Is society really run "by men for men"?

@Drunk: What? Yes you can win a marital argument. And of course it's not as good as not arguing in the first place, but I know my parents have had arguments, in which one of them won. And they have skillfully avoided arguments, of course, but you can't do that all the time.

Are you perhaps thinking when I say "argument" I mean "yelling and throwing things"? Because I realize that happens pretty rarely; in my whole childhood I only remember about 3 "yelling loudly at each other" arguments.

But "trying to persuade each other to back off" kind of arguments happen pretty damn often. Better example of what I'm talking about:

MOM: I'm feeling bored, can we go out or something?
DAD: <in a whiny voice> I'm tired, I'd rather not.
MOM: <same whiny voice> Please? <pause> ...okay fine, you're tired.

This is an argument. They're both want to do something, and what they want to do conflicts, so only one person can actually get their own way.

edited 7th Jul '11 9:25:14 PM by BlackHumor

MOM: I'm feeling bored, can we go out or something?
DAD: <in a whiny voice> I'm tired, I'd rather not.
MOM: <same whiny voice> Please? <pause> ...okay fine, you're tired. How about we stay in and watch a movie, then?
DAD: OK, that works.

Compromise is good.

edited 8th Jul '11 12:16:06 AM by sketch162000

: Are you seriously giving my parents relationship advice? You are giving a couple that has been married happily for over 25 years relationship advice. I mean, you didn't know that, so I'll let you off easy, but seriously.

And, okay, it does work like that plenty of times as well. Rarely is it explicit compromises like that, though; more often it's "you can do your thing this time but I get to do my thing next time" or "you can do your thing today but I get to do my thing tomorrow".

edited 8th Jul '11 1:36:55 AM by BlackHumor

That is an arguement?

I'm not so sure that explicit compromises are as rare as you say, but I don't have any data, so whatever. The point is that it's not a rule that relationships just devolve into one person getting his or her way, full stop, the majority of the time, either. It's much more complicated than that. Even in relationships that do behave in the way you describe, there's too much variation to definitively say "men have the majority of the power in relationships" in order to support the narrative that society is run by men for men

Hi im 15 and what is this

No, seriously. What were you guys talking about again?

I had four options.

A) Holy shit your 15 and YOU CAN'T READ??

B) Long winded explanation of how the internet works and adult relationships. How to work the thread page feature and that you should read a discussion before commentating that you need help understanding what is going on. Also ask if your parents consented to you being online.

C) Ignore you.

D) Write this post.

Should have gone with A :(

edited 8th Jul '11 3:05:44 PM by TheDeadMansLife

Of course I can read. If I couldn't read, then how would I be able to write?

It just seems like the thread got a gazillion ways offtopic, that's all. I mean, I read the title of the thread and thought it would be a discussion about whether men are engineering society for their benefit. I did not expect a thread about marital advice.

@Josef: Two people go into it expecting to get their way, one person leaves having gotten his (in this case) way.

@sketch: I wasn't saying necessarily they were rare in all relationships, only my parents'.

I'm under no illusion that my parents' relationship can be generalized to all relationships. *glares at Drunk*

@Suzy: BABIESBABIESBABIESBABIES...oh wait, OTC. Never mind.

So how is an arguement different from a debate? Or a Discussion? or a conversation about which movie is better Die Hard or Casablanca?

Different spelling?

In which case why is it bad to argue, and how does it grant greater "power" than those things?

Because the phrase "I'd like to buy a discussion" is... lacking.

@Josef Bugman: It's not.

(Or, well, I suppose it depends how you define a discussion, but in general it's not.)

Late to reply: (I'd also like to start off with by saying I was being facetious with the money spending data. I just see that kind of spin everywhere.)

"Nowadays it's not even valid, because women also work outside the home, and are still somehow expected to work inside the home as well. It makes no sense, but it's pretty clear how silly it is."

You're forgetting a few things here, which I touched upon by mentioning asymmetrical situations. One, men, still to this day, tend to work more hours than women do. Furthermore that work tends, but is not always, to be more stressful and/or labor intensive. Comparing straight hours worked doesn't always make sense. Should a construction worker doing 40/wk do the same amount of chores as their spouse who's a personal assistant of a boss who doesn't require all that much, but also works 40/wk? Then what about times... does a nurse working the night shift have all day to do the chores, or is that time better spent letting them relax considering how demanding nursing can be.

I agree that women have a double standard makes no sense in a general concept, as I said in the earlier post. But blanket statements like you continually make aren't much better. Especially if even in your own data, which was specifically "who had more say about what we do together" (not which is more powerful... they just interpreted the data that way, which is a big difference[ever asked a girlfriend where she wants to eat?]) had roughly half saying they felt equal.

You're also still skipping over the social influences regarding class perceptions of power which would systematically color surveys.

Using your own metric for power before: "Like I said before, the ability to make people do things (and to resist being made to do things yourself)."... in marital arguments, about 50% are a draw while women win 40%, leaving 10% to the men. This would imply, using your own definition of power, that women are more powerful in a marriage. But then women file for 66% of divorces, which doesn't make sense if they're the ones on top.

It runs in circles like this all the time. Semantics arguments based on abstract concepts make everyone both a winner and a loser, and blanket statements don't really help.

Okay. I see nothing wrong in what you've said and I don't really want to get caught up in this part of the argument.

Yes, and 40% had the men winning. If you think that data contradicts my position in any way you don't know what it is.

How would you know this? The numbers seem suspiciously similar to the data from the surveys, except reversed, so I'm wondering if you read that page wrong.