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Post by Liberator on Apr 19, 2009 4:06:38 GMT
From another board ( alicesrestaurant.yuku.com/topic/392?page=1 ) I'm no feminist..I'm a human being who happens to be female. Give a dog a bad name...
So are you suggesting a feminist woman isn't a human being?
Or that feminists believe that neither men nor women who aren't conscious sisters are not human?
I think she means more that she is a female human being but feels no need to distinguish that further as Feminist. Thereby lies the problem women identify as feminist saying that they want equal jobs, law, treatment blah blah to men and go on about the Suffragettes. That ignores that when the Suffragettes were active a lot of men did not have a vote either. It presumes women in an inferior position needing to move up to equality with men. Feminists say that they believe in equality of the sexes but in fact they are about the only people who do not. Most women take it for granted that they are more privileged than men and a lot still believe their sex entitles them to traditional privilege that feminists deny and men are not cultureally equal with women to enjoy. Their rallying cry is that women have been tricked into believing they are equal to men when they are really still inferiors in a Patriarchy. Their belief, nobody else's That raises a lot of questions. The most obvious is the feminist assumption that everything men have traditionally done is preferable and superior to everything traditionally connected with women. This does not look so much a belief in equality as in inferiority of anything traditionally thought of as female. It does not question the supremacy of industrial work-orientated society (Capitalist or Socialist) over more personally orientated values focussed on the home and traditionally female activities. It is usually at least as hostile to women in the sex industry (if not more so) as the worst traditional Puritanism, classing anything it thinks of as titillating men as inferior, degrading, subservient with all the lurid tabloid tales to show it. There' nothing equal or liberated about that: it is telling women in that kind of work that they are fallen degraded creatures just like women always looked down an sought to save their errant sisters. A true equality would surely support these women, accept that although there are abused victims in the sex trade as there are in all others, many enjoy showing off to men and true equality consists of women demanding to bring on The Chippendales, not to retreat in traditional shame under another name for flashing their tits. Renegade Evolution is involved in the sex industry and it is Feminsts who give her even more hell than religious fundamentalists (fungusmentalists). Feminists demand what women have had for more than thirty years. So they either are living in the past or want something else that they code in terms of equality. They despise what women have traditionally done (especially if sexual) exactly as do the worst male chauvinists without any attempt to correct that if both sexes are equal than whatever they choose to do is equal too and sex workers deserve respect as himan beings equal to any others, and women to liberate themselves to accept men as equals and sex workers too, as men accept women. Instead, Feminists are usually on the other side, defining men's work as superior and anything women have done, from prostitute to mother as inferior instead of equal and (except for Mother - and there's a couple of cases where even that is legally doubtful) expecting men to do traditionally women's things equally as they expect women to do traditional men's things. In my view, Feminism means reaction against sexual equality to return to women's traditional pretence of being the weaker sex to gain some practical exemption from responsibility equal with men and having to treat and respond to men as equals instead of inferior feeble children.
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Post by beth on Apr 19, 2009 22:50:14 GMT
When I was growing up, "homemaker" was a very desirable job title. That's not to say a lot of women, including wives and moms didn't work - they did. Many, however, put priority, energy and creative effort into the day to day demands of keeping a stable, nurturing environment for their hisband and children. My mom was a homemaker until my brother, sister and I were middle-older teens. Then, she went back to her career as a paralegal, started before we were born. But, here's the thing. While we were growing up and benefitting from a neat clean environment, dinner at 7:00 and home-room-mom presence at school, other women were involved in the feminist movement that pushed for equal work, equal pay. So, when she returned to work, Mom walked into a better situation than she had left. Love my mom - she was terrific. Deeply appreciate the feminist movement, also, and the way the world has changed as a result of the hard work of those women. (apologies for typos and/or misspells, for some reason, the spell check is not working for me this evening)
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Post by june on Apr 19, 2009 22:59:02 GMT
I don't recognise 'the feminist' as portrayed by Ratarse's thread. And honestly - I am not clear why a man would be so excised about feminism or how women choose to define themselves - either individually or in groups.
There is something about me that feels portraying all women who say they are feminists in the way you do Ratarse is not better than the women you despise saying "all men are rapists".
In any case - I don't think there is a role for a man or a woman to tell other women (or men) how they should live their lives in terms of defining the sexual and social status.
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Post by Liberator on Apr 20, 2009 2:44:26 GMT
When I was growing up, "homemaker" was a very desirable job title. That's not to say a lot of women, including wives and moms didn't work - they did. Many, however, put priority, energy and creative effort into the day to day demands of keeping a stable, nurturing environment for their hisband and children. My mom was a homemaker until my brother, sister and I were middle-older teens. Then, she went back to her career as a paralegal, started before we were born. But, here's the thing. While we were growing up and benefitting from a neat clean environment, dinner at 7:00 and home-room-mom presence at school, other women were involved in the feminist movement that pushed for equal work, equal pay. So, when she returned to work, Mom walked into a better situation than she had left. Love my mom - she was terrific. Deeply appreciate the feminist movement, also, and the way the world has changed as a result of the hard work of those women. (apologies for typos and/or misspells, for some reason, the spell check is not working for me this evening) And Communism was a great liberating force in 1917. Doesn't mean it was in 1987! When I was growing up, Homemaker was also a great title that no man would imagine he was anything else, but deferred to the woman to handle the details while he handled more the practicalities of taking farm produce for sale. As I see it, 'feminism' has been exploited to bring women into the same unquestioning commercial service as men when before, it meant challenging the value of that service and assserting the equal value of what women had been doing that the commercial world should serve and men be just as much Homemakers as women. Most people, especially women, value this equality of men respecting and sharing traditional women's activities. It is only a few who call themselves feminist who despise women as 'inferior' unless they conform to the same conservative values as men and oppose men's liberation from traditional employment demands to share and value domestic relationships first, equal with women. Not all women who call themselves feminist necessarily believe in this traditional 'masculine' supremacy, but I have yet to meet one on a notice board who does not, and 'misogyny' is the image that the loudest 'feminists' have created for themselves just as dictatorship is the image the most powerful Communists created, whatever the original benign intent. That is why women usually regard feminist as about the worst insult possible. The sexes are close to equal, though women still expect some privileges they deny men. 'Feminists' would deny them to women too instead of accepting them as equal to themselves.
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Post by beth on Apr 20, 2009 3:23:16 GMT
ratarsed, it sounds like you've run into some pretty domineering feminists. They are not all like that.
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Post by lonewolf on Apr 20, 2009 16:48:31 GMT
It would seem that feminism has liberated some women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men.
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Post by jean on Apr 23, 2009 8:32:17 GMT
I don't recognise 'the feminist' as portrayed by Ratarse's thread. I don't think many people do, june. What I find most curious is that when challenged, ratarsed will say that he only meets feminists on boards like this, and that women in the real world have shake off the dust of it from their feet and are out there rejoicing in what he thinks of as equality. Yet when it suits him he produces real-world examples of women being, for example, aggressive (bad) instead of assertive (good). And men? In spite of the fact that he does not like them, it always appears that their behaviour is either exemplary or at least excusable. Very odd, that.
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Post by Liberator on May 5, 2009 22:46:15 GMT
What I find most curious is that when challenged, ratarsed will say that he only meets feminists on boards like this, and that women in the real world have shake off the dust of it from their feet and are out there rejoicing in what he thinks of as equality. Yet when it suits him he produces real-world examples of women being, for example, aggressive (bad) instead of assertive (good). And men? In spite of the fact that he does not like them, it always appears that their behaviour is either exemplary or at least excusable. Very odd, that. Good old Jean - making it up as she goes long as usual. Quite true, that when it suits me to show that women are not necessarily the victims often claimed for them, I have done so and Jean or another crony has been quick to jump in to claim it condemnatory or aggressive when I meant no such thing by it, but their prejudice anticipated what mine must be. Likewise, since I have rarely been involved in discussions involving men any more guilty of anything in particular than women, but often when being female was sufficient reason to find some excuse for behaviour accepted as needing no excuse for culpability in men, it follows that I did not join in blanket condemnations of men simply because they were men. We know perfectly well that it is common prejudice to present women as always the victim, never the instigator whenever a mixed couple shares accusation, for instance here: www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/99106Jean chooses what she says carefull, but not nearly as carefull as what she leaves out, like the kind of person who would tell you "That one never has a good word to say about anybody" without mentioning that it is a prosecuting lawyer they are talking about. This might be of interest. It's just about short enought to quote in full and shows the kind of feminist prejudice that can need addressing. What neither it nor feminists will ever admt is that a lot of men patronise women and boast to them because a lot of women regard that as a real man, not some New Age, 'New Man' wimp. I should add that I do not agree with everything about Wendy McElroy (though it may work in the USA), but her Ifeminist Newsletter is almost as good a source of debunking victim feminist sexism as the real life that just does not match their projection of their own sense of inferiority at being female onto society at large. www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.463 Good women must speak out on Monday 20 April 2009 by Wendy McElroy Stand up for the values that have been ravaged by PC feminism: freedom of speech, parental control of children, the rights of men, and the ability to rise through merit alone. Every day offers opportunities to transform the culture. When a friend launches into a male-bashing diatribe, remind her that she's talking about your husband or son...and object. When a co-worker loses a deserved promotion because of affirmative action, give him moral support. When public schools teach your child values you abhor, complain to the School Board. But be prepared to argue because political correctness will die as it lived -- kicking and screaming ad hominem abuse as a substitute for arguments. If you defend your husband, you may be called anti-woman. If you protest affirmative action, you'll be slurred as a racist. If you don't want gay teachers "coming out" in school at taxpayers' expense, you'll be labeled homophobic. The first step in arguing effectively is to ask yourself a key question in advance: "What do I want out of this exchange?" Before interrupting your friend or challenging your child's teacher, pause and decide what you wish to accomplish. In talking to a teacher, your goal might be to have your child excused from an objectionable reading assignment. Keep this specific goal in mind and do not let the conversation wander or deteriorate into bickering. If the goal has been achieved, then stop talking. The ideal end to any argument is for the other person to acknowledge error, praise your brilliance and beg forgiveness. That won't happen. Instead, when you have accomplished your purpose, leave...either physically or by dropping the subject. In defining your goal, be realistic. "To convince the other person" is a commonly adopted goal but it is usually an unrealistic one. Why? Because convincing the other person is out of your control and failing to do so can result from nothing more than bad circumstances. During a 15-minute coffee break or at a loud party with constant interruptions, you are not likely to change anyone's opinion. But you might change her behavior. For example, if you firmly object to a girlfriend saying "all men are idiots," then she may well avoid making similar statements in your presence in the future. If others join in, the peer pressure may make her behavior change in a more general way. The circumstances you should consider when defining your goal include: * Where will the exchange take place? * How much time will you have? * What is your level of knowledge on this subject? * How are you feeling-- e.g. do you have a headache? * Is the other person reasonable enough to listen? * Do you have something to lose -- e.g. in out-arguing a boss? Try to make circumstances favor your goal. For example, don't challenge your male-bashing friend's in her home where she can reply with justification, "I'll say whatever I want in my own parlor." Do so in a public place or at your place. In first talking to a teacher, do so in private because a public challenge could make her stubborn. It always possible to "go public" if a private consultation does not work. Even in good circumstances, an obstacle to achieving your goal will be the intimidation tactics the other person may use against you: you are anti-woman, racist, homophobic, etc. Generally speaking, these tactics fall into two broad categories: Psychologizing. The person attempts to intimidate you emotionally. For example, you contradict a diatribe about how "men only want one thing" by pointing out that the men in your life aren't like that. The speaker responds, "Why are you so threatened by honesty about sex?" The ground has just shifted away from your factual objection onto speculation about what is wrong with your psychology. Don't let her get away with this: calmly repeat your objection and make her deal with it. Ask her, "Do you think your son fits that description? How about your next-door neighbor?" If she won't budge from analyzing your psychological inadequacy, then turn the tables. Inquire, "Why can't you answer my question? Why are you so threatened by having to argue your position? Is it that weak?" Intellectualizing. The person attempts to intimidate you intellectually. For example, in the Q&A of a university class, you question whether gender is really "socially constructed": that is, you argue that urges such as motherhood are biologically based, not a matter of social indoctrination. The professor replies, "I assume you have Dr. X's essay on this question in the October '96 issue of Snob's Sophistry Journal?" Of course, you haven't. Now the focus shifts onto your intellectual inadequacies and away from the question you raised. Stand your ground. Insist upon your right to advance an opinion on a matter affecting your life and demand a straight answer. Good women must not let PC feminism continue to affect our culture. Speak out.
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Post by Liberator on May 5, 2009 23:45:35 GMT
ratarsed, it sounds like you've run into some pretty domineering feminists. They are not all like that. Whatever makes you say that?I never know whether people respond to my criticisms of feminists in order to give the impression that they fit their prejudices (though I'm certain that Jean does) or because their prejudices blind them to what I have actually written. I would say that most women I've known (and certainly all that I've had relationships with have been assertive with high self-esteem and even strong-willed verging on aggressive. In fact, I would say that most women are like that and that traditionally girls have been brought up to be much more confident in being female, while men have always come under conscious pressure to prove their masculinity at all times. In fact, not just I would say it - so would Margaret Meade, Simone de Beauvoire and Germaine Greer. What S de M avoided saying that wsa central to MM and GG could not avoid but skirted round, is that men are socially made much more than women, particularly in primitive society. A woman is a girl, a potential mother, an actual mother, a post-menstrual wise-woman/hag. t puberty she initiates herself and any rites are of the order of celebration. A boy is made into a man, often by degrading and painful rites, sometimes so extreme that some do not survive. Of course women face the painful 'rites' of losing virginity (sometimes emulated by late circumcision) and birth - which again some may not survive. If your tribe sends boys out to hack it or die at 13, it does not care much if girls of the same age die in childbirth: the survivors are most lilkely tough enough to carry on surviving. Back to modern life. I don't know why you call strong women 'domineering'. Often in fact, it is the weak who are domineering, always calling for somebody else to do what they can't because they are so conspicuously helpless. You say that not all women are like that. Quite: the ones who feel weak and inferior to men call themselves 'femininists'. There was a time when it meant women could hack it as much as men and that what they were doing that men were not was of as much value as anything that men were doing - often more. That is my belief. My objection to i]web-feminsts[/i] is that their belief is one long tale of woe swapping horror stories about how badly men behave and what poor helpless victims women are, and screaming that any mention of women behaving badly or men as victims is just an attempt by the all-powerful 'Patriarchy' to divert attention so it can go on indulging their masochistic fantasies. So yes, women I've known have been certainly self-assured, though I wouldn't say domineering (though I guess the misogynists that feminists want to see men as would, and feminists would call the same assertion domineering in men). My beef with web-feminists is that they are not such women. A quote that Jean absolutely hates me repeating from a Mensa women's group leader I was sleeping with in 1980 sums these feeble-feminists up entirely: "To me, Feminism means a good job and sleeping with any man I fancy; I'm very worried about this new generation that thinks it meas quivering under the table in a Lesbian huddle the moment a man looks at them". That is my problem with feeble-feminists: they are old-fashioned girlies[/i[ complaining about having to face up to responsibility equal with men and treatment as equal instead of deferential and patronizing from men.
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Post by Liberator on May 6, 2009 6:40:57 GMT
And men? In spite of the fact that he does not like them, it always appears that their behaviour is either exemplary or at least excusable. Very odd, that. Everything I have posted says that men should change their behaviour to learn from women instead of women conforming to traditional expectations on men as 'superior'. It is Jean and 'feminists' who insist that men's behaviour is either exemplaryor at least excusable - so exemplary that she cannot stand my saying it is women who should set the example for men, not men for women. That is the heart of my objection and that of all women I know to 'feminists', their belief in men's traditional behaviour as an ideal standard to achieve instead of an abberation to liberate men from to equality with women. As usual, Jean accuses me of her own faults.
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Post by Big Lin on May 22, 2009 15:12:49 GMT
I think that people are getting hung up on labels and words rather than looking at the individual human being.
Are there selfish, arrogant, cruel, stupid, racist and sexist men? Yes.
Is the same thing true of women? Yes.
Does any of that mean that EITHER gender has to fulfil some kind of stereotypical ways of thinking?
I know a man who had a job as a manager and his wife died. He had to bring up two young kids and, instead of paying for a nanny, he went part-time at a drastic drop in income and he fetched his children up himself. He pushed a pram about, cooked and cleaned, and gave them his love and made them the centre of his world. Men are just as capable of bringing up children as women.
I also remember my Dad telling me about three kids from his schooldays in the 1960s (when gender roles were only slowly BEGINNING to change.) Two were boys and one was a girl.
One boy wanted to learn to type but was told "typing's for girls.' He went on to teach himself and became a journalist.
Another wanted to go to what they called domestic science in those days and was told 'oh, that's just for girls.' He went on to become a chef.
A girl there wanted to do woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing and was told, 'you can't do that, only boys can do that.' She went on to become an engineer.
Feminism is NOT about hating men but about allowing women to have the choice to fulfil their own lives in the ways that suit them best rather than answering to some preconceived gender stereotypes.
You don't have to be a woman to be kind, caring, gentle, and loving any more than you need to be a man to be cruel, uncaring, aggressive and choked with hate.
We are all human beings and we are all capable of good and evil.
All we can reasonably expect of us is to do the best we can.
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Post by Liberator on May 22, 2009 22:11:36 GMT
Point I've been making Lin. It's much less a case of what self-styled feminists say as statements - in fact they are keen to avoid committing themselves to anything that might be taken as defining feminism, since then they would end up in the wars common to all belief movements of all denouncing each other as heretics, class traitors, establishment tools, reactionaries and the rest of the sub-Marxist name-calling. It is much more a case of what they oppose, how they react to points of discussion, their deceitful use of minority to stand for majority (as Zionists class any criticism of Israeli policy as 'antisemitism') and, on the rare occasions when they do make a positive point, the arrogant pomposity with which they continue a similar process of pronouncing upon what 'women' want - as if women were a homogeneous bloc with a single mind: theirs. This is one of the things most women dislike about the the most, their habit of trying to enforce what they believe as what every woman must believe or not be a 'real' woman. So there is no argument against their sexism, since any woman who does not fit does not count as a woman.
I don't think feminists do hate men as a rule (though some women with reason to hate men call themselves feminists and so do some who expect the world to be their servant, including other women. Those are the ones my friends hated the most - the ones with the 'good' cushy jobs wanting to offer every woman the chance to support herself - as their cleaner, nanny, all-night supermarket checkout). It's much more that they are stuck in very conservative concepts of sex roles and envy the ones they attribute to men as far more glamorous and independent than they really are. That plays straight into the hands of Corporate Consumerism in need of removing any threat to these values that it has bamboozled men with. And CC has manipulated feminist influence to that end. The equality that they pretend to want has as near as dammit arrived and they are its biggest obstacle to advancing any further.
Say that both sexes are equal and almost the only people to scream that women are inferior will call themselves feminists. What they list as examples of inferiority are usually cases of men treating women as equals instead of social superiors, or else highly selected factoids that do not tell the whole tale and reveal their own prejudices about what is socially superior or inferior.
For instance, women earn less because they work less because they have children to look after. Their choice: why aren't they demanding men work less too so they can live a life as balanced as those women? Because that is not the feminist aim. The feminist aim is to reduce women to the same level of wage-slavery as menbecause they define it as superior and (probably unknown to themselves) they have been indoctrinated to believe women's work inferior to men's work.
I tried suggesting once that childcare should be treated as a career on a footing equal to any other and paid accordingly by the State so that single mothers would not be faced with impossible demands (Little Timmy had a nightmare and woke you up crawling into bed at 3am? I'm afraid there's still work to be done dear). The web-feminist response? Fulminating about men avoiding their responsibilities to 'their' children. Funny that - the feminists I used to know insisted (A) that women should not have to depend on men for their upkeep, (B) that their fertility is none of men's business and when push comes to shove, they choose whether to use contraception or not, if not then they face the pregnancy, they face the birth, they get the milk whether they use it or not - and they choose the man to partner them in Bringing Baby Up regardless of his genetic affiliation to the child, if they choose any man at all. Here I find 'feminists' coming across like some 1950s Hillbilly wielding a shotgun demanding the man do the decent thing by my daughter however the daughter feels about it - the very thing that what they would call second wave feminism was fighting against!
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Post by jean on May 25, 2009 8:13:45 GMT
Point I've been making Lin. Really, ratarsed? So when lin writes: Feminism is NOT about hating men but about allowing women to have the choice to fulfil their own lives in the ways that suit them best rather than answering to some preconceived gender stereotypes. we can take it that you've decided to actually listen to what the feminists have been telling you for as long as you've been haranguing them on messageboards? And since we've revisited this thread, ratarsed, you are quite correct about A quote that Jean absolutely hates me repeating from a Mensa women's group leader I was sleeping with in 1980... "To me, Feminism means a good job and sleeping with any man I fancy; I'm very worried about this new generation that thinks it meas quivering under the table in a Lesbian huddle the moment a man looks at them". But it irritates not because it sums these feeble-feminists up entirely, but because you trot it out over and over again as though it were the last word on the subject, while failing to notice that the good job this high-acheving and ostentatiousy bright woman (cf the Mensa membership) aspired to is very unlikely to have been - correct me if I'm wrong - as a stay-at-home mother. (What happened to her, btw? Can we have an update?)
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Post by fretslider on May 25, 2009 10:18:00 GMT
Wimmin - can't live with them, can't live without them
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Post by riotgrrl on May 25, 2009 10:34:50 GMT
Men - can't live with them, can't cut off their heads and boil it in a pot, because that would be cooking.
(Jenny Eclair)
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Post by fretslider on May 25, 2009 10:47:07 GMT
Men - can't live with them, can't cut off their heads and boil it in a pot, because that would be cooking. (Jenny Eclair) Ooer, RG!
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