a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by humanodon
humanodon  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A list of "Men's Rights" issues that feminism is already working on

Yes! This was exactly the item that bothered me, too. It's also weird because it seems to imply that if women were "allowed" to participate in these jobs that perhaps equal numbers of women would choose to do so. If there are women that want to do these grueling, dangerous jobs, then I'm fine with it, provided no unreasonable additional risk to the other workers in said job would result.

You're right, this is a charged issue, but I haven't had a smoke yet so . . . in light of your assertion about social constructs being inherited, does this not mean that unless men reject all inherited social constructs that they and women who have not recognized and rejected "patriarchy" are therefore parts of "patriarchy" and therefore to be hated by feminists?

If the idea behind this is to win hearts and minds, it's going about it shittily. Advocating hatred is advocating the casting aside of reason. Fuck that.

No Kool-Aid for me, thanks.





AnSionnachRua  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Advocating hatred is advocating the casting aside of reason.
Yeah, and it's downright inefficient - people tend not to respond positively to others screaming down their necks that they're wrong, as the backlash against certain kinds of feminism has demonstrated quite well.

I'm still trying to articulate myself on this. Perhaps it could fruitfully be compared to racism. Racist people are themselves racist, which makes it seem like they're intentionally racist. But really they acquired their racist beliefs from the context in which they live - from their parents and their peers and all of the people around them who are racist. Go back to the times of the slaves - most people simply thought nothing of the fact that humans could be bought and sold...

That's it! Naturalisation of beliefs! The patriarchy doesn't come down to a matter of the actions of men against women as it does to naturalised beliefs and attitudes about both men and women. In this sense, the patriarchy is pre-action. So yeah, hearts and minds.

I feel like my brain isn't working properly today.

thundara  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    It's also weird because it seems to imply that if women were "allowed" to participate in these jobs that perhaps equal numbers of women would choose to do so.

Many decades ago, women were snuffed down by the scientific community because they were believed not to be as intelligent as men. Now the most recent fight has been to remove roadblocks for women in the army. If the question is "are there gender roadblocks in certain careers," the answer is most certainly a "yes."

AnSionnachRua  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's absolutely true that there are gender roadblocks, but the point is that it is not individual people who put those roadblocks there. It's not because the manager of the mine says that a women is not allowed to work there that she is not allowed to work there; it is because that manager lives within a community in which gender values prohibit women from working in mines.

In the same sense, if I try to purchase alcohol but I'm under 18, it's not because the shopowner refuses to sell me alcohol that I can't get it - it's because of a broader system governing behaviour - the law. (I'm just using this is an example, so as to avoid seguing into a discussion about the intersectionality of gender and law and so on...)

thundara  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Is there de jure enforcement of no women in coal mines? I'd always assumed that it was a de facto thing...

(See my cousin comment for more chit-chat)

AnSionnachRua  ·  4015 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Huh. Well, actually, I didn't mean to imply that there was de jure enforcement - de facto works just the same.

thundara  ·  4015 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I should correct myself: Is it de facto enforcement that no women will be hired in a mine? Or a fact of life that no women apply to work in a mine?

humanodon  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's undeniable that women face roadblocks, but they of course are not the only ones. The focus of the question I was responding to was specifically about dangerous industrial jobs, rather than roadblocks women face in general in terms of employment.

Since coal mining was used as the example, if women were suddenly eligible to work in coal mines in exactly the same capacity as men and if the men working in the coal mines were doing it purely out of preference, would equal numbers of women choose to become coal miners? Would as many men become coal miners if they were prior to hire at the mine, presented with "cushy secretarial work and various yarn-themed activities" as a way of making a living?

I really don't know.

thundara  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well, that's the second front to the question: Should under-represented groups be encouraged to fill historically gender/racially-biased jobs?

I have a feeling that few will argue about it in the case of coal mining, but you definitely see it in the fields of science. I have yet to see any contention over those movements, though. Occasionally, hacker news has a discussion about women in computing fields, but usually they are about how to promote interest in the industry (As well as combat sexism within it), not whether to.

The lack of any discussion about a particular job, such as coal mining, probably reflects it being an unfavorable job that no one wants, but unfortunately a few find themselves doing for lack of a better option.

AnSionnachRua  ·  4015 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, people usually only talk about people getting into jobs and positions that are highly sought after, so everyone wants to see more women in science and everyone thought it was fantastic that a black man became US president but no one seems to say "hey, there should be more female garbage men."

They're making a barely distinguishable but critical mistake. The point is not that certain groups do get into certain places in society; the point is that the roadblocks preventing them from gaining access are removed. (This is sort of tied in to what humanodon said about balance.) Focusing on getting certain people into certain places is part of the illusion of the whole "glass ceiling" thing. It isn't about numbers. Attitudes toward black people, overall, are probably not going to change significantly just because Barack Obama was elected.

Although, in the long term, it probably does make a difference. And it does suggest that at least people are willing to elect a black president, but then that makes it a symptom of changing attitudes, and not a terrifically powerful causal factor. (And, of course, the fact that many would have voted for him because he was black is itself a problem.)

_refugee_  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I feel like this kind of comes down to an interesting question about ignorance; if you're not aware that you're propagating the patriarchy then are you still guilty as an accessory of the patriarchy? In our legal system (US), not knowing you're committing a crime isn't an excuse. That has always been an interesting point for me because, well, I want to be a law-abiding citizen (most of the time anyway) but if I'm breaking a law I don't know about, I'm kind of boned, right?

I guess the counter to that is that most laws should be common sense (i.e., don't kill anyone) but knowing about patriarchy, etc, ... well, the 'patriarchy' is ingrained into our culture as a norm for the most part. So you can't really claim that it's common sense to know about it and act against it. So I don't think that you can say that people who don't know what they're propagating should be held guilty for their actions.

Except that seems like a really stickily moral thing to say, you know? Like, I'm afraid someone's going to come out with a comparision to Nazi Germany that completely proves me wrong here. I don't know. I don't condone normalizing killing people or whatever.

It's hard to hold people guilty for esoteric, not-obvious things that they don't know about. Which then raises the question of how obvious is feminism and how obvious should it be, really?

Sorry for the ramble, humanodon. btw, I'm really enjoying following you.

humanodon  ·  4016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't think that was rambling at all. If anything, I think it's a good example of the thought process any number of people might have in negotiating this issue and that what you're saying makes a lot of sense.

    I want to be a law-abiding citizen (most of the time anyway) but if I'm breaking a law I don't know about, I'm kind of boned, right?

This is where I think the aggressive feminist point of view gets stuck. Most people want to be fair and equitable to people around them, but they can only be as fair as they know how to be. Let's take an extreme example of say, a tribesman somewhere who comes from an extreme patriarchal society, one in which women are actually treated as property and bought via dowry. What people forget, or don't want to acknowledge is, that is how that particular society has functioned and thrived (that term being relative of course) for untold generations. That is how their "world" works. This is not to say that it can't change, but from the tribesmen's view, why should it change?

This is what I mean about winning hearts and minds. You can't ask people to change without guiding them through the steps. What if instead of demanding that change happen overnight, without concern for societal consequences, much less the feelings and emotions attached to established societal norms, small changes were deliberately implemented with smaller, achievable goals in place along the way to the ultimate goal of a legally and societally defined, recognized and supported concept of human equality?

In many societies, people strive to teach children about fairness. This is a hard concept for children to grasp, but in time they begin to understand. Then, just as they begin to understand and wish to participate in a fair system we tend to tell them, "too bad, life's not fair." This is all kinds of confusing. Similarly, we tend to tell people to treat each other equally, while respecting their differences. All of this is introduced when people are still figuring out who they are. Small wonder then that people have a hard time negotiating how to treat others when many people aren't really sure how to treat themselves. To bring it back to the idea of a sticky situation, people have a hard time agreeing on exactly what the problems or barriers are to equality. I'm not saying that we need to wait to figure it all out before we begin, because by then things will have changed, but what I am saying is that I think people need to stop thinking of this problem like they think of math problems, or balancing an account.

If there's one thing that I dislike about the Western idea of balance, it's the static nature of it. Often it seems very much to be, "one for you and one for me and now everything is fair and balanced." This is not balance. This is motionless. Balance without motion isn't motion at all; it's death. Consider the ying and yang. The very symbol evokes equality and motion while making clear that they are different. Opposite is too strong, but counterpart is I think, a better idea. Likewise, we need to start understanding people as counterparts, which is not to imply that man and women need to go together sexually. Humans are group animals that depend on others and the abilities of others to survive and if we look at group animals, we tend to see that they are constantly negotiating those group dynamics.

I am still figuring out how to negotiate this, but I do know that if people take "sides" and solidify their arguments into a static system of beliefs and deal in absolutes, then they create resistance and will influence people to reach for the other extreme, if only for the sake of perversity.

I guess I'm rambling too. My point is, ideas have to remain fluid for equality for all to be achieved. Too often people seek equality from the perspective, "where's my share of X?" and this is to me, is wrong. I also think that some of these problems exist for us because we're only equipped to understand groups up to a certain size and beyond that, people become abstracts. I think if real change is to be effected, people cannot be treated as abstracts. When dealing with problems of mass humanity, the humanity has to remain intact.

I enjoy following you too. You put up a whole bunch of interesting stuff!