Feminists - A question.

[miokomioko]

I am just hoping I'm taking it out of context or something, but I'm pretty sure women also have the option of not putting semen in their vaginae.

[Kuya]

Women have a strong desire for semen, mioko.

[aduidarnenye]

I am just hoping I'm taking it out of context or something, but I'm pretty sure women also have the option of not putting semen in their vaginae.

Just for amusement, my first reaction was to post "All sex is rape!" in the vein of those evil feminazis, but I decided that would be silly.

I don't think it's as cut and dry as women just withholding sex to avoid pregnancy since most humans feel the need to reproduce at some point or another, especially women. Eve's sin? Or would that also be silly?

I recognise the comparison is not cut and dry, I was just pointing out a dangerous activity one gender exclusively does versus a dangerous activity another gender almost exclusively does as an interesting comparison in light of the view that women have it easy since they don't have to participate in war. I'm also sure my numbers are probably off since the Interwebs likely lies.

And I really am going to bed this time!

[miokomioko]

Like catnip? It all makes sense now.

[Benevolentone]

Yes this is very true. This applies to a lot of situations not just standing up against something. Men are severely restricted in terms of what they can enjoy, do, be, etc where women don't face the same criticism. If men do something that is against the norm set for males they are labeled instantly, women have more freedom in that regard.

This. Is the single. Most. Retarded thing. I have EVER READ. My god how do you wake up breathing in the morning. I was gonna respond with something but I fear the words would be wasted because all you would hear is WAHH WAHHA WAHH.

[Cadsuane]

Just attempting to show that women don't have it easier than men just because they're not draftable in the US.

How? It doesn't show that even when maternity death rates were high that women had greater overall mortality rates than men (since in fact the exact opposite is true), and how in the blue fuck is it relevant to a discussion of contemporary gender equality issues when you're citing childbirth mortality problems that by your own description are rare at present day? If this argument had a case in the 1920s (and it didn't), it doesn't now, so don't make it.

I don't think that the longer life expectancy of women make life easier on women; quite the opposite as elderly women are more likely to live in poverty than elderly men.

It does show that women are at less risk of injury and death than men are. I'm not trying to argue that women's lives are easy (nor do I particularly give a shit about discussing something so vague), just that you've failed to show that they're harder than men's or even made clear exactly what the fuck it is you mean by harder or easier. Maybe if some measure of quality of life were to be drummed up your argument could be refined into something halfway presentable, that is if if it wasn't so doubtful that the statistics would corroborate your position.

[falloutboy14]

yet somehow women have higher life expectancy than men pretty much uniformly around the globe and I can't think of a time where that hasn't been the case.

Actually, up until the early 20th century, men lived longer lives. The primary cause of women's shorter lives maternal death. Improvements in maternity care have of course changed this in the developed world.

There's a big section in it on maternal health and a bit caught my eye in relevance to this thread: "During World War I, more American women died in childbirth than American men died in the war." I decided to do some research. I discovered there were about 150,000 maternal deaths in America during WWI and about 117,000 male soldier deaths.

Question about this. Is your total number of maternal deaths running during the entire span of WW1 (1914-1918 ), or from the time of US involvement. America's involvement in WW1 went essentially went from '17-'18 (it took us a while to get there and to contribute to the point where we started facing significant casualties).

The point I'm trying to make is that those maternal deaths may have been over the span of 4 years while the soldier's deaths happened over a much shorter time. Either way it's still an interesting point.

Also, if you consider women's role as mother/homemaker compared to men's role as provider/protector, I think men's casualty rates while full-filling those roles would be higher (think about the crappy working conditions which men would have faced in much greater numbers).


I think in the end, as others have made the point, this is about the gender-roles and options that are presented differently to men and women. Feminists have fought for the rights of women to have more control over the decisions that control her life and rightfully so. However there's no advocacy group working for the same rights for men.

If a woman becomes pregnant, she has 3 options:
A) Abortion
B) Adoption
C) Raise him/her

The man in the situation essentially has no control. It takes two to tango, but the woman makes all the decisions. If a woman feels unprepared to be a mother either financially or emotionally, she has that option. Men don't have that option and if they're not financially or emotionally prepared, they're looked down upon (dead-beat dads).


When a wife in a marriage becomes a mother, she has 3 options:
A) Be a stay-at-home mom.
B) part-time mom, part-time work
C) Work full-time

When a husband in a marriage becomes a father, he is essentially in the same boat as above. Since realistically a family needs one full-time working parent for monetary/insurance/etc reasons the only way in which the father has the option of being the primary caretaker is if the mother passes on those responsibilities. I realize that every family is different, and that not every father wants those responsibilities, but imo how it works most of the time is the wife decides, and the husband accomodates.

Reverting back to the draft discussion, while I agree that the chances of a draft being enacted in my life-time, not to mention me being in prime-draft age, is slim to none, this is another example of women having a choice, where men do not.

Of course this may be one of those "Grass is greener on the other side" issues. Any thing that compares from the woman's perspective?

[Galkaeater]

I know a girl who thinks society is fucked up because women are not alowed to be infantry on the front lines this came up after she was complaining that theres hardly any women in gears of war a game set mostly on the front lines.
I'm willing to bet she just likes the idea of women fighting and dieing rather than acturrly wants to fight herself.

[Ivve]

I had a class called issues in American society. The topic came up about what women want in America. As a joke, I said "The draft." The room fell silent, leading me to believe that no one understood the point of what I said. So basically what you're getting at here is exactly as it seems. Just a hunch (a hunch I'd bet a decent sum of money on) - I think non-feminist women would be more likely to argue for a draft than hardcore feminists.

Edit - didn't bother to notice there were more than a few posts to this thread, so if my point is null please ignore.

I'm not sure what you mean by "non-feminist women." I could be wrong, but I don't think there are any women around who believe that women are inferior to men, but should be drafted as soldiers. That just doesn't make much sense.

It's really kind of amusing and somewhat disturbing to see everyone's perceptions about feminism. A neuter dictionary definition of the word is simply "the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men." It's very simple. The things I'm reading here lead me to believe that people are incapable of separating ideas about equality from hate-mongering disguised as feminism. I don't think it's a truly feminist belief that women should rise up and crush the evil chauvinist overlords, any more than KILL WHITEY is a legitimate tenet of the civil rights movement. There is a difference between wanting to be equal and wanting to be superior. It's kind of frightening how many people here singularly connect "feminism" to a hateful ideology.

I think that we are more respectful and less sexist than you give us credit for, which is what originally motivated me to post. We live and work with our fellow soldiers day in and day out. We know them quite well, and we are perceptive enough to figure which females are serious about what they do and which ones are out to skate by. I respect any competent, intelligent female who will work hard on equal terms with a male without expecting any breaks. In some ways you respect them even more because you know they have the option to skate by. The vast majority of the people I knew and associated with felt the same way, and would gladly take orders from a fair and competent female leader. I know that the few highly motivated, competent, intelligent, physically fit females in the co-ed units i was in were held in extremely high regard. Sure you've got the minority of people who aren't going to respect a woman on any terms but A, they are generally inbred throwback hicks that are in the wrong century, why would you want their respect anyway? B, they are a small minority, C, you've got that minority share of moron bigots wherever you go, not just the military.

&

As for the resentment, again, i think we are more perceptive and fair-minded than you give us credit for. We can tell whether a female has skated to her position or earned it, and if she has earned it, the majority of us will follow orders resentment-free. As for the true sexists, if the positions were reversed and i was female, i wouldn't want that resentment to stop. I would savor it like a delicious dessert. I will add that my experiences were with the army. I don't have personal experiences with the marines and your mileage may vary.

I think it's a situation where my mileage has varied. It just seems like whenever there's some kind of tension between the people I've dealt with, the men immediately go to a place of resentment toward the stupid bitch who doesn't have to work as hard -- even if they're usually neutral toward her or even have positive feelings about her. This isn't something they'd go saying out in the open, but being a military spouse and being behind the scenes seeing people in their private moments, this is constantly below the surface. For whatever reason, people tend to get comfortable enough around the spouses that they forget for a moment that we are also women. In their mind, they're probably just raging against their boss, but what comes out is just their most honest, most bare thoughts, and those thoughts are always always always about how women are inferior to them in some capacity.

I think it's worth mentioning that if a woman really wants to see combat in the army she can do so with ease. I'll be the first to admit that putting women in combat while not letting them take the title of infantry is most unfair and Orwellian doublethink of the highest degree. It's a bad system and it does need changing, even though i don't have any solutions to offer up.

Yeah, exactly. It's just a matter of letting them do it directly and with pride, rather than kind of... not sneaking into it, per se, but I don't have a better way to describe it. Letting them truly be part of the "warrior culture," and have everything that goes with it, rather than taking whatever scraps they can grab. Does that make sense?

I absolutely agree with you that forcing policy changes over women fosters resentment and is the wrong way to go about things. Some of the sexual-harassment and gender relations classes we had were truly lolworthy. Similar to an incident i think you mentioned earlier in the thread, subsequent to a series of rapes reported in the army times, we actually had to attend classes informing us that it was not OK to rape women. ...yeah.

Yeah, that's another thing that really bothers me. I know that some of that sort of shit needs to be said, but to be honest it seems to me that it does more harm than good to make it loltastic. It just takes down the serious nature of the message completely. My husband actually got sent to some classes that flat out said "don't get drunk and beat your wife." Like wut.

Still, i don't think women will ever be treated as one of the guys. We're just different in some respects, and i think that we are evolutionarily wired to look at girls differently than guys. the courtship instinct will never go away, and it will always affect the dynamic between men and women. I think you said earlier in the thread that we will never be exactly the same. I do think, though, we did treat females in the service no differently than we would treat them out the service, and that we considered them to be on equal ground.

I think that's honestly something that needs to change within society itself outside the military before they even have any hope. That's another discussion entirely, though. I think we do basically agree on most things.

Also, holy shit Draylo is either amazingly retarded or an amazing troll.

[Xno Kappa]

Domestic abuse classes in the military is nothing out of the norm. I give my soldiers a safety briefing before they're released every weekend not to beat their spouses, don't drink and drive, i.e. basically don't do stupid shit. Soldiers in general have to receive an Equal Opportunity/Sexual Harassment class at least quarterly in most units. Is it silly we have to resort to classes to remind people of common decency? Of course but it's unfortunately still necessary.

Anyways, from what I read this whole discussion is silly. There will always be;
A) Male soliders who want to white knight females in their units.
B) Female soldiers who'll use their tits to get out of shitty details.

Nothing about this will ever change.

[aduidarnenye]

Anyways, from what I read this whole discussion is silly. There will always be;
A) Male soliders who want to white knight females in their units.
B) Female soldiers who'll use their tits to get out of shitty details.

Nothing about this will ever change.

Good lord, you just described people in 100% of all the linkshells I was ever in in FF11!

[Kashka]

It's really kind of amusing and somewhat disturbing to see everyone's perceptions about feminism. A neuter dictionary definition of the word is simply "the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men." It's very simple. The things I'm reading here lead me to believe that people are incapable of separating ideas about equality from hate-mongering disguised as feminism. I don't think it's a truly feminist belief that women should rise up and crush the evil chauvinist overlords, any more than KILL WHITEY is a legitimate tenet of the civil rights movement. There is a difference between wanting to be equal and wanting to be superior. It's kind of frightening how many people here singularly connect "feminism" to a hateful ideology.

The problem with this definition is it's too simple and doesn't really reflect political reality. It creates a dichotomy where either you're feminist or sexist. Antifeminism is also pretty misunderstood and maimed. Due to feminism's history as a political platform and movement though, it creates a problem where people who don't agree with certain viewpoints but do with the idea of equality aren't going to see themselves as feminist. For example, a pro-life person is most likely going to be somewhat turned off of feminism because they were the most influential in the push for abortion rights, regardless of the fact that that same person could strive for equality in every other facet. Furthermore, almost all, if not just all, feminist ideologies believe patriarchy is the umbrella source of women's oppression, the contention is mostly in how it manifests and how to correct the oppression. So if someone were to believe that patriarchy is itself benign or just a societal tool(usually a position held by men's rights advocates, which DO have a movement... since the 80's) then they probably won't identify as feminist. Also, the literal meaning of feminism is women's doctrine, which doesn't readily lend itself to the general social definition.

The extremely vocal and more radical segment of feminism also doesn't help things because people just don't want to be associated with them in general, either. This is especially tragic when you consider that legally women's equality is nearly entirely secured in the west, and that really the last remaining fights for equality lie in social/cultural changes but no one wants to listen to feminists anymore.

Also just to pitch in to the thread topic: I don't really see the point of debating whether or not women should be drafted when they're not allowed combat roles. Figure that one out first, then fight about the draft. The point of the draft is to fill in roles for fighting, and if women aren't allowed to fight then what's the point of drafting them. Furthermore the single best argument for equality has always been that it enriches the lives of both sexes; if drafting women hurts military efficiency, leads to resentment for special treatment, and is fiscally not pragmatic, then it does exactly the opposite of that. Also finally... there ARE feminists who argue for inclusion into combat roles and to be included in the draft.

[Pepsodent]

I'm not sure what you mean by "non-feminist women." I could be wrong, but I don't think there etc.

I misspoke. Non-activist women, but you knew what I meant.

[joft]

by the way,

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION AND ALTERNATIVE SERVICE

even more reason why this thread is stupid.

the one good thing about this thread is that it reminded me to update my address with SSS

[miokomioko]

by the way,

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION AND ALTERNATIVE SERVICE

even more reason why this thread is stupid.

the one good thing about this thread is that it reminded me to update my address with SSS

I mentioned that option a long time ago and it doesn't quite change anything.

[Rothbardian]

Feminism is merely a veil for authoritarianism & special privilege. Take for instance, Iceland which recently banned strippers, and any woman who wants to provide a voluntary service that includes baring skin. Is that progress? Is that what Feminism is -- Totalitarianism? Now, in the same vein that was the CRA, they now want to tell you, the private property owner, what you can and can't do and force you via the State to comply. If you don't want to serve women, then that is your right as the property owner. Now, is that wise, or even a self-sustainable business model? Of course not. Anyone who dares do such a thing will be ran out of business in a split second because of negative out-cry, and in many cases the business owners will be ostracized. And for good reason. You can effect change through voluntary and non-violent, non-coercive means. Bah.

What kind of person agitates for that? The whole thing is a bunch of gobbledygook authoritarians posing in the name of 'rights' and 'equality'. If women were even interested in obtaining for the same rights as men, they would do so under the banner of liberty. A banner I might add, that gives free reign on voluntary action so long as you do not infringe on anothers rights.

The whole thing is warped.

How many Feminists would advocate letting males into the Girl Scouts of America? Right....I'll let you answer that one.

Obligatory:

http://theinfosphere.org/images/6/69...n_the_Mood.jpg

[aduidarnenye]

How many Feminists would advocate letting males into the Girl Scouts of America? Right....I'll let you answer that one.

I'm all for allowing boys into Girl Guides if they want to join. It'd be nice if Boy Scouts of America opened all their programming to girls, homosexuals, and atheists as well.

[Ivve]

The problem with this definition is it's too simple and doesn't really reflect political reality. It creates a dichotomy where either you're feminist or sexist. Antifeminism is also pretty misunderstood and maimed.

So you're telling me the political reality is that feminism is always a tool used to put women ahead of every other group of people? I'm going to have to disagree.

I'm just saying it's kind of disturbing how many people read "feminism" and automatically think of backwards, man-hating (and woman-hating, at times) extremists. I just think that's an emotional response and association, and frankly it's almost as offensive as the perception that all Muslims are suicide bombers. Just because I believe that men and women should be on equal footing in society does not mean that I hate men, think I am entitled to more than a man, or think that I have the right to make value judgments on how other women live their lives.

Also just to pitch in to the thread topic: I don't really see the point of debating whether or not women should be drafted when they're not allowed combat roles. Figure that one out first, then fight about the draft. The point of the draft is to fill in roles for fighting, and if women aren't allowed to fight then what's the point of drafting them. Furthermore the single best argument for equality has always been that it enriches the lives of both sexes; if drafting women hurts military efficiency, leads to resentment for special treatment, and is fiscally not pragmatic, then it does exactly the opposite of that. Also finally... there ARE feminists who argue for inclusion into combat roles and to be included in the draft.

However, on this we are in agreement. The point of the draft is usually to fill combat-related roles, and as someone else said, people who have been sitting behind a desk for most of the military careers do not necessarily make good soldiers. Drafting women to fill those roles and then putting those people into combat really isn't achieving much at all, except making enlistees really fucking mad.

[miokomioko]

I understand reasons that random women aren't ever going to be thrown into the infantry, but why aren't women required to register for drafting into the same services that a male Conscientious Objector gets shoveled off into?

[Kashka]

It's not that feminism always puts women ahead of other groups, it's just that the definition of it normally used it kind of fallacious; Egalitarianism is a much better word. By virtue of the fact that the prefix fem- is in there the very term excludes other groups. In addition, the history of feminism is rife with exclusions of other minorities and their own biases, largely which come from the fact that feminism has by and large been a movement of white upper/middle class women targeting the socioeconomic status of white upper/middle class men. It's only more recently that it has come to terms with this and become much more inclusionary, although there's still infighting between different factions because most ideologies still work the same way.

The political reality is that feminism is a far more defined movement and political platform than simply saying "equality between sexes", and that someone who says they are a feminist is pretty much assumed to hold to the ideals of the movement, which goes beyond black and white parity, sometimes into some pretty gray areas(abortion, views on sexuality, etc). That's the extra connotation of calling yourself a feminist, not that women should be above other groups.