Gender and violence issues

[Zaevod]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Does that mean that we should treat first wave, second wave, third wave, and radical feminism all as the same thing? Feminism is a category of various beliefs, rationales, and scholarships. It's not a singular movement like you seem to be under the impression it is.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all those feminisms share some common tenets, as far as I'm concerned: the Patriarchy, male privilege and female oppression being among the most universal of them. Saying that feminism is for equality practically implies that equality can be obtained by focusing on female issues (unless that "fem" part is just a coincidence).

My point, and the point of the videos I posted, is that things are not so simple.

[Zaevod]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Just to be clear: I didn't create this thread to specifically bash feminism, but to challenge the notion that violence is primarily a male trait, and that women are the primary victims. You see a lot of discussion about violence against women on the mainstream, but a lot of people don't take male victims or female perpetrators seriously.

[Zaevod]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Actually, the video does cover some of these claims.

As for the excuse of the woman "being stressed out" as a mitigating factor... I can't imagine anyone claiming the same thing for a man under the same circumstances.

Your post also contains the conclusion that women were more oppressed in its premises. In short, everyone is oppressed in different ways. Society just gives a lot more sympathy for female issues.

Maybe you should check the videos of a woman named Karen Straughan. She elaborates on a lot of these points. I can't write too much at the moment because I'm on my phone, but I will, later.

[Zaevod]

Re: Gender and violence issues

So you're saying it's double standards, that if a woman abuses her kid feminism lets her off the hook while if a man abuses his kid feminism paints him out to be the scourge of the earth? Well, that's not the case, but at times it can seem as such and that's part of what feminism is trying to change.

So it seems. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/story.html?id=9270200

I don't deny that there are many well-intentioned feminists, but feminism is not just composed by those people, in the same way christians are not just composed by mormons or catholics. Making a sweeping claim about what feminism is trying to do, when many self-proclaimed feminists actually contradict that, is a little problematic.

Yeah, men are oppressed too. They have different definitions of success to adhere to, are prescribed to behave in different ways, get harsher prison sentences on average, etcetc. But, because all groups experience distress does that mean we're not allowed to try to better them? A lot of races are oppressed in different ways, and so are people of different financial status. Working out women's issues is not to detract from working out men's issues, it's just a different line of work.

You can, in fact, work on women's issues. That's great. However, many feminists assert that feminism is THE ultimate authority on gender issues, and nothing else is necessary because they will take care of everything. Evidently, this is not true.

Also, our society doesn't give more sympathy to female issues over male issues, it's that there's more female issues to give sympathy to.

It looks like you didn't watch the entire video. Sorry, but men are about half of the victims of domestic violence and yet a lot of people still refer to domestic violence as "violence against women".

There are people who laugh on national television about an innocent man who had his penis cut off by his wife:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muuFygvXPAM

Genital mutilation on males is still accepted and even condoned by a large part of the western population, while female genital mutilation is nearly universally recognized as unacceptable in our culture.

We even have a trope that addresses this disparity: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...pendableGender

I could go on. Women gain a lot more sympathy than men for the same issues, in general. Women are also seen as less responsible when doing the same crimes, so they get lighter sentences. As a whole, society treats women as children and men as disposable, which is both misogynistic and misandric.

At the end of the day, there is an extraordinarily massive body of work by feminists and non-feminists alike that say women face more disadvantages than men on issues pertaining to gender alone. The research that has passed through hundreds of thousands of hands and has been going on for more than a century now is not in your side of the argument's favor.

My objective is not to make a competition of suffering between men and women. I don't think it's possible to determine which gender suffers the most, on absolute terms.

Still, people see more issues that women face because people care more about issues that women face, and are more willing to do research based on that. Men constitute 93% of worplace related deaths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality) as well as 80% of suicides(http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-...a-z/S/suicide/). Men have been historically forced to throw their lives away at wars. Men are the majority of rape victims when you take prison rape into consideration, as well as the majority of victims of assault in general. They get harsher sentences for the same crime, etc, etc...

Perhaps you'd be willing to listen to a woman on the subject? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqEeCCuFFO8

[Cavernio]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Before reading the thread, after watching the video.
~18:00 No, you hold men to too high a standard, not women to too low a standard.
It's perfectly valid and RIGHT to say something like 'But women spend three times as much time raising children'. The correct male/female ratio SHOULD be viewed as the way one automatically thinks, because that is the accurate way of viewing it. It's like when I worked at UPS and I because twice as many shipments of mine were being looked at, they found twice as many errors as for people who only had half as many shipments being looked at, but then thought I was doing twice a bad a job as them. The same principle applies here.

The prison rape discussion fails to point out the obvious that it clearly shows that it's men who were doing the raping of other men.

Spanking, as discussed in this video, has not separated spanking from the overall beliefs and actions of the parent who spanks holds. ie: spanking is obviously going to be related to other actions that are going to also be detrimental to a child. I am intrigued by this though, and I might look up more studies about this just in my own time, about women and spanking and also about negative effects of spanking.

The very end of the video walks a very tight line...how many women teachers who want to teach older kids get asked 'Oh wouldn't you rather teach this grade 2 class?'
And yup, if men don't help raise kids, of course women are going to be raising kids more...that's not new, and more male involvement with raising kids is one of those things that a lot of feminists would like.
I wonder if that McGill study at the end that showed that the most important factor for empathy is men in a child's life, ever had kids in that study that had no female nurturers? The take-away message from that study, to me, is if there is a 2nd nurturer to a child, possibly one that is not with them all the time so there's an opportunity to miss them such that their interactions will be different and more meaningful for the time they have them, than the relationship they'll have with the primary caregiver. The sex of the parent seems like it would be irrelevant.
EVERY child will have a primary caregiver or else the child probably won't be alive. The baseline, therefore, for learning to empathize from social interaction isn't going to be 0, they will already have some level of empathy learning/developing from the primary caregiver, and they will ALWAYS have that, yet we're given to believe from the video that having a father involved is the single most important thing for a child to develop empathy. Yes, given the baseline of 'some amount of empathy granted by having a primary caregiver', it's not that surprising that a secondary, loving caregiver is the biggest factor above and beyond this non-0 empathy baseline.

I have specifically seen the term "feminism" applied to inequalities between men and women only, without it necessarily meaning that women must arise only to power. I'm not sure that's a great definition of the word, but there it is.

In any case, yes, of course there are inequalities for men where society treats them unfairly. 'It wouldn't be creepy for you or us to hang around the park, but it would be for me (a man)'
The only thing in this video where women have apparently overstepped a boundary pushed by feminism, is when the paternity of a child doesn't matter for who has to support the child...although even that is a little sketchy because it's ultimately the child who we should be looking at, and if the child themselves thinks that their dad is their dad, it'd be a terrible thing to find out when you're 5 or something that your dad, upon finding out you're not their biological kid, suddenly wanted nothing to do with you. That is, I suppose, separate from making a man pay money to support a child though anyways. It's really a social cop-out though I suppose, because that kid needs financial support from somewhere, and there's a reason the actual dad isn't paying support, and the government doesn't want to have to foot the child support.

[Cavernio]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Female genital mutilation involves completely cutting off her clitoris (because god forbid she gets pleasure) or some crazy crap like sewing her shut except to have sex with her.
Male genital mutilation, AFAIK, involves getting rid of foreskin.

Keep in mind that the only reason there IS a push towards feminine issues is because feminism is being successful.
Also, yes, you should be able to EASILY say that women have a harder time in society if you just don't look at the past 10 years in your specific area. All throughout history, women have been the primary caregivers for children which, even if not outright treated as second-class citizens, (which is just not the case) end up not having the opportunities to do things besides raise kids and look after the home.
In most of the world women are still treated far worse than men.

Sympathy is a good thing that comes from a good place, and I usually don't perceive that I'm being coddled like a 5 year old because someone is nice to me because I'm a woman. (Of course I'm also lucky enough to live in a place where I am not treated like a second class citizen.) I perceive that men, when not given the same consideration as I might be, are getting treated poorly.

[Zaevod]

Re: Gender and violence issues

I'm not going to make another lengthy post about the whole oppression thing (you can watch that last video I posted if you want and read the few posts above), it's not meant to be a competition of suffering. Still, it's good to remember that things are not as simple as the mainstream believes.

But, anyway, just a few details:

Female genital mutilation involves completely cutting off her clitoris (because god forbid she gets pleasure) or some crazy crap like sewing her shut except to have sex with her.
Male genital mutilation, AFAIK, involves getting rid of foreskin.

Then you should know better. Some babies actually die because of complications from the surgery. It's often done with no anesthetics and is an extremely painful procedure that rids the area of a big portion of its sensitivity.

I never said it's "worse", since that's irrelevant, but it sure as hell shouldn't be considered as acceptable as it is today. It's mutilation on someone's body without consent. Period. If there really is a medical requirement for it, then fine, but it's completely unnecessary in the majority of cases.

There's a lot of material on it, but here's a quick video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXbl83m0tQ0

Sure, it helps to prevent some diseases. Like taking out your lungs prevents lung cancer.

Edit: Better video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acc70D2ApFg
And part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPxjhLq3eUQ

The prison rape discussion fails to point out the obvious that it clearly shows that it's men who were doing the raping of other men.

And that somehow makes it... Acceptable?

You missed the point that rape is not a gendered issue that specifically targets women, as a lot of influential feminists seem to believe.

[j-rodd123]

Re: Gender and violence issues

I for one am very happy my parents got my nasty ass foreskin cut off so I wouldn't have to look at a gross ass dick everyday so speak for yourself

[Zaevod]

Re: Gender and violence issues

I for one am very happy my parents got my nasty ass foreskin cut off so I wouldn't have to look at a gross ass dick everyday so speak for yourself

It's not gross if you have basic notions of hygiene. Also, if you don't mind the reduced sensitivity (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23374102), I guess that's up to you, as long as you don't condone genital mutilation on others.

Edit: Interesting link: http://docakilah.wordpress.com/2011/...-masturbation/

[stargroup100]

Re: Gender and violence issues

I for one am very happy my parents got my nasty ass foreskin cut off so I wouldn't have to look at a gross ass dick everyday so speak for yourself

ok if you mean gross as in the hygiene kind of cleanliness then I would question your cleaning habits because you [somehow] don't understand what makes a dick unclean

if you mean gross as in aesthetically it looks unappealing, then I would call this a problem with society's influence. the same way we criticize models for being too skinny and making girls feel self-conscious by creating unrealistic standards of beauty, society should also try to avoid making guys feel self-conscious about their dick, whether it's being cut or not, a size issue, endurance, etc. there also isn't that much of a difference when the penis is erect, as the foreskin pulls back anyways

unfortunately, we cannot realistically control whether our dick is circumcised or not (cutting is a scary thought and "uncutting" isn't exactly straightforward either), and there is no significant positive reason for circumcision (people may disagree here), so it shouldn't be something that is encouraged

[devonin]

Re: Gender and violence issues

It's still definitely the case that comparing circumcision to the kind of female genital mutilation which is still practised in some parts of the world is absolutely asinine in about the same way as comparing putting handcuffs on a thief when they are arrested versus chopping off the hand of a thief under Shari-ah law would be.

[MracY]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Do you think there can exist a case in which you would not consider it asinine to remove part of a human's genitalia for ideological reasons, if it were done in a surgically precise manner?
If yes/no, why?
As an exercise, try not to use axiomatic values without explaining why they may be used.

(This is just a teacher-esque question to provoke discussion)

[Zaevod]

Re: Gender and violence issues

It's still definitely the case that comparing circumcision to the kind of female genital mutilation which is still practised in some parts of the world is absolutely asinine in about the same way as comparing putting handcuffs on a thief when they are arrested versus chopping off the hand of a thief under Shari-ah law would be.

You completely failed to get the point. Did you watch any of the videos I posted on the subject?

Try to think of it this way: What level of female genital cutting (as minimal as it can be) without the girl's consent would be considered acceptable in our society?

Also, your analogy is atrocious. You are completely ignoring the damage done by circumcision.

[choof]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Why should we have to watch videos in order to understand your point?

[stargroup100]

Re: Gender and violence issues

Do you think there can exist a case in which you would not consider it asinine to remove part of a human's genitalia for ideological reasons, if it were done in a surgically precise manner?
If yes/no, why?
As an exercise, try not to use axiomatic values without explaining why they may be used.

How are we supposed to answer this question? You say that we have to explain without axiomatic values, but what humans consider to be stupid is relative. I think it's stupid to believe a certain kind of god, but clearly there exist many people who disagree, and while I may even possibly claim that my opinion is more logical and practical, everyone is entitled to their opinions.

I think the best answer you can really say is as long as you're not forcing something significantly harmful on someone. If someone who is qualified to make that kind of decision on their own and chooses to do themselves harm, so be it. While there aren't any real benefits to circumcision, it technically does not strongly impact the general health of an individual, so it's not totally unjustified under simply ideological reasons.

And that's exactly why it's not the same as the female genital cutting. Relatively speaking, there is far more damage done from the cutting of the female genitalia than the male.