Sexism and Men's Issues

How is it sexism when people do what they want to because they want to regardless of sex/gender?

It can be sexist, if their motivations are sexist. They may be completely unaware that they are.

edited 15th Jan '14 8:12:00 AM by KingZeal

So you say, after basing your entire argument on whether or not we can consider Norton a feminist. Anyway, I'm done with this discussion, it's not getting us anywhere and it's only tangibly related to men's issues.

Or simply that they even further value the benefits of belonging to a community, even at the cost of some loss of individual self expression. After all, one of the reasons individualist movements fail is that their members can get too individualist at the wrong time. It's only logical for the larger community to look at the respective mess, and conclude they want none of that. If you want rules to apply equally to everyone, you best make sure everyone has motivation to agree to them first. And if only your motivation is force, well... Though I'd rather it not happen, I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually. Nazdarovye.

edited 15th Jan '14 8:17:44 AM by indiana404

They do? And do they fail more than collectivist movements? Fascism and Communism weren't really successful either after all.

Conform or die is pretty much force.

Fascism wasn't all that collectivist in the first place, being more of a nationalist Genghis Gambit against designated foes both foreign and internal. But Communism - turning a group of third-rate agrarian nations into a world-spanning superpower, only to dissolve relatively peacefully after serving its puropse? I'd say it did its job just fine. You can say I'm idealizing, but even American egalitarianism at one point had to come through a civil war, with the victorious leader later killed as a tyrant. So again, before you judge another people's means for social advancement, consider the ones used for yours. I'm not saying your ideals and goals are wrong; far from it. But they come at a price. To put it simply - all civil rights you feel entitled to, have had to be built on, and are protected still, by acts often decidedly uncivil. Keep that in mind, whenever you demand for more.

edited 15th Jan '14 12:08:53 PM by indiana404

Because in the example given, he doesn't want to of his own volition. He wants to do it because he believes that not doing it would make him less of a man, while doing it will make him more of a man. He is allowing his Designated Gender Role to dictate how he should behave.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Did he say he believes that? Maybe he prefers one chore over the other. I'd rather take out the garbage than scrub dishes. Nobody is forcing me.

People seem to intent to insert sexism into my example despite me specifically saying that all sexism was removed. He, they both, are choosing the actions not because they think it's expect, but because they just happen to think it's the right thing to do. She does not want to take out the trash and he doesn't like washing the dishes. How about that for the reasons?

This is what I mean with "Sexism where it doesn't exist". All actions, no matter how small, if you do what is "expected", no matter why, is sexism.

I believe this is wrong attitude. Take for example idea of men being chivalrous, AKA polite to women. If a person decides to be a polite to women because he wants to, he is still, somehow, being sexist because people only see that he is following what they believe to be sexist attitudes, while he himself might think "It's nice to keep the door open for people."

I feel that these days people are too eager to call sexism. Yes, sexism does exist. However, one should check the situation before calling it sexism. I know people have been called "comforting to patriarchy"(anecdotal, I admit so not really the best argument) because they chose to stay at home... when their own reason for doing so end up being completely different.

Then there is the whole "Why there aren't more female CE Os?", which as I described earlier in the thread might be less due to women being actively discriminated against, but more due to choices they make in life.

edited 15th Jan '14 12:30:56 PM by Mandemo

My mistake. I thought you were responding to this.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

In that case he would be polite to men too and hold the door open to them. If he does it only for women he is either sexist or simply tries to score with the women.

Also, our choices are influenced by our surroundings. Women make this choices because society gave them the feeling that say, staying at home is appropriate. No it's not okay to say those women make the wrong choices. It's still their will even though it is influenced. But pointing out unspoken expectations and limitations can be freeing for some and give them more perspectives.

Which doesn't really tell us much. All actions are precipitated by external factors which are themselves precipitated by external factors. If one of those external factors in the long chain happens to be sexist, it can possibly mean that the action at the end of the chain is sexist, even if unintentionally.

I'm going to pop in and point out that more than one or two degrees of separation of the causes of an event are all but unprovable for in most cases, and really difficult to argue in the rest. (And if you go beyond four or five degrees, practically every event that happens can be theoretically traced to a single cause, be it sexism, racism, ism-ism, etc.)

Or to put it plainly: if event A is sexist, and event A causes event B which causes event C which causes event D, you are much less likely to be able to prove that C is sexist than B is sexist, and more so with D compared to C.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Yes, but that's irrelevant.

Sure, if no one present within the scenario is aware of a sexist cause of an action, then we can simply say that it shows no known signs of sexism. That doesn't mean there's, absolutely, definitely, no sexism. Just that it's innocent until proven guilty.

However, if there are signs of sexism early on in the chain of causation, then the point you bring up is irrelevant, because now that we know about it, the situation can be critiqued appropriately.

The real problem to address are premature declarations of "absence of sexism", because that leads to all sorts of difficulties later when people are taken out of their comfortable, "I'm not sexist" safety zone.

So, don't know how off topic this is, but it seems like it's relevant, so away I post :D

I am taking a Masculinities course this semester, and I have to say, that academically, at least where I'm at, the study of male issues really has their shit together.

The course readings involved:

Trans men

Trans men in female prisons

Men growing up with feminine qualities

The eroticization of male asians

the emphasis of sex and violence for black males

the cultural struggles of "mexican men"

The negative qualities imbued onto them on how women are treated

And a bunch of other stuff I can't remember.

Read my stories!

Seems totally on-topic to me, though some subjects seem US-centric (not a bad thing if you are in the US).

Well, if even one place can get their shit together, it gives hope other places can too.

While I do like the course readings presented, I do feel like it misses stuff about men in general. It is good to talk about especially marginalized groups of men but this seems too much like the attitude that men can never be discriminated against because they're men.

You can't cover everything. This course reading his hitting the more confused and often sidelined men's issues so I think the professor really has their priorities together. It's a good starting point.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Wait, what? How do you figure?

I really don't think issues of minority men are side-lined in the mainstream. They might be more often dealt with under different banners but they are still far more prominent that way than men's issues are.

It's an assumption and I will wholly admit that I can be completely wrong here. The thing is, I've seen the argument that male minorities are disadvantaged as counterpoints to the fact that men as a group have problems. Of course, because I base this off on what was not listed instead of what was listed, that's not very reliable but I see the risk. Maybe the general men's issues stuff just sounded boring and Mr AHR didn't want to list them because of that.

Transmen are often sidelined if not outright shoved in the corner and denied their manhood completely.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

OK, transmen I can kind of see in that regard, as there really isn't much out there about it.

General men's stuff like what?

I think I have an idea what you mean (stuff like custody, for example), but I'd like to know which issues you would specifically like us to talk about.

Basically everything that's due to being male. Higher risk of violent victimization, more workplace deaths, higher suicide rates, unfairness in basically all courts. Stuff that's affects all men to higher or lesser degrees and not only some subset of men, who may have additional problems on top of that.