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comment by aidrocsid
aidrocsid  ·  3171 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Rape Is Sincerely Hilarious

Personally, I don't really fall into either of those categories. I think that there's a lot of good in feminist action and some of the academia, I really like Judith Butler's work for example, but the whole general idea of gender stratified power is something I just don't think is accurate. I'd say it's a massive oversimplification and the lived experiences of most people invalidate it. I honestly don't see the label of feminism or the concept of patriarchy that it carries with it as being compatible with a solution to sexism.

That doesn't mean that I don't want to disrupt the status quo or I want to put men first or that I want women to be housewives. It means that I don't think we can successfully eradicate sexism while holding up the banner of a single gender.

What do you mean by assault prevention costing men a right? Are you referring to laws that dictate how domestic abuse calls are handled? Personally, as someone who's been a victim of domestic abuse, that's important to me. I know some men wind up arrested when the cops show up after they've been beaten. That's not okay. I don't expect that that's what you're referring to, but I'm not familiar with this particular line of argument here so I really have no idea.

At any rate, I don't sort into either of those piles. I think sexism happens to everybody and we need to stop expecting certain behavior from one another on the basis of our gender. I don't think that can be done from the context of a narrative that can't let go of the old agency/vulnerability dichotamy, though.





tla  ·  3171 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    What do you mean by assault prevention costing men a right? Are you referring to laws that dictate how domestic abuse calls are handled?

No. Some anti-feminists think rape was a male right that feminists stole. It's a major MRA talking point.

aidrocsid  ·  3171 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Never seen that discussed, but I stopped reading MRM stuff years ago so I guess it's possible. Pretty nasty.

Did you have a response at all to any of the rest of that?

tla  ·  3171 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why are you denying the stratification of power? Is this really about which gender the poorest person in the world is? It's not a competition, and it's not what stratification of power means. The super majority of positions of power and societal influence are held by men. Men as a whole hold more power than women since powerful women cannot outvote powerful men. That means that women raising an issue that affects women don't have representation.

If men are the most downtrodden it isn't because women do it. It's because men do it. It isn't based on sex. It's based on class. It's based on people like Trump casting away anyone who failed at something.

If you still can't believe in the stratification of power favoring patriarchal society, then I have better things to do than sit here repeating myself.

aidrocsid  ·  3171 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Because power isn't clear cut or stratified along gender lines. Want to see what clearly stratified power looks like? Compare white and black populations in the US. You have less access to education, greater rates of imprisonment, greater rates of homelessness and poverty. Across the board. Not one stat has white people coming out worse off than black people in the United States.

Yet when it comes to men and women, the discrimination is all over the place. Women make less money but they're overrepresented in college. Positions of power are more likely to be occupied by men, but so are prison cells or the graves of dead workers.

I will happily once again repeat the issue that you've yet to address. No other intersectional axis is in this situation. Every other example where we know power is stratified does not look like this. Instead we have to jump through hoops to maintain a narrative. That's not a clear stratification of power between genders. Men are more empowered in some ways, women more empowered in others. Again, this is the only intersectional axis along which anything remotely like this happens.

One more time, explicitly. I deny power stratification between genders because nowhere else where we see clearly stratified power do we see discrimination against parties on both sides of it. Nowhere. Not once.

tla  ·  3171 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Stratification doesn't have to be clear cut to be stratification. What you're doing is still arguing for a men-first approach. You want to think you aren't, but you are.

aidrocsid  ·  3171 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The moment that you tell me what my point is is the moment that I bow out of the conversation, because good faith has just gone completely out the window. Cheers.