Feminism Thread.

[Chaos]

So I wanted to answer but I didn't want to hijack the article suggestion thread... so far this is what's written in the last thread:

Mark Wrote:I plan on doing an article on the men's rights movement at some point. Unfortunately, almost every site I've found has been teeming with misogyny. I hate to say it, but feminists are light-years ahead when it comes to the gender discussion and despite their problems, seem to be much more capable of talking about the issues rationally and with authority. If you noticed, on my "Why I'm Not a Feminist" post, many feminists posted that although they disagreed with me, they respected my opinion and enjoyed the article. Surprisingly, it was the MRA guys who threw a huge fit and flamed me, despite the fact that I just wrote a 4,000 word article explaining why I was NOT a feminist.

crazyhorse Wrote:True. But I wouldn't make generalizations like that about the feminist movement. Everytime I state a critical opinion of feminism, I always have to deal with statements such as "you are a mysogonist", "you are just afraid of strong women" etc.. While in fact, I love confident women. But these days it's these gigantic waves of female chauvinism that turn me off. Combine that with the incapability of dealing with statistics. Well, that's a great recipe for building a cult.

Also, you gave a bad rep to the men's right movement. You immediately linked them to guys like roissy and roosh and placed them immediately in the mysogonistic department. That's exactly what feminists do! I placed a couple of comments regarding the myth of the rape statistics on your blog post. Nobody replied to it. The only reason feminists didn't attack you, was because you stated that you found it to be offensive, you didn't attack the existence of it. If you would have done the latter, their tones would have been very different.

I'm not a men's right activist myself, but these days, I can't ignore the feeling that we're living more and more in female paradise. Yet, at the same time, we still havn't got rid of certain myths (gender wage gap, rape statistics...). We are also becoming more and more blind to the fact, that there are indeed fundamental differences between men and women. But if you state these, hey, you're a mysogonist.

Although I have a feeling that it's loosing it's grip on our current society. I live in Belgium and it seems that it's becoming more and more acceptable to be critical of the feminist movement. A couple of years ago, a women, published a book called "the myth of the glass ceiling". She used very convincing arguments, and called feminist, "sexist people with a meddling attitude".

This is also why I disagree with paul. According to me, men really don't have that much of an issue with changing roles, or a changing environment . It's the dumbification of our sex, that turns us off. If you act masculine, you're a member of the patriarchy. If you act feminine, "see I told you, men are finished".

This argument isn't waterproof, but it's definetly an impression that I've been having lately. But hey, at least I have the guts to say that my impressions arn't waterproof.

Unlike, a certain movement I could name

Mark Wrote:I find it kind of funny that you tell me not to make generalizations about the feminist movement and then go on to make three paragraphs of generalizations about the feminist movement.

I never said that there wasn't reverse-discrimination or that a lot of feminists weren't idiots. There is and many are. I've just found the discourse within the feminist movement to be much more advanced than the few MRA sites I've read (In Malafide, A Voice for Men, etc.). There's a wide spectrum of feminists and many of them are forward-thinking and able to have very rational arguments. I can't say I've found the same for the men's movement (yet).

And I don't think we live in a women's paradise. Both genders have a laundry list of problems they have to deal with. Just because we don't experience their problems or they don't experience our problems doesn't mean they don't exist. Just because women have made some gains that may be unfair to men, doesn't mean that men haven't done the same thing or don't already have the same thing.

Personally I think distinguishing between gender should only happen if absolutely necessary. I think both feminists and anti-feminists insert gender arguments into all sorts of places where they shouldn't be and make assumptions about each other with little to no basis.

This is the whole problem with defining movements based on gender. It provides incentive to look at the world through the lens of gender and draw lines where they don't necessarily need to be. If we care about uniting people under fair treatment and human rights, shouldn't we have a humanist movement?

Social change has rarely occurred through pointing fingers and blaming. It's always come through standing up and having the courage to include the other group rather than fighting them. Think Martin Luther King or Gandhi.

And of course, I'm endlessly fascinated by the fact that this "gender war" more or less doesn't exist outside of western, English-speaking culture. I can't help but think it's not a coincidence.

crazyhorse Wrote:Well, to be honest, it's rare for me to come across feminists who don't have an absurd view on equalty. I'm also amazed by how they manage to dominate the public opinion so easily. I remember when I was in Brussels, I got interviewed by college students, "sir what is your opinion on the glass ceiling and the wage gap?". Off course, I gave them an awnser that was rather unusual for them.

Why do you think I don't define myself as a men's right activist? It's simple. Because I want to see these issues being discussed from a gender neutral point of view. A perspective where society as a whole could benefit from these. For example if you look at the reason that there is a gender wage gap, it's mainly because a lot of women tend to work in social professions (teacher, social worker etc.). The majority of these jobs don't earn that much pay. I wouldn't mind if these jobs would get more pay, but that's a different topic.

When I mentioned women's paradise, I refered to the existence of quota, child care etc. Quota means that a certain percentage of women should always be available in high ranking positions. A politician suggested this in Holland, a quota of 30% for women in high ranking positions. Not even 25% of the women work full time. So what does this mean? If you are a women, you now have the right to work part time at a high ranking position. I find this to be very discriminating to people who have to work full time. To say the least, an entrepreneur should always be able to select his own staff. In norway, the penalty for neglecting quota, means that you're company won't be allowed to exist anymore. Child care, is another funny storry. In the scandinavian countries, they believed that free child care, would allow women to work in high ranking positions. Well the results weren't quite what they expected, they have created 10.000 extra jobs in child care. All of which are financed by the government.

Perhaps I wasn't being fair with the term female paradise, but I find that our society is starting to neglect the male perspective.

The fact that a lot of these topics are quite touchy, and politically correct, isn't making it easier to adress these. Recently I skimmed through a school newspaper from our local school. I actually found myself to be astonished, when I started reading the comments. All these kids were shouting "men still earn more then women", "women have to work three times harder as a man to earn promotion". What annoys me with this, is that people have never asked themselves how they came up with thee statements. We just accept it, without questioning it. Now this, is a real danger.

We will know, as a society, that we have evolved and have reached the point of equilibrium, when we can look at society’s issues from a point of gender neutrality. An attempt that neither the feminist movement, nor the men’s right movement has succeeded at. This requires more then just vague intentions, idealizations pulled from thin air and shouting sexist remarks back and forth.

No, this requires statesmanship, real leadership

ah we'll see what the future will bring us.

[crazyhorse]

thanks Chaos!

But euhm I could use some likes....

[Chaos]

Now I'm not an activist of any kind nor I'm inclined to fight for "men rights" (what does that even mean?) or a feminist position.

Nonetheless there're certain facts that are quite clear, at least in Spain.

First, women, on average, earn less than men in the same positions. That's a fact, easy to check and a result of the surveys, the maths and procedures are relatively simple. Now I don't have the time to go and interview 5000 guys and girls about their position and salary, so I tend to trust these surveys, specially since different surveys tend to highlight the same kind of results.

Second, the fact that we have to talk about "men rights" vs "female rights" is highly disturbing. Clearly women have been historically diminished and while we could argue about whether the situation has moderated or disappeared now, that historical disadvantage can't be argued against... they were in a worst position in the past, is still to be seen if they still are. We shouldn't be making the distinction, or more to the point, the movement shouldn't distinguish between men and women rights, just about rights... if it so happen that women are not being granted those rights, then we can fix them, but the kind of feminist I like is the one that would jump when the other side of the story is true, a man is not being granted the same rights as a women.

One problem I think a lot of feminists do is worry too much about the abstract instead of focusing on the practical day to day results. So they focus on things like "language stuff" (in Spanish for example you use the "profesores" to refer to a group of mixed male and female teachers, even if there's only one male and 15 male the correct use is "profesores" instead of "profesoras") or discussing about whether forcing men to wore smoking and girls to wore a dress is misogynistic or not... WHO CARES!!! Those are interesting questions, and maybe we can address them in the future, but right now I'm much more concerned about them having exactly the same tangible rights that we have when possible (salary, job opportunities, etc) and an acceptable solution when it can't (pregnancy for example).

Of course when one movement is pushing one way, there's always the possibility to fall in the temptation of pushing a little harder than equity, so that you gain some rights that unbalance that equality again. I think that's part and risk of every movement in human history. Very few people go with "ok, I managed what I pursued, I'll stop now". That's the reason you'll see feminist with an overly aggressive view, to which the situation should actually be reversed... Those are a minority anyway, but they're there, and the problem is such opinion are flaming and usually do usurp the conversation away from the topic. Is like the Goldwin's law, once that kind of opinions arise, the discussion get hijacked because of the intense feelings of menace that it will provoke on men (rightfully so).

The main problem though, is that I think that we entertain a lot of discussions about the wrong topics. Sure, it's really interesting to discuss about whether "women first" is simple courtesy or misogynistic behavior, but in the end that simple doesn't matter. Whatever my reasons are for doing it, it doesn't hurt anyone... so I might as well be the biggest jerk in the universe, the life of girls in general won't change by it so move on...

Just an example of what I mean, this is out of the last article in Clarisse Thorn blog (this is an example, I've discovered this blog right now so I haven't gone in depth about it and this is supposed to be an example, not a critique).

Clarisse Wrote:There’s a femininity tightrope that all public women are forced to walk …. Whenever a public woman fails to balance the following factors just right, then splat she goes. To wit:

Public women should be X amount feminine, X amount motherly, X amount hot, X amount beautiful, X amount young, X amount confident, X amount helpless, X amount exotic, X amount educated, X amount intelligent (required: the last two values < the men in the office), X amount gay (the last value almost always = 0). The ratios are fluid, shifting from day to day at the whim of public sentiment, so that a woman may think she’s got it pretty well sewed up, only to wake up one fine spring morn to discover that the parade being thrown in her honor has suddenly vanished. Later she finds out it’s because she stupidly forgot she was a member of the sex class, and had dared to imagine that she would be judged on merit rather than her ability to do femininity right.

Eventually we all fall off the rope.

Yeah, true... but irrelevant. The same happens to men, it happens for every person... it's not solvable, at least not in the short term. If you work with "perceptions" and "preconceptions" then you're doomed to fail because perceptions change slowly with time. On the other hand, salary is a tangible benefit that can be attacked and changed quickly. It might be regrettable, but just deal with it because it's not gonna change... oh, is nice to try to change it, but is stupid to make it the "center" of a movement, that should be a side effect effort, something that would be nice to change. AND is the kind of comment that would draw us into an interminable abstract discussion about whether it's right or not for people to judge on femininity or not... I could be talking about it for hours... but it doesn't lead anywhere, not yet, not now.

---

(03-26-2012 12:36 PM)crazyhorse Wrote:  thanks Chaos!

But euhm I could use some likes....

Lol, no problem, right now I'm charging 5$ per like, you can pay via paypal, credit card or check. If you have any doubts check with Tim who's already acquainted with the procedure

[Mark]

I agree with what you're saying Chaos. The point about power structures tending to stay in power was a big one for me as well.

What I don't like is that a lot of feminists feel like it's their RIGHT to never be offended again. Which I find ridiculous. You can't govern people's ability to be offended or not offended. It's everyone's individual responsibility to handle themselves.

The other thing is that I think it's important to always look for analogs in the other gender for these things. For instance, feminists complain a lot about slut-shaming (like in the quote above). What about referring to men as deadbeats or losers if they don't make enough money or aren't professionally successful?

One of my favorite quotes about this comes from Warren Farrell -- who is probably the only MRA guy I've come across who I can get behind. He said once that a feminist got mad at him because he refused to say that beauty was relative, that fat women can be beautiful or whatever. So Farrell replied: "I will date a fat woman if you agree to start dating a garbage man."

[Tim]

That was the best thing I've read about Feminism on these boards Chaos, just awesome.

[Zac]

I don't understand why everyone can't just be humanists and care about everybody.

[Alvar]

(03-26-2012 02:05 PM)Mark Wrote:  What I don't like is that a lot of feminists feel like it's their RIGHT to never be offended again. Which I find ridiculous. You can't govern people's ability to be offended or not offended. It's everyone's individual responsibility to handle themselves.

I think it was in Spain(?) that they wanted to make illegal negative comments regarding looks. Also in Spain there was a minor storm because a female minister went back to work only 3 weeks(?) after giving birth. Not to mention that feminists want to end those flirtatious whistles. Soon there will be no point for young ladies to walk nearby construction sites

While in the south women's rights still lag behind, in northern Europe you have a different situation. Here in the Nordic countries women have almost as much as men, they're build massive public services that, for the larger part, serve to advance women's rights and address their needs; men are often meek, passive and less inclined to use these services. Women complain that they don't get enough seats in company boards nor equal pay, what is true, but it is also true that the overwhelming majority of females chooses to work on public sector jobs - care/medical, education. Not the best paid jobs, but pretty safe and regulated. They've calculated that in some countries women actually earn more than men, since they work less hours and have less experience (take out 2/3 years of maternal leave per child.) Meanwhile feminists keep on pushing their agenda to the public, and it is pretty rare to find some girl that agrees that women are on equal foot as men, or at least, very close. Or maybe that's my experience, pretty much every girl I've dated described herself as a feminist
If you want to see the dirty side of feminism just dig some of the details of the Assange affair in Sweden. I almost wish this was political. The whole case is pretty ridiculous. Also in Sweden, someone commented on the blog that swedish kids are (were?) being shown a play based on the Scum Manifesto. And in Stockholm there's a genderless preschool, Egalia, where kids are taught to avoid words like him or her! Across the gulf, the Gender Equality Unit of the Finnish ministry of Social Affairs list 18 names on it's website. Guess how many are female?
There's a extensive network of support for women - from shelters for those in need of a haven from their partners, to activities and activity groups. For men... meh. Here there's one association that supports men's rights, and where I found support. But not much else, really.

That was the bad. The ugly? Fathers rights. I'm no position to complain but I've heard stories of fathers who go for long periods without seeing their kids, mothers using their children to get back at the fathers... Courts and specially social services often side with the mothers and are pretty lenient when it comes to let them know that they are out of order - not to excuse misbehaving, abusive or careless fathers, of course, but that should be another matter. I hope you guys won't have to deal with this, it can be pretty demoralizing.

To be fair, I still find it amazing that I don't have to pay alimony to my ex, like in many other countries. But she is my "equal", she can get a job for herself.

Oh, and Mark, I think you are being a bit hard on MRA guys. I looked up TDOM's site and I was turned off by what I read. Even some of the articles on the Rawness have some of that anger. And maybe they are angry, even a bit misogynist. Their voice is not heard, most men don't care about their rights, or don't seem to think that, some day, they too may be in the same situation. Pretty hopeless.
The first generation of feminists also sounded angry and come across as aggressive. Nowadays they can afford to be polite or even ignore comments like yours.

[Mark]

There's a difference between being angry and being a misogynist. That line gets way too blurry for me on many of those sites.

And yeah, from what I can tell, Scandinavia has got it the worst. Liberal excess at its worst. The Julian Assange case was so ridiculous that even Naomi Wolf -- who is like one of the most popular American feminist voices alive right now -- came out and said that it wasn't rape and it was a travesty that he was being persecuted.

[Chaos]

(03-27-2012 12:33 AM)Alvar Wrote:  I think it was in Spain(?) that they wanted to make illegal negative comments regarding looks. Also in Spain there was a minor storm because a female minister went back to work only 3 weeks(?) after giving birth. Not to mention that feminists want to end those flirtatious whistles. Soon there will be no point for young ladies to walk nearby construction sites

no, I haven't heard about any of those things. The closest one would be Carme Chacon, who was back to work after just two months. In Spain the pregnancy leave is four months, of which 2 are mandatory for the mother (lactancy) and the other two by either of the parents (so that would make a theoretical limit of four months for the mother if she so chooses). In practice though, the great majority of women choose to use the four months and the husband usually goes back to work after two weeks.

The irony of the thing, and what makes the subject so difficult, is the fact that it makes sense to treat women differently sometimes, and some feminists choose to ignore the consequences of what they are asking for.

Let me give you an example. Obviously you can't ignore that someone you're hiring is a woman, it's not doable, so for any hiring manager that's a factor to keep in mind, if you hire a women, specially between 25 and 35 years old, you're risking a leave of 4 months. That's a hard fact, the probabilities of her having that leave are way higher than those of a man. Now let's say we're not talking about some big corporation but about an entrepreneur like Mark... Having a leave of four months is a fucking problem... Is he supposed to simply ignore it... I wouldn't, fuck I probably wouldn't even if I was a woman... I don't think any feminist will fail to think about that too.

Funny thing, what I think would be the solution is to actually remove the choice for the women. When you have a child you enjoy two months, your husband the other two months... That's it, you cannot choose. That way the hiring manager doesn't have to choose, it's all the same to him so there will be ono practical real difference between the man and the woman (now there is, no matter what any feminist says, there's a measurable, direct, difference). But then again... Isn't is more suitable for the mother to be around longer than the father? Specially due to lactancy, the emotional connection of the women, the recovery from the labour... So what's the right thing to do?

And about the language things, that just get me sick. That gotta be either stupidity or plain malevolence (of both). Words are just means of communication, poor means maybe but the only ones we have, and they are used to communicate meaning but also to transmit intention. I can call my best friend nigar and he won't be offended because he understand the intention behind the word, and if understand it correctly that's a very offensive term in English. Now for neutral words it just doesn't make fucking sense, judge the intentions, not the words... If no body used Nigar ever in an offensive way it wouldn't have become an offensive word, so intentions modify words, not the other way around. One has to ask, what's the intention of some feminists when they attack those words? Who is actually conferring the meaning to those words, the one who's saying it or the one who's listening. Bad intentions, sometimes, are just in the eye of th beholder.

[Zac]

I never understood why it's a women's body when it comes to making a baby but it's not a man's choice to bail once the baby is made even if it requires his body, time, and effort to pay his "dues" for his 'responsibility". Why can't a guy just walk away? I know it isn't popular, but why?

[machiavelli]

Bearing in mind that we still have a ton of rape, a ton of domestic violence, genuine (not made up) sexual harassment, lots of professions where women are often de facto not welcome, etc. Honestly, feminism has a lot to add -- I go back and forth about whether or not I want to call myself a feminist. Because some schools of feminism do go way overboard, but many are right-on.

As for the MRA people -- c'mon. Yeah, women have some advantages in the getting laid department. Although I think even that's overrated: really hot women have advantages in the getting laid department, but I know women who get rejected a lot. And they may not have that big an advantage in getting laid by *those who they want* -- the advantage is only really there if they lower standards. And hell, we could lower standards too, sleep with ugly chicks...

Hell, let me go further. The kind of women we all want to fuck have an easier time getting laid than most men do. OF COURSE THEY DO, THEY'RE THE KIND OF WOMEN WE ALL WANT TO FUCK! I'm sure the kind of men women want to fuck have an easier time getting laid than most women do, for the same damn reason.

The other big thing the MRA people go on about is legal. According to the MRA folks, women have all kinds of advantages in terms of divorce/custody/child support, plus in the power to make false rape/sexual harassment/domestic violence allegations. Here's the thing about that idea: it's total raging bullshit. Lemme undermine my anonymity here for a second and say: I'm a lawyer. I've done a few of those sorts of cases. And they do not confer some kind of magic power on women -- in fact, lots of women get screwed in those domains because of non-legal power that the men involved have, like controlling the money and being able to pay for better representation, violent intimidation, routine disbelief of/disdain for sexual harassment/rape claims, etc. etc. The MRA are completely full of shit, all their claims are based on a few high-profile cases from which they extrapolate to the legal system as a whole. (Psychology wonks: read up on salience bias.)

Moreover, people get falsely accused of crimes all the time. The MRAs only pay attention when it's men getting accused of sex crimes, but unless they can point to data (DATA, not anecdotes) showing that false accusations by women against men of sex crimes are more prevalent or damaging than other kinds of false criminal accusations, all the talk about duke lacrosse players and the like should fall on deaf ears.

[Mark]

Excellent points machiavelli. Thanks for piping up.

The custody/divorce stuff is interest. It was really the only solid issue I figure MRA guys had ground to stand on. I'd be interested in seeing some studies or statistics about that.

You're right though, there are a lot of legitimate things feminists fight for and it's easy to forget that.

[machiavelli]

To be fair, custody is one area where there might be some truth to the anti-male bias claims -- it's generally believed among many who know what they're talking about and are not MRAs that many judges default to giving primary custody to mothers. However, interestingly, some feminists have criticized this practice too, as perpetuating the stereotype of women as the caregiving sex -- though, of course, some feminists have also favored it -- feminists disagree among themselves about lots of stuff. (There are also major economic problems for custodial mothers in divorces where the man makes significantly more money, but not enough that child support can make up for the costs of custody.)

This law review article (student-written, but very good) (written from a pretty doctrinaire feminist perspective, and criticizing the default rule that custody goes to women) summarizes a lot of the history, current arguments and research on the custody question, it's worth reading the whole thing:

http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawrevie...cneely.pdf

(Note that as far back as 1839, that is, there was legislation in the U.S. favoring women in custody -- that is, way before feminism became a significant force, such that we can't really attribute all of it to feminism.)

Edit: I've not read this book, but know Mnookin by reputation as a really good scholar, plus as far as I can tell from blurbs, they have a good methodology -- might be worth reading at the local university library etc. for those who want to learn more about how these custody cases come out. I've seen this cited for the claim that lots of the custody-to-mother decisions are agreed by the couple, but always better to go to the original source:

http://www.amazon.com/Dividing-Child-Soc...0674212940

[Alvar]

One thing is sure, the custody /child care disputes are pretty messy and they seem to bring out some of our worst traits.

(03-27-2012 01:10 AM)Chaos Wrote:  no, I haven't heard about any of those things. The closest one would be Carme Chacon, who was back to work after just two months. In Spain the pregnancy leave is four months, of which 2 are mandatory for the mother (lactancy) and the other two by either of the parents (so that would make a theoretical limit of four months for the mother if she so chooses). In practice though, the great majority of women choose to use the four months and the husband usually goes back to work after two weeks.

I found the link (El mundo - in spanish.) I guess this wasn't much of a deal. Maternity leave does make it harder on women, be it 4 months like you have or up to 3 years, even if the father can take part of that for himself (IIRC up to 6 months, here.) I don't know much about Spain but I'd guess this is not much of an issue there because of the unemployment and because of a stronger discrimination towards our generation.

Btw, while searching for the link, I also found this: Te invito a unas copas porque quiero sexo, with pearls like "Un 44% de las estudiantes ha sufrido este tipo de acercamiento", where basically inviting a girl for drinks is presented as a scheme to lower her defences for sex and compare to sexual abuse. This may be a fringe movement seeking attention, nevertheless, when you see the kind of laws that EU enacts you may see something coming out of studies like this.

A few weeks ago I was at a book store and picked up this book that translates as "Save the boys". Haven't read it but the authors seem to suggest that boys are being left behind in education, school, health and human relations because their true nature is not understood or accepted. This thesis is nothing new for those of you who have read "no more Mr. Nice Guy". A girl that was with me recognize the name of the doctor in the cover: "she teaches future teachers and is really good." So there may be some credit due to the system for making these concerns part of future teacher's curriculum.

[Mark]

There are a LOT of books -- many written by prominent feminists -- about how boys are being left behind in schools and how they're doing worse and worse. Christina Hoff Sommers has a book called "The War on Boys" and even Naomi Wolf has written about it.

[Chaos]

BTW I bought Clarisse book, I've just started it but I'm finding it pretty refreshing. The style is good and direct and so far pretty honest. I'll post a review when I'm finished here and in Amazon... At 8.99 is a pretty good deal, translated into Euros that's like a coffee and a donut in any Starbucks ...

[Mark]

She's awesome man. The book is good and interesting. I don't agree with her on everything, but she knows her shit.

Not sure if it made it into the final draft, but in the book she has the best takedown of Roissy (or Roosh, they're interchangeable) I've ever read. Absolutely destroys him.

[Alvar]

I've heard of Sommers and Paglia, but are they feminists? I once googled Paglia and, according to wiki, other feminists didn't have very pleasant things to say about her.

I was just thinking of what you wrote "the right not to be offended" and the story about the kid who got sentenced to 56 days in jail for "offensive" tweets. You can read them here. Or the teen charged with treason for these comments on FB. This is just ridiculous and sad. Hope this doesn't mean I will be charged when I set foot in the UK...

[Mark]

Paglia self-identifies as a feminist, but many of the more hardcore feminists hate her. I think it's because she asserts (and has always asserted) that there are biological differences between men and women and that that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as we all respect each other.

[crazyhorse]

My main gripe with the movement is that the hardcore feminist are usually in the government and have a lot of influence on changing laws. I'm a bit cynical about it.

I'm familiar with Sommers. It was actually a relief to hear her speak.

[Chaos]

(03-27-2012 11:14 PM)Mark Wrote:  Paglia self-identifies as a feminist, but many of the more hardcore feminists hate her. I think it's because she asserts (and has always asserted) that there are biological differences between men and women and that that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as we all respect each other.

How can someone not acknowledge there're biological differences between men and women? Hello!! I can't give birth!! That's a fact and by definition a biological difference... And since two people having different prospects and different experiences will tend to act different is just sensible to at least acknowledge it, whether it does make a difference or not in a practical sense.

BTW, I can handle a lot of things, but if a girl is not sensible and takes into account childbirth as something that's significantly different for men and women I'd say she has lost touch with her femininity... And yeah, a lot of them will hate me for that, but no matter how you wanna see it, you're a female, and by definition we define females as "the ones who give bird" so ...

[Mark]

Yes... it's a bit ridiculous. Dimorphism, hormonal differences, etc. There obviously are differences, and on average, men and women obviously have propensities for different types of behaviors.

BUT, some anti-feminists go too far and insist that because there are biological differences, then men and women MUST act differently.

I think we have to strike a fine balance in recognizing that biological differences give each sex a propensity to act in a certain way, but respecting everyone of both sexes regardless of how they choose to act or express themselves.

[baller08]

(03-27-2012 04:40 PM)Chaos Wrote:  BTW I bought Clarisse book, I've just started it but I'm finding it pretty refreshing. The style is good and direct and so far pretty honest. I'll post a review when I'm finished here and in Amazon... At 8.99 is a pretty good deal, translated into Euros that's like a coffee and a donut in any Starbucks ...

Hey Chaos - which book are you referring to?

[Mark]

"Confessions of a Pick Up Artist Chaser"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007I5H...B007I5HRQU

[baller08]

Thanks Mark. I read an excerpt from that book somewhere and I thought it was really good. I also got "The War on Boys" on my list now, I haven't heard of that one.

Looks like it hits upon a lot of the topics in this short video in much greater detail: http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge.html