an anecdote on the existence of inequality between the sexes? i propose a fairly easy to conduct and very practical experiment, although this one is for the male readers and is more based on negative social attitudes rather than economics. go to any clothing or charity store and purchase [or ask a friend or two of roughly the same stature and build to borrow from them] an item of clothing (something plain and simple that others of the same age as yourself might wear) that hangs freely from the waist down and doesn’t join between the legs, although for the purpose of this experiment we’re going to exclude a specific subset of this variety of attire, the kilt. wear it for a few days, in a variety of situations (work, out around town, family occasions, etc). what you will very likely experience practically mirrors the attitudes that were seen in the early 20th century society in regards to the phenomenon of women wearing trousers. this, if anything, shows that there is a long way to go for equality between the sexes, even in matters assumedly as simple as that of clothing. on the other side of the coin, note that for a female to go bare breasted in public in the same locations where a male can is also an equality still not enjoyed in most parts of the world.
milk
on the header image—yes, it has male/female characters in different roles, but i can think critically and understand that the culture it’s coming from was biased and thus ignore giving any kind of credence to the metaphors behind the literal representation it offers.
on the question “Would you personally ever consider dating a woman who had sold sexual favors?”. yes, i would as i don’t see anything wrong with the practice, as long as it’s consensual.
on “If you call yourself a Communist I will point out that you are choosing a label identified most strongly with mass murderers, and if you call yourself a Christian, one identified with warmongering anti-rationalists. Doing this is beneficial. If you call yourself a ‘communist’, you really will probably end up with an inappropriately positive attitude towards the Soviet Union even as you denounce it as “not really communism”. If you call yourself a Muslim you really will probably end up with a level of sympathy for Islamic terrorists that you lack for terrorists of other types even as you insist that they are misguided and that “Islam is really a religion of peace”.”
i think that’s a slippery slope argument. to look at communism, there’s a difference between marxism, marxism-leninism, stalanism, maoism, anarcho-communism, etc. i’m a socialist, of which communism is a subset, but i’m of the social democrat variety, and again, i’m of the subset of social democrats that argue towards decentralisation of power, offering more forms of direct democracy, etc, rather than, for example, the variety of social democracy you get from the Labour Party in the UK in this day and age.
“In the case of feminism it is totally clear to me that many of the more prominent feminists endorse positions diametrically opposed to equal rights and to rational thought and it sure seemed to me like you did as well based on your posts.”
this statement leaves me wondering if you have much knowledge of feminism at all. can you say what prominent feminists or varieties of feminism have you read about which espouse tenets “diametrically opposed to equal rights and to rational thought”? yes, there exists ‘separatist feminism’, but that’s only one (very flawed imo) variety of feminism among much wide and more important strands of thought.
Doh, how did that ′ get there.. ;)
“I really don’t think that in the modern world we need a label for “someone who believes in equal rights for men and women” any more than we need a label for “someone who thinks that we shouldn’t have slavery” outside of the Muslim world.”
Michael; Are you talking about legal rights or social attitudes?
In some countries, one can maybe argue that the job of liberal feminism is done as that see’s the solution to gender equality through political and legal reform, although if you look at the reality of the situation the even the UK, this becomes an untenable argument as of yet.
Social attitudes are the more interesting part for me as that’s where the psychological bias exists. Even certain items of clothing such as skirts are still seen as fit for only the female sex! Ohoh, except for kilts that is...
Oh, no, I stand corrected. I must admit I skipped reading the lower half of the comments but my ctrl-f on ‘radical’, ‘liberal’ and ‘wave’ weirdly didn’t show any results. Anyway.
Hellohello!
I’m of the opinion that genders are simply a personality stereotype and that there should be no expectations or assumptions made between gender, sex and sexuality. This links in with existentialist/radical feminist (careful there, there’s a variety of forms of radical feminism out there) and queer theory thoughts on the social constructs of gender. Apart from my leanings towards existentialist thought, the main empirical arguments I use for this are a) that the definitions of masculine and feminine are so different through the world and have changed so much throughout the history of mankind that they’re pretty worthless terms and b) the existence of transgendered/transsexual persons shows that you can get the traits of any ‘gender’ in an individual of any sex.
(I also find it strange that none of the references to feminism in the comments distinguish between the different schools of feminist thought, something you can’t avoid if you’re talking about feminism seriously, given they have so differing reasons as to why there is inequality and as to what the solution is.)
milk.x
“Men’s rights are 100 years behind women’s rights?”
not legal rights, that is unless we’re specifically talking about a man’s right to wear a skirt at his place of work and not get fired for it, but right in as far as what society in general sees as accepting for a man to do without stigma (or women in the case of going topless in public, although that’s still prohibited by law in many places). equality is more than just legal rights, although they’re still required before societal change can happen in regards to ironing out irrationalities in how people treat the different sexes.