You know as well as I that this discussion has degenerated a long way from the original article. Never did I say that I thought it was a man's responsibility to do that. The article suggested that men cross the street to be less threatening to women. I was just trying to shed a little light on the female experience, and obviously that's not something you're interested in hearing about.
After having read through the article, this thread and a few of his other articles. I think I can safely say that this man(can I call him a man, I don't know if I'm allowed to identify him as such without his permission) is absurd. While he may have some good ideas, he takes them far too far, when basically the entire list can be narrowed down to the golden rule of "Don't be a dick", i.e. don't leer at girls on the street, don't partake in making lewd catcalls, or better yet don't talk fucking politics in work and get yourself into awkward situations. Whereas this guy is pushing for you to talk politics everywhere and generally be an arrogant douchebag pushing an agenda, which he declares to basically be for all women, despite not all women wanting exactly what he says(what about all those women who are against abortion? He seems to disregard and/or ignore them.) In essence, he ceases to be a human being and becomes a parody of himself. He creates this Byzantine list of buzzwords and commitments that no one could commit to and comes off as so much holier than thou. He is not a human being, just a sock puppet that can't properly function in polite society. He revels in confrontation and showing his "superiority" by actively seeking it out and trying to prove a point. If you read his article entitled "“No, you didn’t give me a tip because you are Black!” – Overt Racism at its Finest" you can see he is an instigator. His friend allegedly gets into a confrontation with a bartender who allegedly calls his friend "Black and stupid" He of course immediately seeks out the black bouncer and explains what happens, bouncer takes the bars side. Whereas the entire situation could have ended here with a hearty "fuck you all" and them taking their business elsewhere, they instead decide to argue with the manager to right this social injustice. They are swiftly removed from the bar. Instead of once again resorting to the hearty "fuck you all" and going to another spot to enjoy their night. They instead seek out 2 policemen and bring them back to the bar, because New Orleans cops have nothing better to do than deal with someone saying "you're black and stupid." The situation of course escalates because our author does not know to take the hint that there is nothing to be done, no laws were violated(his friend was served, perhaps in a rude manner, but still served). In fact they become the ones who are openly hostile, and accusing randomly accusing another bar employee of being racist and being even more offended when he tells them he has a "black wife". How dare he not take the accusation to heart and rethink his life! The author is clearly an instigator, who has latched onto something, which most likely is merely because it is controversial, allows him an outlet for his own anti-social behaviors and to rile others up. Given other circumstances he could easily fall into any category of extremism. Be it, far-right or religious fundamentalism or any other group which holds non mainstream views which will turn off the vast majority of the population and lead to confrontation. He is simply an attention whore, who has completely immersed himself in this as a way to stand out, everything he does in his life is to seek attention(positive or negative) and create potentially create a scene so he can self validate.
In a thread about feminism, the immediate reaction was to invalidate everything that female board members said. What if the thread was about race and the reaction was for all the white people on the board to invalidate the experiences of all the people of color? I'm not trying to be militant or condescending, I'm just trying to provide another perspective.
This is probably not the most rational or reasoned point, but here it is, since it's come up: I'm not sure how many of you have a lot of trans friends, but a lot of stuff about it is pretty shitty. That's just how it is. It can be really difficult to get jobs. Physical transitioning can be expensive. Often times, your legal identification doesn't match up with what you physically present as. People stare at you. People call you the wrong pronoun, even well-meaning people, which just highlights the internal discrepancy you feel. If you see a trans character in tv or a movie, they're usually presented as either comic relief or manipulative. So even if the term "cisgendered" is just some newspeak jargon that trans people are trying to force on us all, I'm still gonna use it. If I can help somebody who got dealt a pretty raw deal by using a word every so often, arguing against it just feels petty.
My impulse to make jokes of everything aside, I do find myself sympathetic with a great deal of feminism, but shit like this is a large part of what frustrates me about the prevailing feminist thought. You can't just shovel things off on the amorphous beast known as "Patriarchy" and wash your hands clean of any responsibility for it. I sympathize when your valid concerns are dismissed with a hand wave, I really do, but you can't act indignant when you do the exact same thing to the concerns of others. There is simply no amount of feminism in the world that is going to prevent Dixie's baby momma from ditching him and going back to fucking her cousin if his value as a status object drops due to lack of work or perceived lack of success.
Damn, you leave for one weekend... As a cisgendered white male, I'm not sure I have anything to offer here other than taking the blame for societies problems, so:
Well fortunately I'm large and black so most people cross the street to avoid me. Obligatory joke out of the way, I honestly found the article douchey rambling by a douchey douche. I think gender equality is a cause worth working towards. But as a male it can be hard to see the myriad of ways I benifit. I do my best to treat women as equals but I know sometimes I'm dismissive of the female experince and think/say things that are down right mysoginstic. And its also hard to not get into an oppresion mesuring contest. For example the often discussed pay discrepancy. While it is true that women statistically make less than their male counterparts, white women usually make more than black men. And when I learn things like that it makes it more difficult for me to empathize with feminist goals, even though I know intellectually that any step forward in equality is a good one. In my rambling I'm ultimately trying to say that I want to treat women better but I'm often fighting myself. This is growing more important to me as I am working towards becoming a teacher and I know a lot of patriarchal imprinting on young women happens in schools. And I would love to be a teacher all my students look back on as a positive and inspiring influence.
Someone earlier in this thread commented that the internet ruined feminism. I think they're right, and I could pick pretty much any comment thread following a Jezebel article to back it up. From an outsiders view, Feminists have become victims of anything and everything that they don't like. In the nonprofit world, it's called mission creep. Basically, it's what happens when a group takes its eye off the ball and tries to become the ambassador for all things related to X, rather than one aspect of it. It would be like Save the Whales focusing their efforts on saving the dolphins, then saving the sea turtles, and finally landing on saving the Rocky Mountain Shell Darter. Eventually, the message becomes so diluted that nothing gets accomplished. What happened to saving whales? As it relates to feminist issues, it makes empathy, even sympathy, almost impossible. Feminism has seemed to adopt all forms of oppression as feminist issues- homosexual discrimination and sexual identity are two of the biggies, as far as I'm concerned. I can see how both can be tangentally feminist issues, but they're not at all related to the core Those are small potatoes when ableism and adoptive, made-up pronouns become part of the feminist lexicon. I'm out when I have to label myself as a self-identified cis gendered white male who is in a herteronormal relationship with a self-identified cis gendered white female who is empathetic to feminist causes. No. I'm a white guy who has a girlfriend. She's into feminism. That's it, which brings us to my next point. I don't think that internet feminists want equality. They want men to have a different genetic code, but only when they want men to behave differently. Men are visual creatures. They're going to look at tits and asses. Polite society says that it's not cool to leer or catcall. Men are stronger. It's how we developed and I can't make myself weaker; even if I wanted to. I don't think this is a secret. That doesn't mean that I can or should use that strength to take things from others. What I find baffling about a good portion of what I've read on feminist sites is the idea that women shouldn't be objectified unless they want to be objectified and then it's okay and encouraged, even when it's difficult to separate the actions from the oppression that they're fighting. An extreme example is the idea that a woman should be able to be the chairperson of her anti-rape advocacy group and participate in a brutal (consentual) gang rape without anyone so much as casting a sideways glance her way. For most people, it's too much of a stretch to disconnect those actions and not see them as horribly hypocritical and incredibly insensitive. I understand how tremendous a role consent plays in the above scenario, and I wouldn't even bring it up as an example if it wasn't brought to me as a valid scenario first. However, it's a shining example of the disconnect that many feminists suffer. I can't help but know that at least one of the dudes raping that woman is going to have a hard time separating fantasy from reality. I also have a hard time swallowing the idea that the woman takes rape nearly as seriously as those in her advocacy group. Finally, I can't imagine serving as a leader to victims who may have been the victim of gang-rape and then turning it into a pleasurable fantasy. Let's go back to polite society. Don't be an asshole. Make eye contact. Smile. Get doors for folks (fuck you, feminists, gonna be polite) Focus on performance at work. Don't put yourself in weird places that are obviously uncomfortable. I once found myself leaving a hotel bar alone and going back to my hotel room. By pure happenstance, I wound up following some poor woman out of the bar, across the lobby, to the elevators, in the same elevator and we were staying on the same floor. She was obviously uncomfortable, as anyone would be. I should have stopped for a pack of smokes or just offered up the elevator and waited for the next one, as I've learned to do at night when you wind up standing in front of an elevator with a woman you don't know and it's just the two of y'all. I'm still not switching sidewalks. So, where does that leave a moderate feminist? What does she do? Where is the room for a woman who does say that people can do stupid things that will put them in harm's way. Rape is rape, 100% if the time, but women can do things that will get them raped, like go home with strange men. What does a guy do who recognizes the fact that women do suffer some real hardships, but isn't willing to apologize for his identity, especially if he's really kind of masculine and into guy things like hunting and gathering? According to the Internet, one is a Rape apologist and the other is just another member of the patriarchy.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? I can't even have a weekend away with a handsome man without coming back to the most ignorant shit I've read on this board in a long time. Ugh. Some of y'all are disgusting. Oh, I need to come up for air? Please. Sit down, son. Society places no one on a goddamned pedestal except the wealthy. Period. Men have to work their asses off to get ahead in this world. Women have to work their asses off to get ahead in this world. Minorities have to work their asses off to get ahead in this world. People with disabilities have to work their asses off to get ahead in this world. People without asses are still expected to work their asses off to get ahead in this world. No one is on a goddamned pedestal on a macro level. The way you treat women in your personal life? Perhaps. If you put women on a pedestal instead of treating them as equals on your level, then you have set up a system of inherent inequality that may or may not come back to bite you in the butt. That's true for women too, by the way. All this "cater to your man, baby, make him your King" shit only allows for the inequality gap to widen down the road and cause massive problems in how the two sexes relate to one another. So. No one is on a pedestal. No one needs to come up for air (except some people on this thread, because I am worried about how some of you can go without breathing for so long while inside your own anus). Society hasn't recently "become" anything. It's always been like this for women. The only difference is that you're now being made aware of how our existence is fraught with unseen complications and you're oddly butthurt about having to contemplate the needs and struggles of others. Why? It costs you nothing to be more aware of the hardships other people face. And it makes you a more excellent human being when you understand the nuances of how society works for people who are Not-You. Why are y'all fighting so hard against it? Caring about "touchy-feely nonsense" doesn't mean you're the catalyst to someone else's problems. That....doesn't even make sense. Read that out loud to yourself and admit that it is an incredibly stupid statement. Ugh. You, white heterosexual cisgendered able-bodied male, are probably not actively oppressing anyone as you go about your day to day life. Feminists don't say that, activists don't say that, minorities don't say that. Okay? Oh, jeez, I know you missed it. Let me bold it so it might have a chance of sinking through this time. Feminists are not saying that you, singular white heterosexual cisgendered able-bodied male, are actively oppressing anyone with your existence. That would be fucking wrong. And yet...some of you seem to have this incorrect impression about what feminists are trying to say and accomplish and do and you're railing against this particular statement (among others) without verifying that it's, indeed, what the mainstream feminist movement is saying. I mean, I know that when I form strong opinions about a movement I generally educate myself the best I can about it before even speaking about it in public. But I happen to appreciate critical thinking, so whatever. When you have all this inherent privilege, white able-bodied heterosexual cisgender male, you tend to be unaware of the hardships and struggles that others face solely due to the absence of one of those traits. This doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't even make you a slightly-bad person. Look, other than the male part and the heterosexual part, I am guilty of the same thing. It's just what happens when our social system is set up to provide the smoothest existence to those possessing your set of traits. NOTE: I did not say struggle-free. No one is saying that being a white, heterosexual, cisgendered able-bodied male is a party wherein all members get an all-access pass to booze, bitches, and dollars. Let me repeat it in bold. No one is saying that being a white, able-bodied, cisgendered heterosexual male makes your life struggle-free. The harm, then, comes from your ignorance. Which is why it's so frustrating to read people in this thread getting so angry about their unchecked privilege, you know? Because while one of you isn't an oppressor, a bunch of y'all remaining in willful ignorance can do a LOT of damage. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? I want to expand on this, but if you understand then I don't need to. Also: text limit.
True, it won't ever get better if the issue is brought up. I don't really think there is a right minded person out there who thinks that transsexual people don't have their own unique set of problems, but people coming along and telling others to recognize their privilege when they don't know shit about those people aside from that they have stereotyped them as living a better life simply because of their race and gender is not only bullshit but racist and sexist, which is hypocritical. Maybe if everyone on both sides of the argument focused on people as individuals rather than trying to group and stereotype them the less privileged classes of people wouldn't be less privileged. There have been plenty of societies throughout history where women could be as slutty and freaky as they want that actually were extremely "patriarchal." Can you actually prove that something like that is a direct result of feminism? I don't get what's so hard understand that the idea that since I was born a man I am automatically part of the problem unless I just go and accept everything feminism says as reality. Except that like you said there are so many different brands of feminism pretty much no matter what some people are going to tell me that I'm an extremist for my views while others will still tell me I'm not extreme enough. So which brand do I choose? What is "real" feminism? Just sounds like you are doing the whole "no TRUE Scotsman" schtick. Wasn't another self-described feminist just complaining about invalidation of women in this thread, and then you, a feminist woman, just went and invalidated a bunch of women? See what I'm talking about? Except that rather than it being about how unsafe women feel we were literally just told about how we were all potential rapists in women's minds, and not only that it's apparently my fault that I'm seen as a potential rapist because I don't buy into the idea of patriarchy. I can get behind the idea of gender equality, I simply don't buy into a whole lot of the reasons why you seem to think the genders are unequal, or that everything bad is the fault of men, or that feminists are somehow enlightened.
You're needlessly equating being "the cause of the problem" with being its beneficiary. It's perfectly possible to be the former without being the latter. For example, random non-slave owning white dude living in 1820 didn't cause the fact that it was better to be a white man than a black man. Likewise, the average heterosexual man in 1950 didn't individually cause life to be miserable for homosexual men at that point in time. However, in both examples, the person in question benefited on a comparative basis from the social norms that favored them. The state of affairs is not your fault, in that it is not a consequence of your actions. That doesn't make it any less the case. Viewing this in terms of personal blame is missing the point. Also, the whole idea that it is oppressive to point out oppression is patently absurd. It is not racist/sexist/whatever to point out that, all else being equal, some people are dealt an easier hand than others, and insistence that discussion of group-advantage is verboten is a display of fingers-in-ears stubbornness and ignorance. If you applied that tactic to other times or situations, its uselessness would be immediately obvious. "It's unfair to say that Americans live in privilege compared to the residents of Sudan or Sri Lanka, because SOME Sri Lankans have it easy, and SOME Americans have it really hard. So let's talk about individuals." Or "You can't say black people in 1930 had it hard, because Duke Ellington was living pretty comfortably."
Can we set up odds on how many more posts until this thread gets locked? Or until someone posts a picture of a train wreck. I could set up more prop bets than the Super Bowl here.
Can we at least agree that the whole "sometimes no means yes" thing some women do is fucking stupid and confusing? If you're one of those women, please take a swan dive into a wood chipper.
I'm confused, because the whole idea of privilege and patriarchy to me seems to be saying that straight white men are on the highest pedestal in society and then depending on your race, sexual orientation, gender, and a few other factors determine what pedestal you are on in society. To me, it would seem that the two most prevalent factors in how privileged you are as a person would be your socioeconomic status (like you said) and where in the world you live, yet those two things have been completely ignored in the brief reading I've done. It isn't that some of us are unwilling to accept that you as a woman have unique disadvantages in society that we as men don't have, I can accept that is true in certain ways. It's just that I don't agree with the a lot of the things that are supposedly a privilege are actually privileges that men hold or really even privileges at all, at least not according to that list linked to in the article. And people aren't getting butthurt over that anyways, it's that you called every man a potential rapist for simply existing in the same space as a woman earlier in the thread. In the original example a man is literally making a woman fear for her life by simply existing in the same space as her. To me that sounds like exactly what you are saying you aren't saying. Also, you've made a lot of claims about what feminists say and do not say. It seems pretty pretentious of you to speak for a whole movement when a guy like myself who knows next to nothing about modern feminism can do some simple searches and find plenty of people who are saying exactly what you claim feminism to not be saying. A lot of these priviliges that are being pointed out are complete horse shit or conjecture at best. Seriously, more than half of this list ranges from partially untrue to complete bullshit, and even some of the ones that are true would have a trivial effect on our lives at best. What privileges you are afforded in life has way more to do with what you have between you legs and what skin color you are, a couple of disadvantages and advantages are universal, but most of life is so situationally specific that to me this whole concept of privilege as it is being presented to me amounts to little more than stereotyping. Except that I'm not just a beneficiary, I'm denying that many of the things that are supposedly my privileges as a man actually exist or are questionably privileges, which from what I've read does make me part of the problem. Also PinkCup just said that "Because while one of you isn't an oppressor, a bunch of y'all remaining in willful ignorance can do a LOT of damage." If simply being ignorant causes damage, then being ignorant of your privilege is being a part of the problem, which probably most people are. Again, we're at the point where I'm saying that a lot of the things that were pointed out in that article that were privileges weren't actually privileges. That's stereotyping which is quite literally the root of the problem.
Gentle reminder that a guy who "knows next to nothing about modern feminism" might not be as well equipped to discuss what it usually entails as somebody who takes a serious interest in it. I could find you some internet articles that say that the Godfather II isn't a very good movie at all. But that wouldn't have much of a bearing on how film critics as a whole feel about it, and if I knew a lot more about film criticism than you, it might make sense for you to trust me. Edited to add: I suggest you read the analogy I posted, because I think it speaks almost directly to your concerns about what privilege means.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Wait, you were serious?! You mean to tell me that because you have wifi connection and know how to do a rudimentary Google search, you can find a random person(s) who identifies with a movement I'm deeply passionate about? And this person may disagree with me? And their opinion is more valid than mine because...oh, right, because they presented a contrary opinion and unless we feminists operate as a monolith, everything one of us says is invalidated? Oh, no, wait. You're saying that although you know zipshit about feminism, I am incorrect. Because Internet search results. "Plenty of people." Dude, I don't even have to respond to anything else you've presented. This is the forum- equivalent of citing a Wikipedia article on your Works Cited page. Glad you managed to bang out a post/five page paper in fifteen minutes before class, but you're not backing into an A+ on this one. F for idiocy and 0 points for calling me pretentious. You did make me laugh, though, so good for you. I needed that after the stupid that has been flying all around this thread.