D
Deleted member 12009
Ikr. Thers ppl who wanna castrate/kill all boys at birth... n mutilate all males so they r equal to wimmin?? Can they have more of an inferiority complex?
Is Feminism Outdated?
- Thread starter iHeartCats
- Start date
Ikr. Thers ppl who wanna castrate/kill all boys at birth... n mutilate all males so they r equal to wimmin?? Can they have more of an inferiority complex?
I think they should be called out as frauds - women who say they are feminists when they are actually just psychopaths who want attention for their ridiculous behavior.
I'm sure there are but are they really representative or are they a lunatic minority?
I wouldnt think they are representative of feminism anymore than the patriarchal wings of the nation of islam, ISIS or other cultural conservatives are representative of traditionalism.
I think you're right and I also think that this current within feminism is only the tip of the ice berg, there are their equivalent in all political currents but they seem to be pretty obvious within the left wing or anti-oppressive, emancipation ideology ranks, maybe its just a historical quirk or a result of Orwellian psychology or who knows what, I've noticed that a lot of traumatised or personally troubled people can take their experience and generalise and politicise it, considering it as a social standard instead of exceptional or individual tragedy and misfortune.
I actually think the whole Valerie Solanis (spelling) and SCUM manifesto thing was interesting but not representative of feminism so much as the times and one woman's experience. Its both interesting and worthy of discussion, although as serious politics, nope, I dont think anyone would consider it who wasnt wounded.
Solanis wrote the manifesto though and acted as she did, which is totally different from most serious mysogyny which doesnt need a manifesto, it may be reflected in tenets, principles, cultural norms and convictions but generally it needs no manifesto or movement. That's always been something I found interesting.
The violence against women is largely unconscious while the response, which is essentially mirroring of the violence, is conscious or manufactured.
Feminism has always been weird...its like women don't like the idea of simply being women, they want to be men.
I dont think so, well, anyone who is a feminist could claim that.
Radical feminists used to attack women for being male identified or wanting "to be men", then again radicalism is not the same as the militancy or misandry it has come to mean, at least not originally.
There is a very good basis for believing that despite being egalitarian or even supporting woman's liberation that you either are not or can not be a feminist because the more sophisticated varieties are clear in endorsing and promoting feminity for both men and women, it goes beyond acknowledging difference, supporting difference, aiming to correct disparity of esteem and towards considering feminity as superior.
"Feminism" is more or less an umbrella term these days, but for the most part, no. The ideology most feminist groups/movements/whatever else share is that the female identity is wholly different from that of the male, and thus deserves equal representation in society.
If you want to find out more check out some of the works by Angela Carter and Katherine Dunn, both were 20th century feminist authors who wrote some pretty gr8 novels.
There's a large crowd of misguided "social justice warriors" there that go around flaunting the word "feminism" without really knowing the meaning and/or origins.
A lot of people dont know enough about the things they choose to talk about and think that having enough "passion" is a good substitute for a bit of knowledge or learning, its part of the reason we have pundits instead of intellectuals and soundbites instead of insights.
That is especially dangerous when it is applied to social issues. Enough uninformed people giving each other constant pats on the back will eventually develop into a new class of pseudo-intellectuals.
I think some people under-estimate the power of language
I think most people these days would argue that women should have equal say in the decision making in society and an equal ability to express themselves and pursue opportunity eg education and work
But the key word there is 'equal'.
To say that men and women are totally the same and that any differences are simply culturally programmed and existing only in the mind is...well...frankly insane
There are physical differences between men and women which will also have implications for behaviour and the shaping of culture
There are also certain physical dynamics regarding the sexual apparatus of men and women with the male sexual organ generally being used in a more active way during sex and the female sex organ generally being used in a more passive way during sex
Now sure that's not always the case and i'm sure most guys love it when the woman climbs on top and does some of the work!
But if you think of all the sexual positions you can think of i'd bet the majority of them involve a more active role being played by the man
This is going to have certain psychological implications whether we like it or not
If a woman is being given new cultural programming that programmes her to believe that she must always be the more assertive active element in the dynamic then her sexual repertoire is going to be severly curtailed
The strange situation that men find themelves in is that now they don't even know if they should hold doors open for women!
I have no problem holding a door open for a guy because no guy is going to berate me for suggesting that i am belittling his physical prowess by holding a door for him...this is because men are physically secure in that sense at least
For example men don't wear high heel shoes because they are insecure about their height...they don't need to because they are already high
In physical industries guys do not want to work alongside women because they are physically not as strong and if a person does not pull their weight it then puts more pressure on the other people, causing strain and injuries
I'm sorry to point out these inconsistencies in the theory that men and women are indentical but nonetheless they remain as a culturally unresolved problem just as the movements of the planets caused the catholic church great consternation when Copernicus pointed out that the sun was at the centre of the solar system
We're not the same
But getting back to the issue of language. Whilst i strongly believe in equality in spirit (despite the awkward sort of exceptions such as the ones mentioned above) i think that in order to harness the spirit of equality we should re-evaulate the language we use when approaching this issue
So for example i think the term 'feminism' is redundant due to the bias towards the female sex that is linguistically built into the word...there's no escaping it
For this reason i appeal to men and women to discard the word 'feminism' and to replace it with the word 'equality'
Once that is done we can all then move onto the next stage of this very bizarre journey that our species is on where we somehow despite being around for 200,000 years have managed to lose in the last 50 years a consensus on how to behave
I suggest the next step of the 'equality' phase would be to try and come to terms with the inherent inconsistencies in the concept of equality when the two sexes are inherently, by design, different
It would require us to define in what ways men and women should be equal and in what ways we should exercise a bit of adult discretion in acknowledging that men and women are different in some ways
On a totally serious note i do want to raise an issue that i do believe would be worth some discussion as it could be a step towards a reproachment between the two sexes
It is the issue of how the sexes express hurt. Please tell me if this needs its own thread and i'll have it moved (i'm gonna put it here though for now as there seems to now be quite a few feminism related threads)
This issue i'm going to raise might be of interest to any woman who has dealings with men lol
If a woman is upset in our society it is culturally acceptable for that woman to cry. Even if a woman cries publically she will not be judged harshly by the majority of people. in fact such an outward sign of distress will almost certainly draw sympathy from others present
A man however is not allowed to do this. How are men able to show distress and hurt in a way that will illicit sympathy from those around them?
This is a problem that is likely to particularly affect young men. A young man who is feeling great distress and hurt cannot cry and yet his body is flooded with the same stress hormones that a distressed womans body is
This 'energy' for want of a better word must often need to find an outward expression in some form. For the woman she can cry and release the negative energies and also be comforted by those around her.
Men currently lack that outlet and the build up of emotions may find a different outlet/release for example through frustration and/or anger. The larger build of a man and the deeper voice may also make his intensity more unpleasant for the people around him having the effect of repelling them or of drawing out their own natural defences of flight or fight.
Whilst the woman is consoled a distressed man might find himself suddenly drawing anger from others through their own natural defences being triggered towards what they might perceive to be a threat
When peoples see a man angry in the street what are their initial thoughts? My guess would be that they think he is a potential threat and they move away from him
If people see a woman crying in the street what is their initial thoughts? My guess is that they would be likely to see if she is ok.
What would people do if they saw a man crying in the street? My guess is that they would move away just as fast as if he was angry
So some feminists might say...this is not a problem....this is a cultural problem. The solution to this, they might say, is that men must learn to be comfortable crying in public.
Well ok....on one level i can understand the thinking behind that. However the message that men commonly hear and often straight from the mouths of women themselves or indirectly from womans magazines or TV chat shows is that women like their men to be strong
How many women would respect their man if he suddenly broke down in tears in public?
Another thing that guys commonly hear from women is that women actually like their man to 'be assertive' or 'take control' particularly in the bedroom for example
How many women would respect their man if having given him the wink and having joined him in the matrimonial bed they found the man simply lying there passively on the bed inactive waiting for the woman to do everything?
And yet men are culturally told that they must not be over-bearing or too domineering and yet they are told different things by different women who vary themselves in their assertiveness or lack of
How often when a person (man or woman) sees a man angry do they first think ''he is showing outward signs of great distress, the poor guy, his body is obviously flooded with stress hormones, i should try to have a soothing effect?''
This brings us back to the passive and active principles again. Another way to describe these would be to call them 'hard and soft energies'
Obviously men can express both hard and soft energies and women can express hard and soft energies
When a woman cries that is a soft energy and will draw people in with further soft energies
When a man is angry that is hard energy and will often be met with more hard energy which then will create an explosive situation as hard v's hard = explosion!
When hard energies are met with soft energies however sometimes the hard energies can be cancelled out and the situation soothed to a more balanced one
If you are for example working in an environment with vulnerable people and one of the people receiving treatment or therapy is angry about soemthing do you as a health professional go upto them and shout at them ''shut the fuck up!''...no of course you don't as that would be meeting their hard energy with another hard energy and will likely result in you getting a smack from the now enraged person who due to the flood of stress chemicals into their system has now lost control and is proverbially 'seeing red'
No....you approach them in a calm, soothing and understanding manner with the intention of finding out what is wrong in order to then help them with that problem
Is that how situations always play out outside a professional environment however when both parties might feel like their pride is at stake?
I suggest that this is something that urgently needs to be examined on a scientific level with a deep analysis of the hormones at play during stressful situations for both men and women
Before the latest wave of feminism there was a kind of understanding in society. Now i'm not advocating a return to that...i most definately am advocating a forward move with all this which now moves the debate into new ground looking at the differences between men and women with a view to creating greater harmony between the two physically different sexes
This understanding was that women would be a 'lady' and that men would be a 'gentleman'. This generally involved the man taking on a more active protective role which even included such rituals as holding open doors for ladies and walking between the lady and the road to save her from being splashed by water and mud from carriages/cars
I want to repeat...i'm not advocating a return to that but can you see what is going on in that dynamic? One side is culturally being asked to hold the default setting of being the active principle and one side is being culturally asked to be the passive principle
So if we are going to change that and blur things between the two sexes we are going to have to find new ways to maintain some sort of harmony through understanding. I personally don't think we've achieved that yet and the reason i think we haven't achieved that yet is due to this pervasive fallacy that men and women are identical when they are inherently different
If a man cannot express himself through crying because he is culturally programmed to feel ashamed to do so or because he fears his female partner will disrespect him if he does so then he will have no outlet during any argument with his partner
In social terms it's a sad fact of life that during economic downturns such as the one we are in pressure grows on relationships as people struggle to deal with the pressures of life
One solution for the man is that he can walk away from the argument...go for a walk in the park, punch a punch bag out in the garage whatever
But he is not going be able to get much said in regards to putting his point of view over in situations if he must walk away everytime voices are raised as this is a breakdown in communication (there is no dialogue)
So we come to another of the inconsistencies of the theory that men and women are identical...which is the public perception of violence between the sexes
Violence against women is universally abhored......you are unlikely to find anyone that will support it
However violence against men is generally not taken so seriously
So i guess what i'm talking about is the need for a new law in statute to protect men from aggressive women. Aggression would include verbal abuse and wild gesticulations and getting up in the face of a man or pushing, jabbing, slapping, punching or any other such act which causes the man to have a stressful reaction
A man under such pressure can walk away and leave the house, possibly in the pouring rain., possibly in the small hours of the morning and conceed his home to the female or he can stand and not say anything which might enrage the female even more leading to an escalation of the problem
The man raising his voice in reply is not an option as this would be meeting hard energies with hard and likely to lead to an explosion of some sort
I think its time that in the post-feminist era the law recognised this problem and afforded men some legal protections
I'll conclude this post by referring to a recent study where a man was asked by the people running the experiment to agree to his wifes EVERY demand. The wife was not aware of the study.
However the study was stopped within a fortnight after the male test subject sank into a deep depression as his wife hen-pecked him more and more as time went on
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...y-abandoned-as-husband-becomes-depressed.html
I heard in a similar discussion to this somewher else online, a male poster make the comment that they believed that if women started acting like a lady again men would instantly start acting like gentlemen again. The poster felt that men could not be the ones to instigate that change because in post-feminist militant women a man acting passivley would not be viewed as someone trying to de-escalate a situation but rather be viewed as a sign of weakeness upon which the woman could seek to consolidate her dominance
I'm going to make a prediction though...and you can keep an eye out for this yourself by watching the mainstream media
I predict that the OPPOSITE of what i'm suggesting regarding new laws will happen. I predict that new laws WILL be created but that these will ALL be geared around protecting women with NONE of them aimed at the protection of men
Oh and i predict the economy will get worse too
I think most people these days would argue that women should have equal say in the decision making in society and an equal ability to express themselves and pursue opportunity eg education and work
But the key word there is 'equal'.
To say that men and women are totally the same and that any differences are simply culturally programmed and existing only in the mind is...well...frankly insane
There are physical differences between men and women which will also have implications for behaviour and the shaping of culture
There are also certain physical dynamics regarding the sexual apparatus of men and women with the male sexual organ generally being used in a more active way during sex and the female sex organ generally being used in a more passive way during sex
Now sure that's not always the case and i'm sure most guys love it when the woman climbs on top and does some of the work!
But if you think of all the sexual positions you can think of i'd bet the majority of them involve a more active role being played by the man
This is going to have certain psychological implications whether we like it or not
If a woman is being given new cultural programming that programmes her to believe that she must always be the more assertive active element in the dynamic then her sexual repertoire is going to be severly curtailed
The strange situation that men find themelves in is that now they don't even know if they should hold doors open for women!
I have no problem holding a door open for a guy because no guy is going to berate me for suggesting that i am belittling his physical prowess by holding a door for him...this is because men are physically secure in that sense at least
For example men don't wear high heel shoes because they are insecure about their height...they don't need to because they are already high
In physical industries guys do not want to work alongside women because they are physically not as strong and if a person does not pull their weight it then puts more pressure on the other people, causing strain and injuries
I'm sorry to point out these inconsistencies in the theory that men and women are indentical but nonetheless they remain as a culturally unresolved problem just as the movements of the planets caused the catholic church great consternation when Copernicus pointed out that the sun was at the centre of the solar system
We're not the same
But getting back to the issue of language. Whilst i strongly believe in equality in spirit (despite the awkward sort of exceptions such as the ones mentioned above) i think that in order to harness the spirit of equality we should re-evaulate the language we use when approaching this issue
So for example i think the term 'feminism' is redundant due to the bias towards the female sex that is linguistically built into the word...there's no escaping it
For this reason i appeal to men and women to discard the word 'feminism' and to replace it with the word 'equality'
Once that is done we can all then move onto the next stage of this very bizarre journey that our species is on where we somehow despite being around for 200,000 years have managed to lose in the last 50 years a consensus on how to behave
I suggest the next step of the 'equality' phase would be to try and come to terms with the inherent inconsistencies in the concept of equality when the two sexes are inherently, by design, different
It would require us to define in what ways men and women should be equal and in what ways we should exercise a bit of adult discretion in acknowledging that men and women are different in some ways
On a totally serious note i do want to raise an issue that i do believe would be worth some discussion as it could be a step towards a reproachment between the two sexes
It is the issue of how the sexes express hurt. Please tell me if this needs its own thread and i'll have it moved (i'm gonna put it here though for now as there seems to now be quite a few feminism related threads)
This issue i'm going to raise might be of interest to any woman who has dealings with men lol
If a woman is upset in our society it is culturally acceptable for that woman to cry. Even if a woman cries publically she will not be judged harshly by the majority of people. in fact such an outward sign of distress will almost certainly draw sympathy from others present
A man however is not allowed to do this. How are men able to show distress and hurt in a way that will illicit sympathy from those around them?
This is a problem that is likely to particularly affect young men. A young man who is feeling great distress and hurt cannot cry and yet his body is flooded with the same stress hormones that a distressed womans body is
This 'energy' for want of a better word must often need to find an outward expression in some form. For the woman she can cry and release the negative energies and also be comforted by those around her.
Men currently lack that outlet and the build up of emotions may find a different outlet/release for example through frustration and/or anger. The larger build of a man and the deeper voice may also make his intensity more unpleasant for the people around him having the effect of repelling them or of drawing out their own natural defences of flight or fight.
Whilst the woman is consoled a distressed man might find himself suddenly drawing anger from others through their own natural defences being triggered towards what they might perceive to be a threat
When peoples see a man angry in the street what are their initial thoughts? My guess would be that they think he is a potential threat and they move away from him
If people see a woman crying in the street what is their initial thoughts? My guess is that they would be likely to see if she is ok.
What would people do if they saw a man crying in the street? My guess is that they would move away just as fast as if he was angry
So some feminists might say...this is not a problem....this is a cultural problem. The solution to this, they might say, is that men must learn to be comfortable crying in public.
Well ok....on one level i can understand the thinking behind that. However the message that men commonly hear and often straight from the mouths of women themselves or indirectly from womans magazines or TV chat shows is that women like their men to be strong
How many women would respect their man if he suddenly broke down in tears in public?
Another thing that guys commonly hear from women is that women actually like their man to 'be assertive' or 'take control' particularly in the bedroom for example
How many women would respect their man if having given him the wink and having joined him in the matrimonial bed they found the man simply lying there passively on the bed inactive waiting for the woman to do everything?
And yet men are culturally told that they must not be over-bearing or too domineering and yet they are told different things by different women who vary themselves in their assertiveness or lack of
How often when a person (man or woman) sees a man angry do they first think ''he is showing outward signs of great distress, the poor guy, his body is obviously flooded with stress hormones, i should try to have a soothing effect?''
This brings us back to the passive and active principles again. Another way to describe these would be to call them 'hard and soft energies'
Obviously men can express both hard and soft energies and women can express hard and soft energies
When a woman cries that is a soft energy and will draw people in with further soft energies
When a man is angry that is hard energy and will often be met with more hard energy which then will create an explosive situation as hard v's hard = explosion!
When hard energies are met with soft energies however sometimes the hard energies can be cancelled out and the situation soothed to a more balanced one
If you are for example working in an environment with vulnerable people and one of the people receiving treatment or therapy is angry about soemthing do you as a health professional go upto them and shout at them ''shut the fuck up!''...no of course you don't as that would be meeting their hard energy with another hard energy and will likely result in you getting a smack from the now enraged person who due to the flood of stress chemicals into their system has now lost control and is proverbially 'seeing red'
No....you approach them in a calm, soothing and understanding manner with the intention of finding out what is wrong in order to then help them with that problem
Is that how situations always play out outside a professional environment however when both parties might feel like their pride is at stake?
I suggest that this is something that urgently needs to be examined on a scientific level with a deep analysis of the hormones at play during stressful situations for both men and women
Before the latest wave of feminism there was a kind of understanding in society. Now i'm not advocating a return to that...i most definately am advocating a forward move with all this which now moves the debate into new ground looking at the differences between men and women with a view to creating greater harmony between the two physically different sexes
This understanding was that women would be a 'lady' and that men would be a 'gentleman'. This generally involved the man taking on a more active protective role which even included such rituals as holding open doors for ladies and walking between the lady and the road to save her from being splashed by water and mud from carriages/cars
I want to repeat...i'm not advocating a return to that but can you see what is going on in that dynamic? One side is culturally being asked to hold the default setting of being the active principle and one side is being culturally asked to be the passive principle
So if we are going to change that and blur things between the two sexes we are going to have to find new ways to maintain some sort of harmony through understanding. I personally don't think we've achieved that yet and the reason i think we haven't achieved that yet is due to this pervasive fallacy that men and women are identical when they are inherently different
If a man cannot express himself through crying because he is culturally programmed to feel ashamed to do so or because he fears his female partner will disrespect him if he does so then he will have no outlet during any argument with his partner
In social terms it's a sad fact of life that during economic downturns such as the one we are in pressure grows on relationships as people struggle to deal with the pressures of life
One solution for the man is that he can walk away from the argument...go for a walk in the park, punch a punch bag out in the garage whatever
But he is not going be able to get much said in regards to putting his point of view over in situations if he must walk away everytime voices are raised as this is a breakdown in communication (there is no dialogue)
So we come to another of the inconsistencies of the theory that men and women are identical...which is the public perception of violence between the sexes
Violence against women is universally abhored......you are unlikely to find anyone that will support it
However violence against men is generally not taken so seriously
So i guess what i'm talking about is the need for a new law in statute to protect men from aggressive women. Aggression would include verbal abuse and wild gesticulations and getting up in the face of a man or pushing, jabbing, slapping, punching or any other such act which causes the man to have a stressful reaction
A man under such pressure can walk away and leave the house, possibly in the pouring rain., possibly in the small hours of the morning and conceed his home to the female or he can stand and not say anything which might enrage the female even more leading to an escalation of the problem
The man raising his voice in reply is not an option as this would be meeting hard energies with hard and likely to lead to an explosion of some sort
I think its time that in the post-feminist era the law recognised this problem and afforded men some legal protections
I'll conclude this post by referring to a recent study where a man was asked by the people running the experiment to agree to his wifes EVERY demand. The wife was not aware of the study.
However the study was stopped within a fortnight after the male test subject sank into a deep depression as his wife hen-pecked him more and more as time went on
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...y-abandoned-as-husband-becomes-depressed.html
I heard in a similar discussion to this somewher else online, a male poster make the comment that they believed that if women started acting like a lady again men would instantly start acting like gentlemen again. The poster felt that men could not be the ones to instigate that change because in post-feminist militant women a man acting passivley would not be viewed as someone trying to de-escalate a situation but rather be viewed as a sign of weakeness upon which the woman could seek to consolidate her dominance
I'm going to make a prediction though...and you can keep an eye out for this yourself by watching the mainstream media
I predict that the OPPOSITE of what i'm suggesting regarding new laws will happen. I predict that new laws WILL be created but that these will ALL be geared around protecting women with NONE of them aimed at the protection of men
Oh and i predict the economy will get worse too
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