Stupid Feminist Comments

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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

Post by knowledge is power »

knot wrote:^
You can quickly make a list of female privileges that will make those two lists look quite tame
Be my guest.
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

Post by knot »

I think some of the biggest ones are probably

- No forced military service (most countries)
- Complete control over the reproductive process (commercial surrogacy seems to be illegal most places)
- Longer life span
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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knot wrote:I think some of the biggest ones are probably

- No forced military service (most countries)
- Complete control over the reproductive process (commercial surrogacy seems to be illegal most places)
- Longer life span
- Sex, pretty much anytime, anywhere, as long as you're not too picky.
- If you don't like somebody, you can have him beaten up or murdered by a complete stranger if you make up a good sob story.
- Want a divorce? In most places you get to keep the kids, and the man can only occasionally visit them, even if you're a really shitty mother and he's a great and responsible dad.
- How about some free money, too, for "child support" which you don't spend on your children? Even if the man didn't want kids and you tricked him into it by saying you were on the pill when you weren't. Doesn't matter -- his sperm, his responsibility.


Men and women both have different advantages and disadvantages in society -- different privileges that the other lacks. It's irrational to attempt to weigh these and say one definitively has it better than another, because it depends on the situation.

Some men would give anything -- anything -- to have more time with their children and get them away from an abusive and negligent mother. A hypothetical income gap? When she's spending a large chunk of his money on blow?


Women have it shitty. Men have it shitty. Men are shitty to women, and women are shitty to men, and they're all shitty to each other, in different ways.

These are all serious issues of injustice, and they all deserve to be taken seriously.
It would be very interesting to see some actual unbiased research on quality of life of men and women, and the effects these abuses have on each of them. Until such a time, nobody is justified to claim that men or women generally have it better based on a limited perspective on privilege.
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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knot wrote: - Longer life span
Not a privilege. Society doesn't give you that, It's biological.
Men are generally stronger than women. That's not a privilege either, it's also biological.
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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brimstoneSalad wrote:
- Sex, pretty much anytime, anywhere, as long as you're not too picky.
- If you don't like somebody, you can have him beaten up or murdered by a complete stranger if you make up a good sob story.
- Want a divorce? In most places you get to keep the kids, and the man can only occasionally visit them, even if you're a really shitty mother and he's a great and responsible dad.
- How about some free money, too, for "child support" which you don't spend on your children? Even if the man didn't want kids and you tricked him into it by saying you were on the pill when you weren't. Doesn't matter -- his sperm, his responsibility.
- No, society doesn't give that privilege to women. They usually are branded as sluts.

- A complete stranger will murder someone for me? :shock: Extremely rare.

- I agree fathers do not get a fair deal when it comes to custody. Change is much needed here.

-"How about some free money, too, for child support which you don't spend on your children?" Who is 'you'? If you have a personal issue with this, I am sorry to hear it.
Many if not most women do spend child support on children and in many cases it is nowhere near enough.
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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knowledge is power wrote:
knot wrote: - Longer life span
Not a privilege. Society doesn't give you that, It's biological.
Men are generally stronger than women. That's not a privilege either, it's also biological.
You're a little confused here; privilege is privilege. You can't draw an imaginary hard line between social privileges and biological ones; these are all environments of context, and they are all interrelated and inseparable.
It's like when people try to say that something is "natural" or not. There's no clear delineation there.

Are beaver dams natural? Why not houses? How about tools? But many animals make and use them. How about nuclear power? But there HAVE been sustained nuclear reactions in prehistoric times without man.
These are nebulous concepts that are very difficult to define.

We're better off recognizing the sum total of privileges men and women have, and not deliberately (and clumsily) avoiding the biological issues that inform much of this discussion. They are the Elephant in the room, and until we understand them, we're blind.

One of the articles you posted listed one too! (Or did you miss that?)
3. I Have the Privilege of Easy Bathroom Access – Even When There Are No Bathrooms
The fact that men are usually stronger than women is at the root of the danger women face from men. This is very much biological. So is male propensity for being less picky about sex; they face fewer risks from the prospect. Lower chance of catching diseases, no chance of pregnancy and all of the risks that entails.

These are all privileges, from peeing easily standing up, to not having a period, to living longer and being able to choose to have children.
knowledge is power wrote:- No, society doesn't give that privilege to women. They usually are branded as sluts.
They have this privilege by virtue of social economics; supply and demand.
How does being branded a "slut" by strangers in a bathroom affect you at all?

Just keep your private life private. Closeted gays have been doing it for decades.
knowledge is power wrote:- A complete stranger will murder someone for me? :shock: Extremely rare.
And yet you don't contest that a little creative story telling can get somebody beaten up for you, or that you would be able to find somebody to commit murder for you; even more easily if you had sex with them and made them a temporary "boyfriend" for that purpose (although those type can be harder to break up with).

Women who are generally honest and nice don't really have the ability to fully grasp the power of manipulation, or the social leverage they could have if they chose to take advantage of it. This is probably a good thing, and it speaks well of your character.

Kind of how knowing how to peel a person's skin off without damaging it would reflect dubiously upon the character of a person with such knowledge, particularly if this person had no medical training.

Feminists may largely be very nice an honest, and make the mistaken assumption that their views are others as well. Unfortunately, it's not always the case.
knowledge is power wrote:- I agree fathers do not get a fair deal when it comes to custody. Change is much needed here.
It's not just that it's one issue against another; it's also a matter of magnitude of the issue.

How many fathers do you know who wouldn't rather be gang raped in a dark alley than lose their children?

Yes, I said it, losing your children can be worse than being raped.
These are of course both horrible things, but it depends on the person experiencing them and the details of the situation.

Many fathers are trapped in horrible relationships, and terrified of losing their children, so they don't dare leave their tormentors. It's an incredible power women can exert.
knowledge is power wrote:Many if not most women do spend child support on children and in many cases it is nowhere near enough.
Exclusively?
Do you have some statistics on this?

Sometimes it's not enough to cover half of the children's bare living costs (water, food, medical care), and when it isn't they may legitimately spend it on the children since they're just scraping by, but it depends on the men's income. Rarely is child support that low.
Wikipedia wrote:If the obligor has no other child support debts, earns California minimum wage working 40 hours a week, has no benefits, and the custodial spouse does not work, the expected payment is closer to $320.[117]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sup ... mmon_wages

$320 is plenty to take care of a child assuming you can take care of yourself. Anything more than that would be paying for rent and expenses for the mother.

Get knocked up by somebody with a decent income, and you can retire early (at least, for the next 18 years). ;)
Women who are trolling for a baby daddy for child support aren't looking for minimum wage makers.

Accountability is a huge issue in child support.

How about some more, though:

-Get out of speeding tickets, and generally get away with petty violations where a man is shown less mercy
-If committing a more serious crime, get a discount on the legal penalty for gender (even if the ringleader, the man will get the more severe sentence and the woman charged with lesser crimes)
-Can strike men without social stigma, sometimes very hard, and even using implements like purse/shoes.
-If a woman injures and hospitalizes her boyfriend or husband, she's less likely to be charged. Men face a surprising amount of domestic abuse, it's just less cared about.
-Women who may choose to join the military enjoy the same pay, but with profoundly lower risk (I've seen 1:30 fatality risk for women vs. men, I don't know if that's accurate).
-Can avoid deployment to a war zone by just getting pregnant, with no penalty (men may be arrested and tried if they injure themselves to avoid duty).
-Women get rescued first with children in emergencies, and aren't viewed as cowards for not risking their lives; there is no social cost to putting themselves above other adults.
-Enjoy a physically less lethal workplace, with men very disproportionately representing workplace deaths.
-Receive disproportionate spending by the government on healthcare, and research into typically female diseases vs. male diseases.
-Men are expected initiate relationships, from asking women out, to proposing marriage, and take on a lion's share of the psychological burden of rejection, or being labeled creeps.
-The man will be expected to pay for things on a date (free food, entertainment, etc.)
-Can abandon parental responsibilities by dumping the child on the state (which a man can not do).
-Most TV is made for the female demographic, both for advertising, and due to disproportionate TV watching. Men have less quality programming or useful advertisement targeted to them.
-Can wear "male clothing" without social cost; men can not wear "girl clothes"; women also enjoy much greater clothing options in general.

Everybody has different privileges in the world. And different privileges have different value too.
Are male privileges greater than female privileges?
This is in no way clear.

I would not dare to attempt quantifying these things. As far as experience is concerned, probably only the transgendered are the most qualified to tell us how these two roles actually feel in comparison day to day, but even that perspective is highly limited.

If you think you can quantify and compare all of those so trivially, you have probably been misled by rhetoric, and have another think coming.

Anyway, as I have said many times in the past, I'm not an MRA, and neither am I a Feminist. I am a spectator, who tries to stay out of the fray. It's important that there are both MRA and Feminists, each fighting the good fight -- against each other -- in the market place of ideas. I'm just cheering from the sidelines for any victory -- for either side -- that seems to make the world a little better.
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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I know this isn't directed at me, but...
knowledge is power wrote: Many if not most women do spend child support on children and in many cases it is nowhere near enough.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Exclusively?
Do you have some statistics on this?
She said many if not most, not exclusively.
brimstoneSalad wrote:They have this privilege by virtue of social economics; supply and demand.
How does being branded a "slut" by strangers in a bathroom affect you at all?

Just keep your private life private. Closeted gays have been doing it for decades.
Strangers in a bathroom? What? It's society in general.

Social cost matters when it comes to men, but not women? :?
brimstoneSalad wrote:-Can strike men without social stigma, sometimes very hard, and even using implements like purse/shoes.
"Keep your private life private?" As long as you have the consent of the person who you are with, why should there be a stigma to share information about yourself that there is nothing wrong with? And if that's the case for one group and not another, you don't see that as an issue?

Closeted gays have been doing it for decades? You have no problem with that? It's perfectly fine that gay people had/have to stay in the closet to avoid social stigma, and that straight people can be open about their sexual orientation, because gays are able to avoid the social cost by hiding their true identities, when there was and is nothing wrong with those identities?

'Don't Ask Don't Tell' wasn't an issue? Gays should just keep their mouths shut? O_O

This Congressman had it right, to an extent? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alvin-mce ... 72974.html
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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EquALLity wrote: She said many if not most, not exclusively.
Exclusively spending the money on the children.
Yes, I'm sure most women spend some of the money on the children (that's consistent with what she said) -- the question I posed is whether the money is going exclusively to the child's care, in paying the man's half, and not also to relieving the woman's rightful part of the burden, or even going beyond that and subsidizing her cost of living. It's also important to make the distinction between buying toys and games, and actual living expenses.
EquALLity wrote:Strangers in a bathroom? What? It's society in general.
Society has no idea how much sex you have in private or with whom. Simply having large quantities of casual sex is not an important part of human identity.

Note, I said CLOSETED gays. People living otherwise whatever kind of reputation and identity they chose to live in public, as distinct from their sex lives. I didn't say it was a good thing that people are closeted, just that it's very possible.

Again, consider the nature of the comparison, and that it was exclusively in regard to sex.

Actual relationships -- like marriage -- go beyond just sex, and are public matters, and deeply emotional parts of human identity.

While a gay couple should be able to present in public, get married, husbands or wives attending company parties, etc. a woman who chooses to have large amounts of casual sex with men in public restrooms won't necessarily feel emotionally compelled to bring that part of her life into the public sphere -- and can very easily keep it private if that's what she chooses.

She doesn't need to be saddled with the label "slut" in her public personal life if she doesn't want it.

The privilege men have in this regard is NOT the ability to have large amounts of sex anytime and anywhere. It is NOT even the ability to avoid charges of being sluts, since women can do that perfectly well too by just not informing people about their sex lives (which isn't really anybody else's business aside from sexual partners).

The privilege men have is the ability to brag about their sexual exploits, and receive praise rather than condemnation.
This is a much more limited privilege, and it doesn't negate any of the female privileges I mentioned.
EquALLity wrote:Closeted gays have been doing it for decades? You have no problem with that? It's perfectly fine that gay people had/have to stay in the closet to avoid social stigma, and that straight people can be open about their sexual orientation, because gays are able to avoid the social cost by hiding their true identities, when there was and is nothing wrong with those identities?

'Don't Ask Don't Tell' wasn't an issue? Gays should just keep their mouths shut? O_O
I hope you can understand that wasn't what I was saying. I was comparing ONLY the ability to keep sex, which is private, a private matter.

Love, relationships, marriage, etc. are important elements of society, and public matters. I never said it was good for gays to be in the closet.

If a woman wants to have a lot of casual sex, on the other hand, she suffers nothing keeping that to herself and her sexual partners.
All she loses is the privilege of bragging about it, which doesn't lessen her ability to engage in the act.

If the argument KIP was making is that somehow diminished her enjoyment, as if the only purpose of having sex is to brag about it later... that's a strange argument, and it didn't come off like that.

KIP, was that what you were trying to say? That it's impossible to enjoy sex properly without the ability to brag about it later?

EquALLity wrote:This Congressman had it right, to an extent? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alvin-mce ... 72974.html
He does not understand the difference between sex, and a serious relationship/marriage, and the very different role each of these have in our social systems. Anybody who is married can tell you the two are not necessarily related. ;)
One is private (and can easily be kept so), the other is a deeply emotional element of social identity.
EquALLity wrote:Social cost matters when it comes to men, but not women? :?
brimstoneSalad wrote:-Can strike men without social stigma, sometimes very hard, and even using implements like purse/shoes.
With rare exception of shame videos that some sickos take and post online (and celebrities), it is a choice for a woman to make her sexual exploits public knowledge (assuming she's able to follow the old adage "don't shit where you eat" and avoid having sex with people she works with or goes to school with who might gossip http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... re+you+eat ). Just as it is a choice straight men make to share their exploits, and one closeted gays have made NOT to do for the past few decades (in addition to being denied the right to publicly marry and engage in relationships without social cost, which is actually NOT OK, but that wasn't what I was comparing).

Social cost matters to everybody, when it's actually a real public social cost.

If the charge of "slut" is only leveled at you by the man in the bathroom you're currently having sex with who you don't even know, this is a very limited cost. It's not the devastating life-ruining social cost KIP implied it to be.

It's comparable to the social cost women face when the man she is beating in public criticizes her for it, while onlookers are indifferent, or imagine the man deserves it for one reason or another -- or just that he should, "take it like a man".

That is, virtually none at all.

However, if a man hits a woman... you're probably familiar with the outcome, particularly if it happens in public.
EquALLity wrote:And if that's the case for one group and not another, you don't see that as an issue?
If it's nobody's business, and nobody knows about it unless you go out of your way to share it? No.

Men should shut up about their sexual exploits too, rather than be celebrated for them.
Just everybody: Don't kiss and tell. Until the very recent present, it was considered very improper for men to gossip about sex too.
But it's an annoyance on the order of magnitude of manspreading.
It's just silly.

If KIP was not arguing something like -
"Women can't have sex whenever they want, because if they try, the men will refuse on the grounds of them being sluts."
- then it's just irrelevant to the fact of the matter that they can indeed do this. I never said there were no consequences whatsoever (there are always consequences to sex).
There have been several social experiments demonstrating this fact; men really don't ask a lot of questions beyond "really?" and "you mean for free, right?" and "OK, where?"
This was my only point there.
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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brimstoneSalad wrote:Exclusively spending the money on the children.
Yes, I'm sure most women spend some of the money on the children (that's consistent with what she said) -- the question I posed is whether the money is going exclusively to the child's care, in paying the man's half, and not also to relieving the woman's rightful part of the burden, or even going beyond that and subsidizing her cost of living. It's also important to make the distinction between buying toys and games, and actual living expenses.
Ahhh, ok, I understand.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Society has no idea how much sex you have in private or with whom. Simply having large quantities of casual sex is not an important part of human identity.
Well, I wasn't saying society did.

I was saying that, in general, society considers women who have a lot of casual sex sluts, and that men don't have to deal with that stigma. In fact, like you go on to say, they are praised for it.
brimstoneSalad wrote: While a gay couple should be able to present in public, get married, husbands or wives attending company parties, etc. a woman who chooses to have large amounts of casual sex with men in public restrooms won't necessarily feel emotionally compelled to bring that part of her life into the public sphere -- and can very easily keep it private if that's what she chooses.
But why should people have to hide stuff about themselves if they do not want to? And why is it ok that there stigma specifically for women when they don't keep it private, but not men, even though they are doing the exact same thing?

Even if women don't talk about it, and aren't personally labeled sluts, it could still negatively impact them for society to consider women who have a lot of casual sex bad.

"Society says I'm a slut if I have casual sex, and I do. So I'm a slut, and bad?"
"Society says it's bad for me to have casual sex, so I'm going to restrict myself even though I don't want to, or else I'll be bad."

If you practice a lifestyle that is stigmatized, even if you aren't personally attacked for it, can still be a burden. And it seems reasonable to say that it's a burden to feel that you can't talk about doing something because there is a stigma around doing it.
brimstoneSalad wrote:I hope you can understand that wasn't what I was saying. I was comparing ONLY the ability to keep sex, which is private, a private matter.

Love, relationships, marriage, etc. are important elements of society, and public matters. I never said it was good for gays to be in the closet.
Yep, I see what you meant now.
brimstoneSalad wrote:If a woman wants to have a lot of casual sex, on the other hand, she suffers nothing keeping that to herself and her sexual partners.
All she loses is the privilege of bragging about it, which doesn't lessen her ability to engage in the act.
She shouldn't have to keep it to herself if she doesn't want to when it isn't harmful to anybody.

Also, if she gets 'outed' by her partners somehow (like you go on to mention), she's going to get a lot of backlash.
brimstoneSalad wrote: With rare exception of shame videos that some sickos take and post online (and celebrities), it is a choice for a woman to make her sexual exploits public knowledge (assuming she's able to follow the old adage "don't shit where you eat" and avoid having sex with people she works with or goes to school with who might gossip http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... re+you+eat ). Just as it is a choice straight men make to share their exploits,
Ok, they both have the choice, but when men choose to do that they are praised, and when women choose to do it they are deemed 'sluts'.
brimstoneSalad wrote: If it's nobody's business, and nobody knows about it unless you go out of your way to share it? No.
o_O

But it's a harmful double standard.

If a man talks it about it, society doesn't judge him for his actions. It praises him.
If a woman does, society condemns her as a 'slut'.

As a consequence, men are actually encouraged to do it and talk about it, while women are discouraged in a harmful way.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Just everybody: Don't kiss and tell. Until the very recent present, it was considered very improper for men to gossip about sex too.
I'm talking about if both partners are ok with talking about it, not really gossip.

Why, though? What exactly is the issue with it?
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Re: Stupid Feminist Comments

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EquALLity wrote: But it's a harmful double standard.

If a man talks it about it, society doesn't judge him for his actions. It praises him.
If a woman does, society condemns her as a 'slut'.

As a consequence, men are actually encouraged to do it and talk about it, while women are discouraged in a harmful way.
It's a double standard created by biology, I dont think there is an easy way to really fix it. Men are hardwired to have as much sex as possible with any number of women, whereas women are designed to be much more picky. Historically it has been "dangerous" for men to enter relationships with women who sleep around a lot, because that would mean you risked wasting your time accidentally raising another man's child. At least that's the evo-psych reason I have heard for slut shaming. In an age of contraception devices, slut shaming doesn't make much sense, but on the other hand, I dont understand why women would want to brag about having tons of random sex in the first place, since its so incredibly easy to pick up men. Just watch any street experiment where men/women ask total strangers if they want to have sex


Although I'd say it's probably not always a good thing for men to brag about having sex with tons of different partners, since women tend to look for mates who are stable and committed to raising their offspring.
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