A Society Without Need for Men (or at least their emotions and money)

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by General Ludd It's also a society where children can be screened for genetic defects so that they won't be born with things like autism.

That sounds like a good thing. Are you for that or against it?

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Arrian


I think you are seriously out of touch. Things have been shifting for some time now, and continue to shift.

My department is choc full of women (we men are quite outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1). There are lots of valued female managers in the company, one of whom is my wife (who has a very good career going). My manager? Female. The two attorneys attached to our team? Both female. Are the numbers (% of high-level positions, salaries) equal yet? No, but given that within fairly recent history the number of females in management was roughly zero, expecting things to equalize overnight is silly.

In other words, you cannot seriously assert that we're still in the 1950s.

-Arrian

Females currently outnumber males in terms of college enrollment.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Sandman
It's a quasi-mystical thing, Arrian. Women have only got into these positions by acting like men, or something.

i.e. by being smart and working hard? I agree; it's horrible to ask women to do anything other than gossip and bake all day.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Wycoff
That sounds like a good thing. Are you for that or against it?

Since the potentially-autistic fetuses tend to be aborted, it's controversial, especially among the high-functioning autistic community (who call it eugenics). I'm pro-life and HFA, so you can guess my position on it.

[Arrian]

By the way, how in the Sam Hell is genetic engineering re: Austism related to whether or not our society is patriarchal? Is that an assertion that a matriarchal society would never allow such a thing?

-Arrian

[Elok]

It's screening, not engineering. And I think GL meant to point to the callousness or lack of feeling of society in general, or something to that effect. We oppress women, we abort autistic babies, we eat porterhouse steaks--face it, we're evil.

[General Ludd]

The thing about equality is that you have to consider what you are becoming equal to. If women are equal to the white, patriarchal, male, has anything changed? It is like, instead of abolishing slavery, we let blacks own slaves and whites become slaves. We even establish quotas to make sure there are as many black slave owners as there are white slave owners. We're all equal now - great! but slavery still exists.


Take Emma Goldman, for instance. She was quite critical of the sufferage movement because she believed that they where simply supporting the patriarchy (and indeed, the "suffragettes" in Britain sent women door to door recruiting young men for WW1) She believed that the system must first be distmantled completely before any real change can happen.

Originally posted by Arrian
By the way, how in the Sam Hell is genetic engineering re: Austism related to whether or not our society is patriarchal?

It's not, I was trolling Elok.

[Dis]

what system?

Here's a tip. Men and women are not equal. They think differently. And women are not attracted to men who are followers. They want men to be leaders.

[Elok]

Originally posted by General Ludd
The thing about equality is that you have to consider what you are becoming equal to. If women are equal to the white, patriarchal, male, has anything changed? It is like, instead of abolishing slavery, we let blacks own slaves and whites become slaves. We even establish quotas to make sure there are as many black slave owners as there are white slave owners. We're all equal now - great! but slavery still exists.

If we're all equal, then there are no slaves. Those two are mutually exclusive. Or are you suggesting an institution of slavery sans slaves? Or that the equality is between different races, genders, etc. in the abstract, but divisions within and across those categories remain? You might try less rhetoric and more substance.

Take Emma Goldman, for instance. She was quite critical of the sufferage movement because she believed that they where simply supporting the patriarchy (and indeed, the "suffragettes" in Britain sent women door to door recruiting young men for WW1) She believed that the system must first be distmantled completely before any real change can happen.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Emma Goldman an anarchist? No thank you. Anarchists aren't opposed to particular systems, or changing to better systems--they're opposed to the idea of a system existing in the first place. I'm dating a Libertarian, and I love her dearly, but that's as far as I'll venture into that particular lunatic fringe.

It's not, I was trolling Elok.

Oh, was that it? Well, it wasn't a bad effort, but I'm fairly troll-resistant after all my time here. Plus, given that wacky quote in your sig about pork chops---->dead soldiers, I found it quite possible to believe you saw a relationship between genetic screening and oppression of women. It would've been funnier if you'd worked that angle; you seem to be off on a radical feminist trip at the moment, so I suggest you write a little essay about "male gaze" and ultrasound images. Stuff like that.

[Az]

I mean that our society has evolved as a patriarchy society that is formed around "masculine" ideals. It is a society that is structored through power, dominance, superiority, and authority. It is also a society where women are objectified and commodified as sex objects. Where you see giant breasts plastered on billboards to push products and where "guy talk" banter about "hitting her" and **** like that is common place and acceptable.

you've put "masculine" in quotation marks for a reason. It's only due to the definition of certain traits as masculine which is silly and prejudiced this argument holds any water. Is "hitting that" "guy talk"? I've listened to enough female conversations to know that this is, in fact, not true. It IS, OTOH, sexist, to claim that this is not the way that women "want" to behave, but are forced to by "the system". Sexist, generalizing, prejudiced. All those lovely fallacies.

The thing about equality is that you have to consider what you are becoming equal to. If women are equal to the white, patriarchal, male, has anything changed? It is like, instead of abolishing slavery, we let blacks own slaves and whites become slaves. We even establish quotas to make sure there are as many black slave owners as there are white slave owners. We're all equal now - great! but slavery still exists.

yes, but one cannot possibly can that black people are discriminated against. And this is of course, the point

[Cort Haus]

Ludd's been at the Dworkin, methinks.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Az
Spiff, do you know what is he talking about? because I don't.

Well, I've encountered some Feminists, and I'm not hostile to them. My pattern-recognition prompted me into thinking: "Generic feministic sentence, with feministic jargon and absolutely zero example, that you can say in absolutely every discussion".

Which is why I wanted something just a tad less vague

[Straybow]

So if women have so much more leverage than before, and men are compelled by their libido, why arent women exploiting men MORE? If I were a woman ... I would find no reason to settle on one guy...

Which is mostly because you aren't a woman.

[Arrian]

The thing about equality is that you have to consider what you are becoming equal to. If women are equal to the white, patriarchal, male, has anything changed? It is like, instead of abolishing slavery, we let blacks own slaves and whites become slaves. We even establish quotas to make sure there are as many black slave owners as there are white slave owners. We're all equal now - great! but slavery still exists.

This is so absurd I don't know where to start. Have we crossed into communism now (wage slaves! wage slaves!)? If women and men are equal under the law, equal in the workplace (and I noted we're not quite there yet), equal in the home (ditto, but also improving)... wtf?

-Arrian

[Lorizael]

I think this theory is kind of that women's ideologies are not equal. Women are equal in today's society, yes, but today's society is based on the ideologies of men. There is pretty much nowhere in the world where a society is founded on the ideologies of females, where the power structures are created by females, where things are run by females - thus, they're still unequal.

When society is structured in such a way so as to take into account the perspectives of both men and women, then it will be equal. Or something.