Feminism and Gender Equality

@Kiro

I reckon we can just agree to disagree.

Sorry if I hurt your feelings in any way but then again I don't care. It wasn't my intention you just took it that way. I am not a sexist no matter how bad you'd like to make me out to be one. I just simply believe its better for everyone if only men are allowed to fight. This doesn't men women are inferior to men it's just simply better this way.

Maybe you should try to look at it from my perspective. I tried that and it helped me, maybe you'd understand where I'm coming from if you imagined yourself in my shoes.

I want to throw my 35 almost 36 years of life into this mix and comment on the " do horrible things"

thats not a combat thing, thats a day to day life thing as a woman - its harder for people to grasp that YES there is a genuine risk, even in small groups... always having to watch our drinks at the bar even when Im out with my wife, more than a few instances of men lurking outside said place waiting for us to leave and confront us outside our car. and thats not just clubs, when I go jogging i've had men follow and try to force themselves on me after their flirts failed.

I live in Washington state, in a decent place, small city, and just over the few months there have been women showing up drowned in rivers, beheaded and dumped at land fills, one was utterly unrecognizable because she had so many stab wounds and dumped in the woods to rot.... every one of these cases it was done by their boyfriends so even then, our life IS dangerous. threats of capture dont matter to us, thats daily life. as a solider and as civilians.

Nor'baal said:

bar perhaps dropping a nuke on Japan after they surrendered.

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Just a quick correction here @Nor'baal, Japan surrendered only after America deployed atomic weapons against them. August 6th 1945 was the first at Hrioshima, then two days later on August 8th, Nagasaki was hit.

Japan actually surrendered August 15th, after a failed military coup that attempted to prevent Emperor Hirohito from broadcasting Japan's surrender. The official declaration of surrender was signed later on September 2nd.

EDIT:

As for the rest of this topic, I feel it rather ironic that IWD was first acknowledged on March 8th 1914. Who knew that four short months later, women activist groups (along with hundreds more) would be largely ignored, marginalized and swept away from the public eye so that Europe could rip itself to pieces in the First World War.

Mr.BossMan said:

@Kiro

I reckon we can just agree to disagree.

Sorry if I hurt your feelings in any way but then again I don't care. It wasn't my intention you just took it that way. I am not a sexist no matter how bad you'd like to make me out to be one. I just simply believe its better for everyone if only men are allowed to fight. This doesn't men women are inferior to men it's just simply better this way.

Maybe you should try to look at it from my perspective. I tried that and it helped me, maybe you'd understand where I'm coming from if you imagined yourself in my shoes.

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Fleeing crappost is crap. But if you can't handle the heat then get out of the kitchen I suppose. I see your shoes, I know your perspective, and bud you're not just fundamentally wrong, you're also really degrading to women in general and offensive. So perhaps it's best you take some time out of this thread to consider what people are telling you. Rather than asking them to reread your crap.

Sinbi said:

Uh, okay? Take it down a notch dude. Engaging in discourse isn't against the rules (I think? I'll double check), and disagreeing with something you believe is incorrect and arguing against it isn't high horsing. It's participating in discussion. Nor'baal said something I disagreed with, then something I agreed with in a comically angry tone (from what I read anyhow :D). I invited them to disregard the last bit if they weren't actually getting mad over it. If you see me as hostile, that's fine. Like I said before, I'm not intending to offend, and if people take it that way then that sucks and I'd like for everyone to hug a stuffed animal or something and try not to take it that way.

I also never said those peeps were sitting at their desks spitting with rage. I implied some people might be, because it happens. There's no reason to attack me for disagreeing, attack my arguments if you feel they are incorrect. That's how you change minds. Shit, that does sound high-horsey doesn't it? Well, I'm just trying to steer the conversation to a slightly more leveled area, because right now it's skewed to insults and de-constructive "Nuh uh!"s.

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Bud, you're talking about a high strung debate over inequality, you're not going to get calm people giving the classic "well I guess we won't agree but we can still be friends." That's not how situations like this go.

I know someone who thinks rape jokes are funny, I tried for a while to explain to him he's wrong, and when that failed I simply stopped talking and associating myself with him. Just as you don't want bossman agreeing with you, many people can't sit by and be friendy to someone like him. Especially people who have experienced abuse and/or the products of inequality.

But yeah, my tone wasn't hostile. It was level, calm, and simple. But you couldn't hear that because this is the internet. Just how I can't hear if you're being calm or a jackass with your tone. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because I think you just don't want people fighting.

Sometimes, the best course of action is to just step out if you don't like how the conversation is going. Trying to fix it when you're not an administrator really isn't going to work lol.

Empress said:

I want to throw my 35 almost 36 years of life into this mix and comment on the " do horrible things"

thats not a combat thing, thats a day to day life thing as a woman - its harder for people to grasp that YES there is a genuine risk, even in small groups... always having to watch our drinks at the bar even when Im out with my wife, more than a few instances of men lurking outside said place waiting for us to leave and confront us outside our car. and thats not just clubs, when I go jogging i've had men follow and try to force themselves on me after their flirts failed.

I live in Washington state, in a decent place, small city, and just over the few months there have been women showing up drowned in rivers, beheaded and dumped at land fills, one was utterly unrecognizable because she had so many stab wounds and dumped in the woods to rot.... every one of these cases it was done by their boyfriends so even then, our life IS dangerous. threats of capture dont matter to us, thats daily life. as a solider and as civilians.

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This is basically what my mother told me yesterday. She couldn't even go to the bar with her girlfriends without some drunken ass trying something to either her or her friends. It is wrong, on so many different levels.

However I do find that some of your examples were a little extreme. Such as the beheading and all that. To me that sounds like some crazy ass mother fuckers who deserve to be shot dead.

it is but its also pretty common sadly enough too. violent crimes against women are usually more violent and gory than they are against men, and almost always rape is involved, and almost always by someone we trust

Just wanted to chime in and say that @Kiro is right. In my country women ARE held to the same standard as men. If you cannot perform your duties, that is, as my old platoon commander used to say, "grounds for being sacked", (man OR woman).

However, you will have help, encouragement and support if you need it to be able to meet the required physical goals, both from officers, NCO's and fellow soldiers. Understand that not everybody, man OR woman, is by nature a physical monstrosity. I'm lucky enough that I could always handle it relatively well. My body adapted quickly to the increased physical strain of the military.

But some people - for the umpteenth time, both men and women - need to work harder on it. It's like a continuous hurdle you have to keep traversing. The Swedish Army helps you with this. They exercise you, feed you, encourage and advise you on how to best do it. Yell at you if they have to, but out of "love" rather than anger. Their goal is not to kick anyone out, it's to make sure those who are good soldiers, are physically prepared for it.

I'm saying this to clarify that the physical part will come, as long as you have the right mindset. And a good military organization will value people for more than their physical capabilities.

If you approach the issue with this in mind, then at least to me, it makes no sense denying women in general any role in the military.

Turned into a rant, but cest la view, eh?

Empress said:

I want to throw my 35 almost 36 years of life into this mix and comment on the " do horrible things"

thats not a combat thing, thats a day to day life thing as a woman - its harder for people to grasp that YES there is a genuine risk, even in small groups... always having to watch our drinks at the bar even when Im out with my wife, more than a few instances of men lurking outside said place waiting for us to leave and confront us outside our car. and thats not just clubs, when I go jogging i've had men follow and try to force themselves on me after their flirts failed.

I live in Washington state, in a decent place, small city, and just over the few months there have been women showing up drowned in rivers, beheaded and dumped at land fills, one was utterly unrecognizable because she had so many stab wounds and dumped in the woods to rot.... every one of these cases it was done by their boyfriends so even then, our life IS dangerous. threats of capture dont matter to us, thats daily life. as a solider and as civilians.

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Uh... citation... needed? I believe you, but I tend to trust but verify. I don't mean the personal experience, that I'm taking your word on, but the stabbings and all that. The beheading/stabbing victims sound like a serial killer case to me, not dudes all accidentally performing the same crime. Could be, though. I don't know. You're also being very general about this. Insinuating women are preyed upon by men, like sheep living in a city with wolves is dishonest at worst, ignorant at best. Men vastly outnumber women as victims of violent crime, and in the west, those violent crimes have been dropping steadily over the years. And most of these crimes in general are perpetrated by people they love/trust/know.

Traveling in groups in populated places is a basic safety precaution everyone should adhere to. We learn this is in primary/elementary school with the buddy system. Ask any male bouncer at any club and they will tell you the awful things drunk women do to them and they are told to take it. More men harass women in bars, however, but a lot of them are inebriated. Doesn't excuse them, but some bottled courage can cause stupid thoughts to turn into action, and a drunk guy can be very persistent with anything, even trying to pick up a woman who obviously isn't interested. The ones that aren't are genuine predators.

Alcohol impairs judgement. Everyone is aware of this. Doesn't make it okay, but offers a lens to look at the situation through. (Ugh, I hate that phrase, but it's the only one that fits.)

I think bouncers should probably be more vigilant, report what happens to them as well, and make sure to intervene when any of that happens.

Life as a woman isn't a shuddering fear festival. What you described is not the daily struggle of all or even most women. I get what you're saying, but fear mongering doesn't help. It sucks you seem to get the shit end of the stick here, it sounds bad. Hope you have better experiences in the future and stay safe.

Black Noise said:

Bud, you're talking about a high strung debate over inequality, you're not going to get calm people giving the classic "well I guess we won't agree but we can still be friends." That's not how situations like this go.

I know someone who thinks rape jokes are funny, I tried for a while to explain to him he's wrong, and when that failed I simply stopped talking and associating myself with him. Just as you don't want bossman agreeing with you, many people can't sit by and be friendy to someone like him. Especially people who have experienced abuse and/or the products of inequality.

But yeah, my tone wasn't hostile. It was level, calm, and simple. But you couldn't hear that because this is the internet. Just how I can't hear if you're being calm or a jackass with your tone. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because I think you just don't want people fighting.

Sometimes, the best course of action is to just step out if you don't like how the conversation is going. Trying to fix it when you're not an administrator really isn't going to work lol.

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0. Me not wanting bossman agreeing with me was a joke. I added a /s, come on.

1. I can see that a few people have trouble with taking this conversation casually, but that's not really uncommon in any conversation. It's fine. I'll deal.
2. Comedy is subjective.
3. Thanks for the consideration, dude.
4. I'm not just going to step away because I disagree with statements, I'm enjoying myself. It's a thread about feminism and gender inequality, and I'm contributing. I also don't see how me not being an administrator has anything to do with pointing out how things are progressing.

What the hell is a grad scheme? Bloody limey talk. Speak American, Tory. >_>

Livgardist said:

What the hell is a grad scheme? Bloody limey talk. Speak American, Tory. >_>

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An employment channel for those with degrees.

Or, in MURICAAAA:

Jobs for doods with education.

That's better, you lower middleclass yobo. >_>

See, now we are getting into the obvious injustices that are in our society. These are the things feminists should be paying attention to. People like that, people who openly harass women like that, they give their entire gender a bad name. They are... They are...

(Eagerly thumbs through thesaurus for insults that cannot be shown in the thread for fear of being banned.)

But anyway, they are not representative of the gender in its entirety. It's an insult to me that I and many people try to be decent and considerate to all peoples rights and status as a human being, but are lumped together with those jerks because of the crap they pull. It's actually kinda like the relationship between misandrists and feminists if you want to think about it that way.

Mr.BossMan said:

I just don't want a woman killing for me, and I damn sure don't want a woman dying for me.

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If someone is shooting at me, I don't care if a woman if shooting back at them.

This thread has gone to some weird places, but my favourite so far has been the whole 'I can't fight the war today because I'm having my period' thing.

I mean really? This is getting ridiculous.

Green Ranger said:

I can't fight the war today because I'm having my period

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Oh yeah, i'm gonna abuse this quote.

Reminds me of a 30 Rock bit...

Honestly I can't see how a woman's ability could be impared that much during combat by a period. I mean I've had friends describe the pain as pretty intense sometimes but wouldn't adrenaline take care of that?

The physical gap between men and women isn't really that meaningful in a combat scenario. Honestly a woman can compensate with effort, and you won't be benching half a ton every day anyway. We use guns to fight Things now. We don't beat things to death with hammers. I'm pretty sure it doesn't really matter .

But to the people insisting women are inferior to men in physicality and in combat:

Green Ranger said:

This thread has gone to some weird places, but my favourite so far has been the whole 'I can't fight the war today because I'm having my period' thing.

I mean really? This is getting ridiculous.

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You should have been around when the idea of having a woman as president was still a fantasy.

"But what if she's on her period? She could nuke the world!!!!11!1!!!1"

Ridiculous.

I've largely refrained from intervening here because some of the competing subjectivities and backbiting struck me as largely unproductive if not somewhat mystifying pace the structural processes involved in sexism --such as it is. I will make a few observations by way of Sinbi:

Mssr. Sinbi:

I agree with you about the wage gap (to an extent.) The seventy-seven percent figure is derived in a mathematically careless way and does not necessarily account for dynamics such as stochasticity, statistical hysteresis, etc.

However the general defenses against a wage gap are uneven:

1. Women don't choose high paying jobs at the same rate that men do -- This is subbing in one normative argument with another. We don't really have a lot of granular data as to why women make the choices they do. We do know however that women tend to have a harder time advancing in the business world and I've run LOESS regressions where the expected proficiency of a female STEM student (measured by say GRE scores, etc.) don't really match up all that well with their expected outcomes.

So let's dive into some of the data: An older BLS report points out through the power of bivariate data smoothing (MATH!) that the largest portion of the data indicates a concentration of wage disparities in female-dominated sectors and not necessarily gender (though of course there is still a disparity even within the same sector) as the largest single factor in the wage gap (but one which does not explain its totality and which still leaves some portion of potential sexism, or alienation, or space aliens to amend any gestalt explanation.)

In this regard, the defense is somewhat correct but more importantly (and somewhat ominously for the integrity of future arguments along this vein), it substitutes another potential vector for sexism for other factors that may prove to bedevil us as well. For example supposing that the wage gap consists largely of differing percentages of men and women in fields with unequal compensation, a few questions necessarily arise: is that distribution natural or attributable in at least some part to sexism? And if it is not, is the disparity in compensation necessarily fair? Are we valuing "feminine work" in the way we should?

2. Time worked. This argument actually does account for some moiety of the gap, but the BLS datasets show that difference narrowing to a ten percent wage gap. Still substantial.

3. The arguments do not consider ways in which women still get under-compensated relative to men who (may) work longer hours or (may) take on more dangerous jobs. Child-rearing, housekeeping, etc. are all essential and essentially unpaid work that women bear the brunt of. Again. Under-valued "feminine" work? I've changed my girls' diapers more times than I can say, and my perspective is obviously... different.

4. Counterarguments tend to be short on math (aside from the BLS dataset which more or less concedes some kind of wage gap epiphenomena) explaining or getting particularly in-depth with the data. Not to tip my hand but this is mostly because of an irrational private market which due to profit motive and competitive marginalities requires some modicum of secrecy in salary and wage rates.

5. This dearth of data presents --to some degree-- an epistemological and statistical conspiracy against clarity on wages. Instead arguments tend to be temulent with the same type of prejudices (for or against; either classical liberal, conservative, ordoliberal, social democrat) that signify for wider (and meaningless) internecine struggles between one bourgeois faction and another. If middle-class feminists are not being entirely consistent or intellectually honest, neither are the self-appointed tribunes sparring with them. Not entirely at least.

6. These arguments tend to ignore circumstantial or ancillary data (such as women being disproportionately in poverty --sometimes on the order of 37% more(!)-- than men.) that suggests some kind of wage, wealth, etc. lacuna.

7. There's been least one (here) study holding most of the factors cited constant. The unexplained gap persists (and on the order of seven percent if not higher depending on other values held constant.)

Indeed, from the data I've looked at and barring playing with a lot of eigenvalues and other math stuff, the difference persists around the 7-15ish% magnitude and strikes me on a visceral level as more or less correct.

As high as the labeling sold? No. Self-correcting? In some ways and sectors yes. In others... well ambiguous data is ambiguous. And sobering.

Is this 7-15% range still a substantial value? Yes. Around three thousand (or more) dollars a year taking the average wage indexing used by the Social Security Administration.

Is this to say that other issues that also arise from looking at the data (such as racial gaps) are subsumed by the patriarchy or whatever schemata liberal feminism prefers (correct descriptively, nonsensical analytically)? No. And as noted, I think there can be reasonable disagreements on the data and what it means. Whether it exists? I think the preponderance of evidence speaks for itself.

I think you've gotten a bit of heat on that (with some good factual posts along the way), but I don't think I'll defend you on your digressions on the nature of violence pace men and women (women are still disproportionately the victims of domestic violence which is endemically under-reported. I am assuming good faith on your part, but some of your jabs are gratuitous and unnecessary (though I will presume you are simply arguing for a larger feminist-skeptic meta-narrative in good faith.)

As for you and everyone else...

The tone in here overall has been uneven but I am not one to criticize tone unless it detracts from a scientific, positivist, and empirical approach to the problem (assisted and deepened by the necessary and frankly moving personal recollections I have read here.) In a perfect world, people might treat you with less rancor (though of course, some of the data about poverty --male and female--, racial injustice, gender injustice etc. suggest far more pressing needs in a perfect world) but I cannot blame a lot of them that, in the parlance of my grandpappy "charge the mound 'cuz they got skin in the game junior."

With that being said, I would remind you that simply being engaged in good faith (as GABA inter alia have done to you) is far more a mark of respect than abiding by abstract Queensberry rules. We should always keep Victor Hugo's dictum in mind that the easy thing is to be kind; far harder still to be just.

Regards,

Prospero

I want to point out that it's not for physical reasons why women shouldn't be in combat positions. It's mostly mental. Yes it is true that a very small percentage of women will indeed be able to fulfill the same physical requirements as men. It just happened with the three Army Ranger School female graduates. It has to do with the effects on team cohesion when integrating women in infantry units.