Feminism general thread

[Ptangmatik]

I have no strong opinions really one way or the other except I think that once every five pages to sort of lighten the mood in the event of intense situations I think we should post pictures of cats. Because everybody likes cats.

See, that's sort of what I was trying to do with my post, except still on topic, because there's some fantastic feminist comics out there.

Edit: New page hmm. Plan: Repost that link, look innocuous.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Wow. One day, five page thread.

I'll be back later...

[Zipa]

I would have to echo what Alex and others have said in this thread, I support feminism fully (and I'm a guy for what its worth) I think what really opened my eyes was encountering the sort of shit that others have described in this thread.

I used to play a lot of MMOs in my teenage years and every time there was a women in the guild/groups I was playing with you would get the treating them as bumbling morons who couldn't click a mouse to save their lives. (Often they were as good if not better than the people saying this sort of thing). Or you would get the whole she sounds hot act immature to get into her pants routine which surprisingly just drove them away much to my chagrin.
Oh and sometimes you would even get both happen to the same poor sod, awesome. Not.

I also started similar behaviour at work, I would often see females within the business get treated like shit by male colleagues because they dared to be a different gender to them. My employer thankfully is very good and dealt with this when it was reported. It really opened younger me's eyes though.



I was talking to my mum a couple of days ago about something sort of related.
The TL;DR version of it was she explained how women got paid less and could regularly suffer unwanted sexual advances(and abuse) from employers and they could get away with it without recourse. I was appalled and at a loss for words for some time after this, it was almost incomprehensible to me that anyone can treat another human being that way.
That said as she pointed out to me things have gotten a lot better for women in in last 35 years.

We have a long way to go yet though, as made very visible by the disgusting behaviour that people like Anita Sarkeesian have to deal with just because they dared to criticize the established norm. (and the comments on this weeks LRR videos in various places)

I don't think there is an easy or quick answer though, as Alex said to me on twitter the other day when discussing this "They want to keep their pigpen where they can continue enjoying being complete oafs". People fear that feminism is going to destroy their way of life. Its only through educating these people in society and our children that we will ever overcome this.

Sorry about the wall of text but I have a lot to say on the subject but I am not very good at putting it into words.

[Garwulf]

Right, so I couldn't find a link to the 2007 study. I was able to find the abstract, though, and here is the pertinent information (and I did get a couple of figures wrong:

"Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Reciprocity was associated with more frequent violence among women (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.9, 2., but not men (AOR=1.26; 95% CI=0.9, 1.7). Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5)."

(Source: American Journal of Public Health: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020)

Scanning the 2010 study, there are some different results. From page 38 of the study (page 48 of the PDF): The total victimized women over 12 months were 5.9%, while total victimized men were 5.0%. Interesting, total victimized over lifetime was 35.6% for women, and 28.5% for men. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any stats for reciprocal vs. non-reciprocal violence in the 2010 report (this doesn't mean it isn't there - it just means I couldn't find it this morning).

(Source: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf)

Best regards to all,

Robert Marks, wishing he could find more than the abstract of the 2007 report

[Gamercow]

Right, so I couldn't find a link to the 2007 study. I was able to find the abstract, though, and here is the pertinent information (and I did get a couple of figures wrong:
[snip]

One thing that I would like to append to this is that abuse is much more than just violence, and while it is hard to define, I think an abuse study would find women are MUCH more abused than men in relationships.

[J_S_Bach]

You might actually be surprised Gamercow. The problem is there aren't the facilities in place to help men as much as women. It is true that the majority of reported cases of abuse are women it isn't a vast majority. The problem is men are less likely to report cases of abuse (in all forms domestic and non) because that is viewed as not being masculine behaviour. It's the mentality of "big boys don't cry", "a man handles his own issues" that are causing the biggest stumbling blocks in setting up help centres for men.

[Garwulf]

Right, so I couldn't find a link to the 2007 study. I was able to find the abstract, though, and here is the pertinent information (and I did get a couple of figures wrong:
[snip]

One thing that I would like to append to this is that abuse is much more than just violence, and while it is hard to define, I think an abuse study would find women are MUCH more abused than men in relationships.

Actually, according to the 2010 study, when you look at the psychological aggression (defined as expressive aggression and/or coercive control), it's the other way around. For women it was 48.4% experiencing psychological aggression during their lifetime, with 13.9% in the last twelve months, and for men it was 48.8% during their lifetime, and 18.1% over the last twelve months. That's on page 46 (PDF page 56) of the 2010 CDC study.

The fact is that the overwhelming evidence is against abusive behaviour being a gender issue. Whether somebody is male or female has little to no impact on their likelihood to strike out against their partner using physical or psychological abuse. What does matter is personality disorders and previous history (somebody who is abusive in the past is likely to be abusive in the future).

Where there is a gendered difference is in how the abuse happens. Men are more likely to use fists and hands, while women are more likely to throw things and use improvised weapons.

There are places where feminism is definitely needed - there's still workplace inequality, and a rape culture has certainly emerged (and speaking as somebody who is late Generation X, how the devil did that happen? - we prided ourselves in getting rid of that crap). But domestic abuse isn't a place where gender politics have any bearing, and I would even go as far as to say that it is a place where gender politics and feminism cause actual harm.

Best regards to all,

Robert Marks

[Lord Hosk]

I was going to point to that same study that Garwulf did.

There is a pattern of oppressive behavior in society as a whole however society isnt a block it is a group of individuals, a woman is not "all women" and a man is not "all men". I really dont like grouping people in any type of category for just this reason.

The term CIS really pisses me off, because it means I get discounted because my ancestors were from Northern Europe, in the Womb various factors dictated that I would develop external genitalia, and I exclusively have sexual relations with someone who has internal genitalia.

I admit and accept that men have a privileged status in the world, I admit and accept that people of Northern European ancestry have a privileged place in North American society, I admit and accept that heterosexuals have a privileged place around the world. That doesnt mean that I, Lord Hosk, am actively or passively oppressing people who are not in the same category as I am.

I also grow tired of misrepresentations being used as though they were ok because they get the point across.

There is a pay gap, it is not 30%, across the board women in the same job do not make 70 cents on the dollar compared to men, that is using a study to say something it doesnt say.

Women as a collective earn 70 cents on the dollar compared to men as a collective. This statistic includes a lot of extreme which are not entirely separated from the issue but do skew the numbers. That number included in its results a cross sample of society from gas station attendants and janitors up through CEO's, strippers and landscapers. When you include CEO salaries it increases the pay gap. Now there is a separate issue that men are much more dominate in the executive level, its not unrelated but it doesnt say the same thing.

The Pew Research Center released a study recently that found that when you compare women with a similar degree, and within one year of difference +/- of seniority at a company the results varied widely by sector. Women in adult entertainment earned on average 300% more than men, Women in skilled trades earned roughly 60% of men, in health care there was next to no pay gap. The overall paygap they calculated across more than 6000 individuals was roughly 7%. That is something to get upset about that is something to talk about, exaggerating it to 30% does nothing but create a lie for opponents to pick out as a flaw and dismiss your claims. For women under 30 the gap is less than 2%.

Far too often people use bad examples and inflated or misrepresented data because "it looks better" or "gets better headlines"

7% doesnt sound like that big of a deal, I think its a huge deal.

In a separate study where they interviewed Human resources personnel they found that across the board women requested raises 36% less often, and requested 20% less of a raise when they did request raises. In the same study human resources personnel reported that women requested 10-15% lower starting salaries than men when applying for the same position.

Is there a large part to be played in society as a whole raising women to believe that they are worth less, absolutely. Does that mean its the HR persons fault for paying one woman less than one mane when she requested less? No.

The problem with so many discussions is that they lump all people together into broad categories and that hurts the individual. I think this thread has perfectly exemplified that, there is a huge range of people who declare themselves "feminists" with a range of stances on what that word means. So how is it helpful?

Alex, Matt, auberginequeen, Duckay, hascow... all have different opinions and positions and are all good and valid points that some people will dismiss because they are "feminists" and feminists are extremists.

I can go into personal stories and I probably will later but my point as a whole is that, there are societal trends but when you try to apply those to individuals you discount who and what they are and thats crap.

Women are oppressed this is absolutely true, that does not give a woman a right to oppress a man, and dismissing those instances with the statement of "just man up" is infuriating.

[Matt]

The term CIS really pisses me off, because it means I get discounted because my ancestors were from Northern Europe, in the Womb various factors dictated that I would develop external genitalia, and I exclusively have sexual relations with someone who has internal genitalia.

You... maybe ought to unpack that a little. Because all the word cis means is that your physical sex matches the gender you were assigned at birth.

It is not a value judgement, nor is it an epithet.

-m

[Lord Hosk]

Apparently I misunderstand its usage because I have seen it used interchangeably with strait white male.

[Matt]

That is not a correct usage of the word.

It means "gender-conforming".

And it can be applied to women, gay people, and so on.

-m

[Lord Hosk]

I guess different people use the term differently, and even incorrectly.

I suppose its relevant that "CIS" has used so frequently around me to refer to strait white males, that I got the impression that that is what it meant.

[Alex Steacy]

You... maybe ought to unpack that a little. Because all the word cis means is that your physical sex matches the gender you were assigned at birth.

It is not a value judgement, nor is it an epithet.

-m

You're correct about the definition, but it absolutely gets used as an epithet (unfortunately). Thanks, Tumblr.

I actually saw a young girl's profile where she apologized for being white and cis. -_-

[Sieg Reyu]

I used to play a lot of MMOs in my teenage years and every time there was a women in the guild/groups I was playing with you would get the treating them as bumbling morons who couldn't click a mouse to save their lives. (Often they were as good if not better than the people saying this sort of thing). Or you would get the whole she sounds hot act immature to get into her pants routine which surprisingly just drove them away much to my chagrin.
Oh and sometimes you would even get both happen to the same poor sod, awesome. Not.

I've always wanted to conduct a study because there is a theory I had that I've always wanted to explore. If girls are in fact not as good at video games, it is because they are treated as if they are not as good as video games. And not in a people telling them they suck way, the opposite actually.

During Wrath of the Lich King, I was involved pretty heavily in two guilds. The first fell apart so I moved on to the later. In Guild A, there was a woman who played a druid healer. Everyone treated him the same as they did all the guys, albeit with the occasional period or boob joke. If she did good, they said "You're good," and not "You're good for a girl." Whenever she messed up people pointed it out to her, and she improved. She was consistently on the top of the heal charts, my friend who brought me in being the only person who could consistently beat her, but not always.

In guild B, there was a warlock. I only ran with them a few times and you will soon find out why. I only hung out in that guild for the social aspect, but one day I got invited to sub in for someone to do the Lich King raid.. I think this might have been actually during Cataclysm and they were just doing it for achievements/mounts. Either way, I was eager to try my hand so I did. I hadn't done much raiding recently, and as such I was fairly undergeared compared to all of them, especially to the aforementioned Warlock, her gear outranked the next highest by a considerable margin. However, during every boss fight, she was at the bottom of the damage charts and I actually ended up pulling second. Despite the fact that her gear was easily twice as good as mine, she was doing half the damage. But no one else said anything about it, and I didn't want to overstep seeing as how I was basically a guest, so I kept quiet. Then, we came to a boss fight where throughout, you have to tag someone else within a short time span, or else you get mind controlled for the rest of the fight and attack your own party.

Before hand the leader went over the strategy in great detail and implicitly set it up so that the warlocked would get tagged last, so that she wouldn't have to in turn tag anyone. It just so happened that I was the one designated to tag her. Fight gets under way, and when my time comes, I go to tag her and she runs away, so I get mind controlled. We fail, and afterwards, I quickly get blamed for it. They get angry and start in on me, but when I speak up to defend myself and point out that it was her fault, their tone quickly drops. They giv her the verbal equivalent of a pat on the shoulder and say that it's okay, we'll get her next time.

I'm sure if you asked them, they all would have considered themselves feminists, and they were just trying to create an atmosphere where girls could play video games as well. But because they were so gentle with her, she never realized just how inadequate she was. She never felt the pressure to perform better so I'm sure she never did. And it didn't matter because everything was handed to her so that was just what she expected.

I feel like a great deal of feminists think it would be insane to tell a woman she sucks at something because to them it feels like saying all women suck at that thing and are predetermined to suck at that thing. Which obviously isn't the case. BUt no one wants to be the bad guy. I have no qualms about being the bad guy, I give zero fucks.

My sister plays video games. She used to be god-awful at them. She's better now, not amazing, but she is more than capable at LoL and a few others. Before, when she sucked at something, she would justify it by saying it was okay because she was a girl, and I always called her out on her bullshit excuse. Did it help, maybe, maybe not, but she doesn't say it anymore and she is better. Now instead she asks guy what it was like to get beat by a girl, which in and of itself is a whole nother can of worms I don't even know how to address, but at least it's a step in the right direction. I think.

[Sieg Reyu]

You... maybe ought to unpack that a little. Because all the word cis means is that your physical sex matches the gender you were assigned at birth.

It is not a value judgement, nor is it an epithet.

-m

You're correct about the definition, but it absolutely gets used as an epithet (unfortunately). Thanks, Tumblr.

Let us not forget the whole debacle with Mike Krahulik when he got called a cis male as an insult and a whole thing happened. But that's more a trend of the specifically LGBTQ crowd. But yeah, it's garbage to devalue someone because of that regardless.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I've always wanted to conduct a study because there is a theory I had that I've always wanted to explore. If girls are in fact not as good at video games, it is because they are treated as if they are not as good as video games. And not in a people telling them they suck way, the opposite actually.

I think this mentality also comes from that before, there were fewer known female gamers. I don't mean female gamer personalities, but female gamers you personally played with.

When a sample pool is smaller, representation can be distorted; it's not a true representation. If you happen to know 5 players who are female who happen to be substandard, and 1 female player who is very good, your perception is that female players are generally awful. When really, there is nothing (besides social pressure) to cause a female player to perform worse or better than a male player on average. So I think a distorted representation is a factor.

I think gentle treatment maybe another. When you're of a certain age, you're beginning to get more sexually aware. Your peers are beginning to experiment with each other and you might feel alone. If you dedicate a lot of time playing MMORPGs, you might get excited if you meet a female player. Some of this gentle treatment might be due to the male player might be interested in the female player. They're trying to be MANLY and GENTLEMANLY RAWR SMASH. Which... isn't helpful. So as you say, they won't be as critical and thus the player won't receive the feedback they need to help them improve.

I somehow got dragged into a problem due to speaking to a female fellow guild mate on Ventrilo. I came onto Ventrilo one day and joined a chat room with her and a few other guildies. She had been drinking (it was 3 in the afternoon... so she probably had a alcohol problem. But that's kinda not relevant to the story).

She asked me: "Do you want to fuck me?"

I replied: "No sorry. I think of you as a friend. It would be strange"

Her response was: "Yeah you would say that, you being Welsh. You sheep shagger"

I replied with "Yes, I would rather fuck a sheep than you"

[I like how the spoilers don't really hide what was said. But this is literally the conversation. It was etched in my mind)

This offended her. This caused her to think I was sexist.

To me, I politely and respectfully declined an invitation (I don't know if it was serious).
I rebutted a cutting remark.
I spoke to her like a human being.

I felt like if I had treated her like a dainty flower and let her walk over me, I would have been spared being labeled as being "sexist".

Since then I have socially interacted with people who happen to be not the same gender as me, and I have never received this feedback.

Interesting that no one in the same chat channel stuck up for me or tried to explain things.

[Lord Hosk]

You... maybe ought to unpack that a little. Because all the word cis means is that your physical sex matches the gender you were assigned at birth.

It is not a value judgement, nor is it an epithet.

-m

You're correct about the definition, but it absolutely gets used as an epithet (unfortunately). Thanks, Tumblr.

Let us not forget the whole debacle with Mike Krahulik when he got called a cis male as an insult and a whole thing happened. But that's more a trend of the specifically LGBTQ crowd. But yeah, it's garbage to devalue someone because of that regardless.

I dont know about it being used on tumblr, as Vox lunch is 95% of the hits I make on that site. I know that at the college I go to, in discussion groups about feminism, and LGBT, I am dismissed with statements of "You dont understand you are CIS, they shouldnt even let strait white men come to these events"

[Matt]

I would even go as far as to say that it is a place where gender politics and feminism cause actual harm.

I would step that back slightly - because gender politics does play a role in abuse. And while I would agree with you that certain forms of feminist advocacy have historically caused harm in this regard, you can follow exactly the lines of reasoning that led to the policies that were enacted, and I don't think it's the case that feminism must necessarily cause harm on this issue.

(Although it's likely that rates of physical and psychological partner abuse are similar among women and men, as reported by the CDC, women are nearly twice as likely to face severe violece from a partner, are three times as likely to be injured by a partner, and more than four and a half times as likely to be murdered by their partner than men are.

Rates of abuse are similar. Severities are not.)


I would also argue that feminism will be integral to the provision of adequate counselling and recovery resources to men who are dealing with partner abuse.


-m

[Matt]

You... maybe ought to unpack that a little. Because all the word cis means is that your physical sex matches the gender you were assigned at birth.

It is not a value judgement, nor is it an epithet.

-m

You're correct about the definition, but it absolutely gets used as an epithet (unfortunately). Thanks, Tumblr.

I actually saw a young girl's profile where she apologized for being white and cis. -_-

well, it wasn't intended to be an epithet. :\

-m

[Zipa]

I think a small vocal minority (that like to shout loudly) have tried to usurp Cis to be a derogatory term rather than one that is a simple abbreviated explanation.

[Lord Hosk]

The vocal extremist minority... (sigh)

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

(Relating to the original post, which even though it was 5 pages ago, was still posted today)

I really dislike the term "feminism"; it implies that all women think, believe in, and fight for the same thing(s), which is just not the case.

I actually prefer women to men, and not in a misogynistic way, I just get a long with women better. If I had to list my 'best' friends, I'd say it'd be 9 to 1 women over men.

Considering it could be possible in the future to have eggs fertilising other eggs, maybe us guys should be nicer to women, lest we be surplus to requirement.

[Ree]

"Cis" (a Latin prefix meaning "on the same side," contrasted to "trans" meaning "across") is just short for cisgender, which is a word that pretty much means "not transgender." It's no more an epithet than "white" or "straight" is.

It sucks to feel dismissed, but you have to remember that, say, cis people's opinion's aren't as valuable on trans issues. It seems somewhat clichéd, but they don't (really, can't) "get" what it's like to be trans. This is not to say that cis folks are worthless, but that it's not about them.

Feminism isn't about men*. Gay rights aren't about straight people. Trans rights aren't about cis folks. Black rights aren't about white people. This stuff isn't about you**. Fundamentally, the issue at hand is "affluent, straight, white, cis men make the rules in this society." If you fit a number of those categories, don't be surprised that someone who doesn't is resistant to let you make the rules for how we combat that issue.

Society has taught men (etc.) that their opinions are always valuable (and that women's (etc.) aren't always as valuable). Of course, this isn't true. People will have more valuable opinions than you do on a topic, and that's fine. Complaining about that is, well, "shit white/straight/cis/rich/etc. people say."

*This one is slightly inaccurate, since institutional patriarchy does hurt men, just not as much (or in the same ways).
**Working on some (hopefully not too unfair) assumptions about the average poster in this thread, and the posters I'm more specifically responding to.

[Garwulf]

I would even go as far as to say that it is a place where gender politics and feminism cause actual harm.

I would step that back slightly - because gender politics does play a role in abuse. And while I would agree with you that certain forms of feminist advocacy have historically caused harm in this regard, you can follow exactly the lines of reasoning that led to the policies that were enacted, and I don't think it's the case that feminism must necessarily cause harm on this issue.

(Although it's likely that rates of physical and psychological partner abuse are similar among women and men, as reported by the CDC, women are nearly twice as likely to face severe violece from a partner, are three times as likely to be injured by a partner, and more than four and a half times as likely to be murdered by their partner than men are.

Rates of abuse are similar. Severities are not.)


I would also argue that feminism will be integral to the provision of adequate counselling and recovery resources to men who are dealing with partner abuse.

I can see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure I agree with all of it. In particular, I take issue with the idea that feminism will be integral to the provision of adequate counselling and recovery resources to male survivors and victims of domestic abuse. Frankly, I think the feminist movement is directly standing in the way of it.

This comes back to Erin Pizzey. Back in the early 1970s she opened the first women's shelter in the UK, and in 1982 she published a book titled "Prone to Violence," where she discussed the reciprocal nature of a lot of domestic violence based on her own research. The "Red" feminists waged a war of suppression against the book, basically preventing anybody from reading it (and possibly even driving the publisher out of business, although I'm having some trouble finding the source where I read that).

There's a reprint of her Scotsman article about it here: http://www.fathersforlife.org/pizzey/failfamt.htm

The question isn't whether feminism "must necessarily cause harm" on this issue - the question is whether it has, and is continuing to do so. We now have this narrative that is repeated again and again that misrepresents the situation and leaves people who legitimately need help with nowhere to turn. For example, about a year ago, one of the administrators of Interval House, which is Kingston's women's shelter, estimated that 4 out of 5 women had suffered violence in a relationship. I kid you not - the article is here: http://www.thewhig.com/2013/06/27/domestic-violence-happening-in-endemic-proportions

That number is nonsense (and, I would add, unsourced) - but it's also in line with the narrative of violent men battering women. If you remove the gender politics, what you're left with is the raw data. From that data, you can start to address the problem on a case-by-case basis, providing counseling and protection where it is necessary.

Look, I'm not saying that we don't have a problem with violence against women in our society. There are some seriously disturbing signs out there that if things aren't getting worse now, they're about to (the emergence of a new rape culture, for example). But when it comes to providing solid solutions to the very real problems of domestic abuse, any narrative that cuts out around 75% of the reality hinders rather than helps, and right now that is what the Marxist feminist narrative does.

Best regards to all,

Robert Marks

[Ree]

Somewhat less germane to the present discussion, if still broadly on topic: here's a fun thought experiment (for yourselves or for that one friend who just doesn't "get it").

Name a stereotype about gay people.
Name a stereotype about black people.
Name a stereotype about trans people.
Name something women are bad at.

Now name a stereotype about straight people.
One about white people. One for cis people.
Name something men are bad at.

There's going to be a huge difference in the answers you get for the two groups, if you can get answers to some of the second group at all. Think/talk about that - who do you think came up with these stereotypes (really, all stereotypes)? Who spread them?

This is the power of societal privilege - the ability to dictate how people are seen, talked about, thought to be, the ability to ignore someone because you know what "those people" are like.