Why has Feminism become a Dirty Word? and Other Misogyny on the Internet.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Someone bought up the word Kyriachy and I got all excited because it was consistent with some ideas I have going on (basically I was developing the idea of Kyriachy myself without knowing it was already a thing). I started talking about the other thing that had been on my mind; to what extent do things like male liberation from gender roles fall under the 'juristiction' of feminism? Is feminism (or should it continue to be) stricty and exclusively about womens rights, or is it a big enough concept to deal with other forms of prejudice?

That was the point of what I was saying. Garbo challenged the example I gave to I was elaborating to try to make sure what I was trying to say was coming through clear.

Feminism, as it's most commonly defined today, is about egalitarianism, not about women's rights. That means that part of feminism is, indeed, liberating men from gender roles and from macho expectations/shaming.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, statistics indicate that lesbians are very frequently targeted for violence or rape because of their sexual orientation. It's not a contest about who is victimized more often, but it is still a fallacy to assume that being female is a protective factor against homophobic violence.

[Phox]

Which I do, and always have done. Like I said, it was good to know. Finding something reassuring =/= needing it.

Oh, I know.

MY problem is that - not only is there apparently a word for my orientation, which irks me - but there are in fact other people on my planet that makes all this terminology necessary.  If everyone else was flung off into space, things would be much nicer.

I agree with you, Roger. Peoples is peoples.

In regards to the rest of the discussion, I don't think I have much to add that Pix, Garbo, and Nigel didn't already cover. I would suggest that one be very careful in trying to categorize feminists, though, because there are political feminists, traditional feminists, radical feminists, and so on. I've often argued with my roommate that one section of the many groups that identify as such should not be how you judge the mas a whole, but I think that, as was discussed earlier in this thread, the man-hating, bra-burning lesbian-feminist trope (which many radical feminists I have met seem to purposefully embody), has alienated a number of people from using the word feminist. I suppose I overestimate humanity's collective intelligence when I expect them not to do stupid shit like that, but damnit, I'm an optimist. 

[Freeky]

Also, statistics indicate that lesbians are very frequently targeted for violence or rape because of their sexual orientation. It's not a contest about who is victimized more often, but it is still a fallacy to assume that being female is a protective factor against homophobic violence.

As usual, Nigel cuts to the heart of everything.  WHY YOU GOTTA BE SO NIGEL, NIGEL?

[Golden Applesauce]

ILU FREEKY.


Please provide me with a situation where "female privilege" would exist, Dingo (I'm looking for stats on your assertion regarding the "bi/homosexual females are less likely to be assaulted for being queer" and I gotta tell you, the results are not supporting it. And that's not even including the rape statistics).

I want to preface this by saying that in the general case men have it much, much easier than women. I don't dispute that.

But if you want a specific scenario: primary education teachers in the US. Yes, there are more male dominated professions than female dominated ones, and the male dominated ones pay better. Overall, men do have better employment opportunities than women. You can make the counter argument that the only reason female-dominated professions exist in the first place is that men get first pick of all the good jobs.

This is anecdotal - but the female dominance of primary and secondary education positions is staggering. I didn't meet a male teacher until high school, and I attended 5 different schools, public and private, up to that point. There were about 80 primary / secondary education major students in my college cohort, 3 of which were male. Math, physics, and computer science, while male dominated, were more like 15-30% female. Admittedly not high enough, but until the level where there were only like 5 students in a class, nobody was ever the only person of their gender in their classroom. Those three male education majors had it awkward.

[The Johnny]

ILU FREEKY.


Please provide me with a situation where "female privilege" would exist, Dingo (I'm looking for stats on your assertion regarding the "bi/homosexual females are less likely to be assaulted for being queer" and I gotta tell you, the results are not supporting it. And that's not even including the rape statistics).

I want to preface this by saying that in the general case men have it much, much easier than women. I don't dispute that.

But if you want a specific scenario: primary education teachers in the US. Yes, there are more male dominated professions than female dominated ones, and the male dominated ones pay better. Overall, men do have better employment opportunities than women. You can make the counter argument that the only reason female-dominated professions exist in the first place is that men get first pick of all the good jobs.

This is anecdotal - but the female dominance of primary and secondary education positions is staggering. I didn't meet a male teacher until high school, and I attended 5 different schools, public and private, up to that point. There were about 80 primary / secondary education major students in my college cohort, 3 of which were male. Math, physics, and computer science, while male dominated, were more like 15-30% female. Admittedly not high enough, but until the level where there were only like 5 students in a class, nobody was ever the only person of their gender in their classroom. Those three male education majors had it awkward.

Is that a matter of preference and bias of employers?... Or is that personal preferences for jobs that come into play?

Here in Mexico, psychology is still a majority of women studying it, but some decades ago, it was primarily studied by women.

So thats something to take into account, job election and preference.

[Golden Applesauce]

...but women have the privilege over men of being openly homosexual or bi without threat of violence or social rejection.

No we don't. Bisexual female = heterosexual faking it for male attention (so far as the gay community is concerned). Bisexual or lesbian female = sex object or (too often) a bitch who needs to be fucked by a real man to turn her back.
Which is why I am very, very careful about who I talk to about this/allow to know.

Yes, the whole "The slut just needs a good hard dicking" sentiment is probably why lesbian porn is so popular, otherwise why would guys watch it?  Also, I might be thinking of something else, but isn't raping a lesbian considered some sort of cure in Africa?  I might be thinking of virgins and AIDs, though.

I think we watch different lesbian porn, because in my girl-on-girl porn, there are no dicks allowed.  TVTropes, the ultimate arbiter of all truth, reasons that it might have something to do with there being twice as many naked and sexual females as straight porn, with no gross hairy dudes. If there is homophobia in straight men watching lesbian porn, I suspect it has more to do with the idea that masturbating to another man having sex makes you gay or something.

[Golden Applesauce]

ILU FREEKY.


Please provide me with a situation where "female privilege" would exist, Dingo (I'm looking for stats on your assertion regarding the "bi/homosexual females are less likely to be assaulted for being queer" and I gotta tell you, the results are not supporting it. And that's not even including the rape statistics).

I want to preface this by saying that in the general case men have it much, much easier than women. I don't dispute that.

But if you want a specific scenario: primary education teachers in the US. Yes, there are more male dominated professions than female dominated ones, and the male dominated ones pay better. Overall, men do have better employment opportunities than women. You can make the counter argument that the only reason female-dominated professions exist in the first place is that men get first pick of all the good jobs.

This is anecdotal - but the female dominance of primary and secondary education positions is staggering. I didn't meet a male teacher until high school, and I attended 5 different schools, public and private, up to that point. There were about 80 primary / secondary education major students in my college cohort, 3 of which were male. Math, physics, and computer science, while male dominated, were more like 15-30% female. Admittedly not high enough, but until the level where there were only like 5 students in a class, nobody was ever the only person of their gender in their classroom. Those three male education majors had it awkward.

Is that a matter of preference and bias of employers?... Or is that personal preferences for jobs that come into play?

Here in Mexico, psychology is still a majority of women studying it, but some decades ago, it was primarily studied by women.

So thats something to take into account, job election and preference.

Preference is almost certainly a factor, but I don't see how that makes it any better? It still can't be easy to be the only male 1st grade teacher in your school.

In some ways I think it's due to this attitude in the US that primary education teachers are basically supposed to be surrogate mothers or something, and that that isn't a fit job for a normal healthy man - or rather, that a healthy man should have no interest in having that kind of a relationship with small children. Like - is he a pedophile or something?

I think that the "Men aren't good at being nurturing" myth is of comparable harm to the myth that "Women aren't good at math."

[Juana]

ILU FREEKY.


Please provide me with a situation where "female privilege" would exist, Dingo (I'm looking for stats on your assertion regarding the "bi/homosexual females are less likely to be assaulted for being queer" and I gotta tell you, the results are not supporting it. And that's not even including the rape statistics).

I want to preface this by saying that in the general case men have it much, much easier than women. I don't dispute that.

But if you want a specific scenario: primary education teachers in the US. Yes, there are more male dominated professions than female dominated ones, and the male dominated ones pay better. Overall, men do have better employment opportunities than women. You can make the counter argument that the only reason female-dominated professions exist in the first place is that men get first pick of all the good jobs.

This is anecdotal - but the female dominance of primary and secondary education positions is staggering. I didn't meet a male teacher until high school, and I attended 5 different schools, public and private, up to that point. There were about 80 primary / secondary education major students in my college cohort, 3 of which were male. Math, physics, and computer science, while male dominated, were more like 15-30% female. Admittedly not high enough, but until the level where there were only like 5 students in a class, nobody was ever the only person of their gender in their classroom. Those three male education majors had it awkward.

While I'm sort of willing to concede that point, I do want to point out that teaching is a "pink collar job" - one that has been historically one of the few jobs women were allowed to have.
And it is, nevertheless, not representative of women in the workforce by any means.

[The Johnny]

ILU FREEKY.


Please provide me with a situation where "female privilege" would exist, Dingo (I'm looking for stats on your assertion regarding the "bi/homosexual females are less likely to be assaulted for being queer" and I gotta tell you, the results are not supporting it. And that's not even including the rape statistics).

I want to preface this by saying that in the general case men have it much, much easier than women. I don't dispute that.

But if you want a specific scenario: primary education teachers in the US. Yes, there are more male dominated professions than female dominated ones, and the male dominated ones pay better. Overall, men do have better employment opportunities than women. You can make the counter argument that the only reason female-dominated professions exist in the first place is that men get first pick of all the good jobs.

This is anecdotal - but the female dominance of primary and secondary education positions is staggering. I didn't meet a male teacher until high school, and I attended 5 different schools, public and private, up to that point. There were about 80 primary / secondary education major students in my college cohort, 3 of which were male. Math, physics, and computer science, while male dominated, were more like 15-30% female. Admittedly not high enough, but until the level where there were only like 5 students in a class, nobody was ever the only person of their gender in their classroom. Those three male education majors had it awkward.

Is that a matter of preference and bias of employers?... Or is that personal preferences for jobs that come into play?

Here in Mexico, psychology is still a majority of women studying it, but some decades ago, it was primarily studied by women.

So thats something to take into account, job election and preference.

Preference is almost certainly a factor, but I don't see how that makes it any better? It still can't be easy to be the only male 1st grade teacher in your school.

In some ways I think it's due to this attitude in the US that primary education teachers are basically supposed to be surrogate mothers or something, and that that isn't a fit job for a normal healthy man - or rather, that a healthy man should have no interest in having that kind of a relationship with small children. Like - is he a pedophile or something?

I think that the "Men aren't good at being nurturing" myth is of comparable harm to the myth that "Women aren't good at math."

My point was that preference and exclusion take place in this case, and i dont really have a way to express evidence that its one rather than the other.

Say, ive heard the IT field or some engineerings are mostly populated by men... is that because more men want to be it rather than women (here would come into play cultural roles/ideals), or should we infer that "OMG, women are prohibited from entering this kind of schooling!"

[The Johnny]

To be clear, i think excluding certain gender from a job is wrong.

I have been discussing the point of causality of gender population/percentage in a given field.

[Phox]

ILU FREEKY.


Please provide me with a situation where "female privilege" would exist, Dingo (I'm looking for stats on your assertion regarding the "bi/homosexual females are less likely to be assaulted for being queer" and I gotta tell you, the results are not supporting it. And that's not even including the rape statistics).

I want to preface this by saying that in the general case men have it much, much easier than women. I don't dispute that.

But if you want a specific scenario: primary education teachers in the US. Yes, there are more male dominated professions than female dominated ones, and the male dominated ones pay better. Overall, men do have better employment opportunities than women. You can make the counter argument that the only reason female-dominated professions exist in the first place is that men get first pick of all the good jobs.

This is anecdotal - but the female dominance of primary and secondary education positions is staggering. I didn't meet a male teacher until high school, and I attended 5 different schools, public and private, up to that point. There were about 80 primary / secondary education major students in my college cohort, 3 of which were male. Math, physics, and computer science, while male dominated, were more like 15-30% female. Admittedly not high enough, but until the level where there were only like 5 students in a class, nobody was ever the only person of their gender in their classroom. Those three male education majors had it awkward.

Why? Why is it awkward to be the only person of your gender in a class?

Did their female classmates make fun of them? Ask them why they were in the class? Insinuate things about their body parts or sexual orientation? Treat them poorly in social situations?

Did this treatment translate to the work place?

[Golden Applesauce]

My point was that preference and exclusion take place in this case, and i dont really have a way to express evidence that its one rather than the other.

Say, ive heard the IT field or some engineerings are mostly populated by men... is that because more men want to be it rather than women (here would come into play cultural roles/ideals), or should we infer that "OMG, women are prohibited from entering this kind of schooling!"

Okay - this one I actually do know about. My mother and I in the general math / computer science field, and we both work as software developers, which is a hugely male dominated profession. (For reference, I am male. I just tend to use female avatars.)

"Computer" used to be a profession, and a "pink collar" one at that - before computing machines were widely used in industry & the lab, you had rooms full of women* doing differential equations and summing Taylor series and whatnot with a slide rule. The reason was more or less that mathematically gifted men could go on to be physicists and engineers, while similarly gifted women were persuaded against it - they were allowed into science and engineering in a strictly support capacity. The heavy theoretical lifting is the domain of great men like Feynman, but women were deemed sufficient for the "easy" part of solving the quantum equations needed to actually build a working atom bomb. Which meant that in the early days of computing machines, a lot of women were in the position to transfer from "computer" to "computer technician/operator/programmer". Computer programmer is one of the few (only?) technical professions where the current percentage of females is drastically lower than it was in the 50s. There are a number of reasons why**, but I think that a big reason is that the more computer science was accepted as a serious hard subject in its own right, the less women were encouraged to enter the field.

<more to follow when I'm more awake>

*I know that atom bomb project did, probably few other projects needed needed that many people doing calculus.
**A lot of people have been saying stuff about male-oriented video games getting boys interested in computers, and there might be some truth to that - but right now in the 21st century, women log more hours than men on recreational computer use, largely due to more time on social media and games like Farmville and Words With Friends. A big reason that Angry Birds is/was so much more popular than all the other games in it's genre is that all the other games concepted the same scenario as throwing grenades at people in bunkers instead of the friendly cartoon birds at cartoon pigs.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, statistics indicate that lesbians are very frequently targeted for violence or rape because of their sexual orientation. It's not a contest about who is victimized more often, but it is still a fallacy to assume that being female is a protective factor against homophobic violence.

As usual, Nigel cuts to the heart of everything.  WHY YOU GOTTA BE SO NIGEL, NIGEL?

I gotta be me.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

ILU FREEKY.


Please provide me with a situation where "female privilege" would exist, Dingo (I'm looking for stats on your assertion regarding the "bi/homosexual females are less likely to be assaulted for being queer" and I gotta tell you, the results are not supporting it. And that's not even including the rape statistics).

I want to preface this by saying that in the general case men have it much, much easier than women. I don't dispute that.

But if you want a specific scenario: primary education teachers in the US. Yes, there are more male dominated professions than female dominated ones, and the male dominated ones pay better. Overall, men do have better employment opportunities than women. You can make the counter argument that the only reason female-dominated professions exist in the first place is that men get first pick of all the good jobs.

This is anecdotal - but the female dominance of primary and secondary education positions is staggering. I didn't meet a male teacher until high school, and I attended 5 different schools, public and private, up to that point. There were about 80 primary / secondary education major students in my college cohort, 3 of which were male. Math, physics, and computer science, while male dominated, were more like 15-30% female. Admittedly not high enough, but until the level where there were only like 5 students in a class, nobody was ever the only person of their gender in their classroom. Those three male education majors had it awkward.

I think you need to be more critical in your analysis. There are a number of professions which are heavily female-dominated, largely for reasons pertaining to gender-role differentiation. It might not surprise you to find that most nannies are female. However, that has mostly to do with the fact that for many years, these were the only professions that were open to women, and in fact, males wishing to enter these professions faced a stigma (also highly unfair, and a fantastic example of how restricting women's endeavors also oppresses men). Even so, sadly, on average males earn more in these female-dominated jobs than females do, when averaged for experience and skill.