thestalkinghead

maybe I'm an individualist (even though i just made up that word and it turned out to be a thing)

i am sort of an all or nothing kind of guy, and if we are going to use a religious analogy, i would say that if you don't believe everything in the bible or all it's teachings, you shouldn't be a christian, you should just be a good person on your own terms, you can still use the bible or any other religious texts to help guide the way you decide to live, but if you are picking and choosing what you do and don't like/believe from a religion you are already making your own religion, so you may as well not call yourself a person of that religion.

well, i think that is a reasonably good analogy

i don't think that is paraphrasing, but if feminism is an umbrella of many different beliefs and approaches they don't stand for anything

this is interesting to listen to if you want to know why i wouldn't identify myself as a feminist : http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2012-07-20T00_44_38-07_00

yeah she was like what cutthroat business people would be like if there was no law

i can see where you are coming from

i agree with most of the things that have been said but one detail

well in a lot of cases it does yeah i would tell people that they are being sexist in a lot of cases, but i actually have to admit that i wouldn't personally go to extreme lengths for no personal gain, i have my own shit to deal with right now, sorry about that

i have heard there are lots of things that trigger the same part of the brain that pain does, like being ignored, if that were true you could use ignoring somebody in a way that was coercion

yeah, i agree with a lot of that, but how would you urge companies and governments to do that, nowadays protesting just gets you arrested and put on a list and no change happens

yeah, the occupy movement had a clear goal of reducing the wage gap between the rich and the poor, i guess i mean goals on how to achieve it, protesting by saying "this is wrong" achieves nothing, maybe it's just because i am a goal orientated person, i need specific things to aim for. to to goal of "End sexual discrimination, reduce the number of women who are sexually assaulted and raped, close the wage gap between women and men" my question would be how?

what about terms and conditions, nobody reads them because if you don't agree to them you don't get what you paid for, so you have to agree because there is no other choice, so i would say that was coercion

well actually i just pick the least bad of the bad bunch, but political parties aren't movements they have manifestos i could read and if there are things in it i outright disagree with i don't vote for them and if somebody says "this political party believes X" i can either say "yes they do and that is one of the reasons i voted for them" or i can say "no they don't believe that, you are misinformed" it's the problem i had with that movement i can't even remember the name of that protested outside wall street by camping and it spread across the world about inequality in wealth, it had no clear goals except that inequality was bad, i actually had a similar conversation that included MLK when they compared the movement to what he did, i said they had MLK as a leader and he gave them goals, they have nobody and no clear goals, and it is similar to feminism in that way, maybe Anita Sarkeesian or someone like her could be the MLK of modern feminism and give it some clear goals edit: it was the occupy movement, and no there aren't any political parties in england that represent me, to more specifically answer your question

i can see where you are coming from, i enjoy hanging out with a more alternative crowd as well, they tend to be more open minded, and share a similar view that people should be allowed to be who they are, and maybe i am just too much of a nonconformist to want to identify with any fixed group of ideals, but i will stick up for the principles of feminisms and equality, i myself am hardly the epitome of man and have been told to cut my hair by random strangers (maybe i confused some men from behind) so i can empathise with your girlfriend in that respect, but i just find it hard to be part of a movement that i may not agree with 100%, but maybe in this case i should just do that if i can just decide on my own ideas of what the movement is

on a sort of related subject, what is feminisms view on paternity leave? and that women are automatically assumed to be the better parent and get custody of a child in the majority of cases? (not trying to make a morbid prediction here Zeusthecat)

humm, so in a way I am the "white moderate", i suppose i agree with certain types of "tension" and not others, i would disagree with something that claims that i personally am a bad person simply for being a man, but i would be for the tension created when i am shown how bad some men can be, like this http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/59024747681/online-harassment-what-drives-it-and-how-it-lowers i want to stop this type of thing from happening

I'm not fixated, it is just a subject that came up and i am talking about it, i don't generally identify myself with any group unless it saves time explaining my position, i had stopped talking about it but it was brought up again

la la la I'm not listening to Mr Angry of course it is a simplified view of science it was barely two lines, do i need to write a thesis on science every time i want to talk about it?

well i think the more studies that separate the social aspects of gender and the biological aspects the better, but there is no denying that different amounts of testosterone or estrogen has a major effect on a human, and it is the effect on the brain which i feel is the most relevant to talk about

well, if we are saying that not everybody in the feminist movement has exactly the same approach or goals for feminism, there are certain groups within the umbrella of feminism that would suggest the the ultimate goal of feminism is total androgyny and the eradication of gender, and i just think that is an impossible goal, and any kind of enforcement of that goal would only benefit whoevers natural behaviour is more androgynous or whatever gender is decided to be the more neutral one (because i believe that a lot of behavior is biologically driven). obviously this discussion has made it clear that not all of the feminist movement has this idea or goal, but i think this approach of asking men to act less like men (my definition of acting like a man does not include belittling or discriminating women) is like asking gay people not to be gay. edit: yeah, substantive equality sounds like the best approach to equality

how would you suggest i present my position in an less angry tone? i would be happy to hear some constructive criticism about how i could get my point across without initiating a defensive position from the people i am talking to

well i suppose i should say "i am a feminist, but not part of the feminist movement"

i guess it's because feminism includes the movement and the people within the movement as well as just the pure definition of the word, i could totally agree with the definition but not everything within the movement edit: sort of like how i could say i agree with some things in the mens rights movement, like equal rights for parents and equal maternity leave etc. but i wouldn't say i was one of them because i have heard a lot of bad things about them

but it could also be part of humanism or rationalism or many other philosophical views and i wouldn't say i was one of them either