Exactly what I was saying @ Octo and Dan Eile

And yeah, I don't like the spin mainstream feminism tends to put on reverse sexism either. It's actually tolerable when it's about stuff like skirt-wearing, but alarming when it's about stuff as serious as the draft.

There's no such thing as reverse sexism; sexism is sexism, point blank.

Even die-hard, militant feminists would have to admit that a draft would be kinda sexist.

They'd have to denounce the draft if they wanted to be seen as consistent in a stand against sexism.

edited 2nd May '11 10:13:59 AM by SavageHeathen

^ Well, since Men dominate the whole world, presumably we draft ourselves because we like to. Whereas Women (Or Womyn or whatever the term that isn't a sexist variant of the male term) don't have a choice.

But people do not draft themselves. That'd be a non-sequitur, hypocritical, and a massive cop-out.

A draft is essentially men being pressed into indentured serviture, a particularly nasty form of it that has No OSHA Compliance, in account of their gender. It's massively sexist in essence.

In some parts of Europe, IIRC, feminist movements DID support getting rid of universal military service and similar things.

edited 2nd May '11 11:05:29 AM by SavageHeathen

^ Does Not Understand Sarcasm

edited 2nd May '11 11:21:44 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

Hard to recognize OTI sarcasm on a Politics forum .

Would be? You realise there are countries who still have it, right? I was drafted. Now, the draft has recently been suspended here, but do you think any comment was about how it's been sexist? No, it was always been about how it's not necessary anymore, how it's too expensive, how it doesn't fit to modern military mandates any more... not a single fucking word about the inequality of it all.

^^ I'd have thought the Take That against attempts to remove the "men" from women would have been a clue.

Poe's Law. There are people out there who are that crazy.

@Jeysie: But that's true; in fact that's obviously true. Women haven't had any power at all until very recently, therefore any longstanding instances of sexism against men had to be started by men themselves.

Given that men aren't stupid, any instance of sexism against themselves would have to be either a byproduct of sexism against women (such as custody law) or from the odd sense of paternalism that used to be common (such as chivalry), which itself stems out of the idea that women are delicate little flowers that need to be protected. Either way, sexism against men is ultimately due to sexism against women.

Or at least, systemic sexism against men is due to sexism against women; Valarie Solanis wasn't inspired to write the SCUM manifesto due to any long-standing prejudice against women writing manifestos or anything.

Utter, absolute nonsense. Because sexism is obviously the only ideology ever held over the centuries by men; such instances could never be archaic remnants of other unsavoury ideologies, right?

I agree with you that men are the greatest enemies of men's rights, but so what? That doesn't mean anything. We're not a collective or a monolith.

And, for that matter, many times women are the greatest enemies of women's rights.

Child custody is actually a good example of this. Women often denigrate a woman who gave up her kid, or a man who is a "house husband", as much as men do! Or women who are the main bread winners feel uncomfortable about it, or feel a need to still take on the lion's share of the housekeeping and child raising, even if the man is OK with the money imbalance or doing more of the work.

All that trying to spin every single issue of gender rights as really being about women even when men are demonstratively disadvantaged does, is make us look like a self-victimizing gender that feels downtrodden and oppressed even when we're actually making progress or we have the advantage in a situation. This sort of attitude isn't remotely helpful at all.

On the flip side, women who want to be stay-at-home moms and housewives and such are often belittled by feminists. Either way, we can't win.

To people who are arguing that women should fight for men's rights as well, do you also believe that men are equally obliged to fight for women's rights?

Because as people have said, fair's fair.

Personally, I don't think anyone is obligated to fight for rights in a general, abstract sense. If we have an obligation, it's to live our daily lives without engaging in sexism towards men or women.

I admit that if you consider it your calling to fight for equality, then you really should be fighting for equality, no matter what angle you're approaching it from. All things considered, I can't see a reason to fight for any law that eases discrimination for only one group, when you could just fight for a law that eases discrimination in general, thus benefiting your own group and all other potential victims. (It'll also get rid of the unproductive Us vs. Them mentality that can seep into minority advocacy groups sometimes.)

But, in those cases where there does need to be a narrowing down, I feel the same way about men's rights groups as I do about feminists: They're not obligated to fight for matters only applicable to the opposite sex, but in those matters where both sexes are affected, there should be a movement to include both sexes in the fight.

Those men who confess to believe in equality should at least, because everything else would be hypocritical. Feminists use equality as the entire ideological fundament of their argumentation, so they should also consider men's right - just as men who say they believe in equality should also fight for women's rights.

^ There are some forms of women's rights that trample upon men's rights. Abortion is one such topic.

There are no "rights" that trample upon other rights. A person's rights end where other persons' rights begin. Now, privileges, that's another thing, but that's nothing to fight for, either.

Actually there are. I just named one. Everyone who calls getting an abortion a right freely admits they are denying the right of men to contest it. After all it takes a man and a woman to make a baby (and it's been well over two thousand years since this rule of thumb has been broken) and yet everyone who's a proponent of abortion rights forgets about that.

By simple contribution logic, the man has a right in the decision. Yet abortion rights trump his right to see that his kid lives.

Shall we keep pulling back the wool on other topics too such as child custody?

Well it does require her body, and pregnancy can indeed do some rather bad things to one's body. Once we have artificial uteri, your example would make more sense. Yet of course there is the issue that it's solely the woman's right, yet the man has to pay if she decides for the child, even if he doesn't want it. That would be an example for a privilege, even if people call it a right.

That's what I meant. A right is only a right if it stops at the rights of other people. Otherwise, it's a privilege, something making people unequal.

Life is not completely win-win. There are plenty of zero sum games, and regardless of which terminology you use, some of them are part of the political battles regarding "rights". "Privileges" are something to fight for, if only because people care enough to fight for them.

edited 3rd May '11 12:40:35 PM by Tongpu

Random aside: I've always thought that, if one was going to make a fuss about this, since "men" was originally just the collective noun, and "women" the female variant of the collective noun, the actual correct thing to do instead would be to make a male variant of the collective noun.

...anyhoo.

edited 4th May '11 4:23:29 AM by Jeysie

There are several rights at law which can be used to "defeat" the rights of other people in court, under certain circumstances.

edited 4th May '11 4:28:44 AM by DanEile