A quick explanation of my frustration

[rivit 3,391]

Reading through this topic as a latecomer I can't help but think that it's mostly avoiding going anywhere near the assertion that "every member of the human species should have the same rights". Biological and evolutionary distinctions are fine to debate as reasons/excuses for all sorts of behaviours and demands of us, but if equality of rights isn't acceptable to start with, then is there any hope behaviours will change? We are supposedly learning creatures, but we struggle over our own mental model of reality.

I'm pretty much a non-fan of excessive prancing about by either gender when it comes to whether things are fair or not - to me it seems clear they aren't - mostly in favour of the male.. While that's so, mankind (and womankind if you must) should naturally keep dickering on agitating about this inequity.  That is grin and bear it or do something real to redress it.

It looks like it will take a long time though as the last 10,000 years of civilisation hasn't been enough.

 

[MilitantRadical 2,844]

6 hours ago, rivit said:

Reading through this topic as a latecomer I can't help but think that it's mostly avoiding going anywhere near the assertion that "every member of the human species should have the same rights".

Isn't that something we all agree on?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

@rivit  Ron, it hasn't been 10,000 years since the Ancient Greeks had a matriarchy.  When this was overturned,  Greek wives were keep in what amounts to purdah.  Whether they acknowledged it or not, the patrician women of Rome ran the show and had a secret cult of the Mother whose precincts no man dared enter on pain of death.  In a matriarchy, you get a large number of 'boy toys'.  It is no wonder that the dark ages did such an effective job of suppressing the distaff side, but even now in Judaism, inheritance passes down the female line.  It is just that all of this stuff is carefully kept out of sight by the 'big boys' running the show.

Equality of the sexes is really unachievable.  The ladies will always have control, even if it is in the background.  They are the ones who reproduce the species and are therefore more important than the boys, who are only needed for a few moments. 

In the workplace we will always have to make exceptions for a brooding female who needs time off to nurture offspring.  Under the circumstances, equal pay for equal work makes complete sense. 

Leave for males with reproducing females doesn't make much sense as they need to keep earning the daily bread.  Government payments (some kind of insurance program) during such leaves need to be covered by premiums prepaid rather than taxes from the general populace.  This is usually handled by payroll deductions.

[Meg 368]

21 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

 Yet in a weird way it assumes the reader doesn't have the basic empathy to understand that women are people.

 

I literally find it awesome that you think that is a weird assumption.    Seriously.    When I was a kid, it was a radical notion.     For centuries, women were legally and socially regarded as property.    When I was in school, it was considered a new and odd concept that a woman just might want to do something other than be a wife and mother, or be a teacher or a nurse.

Examples:  

-  When I was in middle school, there was a science award which was earned by a cumulative total of points on various activities.   I accumulated the most points in the school.  My teacher refused to give me the award because "it would be a waste to give it to a girl".   To quote:  "You're very talented but I don't know what good it is going to do unless you pass it along to your son some day".  He would not be able to get away with that today but, at the time, it was considered to be a valid point of view.

-  A few years later, a guy pumping gas next to me noticed the university parking stickers on my car.  "Oh, you're going to be a teacher!"  I told him, no, I was going to be a computer programmer.   Judging by the look he gave me, you would have thought I had said that I was going into outer space.  and, no, going into outer space was never one of my options.

-  The married adults at the time were having interesting discussions.   (My parents were active in the church and hosted several of the discussion groups so I got to listen in.)   The men literally could not understand it.   They would be asked "Can't you see that your wife is a person in her own right with her own hopes, dreams, and aspirations?"   The men would look puzzled, shake their heads, and say "No".

The men in my generation had two curve balls thrown at them:  the Vietnam war and the changing roles of women in society.  Some adapted.  Many did not.   Your generation gives me hope; you find it to be a weird assumption that someone might not have the basic empathy to understand that women are people.  It wasn't always that way.

 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Life is stranger than you might think.  My wife graduated from the University of North Dakota with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.  She got her first job simply by applying for it by mail.  The job was writing FORTRAN programs doing nuclear reactor simulations for Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. at Chalk River, Ontario.  She passed away a few years ago, but I have her diploma from UND and it has a Summa cum Laude sticker on it.  When I met her we were both support programmers working in the computer sales group in the Information Systems and Defense Products department of Canadian General Electric in Toronto.  Her husband and I shared an office.

While she was there, one J. Carter of the U.S. Navy was there doing a post-doc in nuclear power physics.  An interesting chap who was working for Adm. Rickover at the time building the world's first nuclear submarine.  There is a lot more to that ol' peanut farmer from Georgia than meets the eye.  U.S.N. named one of the SSN class ships after him.

[LexusInfernus 908]

On 1-4-2016 at 4:48 PM, MilitantRadical said:

"It’s hard for guys to appreciate what it would be like to grow up being stared at and sexually harassed every day of your life from age twelve onward. "

It's funny how these kind of feminist articles treat women like they're passive objects just being acted upon by the world. Not denying that women get harassed more frequently, but every day? Kinda damages the credibility of the article when they say things like this. As if girls don't themselves stare, "harass", and objectify. At twelve, the girls in my school would chase around any boy they found cute and poke and prod them. They'd whisper about us, send notes, get frisky (well maybe not exactly at that age). That kind of thing worked both ways. At clubs women grab asses and on the street they cat call. Again, I'll grant you that this behavior is less frequent, but lets not pretend that they don't play the "game" too.

I'm not saying that what they describe in the article doesn't happen at all. I've seen some of the things they're describing first hand, but everything is so generalized, as if all women experience this, they don't (at least not to the degree they're describing). And in the end the whole thing is just a very long way of saying "have empathy" which most people (men in this case) have.

Good job, you have just literally told a woman that you know and understand what she experiences better than she does herself. Ironically, its now also you who is presuming to know what the daily experience for a significant number of women is like, thus doing the same as what you are accusing the author of doing. 

Look, if there are women who don't see their own experiences described in articles like that, let them step forward and tell the author thats not how they experience their life. They don't need you to do it for them, they can tell everyone for themselves what their life is like. 

Finally, its cowritten by Tucker Max, wasn't he one of those PUA dudes? I think he kinda knows what the crappy side of men looks like. 

[krbe 193]

15 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

presuming to know what the daily experience for a significant number of women is like

Like it would be better if a women would presume to know what the daily experience for a significant number of women is like. If 'a significant number' is correct one would expect more statistics than mere accounts. Or the very least an attempt to collect such statistics.

15 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Look, if there are women who don't see their own experiences described in articles like that, let them step forward and tell the author thats not how they experience their life.

Why should those who disagree with what is put forward by people who shout, have to shout back? Groups that articles like this is written about are loud. The validity of opposite viewpoints cannot be based the fact that they are not participating in the fight for media attention. I'm also unsure about how this would fit in a narrative that basically says that the female cave(wo)man brain is to be accommodated by men while the male caveman brain must be suppressed.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Don't forget that it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.  In the social scene squeaking is done by shouting.  I can't help but think of V. I. Lenin "If a lie is told often enough it becomes truth." 

[MilitantRadical 2,844]

On 4/2/2016 at 8:38 AM, Meg said:

When I was in school, it was considered a new and odd concept that a woman just might want to do something other than be a wife and mother, or be a teacher or a nurse.

Examples:  

-  When I was in middle school, there was a science award which was earned by a cumulative total of points on various activities.   I accumulated the most points in the school.  My teacher refused to give me the award because "it would be a waste to give it to a girl".   To quote:  "You're very talented but I don't know what good it is going to do unless you pass it along to your son some day".  He would not be able to get away with that today but, at the time, it was considered to be a valid point of view.

Wow, just wow. However I don't know how uniform your experience is. For example my mother and her female best friend (born in the 50ies) were top of their class science nerds and I've asked them numerous times if they were ever impeded by sexism but they have no stories to tell. Maybe that comes from the fact that Canada is slightly ahead of America in terms of being socially liberal.

On 4/2/2016 at 8:38 AM, Meg said:

-  A few years later, a guy pumping gas next to me noticed the university parking stickers on my car.  "Oh, you're going to be a teacher!"  I told him, no, I was going to be a computer programmer.   Judging by the look he gave me, you would have thought I had said that I was going into outer space.  and, no, going into outer space was never one of my options.

But so what, right? So someone misjudged you? Was it not uncommon at your time for a woman to study computer programing? He made a gender based assumption, but did that stop you in any way from doing what you wanted to do? I mean, it's a random guy at a gas station.

On 4/2/2016 at 5:21 PM, LexusInfernus said:

Good job, you have just literally told a woman that you know and understand what she experiences better than she does herself. Ironically, its now also you who is presuming to know what the daily experience for a significant number of women is like, thus doing the same as what you are accusing the author of doing.

Look, if the author's subjective experience is valid then so is mine. I'm not a woman, but I've spent enough time with some to know that even the most beautiful do not get harassed "every day", do not have a paranoid fear or anxiety of men, can deal with random rude bro-dudes hitting on them, as well as seek out sexual attention and enjoy it.

Also, the experiences described in this article are not entirely unique to women. As a thought experiment the author asks the male reader to imagine themselves as a young gay man at a club on Friday and says "this is the world of sex and dating for women". Well then ok, if that is enough to put yourself in the shoes of a woman, then I have the relevant experience. So by the rules of this very article, I do understand or at least have some relevant perspective. (Not something i like to do, but I'm playing my gay card here - I'm technically bi but mostly gay. It's a story for the Closet Thread one of these days).

On 4/2/2016 at 5:21 PM, LexusInfernus said:

Look, if there are women who don't see their own experiences described in articles like that, let them step forward and tell the author thats not how they experience their life. They don't need you to do it for them, they can tell everyone for themselves what their life is like. 

I'm just responding to an article Meg said people in this thread should read. Do I need to call in a woman friend and say: "reply to this"? Of course they don't need me, but I'm the one who's here. This is a third party discussion, I'm not starting a crusade against the author.

On 4/2/2016 at 5:21 PM, LexusInfernus said:

Finally, its cowritten by Tucker Max, wasn't he one of those PUA dudes?

lol, really? No wonder part of it reads like a pick-up guide.

On 4/2/2016 at 5:21 PM, LexusInfernus said:

I think he kinda knows what the crappy side of men looks like. 

I'm not denying there are "crappy men", but I feel the article sets up a kind of feminist white-knight binary where the reader is supposed to see themselves as "the nice guy" competing with the scum of masculinity for the honor of a fair maiden. In certain parts at least.

[LexusInfernus 908]

5 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

Look, if the author's subjective experience is valid then so is mine. I'm not a woman, but I've spent enough time with some to know that even the most beautiful do not get harassed "every day", do not have a paranoid fear or anxiety of men, can deal with random rude bro-dudes hitting on them, as well as seek out sexual attention and enjoy it.

And again, there are plenty of women who will tell you that yes, they do get harassed every day, that they are at least deeply uncomfortable by the realization that they can be physically overpowered by a lot of guys and that while they can deal with random dudebros hitting on them, its simply the fact that they have to deal with it in the first place that is just so incredibly stupid. 

Frankly this is the sexism equivalent to white people saying that they got a black friend and therefor aren't racist/have never noticed any racism. Perhaps, but just because you aren't aware of it/have never noticed it doesn't mean its not there. 

5 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

Also, the experiences described in this article are not entirely unique to women. As a thought experiment the author asks the male reader to imagine themselves as a young gay man at a club on Friday and says "this is the world of sex and dating for women". Well then ok, if that is enough to put yourself in the shoes of a woman, then I have the relevant experience. So by the rules of this very article, I do understand or at least have some relevant perspective. (Not something i like to do, but I'm playing my gay card here - I'm technically bi but mostly gay. It's a story for the Closet Thread one of these days).

Well then imagine that your club experience also regularly happens outside of a club setting. Transport that experience to basically any other setting you can think of. Doesn't that sound annoying at best? 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Entering professional life for women has not always been a bed of roses.  When I was a freshman in engineering at a prestigious Canadian school there were three women in our class of 310.  By the end of the first week, there was only one.  This woman was tougher than the average bear, and graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering.  The other two transferred to the Faculty of Arts for reasons of their own, but I always thought that they had been somehow mislead by the fact that the school was called the Faculty of Applied Science when in fact is was an out and out engineering school.  Only two courses led to real research work, Engineering Physics and Engineering Chemistry which is Engineering Physics with extra Chemistry labs.  Engineering Physics is, of course, a stiff mathematics course with engineering labs of all sorts.

It was a nice small university of great repute when I was there.  It is now gigantic and has retained its reputation as one of the best universities in Ontario and probably Canada and the world.  Later on, I had the privilege of taking some serious accounting and business law courses given by the Law Faculty as part of my corporate training when I was working for a Canadian Schedule A bank.

[Meg 368]

7 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

Wow, just wow. However I don't know how uniform your experience is. For example my mother and her female best friend (born in the 50ies) were top of their class science nerds and I've asked them numerous times if they were ever impeded by sexism but they have no stories to tell. Maybe that comes from the fact that Canada is slightly ahead of America in terms of being socially liberal.

 

I think Canada is way ahead of America in terms of being socially liberal.   When I was a kid, it was not uncommon for mixed race couples to move to Canada.      That slowed down a bit once it stopped being illegal here.     and Canada had legal gay marriage before it was even a topic in most American households. 

fwiw, I grew up in the Washington, DC suburbs which are considered to be a liberal toilet according to some of my fellow Americans.   I suspect that other girls had more difficult time than I did.

7 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

But so what, right? So someone misjudged you? Was it not uncommon at your time for a woman to study computer programing? He made a gender based assumption, but did that stop you in any way from doing what you wanted to do? I mean, it's a random guy at a gas station.

No, it did not stop me.  The random guy was just an example.  I had a lot of people asking me what the bleep I thought I was doing. 

I would have been happy working in a research lab but that was clearly going to be an uphill battle.    I was fortunate that I have a knack for computer programming. (I can spend hours at it and not notice the time going by.)  At the time, the industry was new enough that it wasn't already set in stone and, since most people couldn't program, they couldn't be too picky about keeping the ones who could. 

7 hours ago, MilitantRadical said:

I'm not denying there are "crappy men", but I feel the article sets up a kind of feminist white-knight binary where the reader is supposed to see themselves as "the nice guy" competing with the scum of masculinity for the honor of a fair maiden. In certain parts at least.

 

I see it more as trying to explain to nice guys why women can't always tell at first whether they are scum or not.   Of course, it's not an either/or thing.   Most things fall along a continuum, not into either/or buckets.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

What it really comes down to is that all cats are grey in the dark.  My wife was one of the best computer programmers I've ever had the pleasure to meet.  Even when she was on kid-raising leave she continued to do some contract work for GE since they insisted that the support manager produce her as the only one who really understood their application.  Worked from home quite a bit when it wasn't at all fashionable, but had to come into the office to use the machines.  This was before the Internet made access to the big machines possible.

Now-a-days you can submit the biggest batch job to some machines over the net.  If any JCL is involved it can usually be parametrized  using a programmable editor such as vi or emacs.  The big mainframes handle time-sharing as a simple task like any other job, but it can have hundreds or even thousands of users connected over the net simultaneously.  You can even submit jobs from a PC acting as a terminal, and pull back your results for local distribution.  We were doing this in the late 1970s or even earlier.  Sure makes it easy for anyone, especially women raising kids, to work from home with only an occasional drop in to the office as needed.

<diversion>  When SC2013 was first announced, I got the impression it was going to be run as a job on a large server with the end-users acting as clients.  This would have been more than possible, especially in light of the MMP gaming that is going on.  Before I left the computer technical game for academia large transaction processing systems were more or less standard.  Unfortunately, neither EA nor the SC user community were ready for that idea.  As far as I can imagine, this is the only way that the SC4D programming can be extended.  The so-called genre reboot as we know, was an utter flop due to lack of imagination, programmers, and just plain guts. </diversion>

[MilitantRadical 2,844]

21 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

And again, there are plenty of women who will tell you that yes, they do get harassed every day, that they are at least deeply uncomfortable by the realization that they can be physically overpowered by a lot of guys and that while they can deal with random dudebros hitting on them, its simply the fact that they have to deal with it in the first place that is just so incredibly stupid.

I'm just saying it isn't universally applicable as this article seems to portray it.

21 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Frankly this is the sexism equivalent to white people saying that they got a black friend and therefor aren't racist/have never noticed any racism. Perhaps, but just because you aren't aware of it/have never noticed it doesn't mean its not there. 

I never said they didn't experienced it at all, just that they're not shell shocked by it as the article seems to describe (in some places). They're not afraid or uncomfortable. How do I know? Because I've seen men act like fool, douches, and outright animals in front of female friends and I've asked them how they deal with it or if it's a big deal. When you're really good friends with someone, when you have trust, they can tell you these kind of things. I can only speak for them, but I doubt they're unique.

The article is written by two men, they themselves don't even know what it's like to actually be a woman, yet they're speaking for them. How is it right for them and wrong for me? (And I don't even purport to speak on behalf of all women, just saying that the article is incongruent with my personal and shared experiences of and with women). I mean you do realize the article is an excerpt from a type of PUA book right? The only difference is they've spun it to sell to a feminist audience. However the basic premise remains the same, hook up with women.

First review that came up on Amazon:

"I've been following this advice for 6+ months and totally changed my life. I now go out on 3-4 dates a week."

Contains chapters like:

Find the Right Mating Markets

From an author who hosts a podcast called:

Mating Grounds

One star review:

"I can't tell if this book is meant to be satire. The characterizations of women are so one dimensional and pathetic as to convince me that the text is not sincere. But if its a joke, I'm not getting it."

lol

This one was funny:

"The way GAY Geoffrey Miller suggests we walk in women's shoes, is by pretending to be weak, small, gay men going out to a gay bar and being hit on by large gay football players. He gets into discussing detail of this secret fantasy of his - and tries to get you to imagine being gay as well. No thanks Geoffrey. I'll leave the gay sex fantasies to you numb nuts! I'll stick to women "

21 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Well then imagine that your club experience also regularly happens outside of a club setting. Transport that experience to basically any other setting you can think of. Doesn't that sound annoying at best? 

Yes it can be annoying. God forbid anyone in life ever be annoyed once in a while.