feminism and social progressivism thread

[bhokabhokabhoka]

[Vaeltaja]

If this is the same documentary I'm thinking of, I think some people were upset when they claimed that the courts called rape an "occupational hazard" when really the courts just said they like to stay out of military matters... sort of beside the point though.

Why's the military so heavily covering this up? Just an attempt at trying to never rock the boat? Keeping controversy down (and badly backfiring)? Perhaps something that has to do with the view that women shouldn't be in the military? One of the articles mentions that some higher ups simply don't want to report a buddy, however I doubt that's the main reason why.

[ab167]

[UnwashedMolasses]

I don't think it's that people necessarily don't want to take a side or want to stay above the arguments. Most of us just want to be able to talk about this stuff without it turning into a shouting match, which is what I believe ben was trying to get across. It'd be nice to keep a positive tone.

[purkinje]

[IsaiahSchafer]

Not just the military either, peace corps doesn't have the best track record with rape/abortion either.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-peace-co ... eft-behind

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peace-cor ... d=12599341

[can-]

, what does this have to do with feminists educating men? I've clearly addressed people on both 'sides' of the issue (and to say there are sides will only deepen existing beliefs. there are no sides). simply put if you can't check your tone, you're not looking for a conversation, you're looking for a soapbox. this is not rocket science nor is it exclusive to this topic. we are here to share content, experiences and maybe even beliefs.

it should not be controversial to say that there are large social issues in the world which supervene onto existing social structures of gender, class and race. it should not be controversial to say that there are men's and women's issues and they are not mutually exclusive.

the goal here, as always on care tags, is to form and exercise human connections. it is not controversial to say that nitpicking arguments and tonal arguments are to the direct effect of keeping human beings away from each other. and this doesn't mean you can't disagree, but if you can't do so reasonably and with simple empathy then again, you're not looking for a meaningful conversation.

quite tired of the meta talk and the us vs them mentality.

addendum: I apologize if I have made this conversation mores heated because I was only looking to do the opposite. hope everyone will forgive me

[Vaeltaja]

[prawnzee]

is there a way to hide a thread?

[zayg]

I don't think Vael is saying that people must defend why they are feminists, but instead making a point that it isn't some sort of sin to actually be uneducated about the topic and expect some sort of respect if you openly admit that you don't know about it and would like some legitimate education. Sure, there are tons of opportunities for people to bait people into getting into heated arguments (see: ask an opinion with the plan of automatically insulting it or ignoring it) which is likely WHY this topic invites so much vitriol, but I think any ideology NEEDS to be openly discussed and not inherently believed in without having reasoning. Feminism becoming dogmatic would be the worst thing to happen to the movement.

[bhokabhokabhoka]

[Rosenrot]

, noone's refusing to back up with sources, there have been links thrown about left and right. The question is, are those links being read with an open mind? Amongst some others, I'm quoting Cameron's "it should not be controversial to say that there are men's and women's issues and they are not mutually exclusive." - How many times do we have to explain feminism also have men's issues in their agenda?

- I hope to god you did not just single-handedly turn ct into a boys club. Heated debates are normal parts of a discourse because these are issues people are passionate about. How does it feel to be told your experiences are not legitimate or widespread because some other person isn't experiencing or seeing it firsthand? Of course it'd be infuriating, no? Perhaps you should also show empathy to that as well. Like it or not, not all views are equal. I know it's not an easy subject to moderate but I hope you'd be able to do it from a less discouraging perspective, and possibly also look into the arguments being presented in depth before throwing in your weight - you do have a great influence on this forum and how it will shape up in the future.

With that said I'm appreciative of people who are willing to be constructive in this discourse, whichever side you're on. For those who are well-behind feminism, glad to have you on our side - whether or not you've participated (shoutout to ). For those who aren't, I hope someone or something will convince you one day that it's an all-encompassing, beneficial movement for everyone, even if we have to sort out the kinks and curls along the way. The more hands we have to iron out the bumps the quicker we'll move ahead.

[Vaeltaja]

@rosenrot I didn't mean me. I meant according to an article somewhere up above. The feministcurrent article.

[Rosenrot]

Fair enough. But I still hold the opinion that some of the arguments presented here weren't read in depth or we wouldn't be getting frustrated in the first place.

Related to the subject of feminist having to explain things - which was featured in the essay:
"On the topic of privilege: "Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions…" - Audre Lorde"

I'm a female born in Indonesia - which is considered a third world country (would prefer the term developing really, Third World is so Cold War and over), so I'd say that I fit 2/3 of that statement. There's a whole lot of truth in it from my own personal experiences but I've come to realise that if I shut up and do nothing then the world wouldn't change. The oppressed/minority has to continuously shout for their rights otherwise the privileged will not bother checking their privileges (some of which I do enjoy myself), nor put the suitable mechanisms in place to correct the situation. It's not the most ideal situation but I guess it will always be part of human nature. Will there be a utopia in which the privileged will be inherently aware of their advantageous positions? I doubt it, but I'm also not much of an optimist.

At the end of the day, I will hold anyone's hands if they want me to explain things to them, but they'd also need to educate themselves and keep an open mind.

[UnwashedMolasses]

As a white suburban male grown in a white suburban upper class area (not a fun sentence to start with) it's often very difficult for people to understand that privilege exists at all. For many people they've never had the idea of "white culture" placed before them, so they don't understand it as anything other than normal vs everything that is not normal. I've seen many people's eyes widen when they realize that minorities/women/poor live in a completely different world. Some people just need to be confronted, which is why a shouting minority needs to exist.

[smiles]

On another subject, an issue that I come into contact with on an almost daily basis is discrimination towards mainland Chinese people in Hong Kong. The term mainland has become basically a slur, and it is quite socially acceptable in daily conversation to claim that mainland people are dirty and rude or any number of negative stereotypes. It's incredible what some people say, honestly. Some seemingly normal people say these things directly to my girlfriend, who is from mainland china. What is she supposed to say? People have made her cry. She is not allowed to defend her home or be proud of China without people conflating the people of China with the government of China. If she tells someone she will remain in Hong Kong after graduation, they will claim that she is lucky because mainland people have an advantage when looking for jobs and they will take Hong Kong people's jobs. If she says she will be leaving, they'll claim she is using Hong Kong's resources without giving back. Hong Kong certainly has a lot of problems, especially with regards to housing issues, and a lot of the blame (at street level) is being transferred onto mainland people. I'm sure my girlfriend would never dare tell people that her mother works for the government, even though she works in a completely non-political area.

even in America, I see a lot of negative traits associated with China (most people from America don't really know that hong kong exists or the situation there). The government is not the people, and the government is not the government people think it is.

I'm not even Chinese and I get upset about this. Wonder what the situation is for foreign born chinese people.

[sidewalk]

In an aim to remain (or attempt to) intellectually honest with myself, I want to address some of the things that I said that may have caused controversy. I do admit that some of what I said came from a place of ignorance on the topic.

First I want to talk about where I believe I was wrong, and then I will get into where I think those who responded to me were wrong as well. Charybdis answered most of my questions just by mentioning racism, and the negative aspects that a societal view can create without it being intentional. Thank you for mentioning that, as it helped clear a lot of the issues I had understanding the issue. I also failed to take into account the disadvantages that women have even in America, such as rulings for abortion and birth control, which make it harder for women to have an equal footing to men. On the other hand (and something I also am looking for insight on), if a woman can't get an abortion, the male will still pay a price. The price that often comes with fathering a child, such as child support.

With that said, I want to understand the negative response I got. A portion of my post was simply questions that nobody actually answered, and instead chose to pin-point single pieces that didn't make sense given the rest of my comment, since they were used to build my argument. It's like if you build a tower out of blocks and somebody pulls a couple blocks from the bottom, causing the whole thing to fall. Is that tower no longer the same tower that it was because it was reliant on every piece working together? At face-value it seems like a lackluster attempt at making a point, but the purpose of my post was to create thought as I looked for insight.

A lot of the flack I got was for my disassociation with 'feminism', which seems equally as ignorant as what I admitted to. Humanism and feminism are not interchangeable, and have conflicting ideologies on several topics/issues, alongside having vastly different histories. Defining myself as a humanist isn't a position of ignorance, and therefore I fail to understand the reaction. Also, I never claimed feminism was an ideology of women's rights, although I can understand the confusion (in this instance) somewhat. I did say that females being treated different throughout development isn't a feminist issue because males are also treated in an unfair way, but the point was that it's not an inequality issue at that point. I suppose the "separate but equal" criticism could be applied to what I said, but I am simply having difficulty understanding how circumstantial expectations for child can be reduced to gender. As I said in my original post, it's something that doesn't seem testable or reliant. I'm just looking for answers.

Finally, there was a criticism against how I brought up biological factors. I want to understand that position, because from my perspective, gender roles exist in nature without these societal constructs that are supposedly the cause of these gender roles (lions, elephants, alligators, birds). Also, gender roles existed in homo-sapiens before "society" itself ever existed. Men would hunt because they are biologically stronger, and women would be out of commission for months at a time due to child birth. Because of this, women needed a man to provide protection and food for when she couldn't herself. Now, I'm not claiming that you can't intellectually move past gender-roles, but the innate negativity that I received for mentioning biological factors seems invalid given the fact that males and females do have biological differences, and I refuse to believe that they should be ignored in the sake of equality. It honestly sounds like somebody saying, "I don't see race". Sure, it may not be racist as a tactic to not judge/act on race, but it also claims that we need to ignore our differences in order to be seen as equal.

Thanks fellas, hopefully we can understand each other better.

[sidewalk]

jk fuck yall

[Stingray Sam]

reducing gender roles down to evolution and natural biology is in my opinion a completely misinformed way to look at the problem. Firstly it ignores the fact that throughout history there has been wildly different gender roles throughout history, and secondly gender roles have very little to do with the actual biological functions or differences in humans.

I'm going to explain the second point because i think it has more relevance and stands on it's own, while the first would require a significant amount of research that i do not want to do to have any weight. If we look at today's gender roles we can see that there are a majority of them that have absolutely nothing to do with biology. For instance we can look at the idea that men don't really need that much help while women need a lot. If this is an evolutionary trait then it is a wonder we as a species still exist. I know tons of men, even myself, who have refused help that would've saved them from any number of hardships whether it be emotional, physical or economic. It would make more sense that both genders ask for help. There is no evolutionary reason why women should not be able to do just as good as job as men at STEMS type jobs, yet we see gender based discrimination in those fields all the time. I see gender roles applied to your analysis of hunter-gather society too. It's not obvious that women needed men as protectors and this type of thinking vastly underestimates the power of humans in general and their ability to survive. I don't have any background in anthropology, however i'm guessing that things were not so black and white in terms of caregivers vs protectors and gathers vs hunters. It also underestimates the flexibility of the human to preform many different roles.

The logic behind that way of thinking is broken. White supremacist groups do the same thing. They take statistics that say for instance that black people have on average a lower IQ than white people and then say that instead of the test being socioeconomically biased that it is actually true that black people are biologically not smarter. Now we all know that this isn't true, and the same goes for gender roles. We know that there's no inherent pinkness to girls and blueness to boys. We know that men and women generally need the same sorts of encouragement academically. Our standards of beauty have very little basis in evolution as indicated by the wide variety of what people find attractive and how the standard of beauty has changed overtime. 50 years ago a woman who would now be considered "curvy" and therefore less beautiful (for most of society #notallpeoplebelieveX i know...) was considered the most beautiful. We fall prey to this parochial world view that takes our current standards as actual inherent features of the human being, when history points to the complete opposite being true.

Now you might say "well let's agree to disagree, i still said we can move past gender roles" (i'm not accusing just addressing common responses). This isn't helpful, because when you take the line of thought that gender roles are "natural" then you ignore the causes and to ignore the causes is to ignore the key to solving the problem. If we understand that gender roles are mostly based on society's ever changing expectations for what people of all genders should do then we can move towards precipitating societal change that ends gender roles. If we don't then what? It's like saying "well i believe that god is causing this disease while you think it's these tiny 'germ' things, but we both can agree that we need to stop it." If you just ignore the causation of the problem or misattribute it then you completely block yourself from solving it. We know now that no amount of praying is going to stop a disease from spreading, but if you misattribute the disease to god's wrath then you'll probably think praying is the right course of action.

On the not seeing biological differences, i think that very few gender roles actually have root in real substantial biological and most of them seem fairly arbitrary. And of course this is the same straw feminist thing that shoved in everyone's face as an example of how stupid feminists are. In reality very few feminists seriously support the notion of there being no biological differences. It would be ridiculous and intellectually dishonest to do so.

Also you mentioned men being harmed if a woman elects to not get an abortion. I think that men should be responsible for their actions, if you are unwilling to deal with the potential of a baby or cannot trust your partner to get an abortion, adoption, plan B etc. then why are you having sex? By having sex you are taking a risk. Why should you not be responsible for that? I'm assuming you're talking about financial abortion which is also stupid because you're condemning a kid to grow up with a single mother trying to support her family by herself. Why would you do that to someone? The issue seems small at worst and the solution is not letting people have their cake and eat it too at the expense of their sexual partner and their child.

[stappard_]

This discussion would benefit greatly from some definition of terms vis a vis sex/gender. A lot of what seems to be discussing (especially wrt to pre-historic labour divisions) is based on physical characteristics emanating from sex. 'Gender' is too fluid a term, with changing definitions and with too many societal connotations to be useful in that context.

[Vaeltaja]

[frogosaurus]

sorry to break up the discussion here, but does anyone belong to any organized social/political/economic equality groups IRL, especially on campus? this fall some friends and i are looking to bring together the two big progressive factions on campus, namely the male-dominated marxists and the female-dominated feminists, into a big progressive politics society. something sort of reminiscent of the former SDS. looking for ideas.

[lee3jm]

[raags]

If you are a man in a discussion about feminism and are telling women to check their tone or that "[they] are not ready to handle this topic" you need to seriously fucking pull your head in.

The most important thing to be mindful of in discussion of social justice is being willing to listen. There has been a serious dearth of that in this thread (and not from the women posting in it mind you). If you have not had to engage in arguments against people who are a member of a more privileged class than you, it can be very difficult to understand or even begin to comprehend how absolutely emotionally taxing and exhausting they can be. Especially when they generally involve people (white people, men, straight people, cis people) stampeding their voices over someone of a marginalised group with greater numbers and group gish gallop.

It easy, short-sighted, and foolish to suggest that people directly effected by institutionalised discrimination on a daily basis just "stay balanced and mature" or whatever trite shit has been parroted in here when you do not suffer from these same oppressions. Please, just listen, and stop telling others how they should behave when this is facilitated from your own position of privilege.

[IsaiahSchafer]

In regards back to the "fat acceptance" train of comments, if you believe in "calories in, calories out being unnecessarily reductionist" I'd recommend you follow up on the laws of thermodynamics and then reevaluate that opinion you hold.

Of course, if I eat 1000 calories of food, maybe my body will only absorb 950 and I'll poop out the other 50. But that's in still in and out. Conservation of energy. You can't get fat if you're putting in less calories than you're putting out.

Bad metabolism, "starvation mode", and similar are dangerous to peoples' health.

[okayfruit]

I think what he meant is that for certain people, simply reducing the number of calories you consume in a day isn't always the most efficient way to do it, given the fact that each person's gut microbiota affects how a good portion of the food you consume is absorbed. (It's been forever since I took nutrition so please bear with me). GI infections and the like that eliminate the "good" microbiota that efficiently metabolize branched amino acids and SCFAs lead to a decrease ability to properly metabolize & get rid of stuff, or could affect the pathway the energy goes through when it's stored (which then could possibly affect weight gain), and certain people just happen to normally live with really shitty gut microbiota. Of course other aspects do affect your metabolism, such as hormonal diseases and the like. While the calories you consume are the calories stored, burned, or pooped out, it doesn't always mean that reducing your caloric intake will lead to weight loss and better health, even though the two are usually linked.

Shitty metabolisms w/o the presence of an illness are very real.

[purkinje]

[IsaiahSchafer]

How in the world can reducing caloric intake not be the most straight forward way to reduce your weight? I spent 30 minutes googling microbiota, and the most I've gotten from it is that cows treated with antibiotics absorb more nutrients from otherwise indigestible foods. Very little of the bits on microbiota have to do with weight, and seem more to do with the overall health of the body- fighting tumor growth, promoting different bacterial growth, etc.

No matter the gut flora, if I eat 1800 calories and burn 2200 calories in a day, it would be impossible for me to not have lost weight. Those 400 calories turned into energy and are gone. The human body preferentially burns fat before lean tissue (muscle), so I can't see how despite metabolism, gut flora, etc... losing weight isn't as easy as a caloric deficit.

Then you can tote the "starvation mode, your body holds onto the calories!" when everything study-wise I've read on the subject reports that while your metabolic rate may drop as you eat less calories per day for extended periods, it will never drop so low as to offset the caloric deficit. ie a drop of calories by 50% will result in a drop of metabolic rate of far less than 50%. Meaning they will never catch up to each other, and no amount of "starvation mode" will make you gain weight in a caloric deficit.

[okayfruit]

To address the matter of microbiota

Here's some research papers
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6 ... 4.abstract (sorry I couldn't find the full paper on a freely accessible website, so make do with the abstract)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2945175/
http://www.nature.com/ajgsup/journal/v1 ... 0125a.html

Some regular non-scholarly articles if the above reading is too dense
http://www.nature.com/news/bacteria-fro ... im-1.13693
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -and-thin/

With that issue addressed, I never meant to give off the impression that even if you stop feeding someone, there's a chance they won't lose weight, or will even gain weight. Nobody in their right mind believes that. That's far beyond the point I wanted to get across.

While calories in calories out is technically correct, weight loss is a hell of a lot more nuanced than simply just reducing your caloric intake, even it is an important part. Breaking down food expends energy. Not all foods are broken down the same way. 1200 calories of soluble fiber requires significantly more work to break down 1200 calories of sheer glucose. Hence, despite the fact that you consumed only 100 calories of something in both cases, you're more likely to put on weight from just eating sugar. Additionally, how quickly that sugar enters your blood stream is another variable in weight gain. Do you see what I'm getting at here?

If you eat 1800 calories and burn 2200 calories in a day, of course you'll lose weight. But you glossed over the fact that calories aren't always burned in a consistent manner, and certain macronutrients are more likely stored than expended or excreted, not to mention the immediate availability of nutrients seriously affect how much effort you'll end up putting into regular activities. There's way too many factors at hand to simply say that weight loss = eat less food.

EDIT: I realize that you might have the assumption that calories labelled on a food = ATP and shit generated from that food by your body. Calorie counts on food are only somewhat decent guesstimates since a bomb calorimeter is like waaaaaaay more efficient at breaking stuff up than your metabolism is. There is a TON of stuff that just kind of gets pooped out or goes through somewhat inefficient and energy consuming pathways in order to be processed. The laws of thermodynamics still apply here, but your GI tract =/= an incinerator.

[IsaiahSchafer]

I think it's vastly less nuanced for simple weight loss. So if you're saying 100 calories of fiber burns energy to absorb more so than 100 calories of sugar. Either way, we're back to square one of thermodynamics.

I could eat 2000 calories of sugar in one day or 2000 calories of fiber. My body would hate me in either case for different reasons, but if I'm burning more than 2000 calories I'm losing weight.

I didn't mean to get into an argument about the healthiest, macro, complete bean energy, etc, etc, argument about losing weight, but merely pointing out the danger there is in suggesting that a caloric deficit won't lead to weight loss.

In regards to some macronutrients being stored rather than burned- well the energy you burn still comes from somewhere even if it's not the mega macro super nutrient you just ate, so it's coming from fat stores or whatever.

For people wanting to lose weight, not a single one needs to do anything more than have a caloric deficit. There's not too many factors at hand to say that. You can't say weight loss isn't as simple as eat less food, and then go on to say you're completely in line with the laws of thermodynamics. it's one or the other.

EDIT: forgot to read those articles first, my bad. I only read the layman-terms articles. But at most it seems gut microbes 1- can put you at a predisposition for obesity and 2- can come to be /after/ you've already been eating bad food. To be at a predisposition for anything sucks, but that doesn't mean you're not still going to be able to control your weight through simple means.