thestalkinghead

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Posts posted by thestalkinghead

  2. Posted

    This strikes me as really naive, if not obtuse. What intellectual or ideological movement isn't and hasn't always been heterogeneous to the extreme? Even going back five hundred years to Renaissance and Reformation humanism, that wasn't the case. Did the Protestant reformation "stand for nothing" because there were Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Anglicans, and fifty million different kinds of Anabaptists? Well, in the eyes of dyed-in-the-wool Catholics, it did, but I really shouldn't take this analogy any further.

    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.

  3. Posted

    I guess I kinda know what you mean. You don't want to be called a feminist because of what (in your worldview) the crazy man-hating feminists believe. It's kinda like how some parties are disinterested in being part of PAX because of the rape-joke person's behaviour.

    well, i think that is a reasonably good analogy  :tup:

  4. Posted

    I'm paraphrasing here:

    [ Feminism is informing lawyers, child-care providers and psychologists to form a blog that calls for eugenically exterminating the male path of the human race. ]

    What is it they say? If you can't stand for anything thestalkingdead, you'll fall for anything.

    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 

  6. Posted

    After Walt, she's pretty much the most murder-happy person in the series. And she threatened Skyler and Walt was told about it.

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

  7. Posted

    Can we talk about Lydia?

    I was talking with my friend today and one of the main reasons she wasn't on board with Walt's perfectly-timed-sequence-of-executions-as-closure was that we've seen Lydia's family. She has a daughter she loves enough to beg for her life earlier this season. However good we might feel about a bunch of neo-Nazis getting shot up with 7.62mm bullets, Lydia's murder seems like a different shade of gray altogether, but looking back, I didn't get much in the texture of the final phone call to tell us that Walt or the writers of the show felt there was a distinction.

     

    I don't know, I don't even think I have a point here, it just felt odd in hindsight to set up and kill both a racist redneck gang and a somewhat bitchy, somewhat unpleasant businesswoman in the same fell swoop.

    i can see where you are coming from

    but although she was a businesswoman her business was at that point the meth empire business, she had money and connections and could have easily become the next gus fring or heisenberg, so i think Walt's intention was to end the mass production of meth

  9. Posted

    No it doesn't.

     well in a lot of cases it does

     

    Sometimes it's a simple as telling your friends that their woman driver jokes are for jerks. Sometimes it's as simple as joining a twitter campaign to have women represented on banknotes better. And sometimes it takes getting shot in the head, surviving and then touring the world spreading the message that girls deserve and education too.

    Nobody expects you to go through the last one, but the first two are within the reach of anyone.

    Also, protests have always gotten people arrested, what's new there?!

    Edit: ugh, and can we try to stop sending such gross music to the top of the charts.

    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   :getmecoat

  11. Posted

    There are lots of ways! Urge companies to run sexual harassment training sessions to explain to their employees what kind of behavior is unacceptable, educate people about what constitutes rape so that men are less likely to rape women, set quotas for the number of women a business needs to employ before they can bid on government contracts, add mandatory time off work for men whose wives have just had children so that employers don't view women as employment liabilities, and thousands of other things that we can do and that we have been doing ever since second wave feminism took off. Not to mention stuff like allowing women to go to school, vote for their preferred political candidate, run for office, and so on, advances which we can thank first wave feminism for.

     

    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

  12. Posted

    Feminism has some pretty clear goals. End sexual discrimination, reduce the number of women who are sexually assaulted and raped, close the wage gap between women and men, and so on.

    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? 

  14. Posted

    I admit I still find this a little hard to wrap my head around. Is something innocuous like environmentalism morally untenable to you because there have been and are a few eco-terrorists out there blowing stuff up? And I assume you don't vote in any elections unless there's a candidate you agree with a hundred percent, otherwise how can they represent you?

    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

  15. Posted

    The issue of paternity leave, and mothers typically being considered the "default" parent in a custody case, and pretty much any other legitimate complaint that someone may bring up as a "men's rights" issue is typically something that an exasperated feminist (at least one who subscribes to beliefs similar to my own) would respond to with "Fuck, OF COURSE it's bad. And it's a direct result of men and women being viewed differently by society! If we were actually viewed as EQUAL this shit wouldn't come up because neither the mother NOR the father would automatically be considered the better parent." Feminism is also fighting for men's rights in the sense that by breaking down that shit and treating people equally for reals, you're throwing out the assumptions that society makes about both sexes. That's positive assumptions too. The same way that saying "all Asians are good at math" is considered a problematic statement by anyone who is the least bit sensitive to racial issues despite the fact that "being good at math" is viewed as a positive trait, "all women are good parents" is viewed as problematic by feminists despite the fact that "being a good parent" is a desirable trait. It's a faulty assumption based on an essentialist view of the sexes.

     

    As you seem to be sympathetic to the MLK argument re: silence being damaging when you agree with a cause, I'll drop my own reason for identifying as feminist on you. I'm a straight white guy. Straight enough, anyway. I've always been more attracted to more "alternative" women. My partner shaves her head, wears "male" clothes, and tends to confuse the elderly when they can't immediately discern her sex from looking at her on the street (honestly, some of them have come up to her and complained that they couldn't tell). This means that our friends are also largely in this alternative crowd, and very few are straight. Hell, I don't identify as 100% straight, it just so happens that I only have sex with women. Hanging out with this crowd, I've seen my share of confrontations. Angry drunks who think that because a woman is bald she can be called out and ridiculed in public for not conforming. People harassing a lesbian couple that we were hanging out with. I've been beaten up on grounds of assumed homosexuality. I always kind of knew that the status quo view of women and homosexuals was a root cause of this, and didn't like that, but it took a long time for me to realize that as a normal looking mostly-straight white guy, I have a super power. Those clowns who harass the people I love? Because of my straight-white-male-ness, they'll actually listen to me for a little bit before they realize that I'm a feminist. That is JUST enough time to seed some ideas in their heads that may actually create change. This is something that most of the people I hang around with won't get to experience. No matter what they say or how they say it, they'll be dismissed immediately. I won't. It's a shitty state of affairs, and an extra sign of how privileged I am, but that's how it is. Since I disagree with it, I feel like I have an obligation to say so and maybe, just fucking maybe, I'll change a mind every few years. Enough people do that, and we can do some good. For that reason, I'm proudly a feminist and have started to feel that there is a moral obligation for those who disagree with the status quo and are white and male enough to be heard by the masses to say something. While that label may make you and others uncomfortable, without a flag to rally behind, there's no movement. With no movement, there's no progress. As long as we all have the common goal of equality between men and women, we need to stick together and that label is one of the best ways to show that we are united in that regard. There are feminists who don't think that transgendered people should count, there are feminists who don't want my white male voice to be joined with theirs, but there are many more others who just believe in an ideal and want to make shit better. I'm joined up with them.

     

     

    ...and now I fade into the shadows once more because every time I turn my back this thread grows 5 pages and it's really hard to keep up with.

    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

  16. Posted

    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)

  17. Posted

    Your position is not unusual - lots of people like to view themselves as enlightened, reasonable freethinkers that avoid the traps of becoming mired in an ideology and who hold themselves above the witless sheeple who throw their weight behind view after view without understanding the implications or ever making a decision for themselves about what to believe.

    I think the problem with that attitude, though, is that when it comes to social issues like racism, sexism, and all other instances of bigotry, intolerance, and inequality, to refuse to throw yourself behind a movement is to implicitly endorse the status quo, which exists largely on the backs of people who do nothing rather than on the backs of virulently racist, sexist, and otherwise intolerant people. If you read Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from the Birmingham Jail for instance, you will see some good examples of the sorts of reasons one might have for ascribing to an ideology that one believes is correct rather than just saying "I never use labels unless it saves time" as if staying neutral is always better unless it's inefficient.

    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

  18. Posted

    thestalkinghead, I'm curious why it is you are so fixated on this supposed subset of feminists that you keep citing. Think of it in terms of any other classification or group you might identify with. Feminists, gamers, civil rights advocates, environmentalists, sports fans, left wing supporters, right wing supporters, lumberjack enthusiasts, etc. Every single one of these groups contain different subsets of people. Each group has reasonable people, unreasonable people, optimists, pessimists, intelligent people, stupid people, and dickwads. Just because these groups contain each of these elements doesn't mean that any one of those elements defines that group. If that were true then you could say that humanity is an angry race because there is a subset of people that are very angry.

     

    For this reason I think you should let your argument go. I suspect that you identify with other groups or classifications despite the fact that they contain those same fringe elements. You have been given the definition of feminism, which you seem to agree with, and that should really be all you need.

    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 

  19. Posted

    NOBODY thinks being angry at people is a GOOD way of getting their point across. Feminists don't get angry as an ARGUMENTATIVE TACTIC. We get ANGRY because THE WORLD IS SHITTY TO WOMEN and when we try to fix it, people FIGHT AGAINST US, tooth and nail! And after years and years of being fought against, we get angry. Then sometimes we say angry things, and when we say angry things, people like YOU dismiss our arguments (which have remained unchanged from the days in which we were not angry) JUST BECAUSE we are angry! And this makes us MORE ANGRY!

    Not all feminists get angry - some are massive milquetoasts who would turn the other cheek if you stabbed them in the first cheek with a knife. I'm a mellow guy in real life but on the Internet I have no problem getting angry because why not? It's not like being angry makes me wrong. Oh unless I'm talking to you or the legions of other people who think the tone argument is the best thing since sliced bread. News flash: just because people get angry about social injustice doesn't mean they're wrong about it.This is a stupid fucking strawman that I've never seen anyone argue for.This is an incredibly simplified view of the science (more testosterone or estrogen does not make you act in a more man-like or woman-like fashion) but putting that aside, of course there are biological aspects of gender. In Western society we create gender almost entirely based on what we perceive an individual's biological sex to be! No feminist in the world would ever deny that there are significant biological difference between archetypal members of the two genders that the Western world uses. Again you are arguing against a strawman and it's not even clear what your argument is.

    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?

  20. Posted

    The thing is I'm not sure where gender discrimination would be appropriate, because there's enough variation that even the statistically significant differences between men and women are not consistent enough to legislate by, or for example plan teaching lessons around.  Some women and men learn differently, and from the macro view there is a significant enough difference to consider, but each individual person is capable of such a broad spread that it doesn't make sense for us to differentiate by gender.

    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

  21. Posted

    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 

  22. Posted

    I think you should try saying that in a less angry tone.

    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 :)

  24. Posted

    It's true that feminism can be seen as a subset of other rational/egalitarian -isms. Why does this matter to you?

     

     

    Sure, but the difference is that humanism has a broader definition which happens to include the sentence "men and women are to be regarded equally".  Feminism is a word that means literally only that one sentence, no more and no less.  If a person fits into that description they are a feminist, regardless of whether they even know the term or if they're an alien from another planet which also happens to have two genders or whatever.

     

    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

  25. Posted

    Because that's literally the entire definition of feminism.  It's literally a word that means that exact sentence and nothing more or less.

    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