, decides she wants her boyfriend to live in the house they have, the courts will grant her custody, alimony and child support (despite her actions) because the courts assume that a woman is better suited to take custody of the kids unless you can show that she is somehow unfit (in effect, the man is assumed to be unfit). More importantly, it will grant child support and such as if the man was the only one working, almost ignoring the woman's salary, and men have a right to be pissed off about this (Oprah Winfrey might love it, but figures). In that case, there is a double standard, women want to be treated as equals but then will turn around and use the law like that, or their lawyers will.
One thing I am tired of hearing is about 'special rights', that drives me up the wall, that is the biggest crock the right wing has laid down, and it is patently false. If I hear that, for example, laws protecting GLBT people from being fired for their orientation or whatever are being granted special rights, I'll puke on the person who says it. First of all, if a man is fired for being a man, or being a white man, they have standing since the 1960's to sue, the law doesn't work one way. Yes, I am aware of issues with quotas and such, and I have problems with them, for a lot of reasons.
On the other hand, what this often boils down to is bitter people who once enjoyed special rights and see them going. For many years, as a while male, there was a lot of unearned privilege, that you could get jobs simply for being that, that in effect women and blacks and so forth were locked out of jobs, would never even get seriously looked at, and often (and this still isn't entirely gone), an incompetent white male would get promoted over a woman, for example, because 'he has a family to support" (and yes, folks, this is something I have heard and seen directly in my career, though not as much these days). And before someone tell me those days are long gone, think about this. For the past 20 years or so, businesses schools are turning out more women graduates than men, I am talking the Harvard MBA's and so forth, yet if you look at the ranks of managers and upper executives at most companies, it is sell overwhelmingly white men, and when you see women executives, a large percentage of them are in 'traditionally' female areas like HR and Marketing. It isn't so much that men consciously discriminate, but what happens is those they choose to mentor (a big, big thing needed to advance), or those they promote, often are people like themselves and it is that mindset that needs to be broken.
And yes, it needs to be a two way street, if we are going to move beyond this crap then stereotypes about men have to be broken, too.....like that the only kind of man who can be successful up the food chain is a hard charging, alpha male type who takes no prisoners (think about someone like Don Draper on Mad Men), or that men are all like that, or are all buffoons. Whatever privilege men had (and white men in particular), the answer in creating equality is in making things so men and women are equal, not hurt men to allow women to succeed. For example, if companies allowed workers more flexibility when it came to things like working from home, flex time, flexible schedules, then men could be a lot more involved in their kids lives, working from home you can work long hours and still get to recitals and practices and such, or help with homework. If men had that flexibility, then women who work outside the home (as most do these days), won't have to deflect as much from their own jobs to take care of these things...known as a win-win proposition, but something that goes right over most company's heads, other then a few like Google. I found it kind of ironic that the new head of Yahoo got rid of working from home, when she is a woman (lot of woman at Yahoo are not all that happy with her).
Men complain about being stereotypes as buffoons and such, but those making claims of 'special rights' or classifying all feminists as Gloria Steinham or the anti porn wack jobs, are falling right into that. The irony is a lot of women are feminists, they are taking on jobs and careers and succeeding, but they won't use the term because it has gotten such a bad wrap, that feminist is some dried up old harpy droning on how if you 'give in to patriarchal modes of dress' (ya know, wearing heels and a skirt or whatever) you are selling women ...and that simply isn't true. It is like comparing the morons in the tea party to William F Buckley....
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RE: Another example how feminists can't handle democracy - 
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