Gender Equality

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

The topic of gender has been tossed about quite a bit here, and one valid complaint that males have is that only males are required to sign up for the draft, and once in the military, women are banned/protected from the most hazardous areas. Here are two petitions trying to remedy that situation:

http://www.petitiononline.com/03110331/petition.html

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/womenincombat/

[Animus]

Well I mean, there are a few things in my experiences that have caught my eye. For one the way Bobbit and Homolka were handled by the states. Although this is old news.

I used to work in a blown plastics factory, where we would melt polyethylene resin down and blow it through a dye into bags and plastic wrap of different sorts. The company Uniplast had two factories in town, one specifically set-up for women. Now, as I demonstrated on another thread, the maximal manual lifting limit within which most men are comfortable is 51lbs and for women it is 23lbs. Uniplast had their factories split so that any orders producing rolls 50lbs or less went to the woman's factory and orders 50lbs or came to the men's factory. Well here is the problem with this, the maximal manual lifting weight for men is 51lbs and we frequently dealt with 700lbs rolls of plastic or more. The fact is, there was only one man on the floor that could carry a load that heavy and there is no way he could lift it vertically. So we relied on lift trucks and frequent jumps out of the way of falling loads. It struck me as odd because the men could not lift the orders they had to deal with anyway and were forced to use lift trucks, something the women could just as easily do, but the factory had it split for one apparent reason, the maximal lifting weight of women was only 23lbs and they wanted to employ women. It turns out women will walk off the job if forced to do too much hard labor. I'll tell you, on the occasion we did get a sandwich bag order, which are usually less than 50lbs per roll, it was a much needed break from making garbage bag rolls that weighed over 500lbs. But this almost never happened as those orders were sent to the woman's factory. I felt like the men were getting the bum deal because it meant that women took all the easy orders and left us with killer work 24/7/365. Men might be stronger physically, but they are not hydraulic lift trucks which women could operate just as easily.

this was at a time when feminism was at its peak and women were getting special treatment left right and center. A friend of mine's wife attacked him one morning after a brief argument. She punched and kicked him, screamed in his face and so forth. he put his arms around here and held her to the floor to stop her from attacking him. Meanwhile a neighbour heard the commotion and called the police. The police arrived and without any concern for prior events they extracted my male friend from the home and placed a restraining order on him for 8 months. This proved almost impossible to manage, he was the bread-winner and had to pay all of the bills without directly or indirectly contacting his wife or newborn son. They had just had a child and it was an important time for him to be around. But the police approached it with a heavily biased script, they explained even after learning of the details that they had a duty to remove the man in any domestic violence reports.

This is in Canada, and its particularly odd considering Canada is one of the only countries in the world that keeps domestic violence statistics on both genders and attempts to compensate for lack of reporting by male victims. Statistics Canada has repeatedly found, year after year, that women are highly aggressive and violent individuals as well. With women rating higher in the use of 11 different weapons including knives, blunt objects and poisons. It turns out women are less likely to lash out in a fit of rage, but more likely to stew and covertly plan revenge. It turns out women are also highly abusive emotionally and verbally. But none of this affects the greater social ethos and the paradigm of the time which suggested that women were God's innocent little angels meant to keep men in balance.

But I mean, that's the society I grew up in, I frequently listened to my own mother painting men with a broad stroke. Talk spots hit the radio asking "Are men needed anymore?" and "What good are men anyway?" usually with the ilk of Steinem on the show to give a heavily prejudiced and emotionally charged answer. Now I'm reminded of this spot on CNN with Gloria after the 2008 election in which she says "if Hillary hadn't been a woman she would have won". This came after she lambasted the host for using a "single factor analysis". Its pretty hypocritical if you look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQkzgr8kXDc

So, I mean, its not just about military, its a general social paradigm that goes; Women can do anything men can do, and women can do what men can't do, but women are weak and frail and at the behest of men.

Its strange because of the contradictions, I suppose thats not so strange. If women are equal to men, then they should not find themselves submissive to men. That seems quite bizarre considering the relative share of women in the world. It seems to me to be a bit of whining, like "I want this", but "I want you to give it to me". Or "You don't control me", but "You keep me down". Holy fuck, you can't win against that rhetoric.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

The rational position can win, but it's going to take time, persistence, and perhaps tackling only one area or a few areas at a time. It can't all be fixed at once, but it's important enough to fix.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Now I'm reminded of this spot on CNN with Gloria after the 2008 election in which she says "if Hillary hadn't been a woman she would have won". This came after she lambasted the host for using a "single factor analysis". Its pretty hypocritical if you look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQkzgr8kXDc

Yeah, Gloria Steinem needs to retire. She isn't at her best, and even when she was, she wasn't quite up to todays standards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3zw5GQA ... re=related

She was quite progressive for her time though, and a good thinker for a woman of her time considering the circumstances that females in general had to live under.

[Animus]

Now I'm reminded of this spot on CNN with Gloria after the 2008 election in which she says "if Hillary hadn't been a woman she would have won". This came after she lambasted the host for using a "single factor analysis". Its pretty hypocritical if you look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQkzgr8kXDc

Yeah, Gloria Steinem needs to retire. She isn't at her best, and even when she was, she wasn't quite up to todays standards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3zw5GQA ... re=related

She was quite progressive for her time though, and a good thinker for a woman of her time considering the circumstances that females in general had to live under.

Wow, she seems quite thoughtful and intelligent in this video.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I think that Colette Dowling has her beat on this video though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNPEiH0Z ... re=related

[pointexter]

Maybe the double standard is part of a patriarchal con (feminism) to keep women sedated about being conned into a deeper level of subservience.

[Tomas]

The topic of gender has been tossed about quite a bit here, and one valid complaint that males have is that only males are required to sign up for the draft, and once in the military, women are banned/protected from the most hazardous areas. Here are two petitions trying to remedy that situation:

http://www.petitiononline.com/03110331/petition.html

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/womenincombat/

For a country as geographically large and populous as the USA is, these petitions just won't fly.

Obama, way before he decided to take a run for the presidency had supported the call (mandated) that women sign up for national service ie the draft. Of course, that two-faced phony didn't bother doing so when he turned age 18. But hypocrisy seems a given when you're supported by the likes of unlimited soft money from conservatives and liberals playing on both sides of an ever-shifting fence.

Elizabeth, since when have you signed on to Janet's Big Sister Homeland Security bandwagon? Ain't you the broad that started the Police State thread over on Worldly Matters. Did the 5,253rd playing of the mind-controlled national anthem click some remote sector of your sixth sense to stand up and place your hand over your heart? Was it the Vikings-Bears game of Monday Night Football? Or was it that constellation blue in Old Glory? Was it the false flag operation recently conducted in Detroit, Michigan? Is the thought of an early Social Security pension or the depiction of the saturn god on the back of the dollar bill.

Oh, I get it, you are wishing you wouldda sign up for a stint in Lebanon circa 1982.

Spouting patriotism - what a beautiful choice!

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Hi pointexter - are you referring to the conspiracy theory that Gloria Steinem was funded by the Illuminati for some sinister plot against women?

I don't believe that, although there have been some seriously bad side effects of feminism on society during the transitional phase. There was not only the dual duty that Steinem mentioned in the above 1987 interview where women had to take care of the house, the children, and hold down a job - she also often had to take in an ailing parent or parent-in-law, so she was pulling triple duty - and until men got past the idea that they were not going to help with any of that because all of that was "women's work" - knowing that he'd pulled a hard day at work and was ready to relax but not understanding that she had pulled a hard day at work too and now had to cater to everyone else - it's a wonder that more women didn't go off on a murderous rampage against their families.

There have been upsides, too - like finding out that guys can make really good parents, and wouldn't turn everything into a disaster like the comedy Mr. Mom. Men's parenting used to be limited to giving spankings and the occasional tossing of a ball (only with sons and only on Saturdays).

The original feminists had a lot of serious stuff to rail against. Today's feminists are left to sweep up the remaining parts, and I think that it is also their duty, in duty to fairness, to join ranks with the masculinists that any left-overs from pre-feminism aren't lurking around to make an unfair gesture at men. For example, again I saw this commercial (and since the only television I see is in waiting rooms, I have to wonder how often it was played) claiming that "only Mom can bring home the love." Men can bring home the love just as well as any woman can. What about all those single/widowed fathers? This commercial is unfair to them and their children who see this. (BTW, anyone wanting to contact Winn Dixie about their ad to inform them that you find it sexist, please click here ). Until things are fair to both genders, things can't be fair to either gender.

Tomas, it would be better if neither gender had to sign up for the draft, but that just isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. When the choice is both genders or just the men, both genders signing up for the draft is the lesser of the evils. It really should have been tied to women's sufferage, but at that point in history the military didn't have any use for a bunch of women.

[pointexter]

hi elizabeth,

no not referring to any of that.

Political philosophy is built on deceit. Mug voter buy the lies, believing they are relevant and have ownership. The ideological flavour doesn't matter, its all the same game. l would seperate women's rights from gender equality, as there are two genders. Once both genders get involved, the gender equality schtick quickly falls apart as each side tries to frame the thing in a way that serves their own gender specific agenda, both sides reluctant to give up their socio-political 'priviledges' if the they can admit to seeing them. Womens rights (read: priveledge) being the rhetorical framework of feminism, which like all political ideologies turns into a power trip, an attempt to control one's environment.

The whole gender thing is too far gone to ever be fixed. Certainly wont be fixed with the same type of thinking that created the so-called problem, which l think isn't a real problem. Its manufactured discontent, which is the very life blood of politics. l doubt that will ever disappear in the world of false and explicitly deluded worldy matters. Personally, as a male, l dont really want the feminist rhetoric and the way women act it out to change, not in so far as my interaction with worldly matters goes, when its time to play the social role of man.

There's no way l would go back to the bad old days of manly slavish protector and provider and faux head of the household. Patriarchy has removed men from that role because it wants a direct line of control over all its slaves, not mediated ones. l find it interesting that it really started to happen on a psych-social level in the sixties, about 10yrs after men started overtly rebelling against the slavish, soul destroying drudgery of domestication by the feminine, exemplified by for example playboy magazine. Men have always rebelled against the domestic role and duty to family, woman, children, society. Through the 50s and 60s it became more overt. l think that consciousness amongst men was an important precursor to womens-lib as it required a buy-in from men, which came with the notion of free-love, no-strings sex. All a silly con.

Society has always had direct control of men, by for example forcing us into fox holes. Soon the powers that be will have absolute control over women too. Power un-mediated by competitors. Men were easy to mentally enslave. Women are taking a lot more work.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

about 10yrs after men started overtly rebelling against the slavish, soul destroying drudgery of domestication by the feminine, exemplified by for example playboy magazine.

It seems that you may have caught me in some ignorance - would you please expound on this point, maybe link something?

[Ergasiophobic]

How about circumcision equality?!

[pointexter]

l have no references, nor links to offer, other than the way l am linking these thoughts, here.

Playboy was first published in the 1950s, amongst rock-n-roll, jazz and beatnick, all considered socially rebellious, counter-cultural, dangerous. A possible backlash against mainstream drudergy and social stricture. Playboy in particular offered an overt escapist fantasy for men stuck in the traditional rut of domesticated servitude to a strict social order. Though it still chained men to a reverence of the feminine (sexually objectified physical form). Also, play-boy is a direct rebuttal of work-man. It was immediately a very popular magazine and its popularity continued for many decades, both suggesting a deep inclination in men to escape its antithesis.

[mensa-maniac]

I believe in gender equality with stipulation that women be tested for their strength before hired, excluding masculine women. A week of unpaid pure hard man's labor should be enough to help these feminine women decide if this labor is what they truly want, or if it's just equality they want.

Masculine women are stronger because they have more male hormones than they do feminine ones, therefore they regard themselves more male than female. These are the women most likely to challenge 'Equality' for the purpose of being equal as a man to a man. And they are more manish than womanish.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

How about circumcision equality?!

Absolutely - that nonsense needs to be outlawed. That's nothing short of rape and mutilation of an infant - boy or girl.

pointexter - so you're saying that there is a direct relation between playboy magazine and the feminist movement based on that it was and is a popular magazine? That seems a bit too broad of a leap to me. It seems more likely to me that when companies decided that they needed women to come into the work force during WWII in order to keep the companies operational while so many of their male workers were off at war, women realized that work wasn't nearly as bad as they had been led to believe, and could even be preferable to the "women's work" that was deemed too sissy for men to bother with. When the men came back from the war, the women did not want to give up their jobs outside their homes, and realized that if they could do "men's work" just fine when it became necessary to call on women for that, maybe the men had just been conning them all this time about their superiority so that they could come home to someone who had been doing their bidding all day and would be willing to do whatever he bid her to do when he got home.

Since women were taught that working at a man's job entitled a man to certain privileges, when she started working men's jobs (which, at that time, included factory work, bank tellers, clerks - pretty much anything but school teacher, which was gender neutral, or switchboard operator - which was originally men's work, but changed over to women's work because women were less likely to swear at the customers), the women wanted the same men's privileges that men got for doing that work.

Women realized that certain things still had to get done, so they carried on their traditional roles too - and either labor-saving devices helped (like the washing machine, or partially prepared foods) or things just didn't get done as well as they did when she didn't have an outside job (like housecleaning - which has now been shown that the decrease in cleanliness of homes has directly contributed to the rise in childhood asthma). At first men wouldn't admit to helping with the chores because it wasn't seen as "manly" - but if they wanted the house cleaner, they were going to have to do it themselves - and only recently have men started taking first - line responsibility (like the new movement started by men to say "No, I'm not 'babysitting.' This is my child and I'm being a father").

Donna - Although I agree with the concept that I think is behind your statement, I'm not sure that your idea of just testing certain women would be practical - much less legal. A person of any gender should have a rough idea of if they can do the job or not, and the potential employer should have a rough idea - and if the person proves unable/unwilling to do the job, then they need to go. There are some men who just are not cut out for heavy lifting either, but they are still considered men. Similarly, a woman who can't lift heavy weights should not be considered any less of a person because of that physical weakness. They should only be considered physically weaker, not lesser - whether a man or woman who isn't cut out to lift heavy weights.

The kind of equality sought is not identicalness. It is actually fairness that is sought, but it could not be called that because men's ideas of what was fair for each gender and women's ideas of fairness for each gender were too different.


(edited 1st time to remove snarky jab, edited second time to explain 1st edit)

[Animus]

I don't believe that, although there have been some seriously bad side effects of feminism on society during the transitional phase. There was not only the dual duty that Steinem mentioned in the above 1987 interview where women had to take care of the house, the children, and hold down a job - she also often had to take in an ailing parent or parent-in-law, so she was pulling triple duty - and until men got past the idea that they were not going to help with any of that because all of that was "women's work" - knowing that he'd pulled a hard day at work and was ready to relax but not understanding that she had pulled a hard day at work too and now had to cater to everyone else - it's a wonder that more women didn't go off on a murderous rampage against their families.

There have been upsides, too - like finding out that guys can make really good parents, and wouldn't turn everything into a disaster like the comedy Mr. Mom. Men's parenting used to be limited to giving spankings and the occasional tossing of a ball (only with sons and only on Saturdays).

You know, a few years back I took a deep interest in developmental psychology, childhood and adolescence and I spent a lot of time on parenting forums as well, and I persistently run into women who dogmatically oppose male parents.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Animus, I was referring to empirical review - of course there are still people stuck in viewing the world through old stereotypes, and there are probably more women stuck in that outdated mode than men because less attention has been placed on breaking down the misconceptions of men than of women.

[pointexter]

elizabeth,
interesting interpretation, not saying what you said.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

From looking at the first wave feminists, it seems that their goal included releasing men from the bonds of their gender roles too - so they could have paternity leave (which, in the US, President Clinton signed into law, but men still get some ribbing for if they take it - not sure how that runs in other countries), so that men could spend more time with the children and work out what it means to be a father, to upend all of the social constraints and see what the differences between men and women really are. To quite an extent, they seem like anarchists.

Only today is their work panning out and enough of the gender roles are fading that we can start to see some bare reality underneath - but in some countries, women's rights went too far. Britain, for example, caters entirely too much to women's reproductive choices while forcing the employer to pay an exorbitant amount in maternity leave pay and hold her position for her for possibly many years so that she can have the best of both worlds, with no regard to the employer's needs in order to run a business viably. Obviously that means that greed is a devil for women as much as men.

Women are failing to jump on board just as much - especially in the African-American community. I've heard a number of African-American men complain that all women want (and will sometimes even cite their mothers or grandmothers in addition to women they get together with) that all women want from men is sex, and maybe make them a baby-Daddy - and they don't want to see them other than that. They specifically complain that they feel useless. The women have their family, they have jobs to support themselves and their families, and the men feel left out. I suspect that the reason for that difference is that African-American women tend to rely on each other more than white women do. Just by observation, white women are more likely to defer to a man or place her loyalty in a man, even above loyalty to her own ideals, and even if that man is a boss rather than a boyfriend or husband, while black women are either devoted to their female relatives and girlfriends, or their church.

I can't even hazard a guess on if this circumstance in the African-American community is because so many of their men end up in jail or prison so much, or if the men end up incarcerated so much because they feel left out of the family structure and as an alternative, end up doing things that get them in trouble. For the African-American male, a gang may be the closest thing he will ever get to family, and gangs tend to get involved in illegal activities. There are girl gangs too, but not nearly as many, and they seem modeled after male gangs rather than being an entity of their own.

[Animus]

Interesting post Elizabeth. Here is some information I came across worth considering...

Young women's accounts of gang-related conflict help to ex-plain this seeming contradiction. Although girls are involved in al-tercations with rival gangs, they rarely escalate to violence, andeven more rarely to serious violence involving weapons. Oppositionto rival gangs is a central theme in gang youths' cultural imageryand symbolism. Often confrontations with rivals are a consequenceof these displays, particularly in conjunction with the defense ofneighborhood boundaries. For instance, Crystal explained, "If aBlood come on our set and we Crips, as long as they come on our setsaying, 'What's up Blood,' they...just gonna start a fight. 'Causethey diss [disrespect] us by coming on our set and saying 'What's upBlood.' There ain't nobody no Blood over there." Vashelle agreed:"A dude come over [to our neighborhood from a rival gang], he knowwhat kind of 'hood it is to begin with. Any dude that come overthere from a gang and know that's a Blood hood, you try to comeover there Cripped out [wearing Crips colors or symbols], you knowyou gonna eventually have it some way."The great majority of the girls' confrontations involved fists; oc-casionally they involved knives, but not guns. Most young women,however, said that when they encountered rivals, as long as theyweren't met with a direct challenge, they were willing to toleratetheir presence rather than escalate into a fight. Pare explained:We going to the show or skating, to the mall. We be seeingsome of our enemies too when we do those things, clubsand stuff, we be seeing a lot of our enemies. [If] they don'tsay nothing to us, we don't say nothing to them. They saysomething to us, we say something to them. So that wayeverybody just go they own little way ff they don't wantnothing to happen.Many young women echoed Pam's account. Although violenceand confrontations with rivals were normative features of theirgangs, on which gang girls placed value, young women typically didnot choose to engage in these activities themselves. Instead theywere often content to leave them to young men. The normativequality of these activities is reflected in the girls' discussions of sta-tus hierarchies in their groups, and in their descriptions of individ-uals they admired in their gangs. These included persons who "diddirt" for the gang by committing gang-motivated assaults and byconfronting rivals. Status was gained in part from proving oneselfin these ways. The young women's admiration of such gang mem-bers indicates their acceptance of these gang norms.Nonetheless, most girls viewed males as the group membersmost likely to carry through these activities at their extreme. AsTonya exclaimed, "We ain't no supercommando girls!" Young wo-men held males and females to different standards based on theirperceptions of what "femaleness" or "maleness" brought to their in-teractions and behaviors. They used this difference as a basis forlimiting their participation in serious gang violence, particularlygun violence. As Crystal noted, "Girls don't be up there shootingunless they really have to." Pam stated that girls don't use gunsbecause "We ladies, we not dudes for real .... we don't got to berowdy, all we do is fight" (our emphasis).As Pain's comments suggest, gang girls did not avoid nor par-ticipate in certain crimes simply as a means of enacting femininity.They also used gender norms to modify their involvement in seriousand dangerous gang violence. Moreover, they played on beliefsabout gender in other circumstances, using their presence to divertsuspicion from their gang's actions. Tonya described this function:Like when we in a car, if a girl and a dude in a car, thepolice tend not to trip off of it. When they look to see if acar been stolen, police just don't trip off of it. But if theysee three or four niggers in that car, the police stop youautomatically, boom .... [Girls have] little ways that we gotto get them out of stuff sometimes. We can get them out ofstuff that dudes couldn't do.


YOUNG WOMEN AND GANG VIOLENCE:GENDER, STREET OFFENDING, ANDVIOLENT VICTIMIZATION IN GANGS*JODY MILLER**SCOTT H. DECKER***University of Missouri-St. Louis

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:SCN ... clnk&gl=ca

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Good piece Animus. Looking at gangs is probably the clearest way to see what the human tendency is without influence of societal norms because these groups could hardly care less about the establishment's laws.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I'm seeing elsewhere that more signatures are not showing up on the petitions because they are not specific enough, including spelling out that we want women to be required to register for the draft. I have written to the White House specifically asking for women to be included in this requirement to register for the draft, and that women's units should be equally eligible to go into combat areas - but separated from men's units to prevent men from taking unnecessary risk to "play hero" to the women.

Here's a link to the White House contact page, for anyone who is serious about wanting women to take equal responsibility along woth their equal rights. http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

[Blair]

How about circumcision equality?!

Absolutely - that nonsense needs to be outlawed. That's nothing short of rape and mutilation of an infant - boy or girl.

Well they still routinely circumcise boys in the USA. So much for it being the land of the free? You can live in the "greatest country in the world" except, you can't have a foreskin.

The human race is a circus of fucking irony.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Two of my friends have given birth to boys since Tomas posted this thread 3 years and 3 months ago, I tried to discuss the issue with both of them, and they both barely heard a word I said, the final word from both of them being that the fathers of the babies wanted the boys circumcised because they had been circumcised. I can understand why most women would defer to the judgment of a man on that issue, because we don't have penises so we don't really know what it's like, but the men's "reasoning" leaves a lot to be desired there.

We know that more recognized forms of child abuse are not okay just because the parent experienced abuse like that as a child, but that's the same reasoning they give for wanting their sons mutilated? Cutting off the end of an infant's middle finger would possibly reduce the incidence of carpal tunnel later in life, along with fewer infections from hangnails and would be easier to clean, but that would likely be considered abuse - yet cutting off the end of a sexual organ is somehow viewed as okay, even though they had to reach just as far to justify it with dubious "benefits."

Guys need to bring this topic up with other guys when their friends wives or girlfriends get pregnant. Girlfriends rather than wives are going to be especially compliant with what the boyfriend says to do out of added fear that he will leave if she speaks up too much. The ball is in your court on this one guys.

[Blair]

The issue of circumcision is a very difficult one, because for a father who is circed, to choose to have a son not circumcised is an admitting a failure within himself, something lacking.

If the equivalent was done to a female baby, it would be illegal. It is in fact a fulcrum of the entire spectrum of humanity to resolve this problem. It means a whole generation of humanity has to recognize a great wrong-doing against itself.

It outlines humans both greatest strength and its greatest weakness, that being, working together in harmony as one, and at the same time embracing the most idiotic aspects of human behaviour. Smoking is another example, it fucks people up, but "humanity" allows it to be legal>