Women's Issues

@ Gabreal I don't agree.

People can feel however they like. Trying to police people's personal feelings is (to me) creepy and controlling.

Especially as mine stem from a mental disorder.

Not to say they all do, but part of the point is you don't know why people form the opinions they do. But so long as they do people no harm, I believe they have every right to form them.

edited 27th Aug '15 7:13:40 AM by Murataku

Ugh... since this thing keeps on escalating, I'm just going to talk about breast pumps.

The most popular on Amazon cost 20 USD. That's not so bad.

And it will break after two weeks and probably contribute to cysts.

Have you put a vacuum to your testicles yet?

Or it's only good if you just pump once in a great while so you can have the night off. Breasts don't really take the abuse of breast pumps very well and no price tag is going to fix that.

Calm down. You keep treating me as the enemy just because of a personal opinion which I do not impose on others.

If you keep expecting everyone to either completely disagree or agree with you, you'll miss the ones in the middle.

edited 27th Aug '15 7:18:34 AM by probablyinsane

We're not treating you as the enemy. We're trying to get you to look at the things you're actually saying and what the effects of them are for women when the whole world says them to us. How stifling it is.

Also, the Cult of Centrism is a thing. Just because a middle exists, doesn't mean that middle is a good thing. It's an argumentative fallacy.

edited 27th Aug '15 7:22:53 AM by shimaspawn

The problem here isn't that you're "in the middle", I have been in the middle several times before in these discussions.

The problem is that your phrased your position poorly, which ended up starting a huge-ass argument which you are still contributing to when you would be better served by just letting it go.

edited 27th Aug '15 7:23:23 AM by SaintDeltora

You are encouraging ideas and spreading nonsense that has actively contributed to the discrimination of myself and other women.

You need to get that through your head.

Your intentions are irrelevant when you are actively being harmful. You need to understand why and what you are doing is harmful so you stop doing it.

Well, I didn't expect such heated responses. It's a non-issue over here, as far as I know. We even have like a Breast Milk law.

About breast pumps, I'm sorry to hear of their problems but I still hope their tech can be improved. Am very pro-human breast milk.

And no... I haven't drank any as an adult.

I didn't realize or just forgot that this was (very) contentious issue in the USA.

Honestly, just my personal opinion which shouldn't affect whatever in the USA.

edited 27th Aug '15 7:28:37 AM by probablyinsane

Strangely enough, you find women all over the place... Breast pumps, or being holed up for three weeks as you completely dry up if you switch to formula (or don't have a kid to show for the months and stretch marks) just so you don't leak near the weak kneed where they can see it?

Fuck that noise.

It's part and parcel of having breasts: we'd be all better off if we didn't try to hide it and made it easy to cope with. At any point in the day, you've got a good chance of standing within 500 meters of a lactating woman, mother or not. :/

It doesn't have be abnormal, difficult to deal with or squicky.

edited 27th Aug '15 7:43:45 AM by Euodiachloris

It's not just the US man.

Women all over the place are affected by this.

Equating a woman's body to a sexual object and controlling the woman's body is a problem everywhere.

Google breastfeeding in the philippines and you'll probably see articles making fun of the USA for being so backwards.

Let's just say that anyone who openly harass breastfeeding women over here will just be asking for trouble.

For example. I had an aunt who remarked (to us, her family) about a woman who breastfed in public. She expressed disapproval cause she thinks it should be done at home.

But... when she heard about idiots harassing women who breastfed in public - I wager it was news from the USA - she said - they should just keep quiet about it. Meaning don't make trouble over it.

I can't quite find the words to describe this kind of attitude. Though it reminds me of how my father reacts to gay people.

He would hire them. He would even have friends who were gay. He would also complain about their gayness (but never to their faces).

And his reaction to gay-haters would be - if gay people bother you, just ignore them.

If it were put to vote, my aunt or father probably won't vote for public breastfeeding or gay marriage. But neither would they vote against.

In other words, "it's best to keep it to ourselves and for them to keep to themselves".

Breastfeeding is not the only issue man.

Breastfeeding is an occurrence where wesee this issue. It is not the only issue.

A man can walk around topless and most places don't care. Yet if a woman tries in most places she is being obscene. Why?

Why are the utensils I have evolved to be a proper mammal so disgusting they can't be displayed in public? Even in cases of using them for the purpose of feeding my young?

Because enough men have determined that my body is for their sexual gratification and must be controlled.

Your refusal to see how this fits in the bigger picture is grating.

Because separate but equal has such a steller track record anywhere...

edited 27th Aug '15 8:19:22 AM by Gabrael

If something bothers you and you ignore this bothering, good.

However you can't expect people to accept this if you tell them outright. That's not ignoring. That is making your position front and center. If it doesn't bother you so much, then why do you continue the conversation?

I have a lot of societal ingrained biases. I don't tell people about them. I might bring them up when they're relevant, but even then it's usually with the "working on it, be back later" tone.

Also being bothered and not saying anything is not a neutral stance. Being indifferent is.

There's also the fact that with women issues, saying "eh, I'd rather not but whatever" can often be invalidating, because many are fighting EXTREMELY hard to make people see the issue.

"I am in pain I skinned my knees"

"Eh I'm indifferent to the topic."

"OK but I am still in pain."

etc. etc.

I know, I know, it's far from being the best thing.

edited 27th Aug '15 8:29:01 AM by Quag15

Since this keeps on being showcased as a gender war thing... I have to ask - is it really men who complain loudest against public breastfeeding?

If this was somewhere in the Middle East, yes. But somehow I'm having difficulty seeing American men protesting about it.

As for this middle-ground attitude, for now I will describe as follows:

(Whatever) is not necessarily what I prefer, but I won't stop whoever from doing it (cause it's not actually hurting me).

"Also being bothered and not saying anything is not a neutral stance. Being indifferent is."

You know... this has nothing to do with what we were initially discussing... but I never understood this idea much.

"Not doing anything" is not the only way neutrality is show. There is also believing both groups have comparable issues, siding with one group one day and another the other, trying to give both groups a way to express their ideas, trying to stop fights between both groups, etc.

Honestly, to me being neutral was always more about trying to get people to get along than not doing anything.

I mean even if it's not men, Donald Trump is definitely a loud complainer about it

In all seriousness, yeah, I've seen dudes complain. Usually because it's then followed up with a penis analogy in the first person. Because breasts are vaginas now or something.

edited 27th Aug '15 8:34:21 AM by MrAHR

Same here.

Seeing as men make up the vast majority of politicians if nothing else it's them passing laws against it. Also you've got the likes of Farage and Trump who both loudly complain about it.

Internalized sexism is a thing, but men have been the defining voice in how women are sexualized so they have some responsibility in changing the attitudes.

They don't get to pick and chose when it's a woman's thing or not when they are controlling and funneling what get's to be a woman's thing or not.

(All the governments restricting women's healthcare, especially mine, I'm looking at you you patriarchal bastards you...)

Cut from my previous post:

Saint Deltora: Not true. Being neutral in many situations often means doing a lot of things. For instance, do you know the term "enabling"? Often times by not doing anything, you are actually not taking a neutral stance. You are allowing the biggest and loudest person to rule the roost. A true neutral stance would involve close moderation and mediation, as well as unbiased assessments of the situation at hand.

You also have an issue of equalizing. For instance:

Person A has been harassing Person B for months. B finally snaps, and punches A in the face. An equalizer might say "well they were harassing you, but you did punch them, so you're equally at fault. I am trying to be neutral here, so I am staying out of making any judgments one way or another."

The problem with this, is that A and B were in uneven and unequal positions from the start, so they can't be equalized, and bad neutrality can easily do that.

Well, this just proves that American politics needs more women. (May Hillary Clinton win.) I'm also going to take this opportunity to crow about how our Filipinas are doing a better than expected ratio when it comes to politics.

Also, I'm going to rephrase the following:

to

Read my post again, I went out of my way to say there are other ways to be neutral than just not doing anything. In fact, I will be blunt here. Whenever someone implies that the only way to be neutral is by not doing or saying anything I feel like punching them.

And you yourself said, that situation is bad neutrality. If I were discussing that I, being my usual neutral self, would say they shouldn't have punched him but rather that they should have approached authorities about how Person A is treating him and I would also try to find why Person A is treating him like that and hear his side of the story.

If, for example, Person A was a schoolyard kid torturing another kid as a way to cope with an abusive household I'd be much more sympathetic to them but also tell them that they went through that the wrong way and tell them to apologize to Person B.

Now if A was doing that just for shit and giggles, well... then I would put them in detention.

The first one is being neutral because you're trying to solve the problems of both.

The latter is taking a side because as far as I can tell only B had good reasons for acting the way they did.