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Roderick

Feminism

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I dunno. If there is an ever present raw gnawing uncertainty at the core of your society, the appeal of easy security is probably pretty great. I wonder if there is a similar correlation with lottery participation and petty crime.

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thestalkinghead, your logic is deeply flawed and you repeatedly contradict yourself as others have pointed out. If you are an all or nothing type of guy then that must mean you don't believe in anything and have a nihilistic perspective. There cannot possibly be any movement or belief that is pure enough in its messaging for you so I have to assume you believe in nothing and disagree with every possible movement or belief out there. And even if a movement or belief was pure enough you can only get behind it if it benefits every single person on earth? So fuck the civil rights movement, fuck feminism, fuck feeding the hungry, fuck curing cancer, fuck things that benefit the rich, and fuck things that benefit the poor. Or do you only believe in things that benefit you?

 

Long story short, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SMOKING AND CAN I HAVE SOME?

 

yeah sure some things may sound like they contradict each other, but they wouldn't if i were able to properly express my beliefs, i think it is a problem associated with individual ethics, because i can't rely on many people over time writing about a set belief system and say read/watch/listen to this, this person has done a good job of explaining what <insert belief> is, but i think stopping racism of all kinds would benefit all the people on earth, i think stopping all sexism would benefit everybody on earth, i think stopping all kinds of poverty would help everybody on earth, i believe curing cancer, AIDS, malaria etc would benefit everybody on earth and when i say everybody on earth i do also include myself (some ways more directly than others)

 

maybe it isn't clear perhaps because i just can't communicate through texts as well as i want to (i think an actual face to face conversation would be easier to explain it) but i do think a lot of what feminism does is good, but i don't think you can achieve equality by focusing on just women, a simplified view of the patriarchy is that is was there to protect women and children in a harsh living environment, obviously over protectiveness is oppressive, especially now that in the western world we don't live in a harsh environment, so we no longer need a patriarchy.

 

however i think it is naive to think that men have only benefited from the patriarchal system and that women have only suffered in it, i don't want this to start a conversation about who has suffered most or who has the most privilege, but i think the best approach would be to simultaneously focus on the problems of both men and women and also focus on how they can both compromise on their privileges, sure there are feminists under the umbrella of feminism that would take that approach, but unless that is the majority view i couldn't totally get behind the movement. 

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Instead of arguing about whether or not you can identify yourself as a feminist, maybe you should talk about what you believe, what exactly your issues are and what specifically you think are issues that aren't being fairly represented within feminism? What exactly is it that you feel, in the feminism umbrella, is unfairly biased against men, where more compromise on women's privilege would help the cause?

 

What do you think are men's rights issues that feminism doesn't help with?

 

I'm actually asking, not being snarky or childish or anything. If you don't want to label yourself as a feminist, that's fine, but after all these pages of discussion I don't remember once actually clearly reading about any specific issues you had or what your stance was on it.. You mentioned something about biology and you asked us what we thought about child custody cases and paternity leave. What do you think about those things, for example? Are they examples of what you talk about, where women should compromise on their privileges?

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Instead of arguing about whether or not you can identify yourself as a feminist, maybe you should talk about what you believe, what exactly your issues are and what specifically you think are issues that aren't being fairly represented within feminism? What exactly is it that you feel, in the feminism umbrella, is unfairly biased against men, where more compromise on women's privilege would help the cause?

 

What do you think are men's rights issues that feminism doesn't help with?

 

I'm actually asking, not being snarky or childish or anything. If you don't want to label yourself as a feminist, that's fine, but after all these pages of discussion I don't remember once actually clearly reading about any specific issues you had or what your stance was on it.. You mentioned something about biology and you asked us what we thought about child custody cases and paternity leave. What do you think about those things, for example? Are they examples of what you talk about, where women should compromise on their privileges?

 

well the problem is that when there is something good it will be claimed that it is all of feminism but when there is something bad it will be claimed that it is just a part of the umbrella of feminism not all of feminism.

 

but a few examples of campaining that has resulted in an unfair bised for women are:

campaingnes to get more women in the military, but not that they should have to have have the exact same tests to qualify for it (a link that doesn't show everything but what a quick search showed up) http://www.army.mod.uk/join/20153.aspx

 

and with child custody, the system may claim equality, but men only get primary custody of the child if the woman has drug or mental issues, the defualt if for women to get custody https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fathers%27_rights_movement#Family_court_system  http://www.fathers-4-justice.org/about-f4j/fact-sheet/

 

or that in tennis women now get equal prize money but they still don't have to play as many matches or use the same heavier equipment http://www.scotsman.com/sport/tennis/andy-murray-let-women-play-five-sets-for-equal-pay-1-3074466

 

or just basically things that campaign for better treatment of women but just leave men of the campaign (  https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/creating-a-fairer-and-more-equal-society  no nention of supporting and protecting the rights of men here and notice the advisory group: Advisory groups:Women's Business Council )

 

feminists would want a minimum percentage of women in male dominated workplaces but wouldn't campaign for a minimum percentage of men as well 

 

obviously i haven't gone into detail with this, but if you are going to fight for equality it shouldn't only be a fight for equal treatment of women, it needs to be about men also 

 

edit: it's things like this that show that the campaign for more equality for women is working, but it also shows that men have been left out http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9484597/White-males-now-classed-as-a-minority-group-at-university.html  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3179265/The-future-is-female-job-figures-show.html

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There's a reason that there's a campaign for better treatment of women in business: because it's a male dominated arena.  The university link? Bottom line is the women are getting better grades. Even then they follow that up with that women still face problems actually succeeding at the workplace because of their gender.  Army Link, there actually is a biological difference.  Men quite frankly have an easier time building muscle.  Besides, military is still WAY male dominated.  You effectively fear the decline of white male power.

 

The father's right group is pretty interesting, it specifically talks about the different branches and schools of thoughts and how they differ, which seems to be a problem you have with feminism but not here?

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however i think it is naive to think that men have only benefited from the patriarchal system and that women have only suffered in it, i don't want this to start a conversation about who has suffered most or who has the most privilege, but i think the best approach would be to simultaneously focus on the problems of both men and women and also focus on how they can both compromise on their privileges, sure there are feminists under the umbrella of feminism that would take that approach, but unless that is the majority view i couldn't totally get behind the movement.

I have never heard a feminist argue that men have only benefited from patriarchy and women have only suffered from it. A book I read recently was The Gender Knot, which is all about the patriarchy, and it, like every other feminist argument I've ever read, said that both sexes suffer.

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Yeah, half this stuff is unexamined privilege and the other half is the lingering effects of the patriarchy.

 

Easy one first: the chief way feminism benefits men is that both men and women are required to buy into the patriarchal idea of how men and women are. Women get the raw deal here because their role is much more limited, but while men get more freedom in what they're allowed to be, they're still in a gilded cage. When it comes to things like custody and relationships with children, men frequently get the raw end of the stick because what kind of man could possibly want to mother children? And the patriarchal notion of men as distant breadwinner and women as homemakers and protectors of children is reinforced. Feminism is opposed to the patriarchy, and demands both that men be both allowed and expected to take a greater share in the raising of children.

 

Harder one last: you are coming at things from a perspective that has no real conception of what it's like for women (and maybe minorities? I don't know), and you are never challenged on your ignorance because your perspective is seen as the 'default'. On many issues, you don't get to be right, and you will have to learn to live with this. Specifically, you have no conception of the thousand little ways women are undermined and marginalised, things like rape culture, mansplaining, disenfranchisement. Things are not 'equal', and gender-blindness is an impossible goal. The important thing is to recognise and disentangle our perceptions of gender, which are cultural, from sex, which is physiological. Sports prizes are not based on physical fitness, but on prestige. This does not need to be based on physiological characteristics. Defence force fitness requirements are designed to ensure their troops are in peak physical fitness - they're arbitrary. The unequal requirements are there to compensate for women starting further back - a man meeting the women requirements is far less likely to be physically fit because of the natural advantages he has thanks to his physiology. Of course, the defence forces need people in peak physical condition, but they also need many other things, like discipline, leadership and accuracy, and it turns out that they're not gendered. The defence force is acknowledging that men and women are different in specific ways in order to ensure that they take best advantage of the assets they have.

 

The reason why privilege is important is because until you realise you have it, and how it blinds you, feminism looks a lot like it's trying to disenfranchise you as a man. No-one is coming for your balls.

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TSH I don't think you're suffering from an inability to describe your position correctly, you're suffering from a poorly founded position.  Feminism necessarily has to focus on female empowerment because they're the ones who are on uneven ground.  I don't see where the confusion is.  Equality in this case means empowering women, and although breaking down the patriarchy will be beneficial to men in some ways as well, we will necessarily be less powerful relative to women than we are now.

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Yeah, half this stuff is unexamined privilege and the other half is the lingering effects of the patriarchy.

 

Easy one first: the chief way feminism benefits men is that both men and women are required to buy into the patriarchal idea of how men and women are. Women get the raw deal here because their role is much more limited, but while men get more freedom in what they're allowed to be, they're still in a gilded cage. When it comes to things like custody and relationships with children, men frequently get the raw end of the stick because what kind of man could possibly want to mother children? And the patriarchal notion of men as distant breadwinner and women as homemakers and protectors of children is reinforced. Feminism is opposed to the patriarchy, and demands both that men be both allowed and expected to take a greater share in the raising of children.

 

Harder one last: you are coming at things from a perspective that has no real conception of what it's like for women (and maybe minorities? I don't know), and you are never challenged on your ignorance because your perspective is seen as the 'default'. On many issues, you don't get to be right, and you will have to learn to live with this. Specifically, you have no conception of the thousand little ways women are undermined and marginalised, things like rape culture, mansplaining, disenfranchisement. Things are not 'equal', and gender-blindness is an impossible goal. The important thing is to recognise and disentangle our perceptions of gender, which are cultural, from sex, which is physiological. Sports prizes are not based on physical fitness, but on prestige. This does not need to be based on physiological characteristics. Defence force fitness requirements are designed to ensure their troops are in peak physical fitness - they're arbitrary. The unequal requirements are there to compensate for women starting further back - a man meeting the women requirements is far less likely to be physically fit because of the natural advantages he has thanks to his physiology. Of course, the defence forces need people in peak physical condition, but they also need many other things, like discipline, leadership and accuracy, and it turns out that they're not gendered. The defence force is acknowledging that men and women are different in specific ways in order to ensure that they take best advantage of the assets they have.

 

The reason why privilege is important is because until you realise you have it, and how it blinds you, feminism looks a lot like it's trying to disenfranchise you as a man. No-one is coming for your balls.

 

that last part is something feminism doesn't apply to women, women don't realise the privileges they have, as i said i don't want this to be a privilege or suffering competition because the just goes nowhere, but there are so many advantages to being the protected part of the patriarchy, but they just don't have names because there aren't such things as male studies or masculinity intellectual books, but basically men are expected to do all the dirty back breaking jobs while women get all the clean more civilised jobs, i do recognise that the jobs at the top being predominantly male is a problem and i am not saying it isn't  (even though that is only really an middle/upper class problem), it's that equality is now in a position that unequal requirements are not just helping women but hurting men.

 

@Brannigan the university link is about women getting better grades but obviously that is a problem that should be fixed, and it shows that feminist policies aren't equal, they are actually damaging male education and career prospects, and that the balance has now (at least in england) swung past equal and is now unfair for men.

the army link isn't just about the biological difference, the military isn't a sport among peers, the requirements are there because it is about life or death, if anybody can't carry a wounded soldier to safety because they aren't strong enough they shouldn't be allowed in the army, if they can't aim their gun straight because their arms are tired after carrying it for miles with no rest they shouldn't be allowed in the army, if they can't carry jerry cans full of fuel or full ammo boxes they shouldn't be allowed in the army, nobody should get a free pass based in their biology, should there be a new category for scrawny men?

and obviously i have a problem with different branches or schools of thought, but that wasn't the point of the links, i was trying to provide links just so people can't just claim i am making it up

 

the tennis link is about equal pay for equal work, and how playing less tennis is not equal work.

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Now that thestalkinghead has provided some reasons to consider not being a feminist, I can say that I have thought it through, weighed the pros and cons and decided (whole-heartedly) that I am a feminist; I want to be a feminist, and I am proud to be one.

Thestalkinghead, have you ever read a comic-book called "Cerebus"? I loved it and I think you may also enjoy it if you ever have a hankering to read 300 comic-books that someone on the internet recommended. And "yes", it does have a small amount of relevance to this discussion, especially the portion after Church&State.

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:tup:

I'm happy your talking about actual stances on specific issues, rather than generalizing, stalkinghead. I disagree with all of what you said, but it did a much better job of explaining why you won't label yourself a feminist than the last 10 pages of this thread..

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the tennis link is about equal pay for equal work, and how playing less tennis is not equal work.

There's a lot of more significant stuff in your post that I'll leave for cleverer people to handle (is there any evidence that women in the army are under-performing?), but this one is easy: sports prizes are not salaries. They are, as someone already said, prestige-based awards. After all, these are competitions. Competitors aren't producing a commodity. By your logic the prize size should vary depending on the quality of play. That's not how competitions work.

Whether the number of games played in either tournament is appropriate is another issue. I'd say that the right amount is a tournament long enough to push the competitors to their limit, but not so long that they're all utterly exhausted by the final. But I don't know much about sport, so that might be completely wrong.

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thestalkinghead, glad you finally provided examples but I think most of those are red herrings.

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Now that thestalkinghead has provided some reasons to consider not being a feminist, I can say that I have thought it through, weighed the pros and cons and decided (whole-heartedly) that I am a feminist; I want to be a feminist, and I am proud to be one.

Thestalkinghead, have you ever read a comic-book called "Cerebus"? I loved it and I think you may also enjoy it if you ever have a hankering to read 300 comic-books that someone on the internet recommended. And "yes", it does have a small amount of relevance to this discussion, especially the portion after Church&State.

 

i will find out about reading it

:tup:

I'm happy your talking about actual stances on specific issues, rather than generalizing, stalkinghead. I disagree with all of what you said, but it did a much better job of explaining why you won't label yourself a feminist than the last 10 pages of this thread..

i am happy to debate about it and i think i have learned a lot so hopefully there will be more understanding on both sides 

 

There's a lot of more significant stuff in your post that I'll leave for cleverer people to handle (is there any evidence that women in the army are under-performing?), but this one is easy: sports prizes are not salaries. They are, as someone already said, prestige-based awards. After all, these are competitions. Competitors aren't producing a commodity. By your logic the prize size should vary depending on the quality of play. That's not how competitions work.

Whether the number of games played in either tournament is appropriate is another issue. I'd say that the right amount is a tournament long enough to push the competitors to their limit, but not so long that they're all utterly exhausted by the final. But I don't know much about sport, so that might be completely wrong.

 

i have no issues with women in the military and i don't assume they underperform i just don't think the requirements for women should be made easier.

 

sure sports prizes aren't salaries, but the funds come from sponsorship and tv/news coverage, so if there are less games in womens tennis it contributes less towards the funding.

 

anyway, for specific issues in feminism that i agree with i would be behind it, I'm not anti-feminist and i don't think they/you should shut up and go away or anything, and i'm not trying to derail or troll, i like to debate and discuss things so i can better understand peoples perspective, but i think i will try and leave that out for now and lurk and learn :)

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@Brannigan the university link is about women getting better grades but obviously that is a problem that should be fixed, and it shows that feminist policies aren't equal, they are actually damaging male education and career prospects, and that the balance has now (at least in england) swung past equal and is now unfair for men.

 

I would like to directly respond to this point. I'm not sure how the feminist movement is to blame for women getting higher grades than men. Are you suggesting that women are being given undue academic favors because they are women? If so, please talk to any woman who has ever studied in the hard sciences field, they'll tell you otherwise.

 

There are numerous reasons why women tend to score higher than men in an academic setting. A lot of it has to do with psychology and how the two genders are socialized, but there's no nefarious feminist plot to keep men down by rewarding all the A+ to the ladies.

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I would like to directly respond to this point. I'm not sure how the feminist movement is to blame for women getting higher grades than men. Are you suggesting that women are being given undue academic favors because they are women? If so, please talk to any woman who has ever studied in the hard sciences field, they'll tell you otherwise.

 

There are numerous reasons why women tend to score higher than men in an academic setting. A lot of it has to do with psychology and how the two genders are socialized, but there's no nefarious feminist plot to keep men down by rewarding all the A+ to the ladies.

 

I'm not saying there is an conspiracy to make men less educated or that women don't work hard for their education, however it used to be the case that men outperformed women academically so feminists campaigned to changed the education system to make it more "equal" but that has clearly resulted in a biased towards women, which i think is probably unintentional, but i don't see any feminist campaigns to make the academic setting better for men and i don't think there ever would be.

 

as you said there are numerous reasons for this gap, but i don't think the feminist movement would be willing to put in the time or the effort to make men perform better academically and have better career prospects because they concentrate on the needs of women, I'm not saying that i would want some mens group to go about changing it so that in 20 years time the education system is better suited to men, i would want a group that is dedicated to helping men and women equally to make it so that men and women both perform equally, you might say that that is feminisms goal, but i think a biased movement (towards either gender) no matter what the intentions, will always have biased results. 

 

Edit: i really didn't anticipate your response, and didn't feel like i was saying that women don't work hard or there was some nefarious plot, and that is the sort of thing i mean when i say i don't think i can communicate that well with text, if that were part of a conversation i may have read you were taking it that way or you may have inserted that question into the conversation. 

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I'm not saying there is an conspiracy to make men less educated or that women don't work hard for their education, however it used to be the case that men outperformed women academically so feminists campaigned to changed the education system to make it more "equal" but that has clearly resulted in a biased towards women, which i think is probably unintentional, but i don't see any feminist campaigns to make the academic setting better for men and i don't think there ever would be.

 

Speaking as an academic who has spent almost ten years total in university settings both small and large, the idea that academia is somehow inhospitable to men is really hard to swallow. Two women were accepted into my program this year and the department is losing its mind with glee about the gender ratio now being 1:5 among grad students. And this is history, one of the more women-friendly fields!

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Re academic outcomes, it really doesn't make sense to say that the system is biased against males just because females marginally outperform males k-12. That presupposes a cause (bias) from an observed effect (unequal outcomes). It could well be that unequal gender outcomes have nothing to do with bias and instead have to do with other factors. For example, maybe the fact that boys are more often encouraged to participate in sports hinders them academically: while many boys are spending a couple hours a day in sports, girls can spend that time studying. Basically until we understand why girls outperform boys, we can't make statements about bias. 

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Speaking as an academic who has spent almost ten years total in university settings both small and large, the idea that academia is somehow unwelcoming to men is really hard to swallow. Two women were accepted into my program this year and the department is losing its mind with glee about the gender ratio now being 1:5 among grad students. And this is history, one of the more women-friendly fields!

 

This is my perception also. When I was in college the ratio of men to women in my field was literally about 9:1. And this was undergrad. I feel like this creates an environment that is inherently biased towards men since they are most represented. So yeah, I find that hard to swallow also.

 

 

but i think a biased movement (towards either gender) no matter what the intentions, will always have biased results. 

 

I'm going to say it again but this has to mean you would be against the civil rights movement. It was biased towards one group of people and didn't help everyone equally. And so what if the results are biased? If one group has more privileges than another, shouldn't we strive to achieve results that help those that are less privileged?

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My college program started with 40 people. 2 of them were female, the rest males. (In fairness, this was in a smaller Canadian college, for a diploma in Game Development... so I don't necessarily feel this is representative of most post-secondary education.) Just wanted to throw my own experiences in. 

(Also, I mention it was at the start of the program because by the end there were only about 25 people left who hadn't dropped out. Both females were still there.) 

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I'm going to say it again but this has to mean you would be against the civil rights movement. It was biased towards one group of people and didn't help everyone equally. And so what if the results are biased? If one group has more privileges than another, shouldn't we strive to achieve results that help those that are less privileged?

 

if the civil right movement was only for black people, and asian people weren't any concern of it because they have the privilege of being assumed that they are good at mathematics then it would be like the modern/third wave feminism movement, are you seriously comparing modern feminism to the civil rights movement because they aren't alike, maybe you could compare the suffragettes to the civil rights movement but not modern/third wave feminism

 

also the results and impact of feminism will be different for each country, i am talking about england, i get the impression that in america feminism hasn't had as much impact in certain areas as it has in england

 

@I Saw Dasein 271,000 more women in university isn't marginal (out of a total of 1,697,000 984,000 women and 713,000 equals 16% more women or 58% women 42% men) and i agree there are many factors for this but they come under the umbrella of education

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if the civil right movement was only for black people, and asian people weren't any concern of it because they have the privilege of being assumed that they are good at mathematics then it would be like the modern/third wave feminism movement, are you seriously comparing modern feminism to the civil rights movement because they aren't alike, maybe you could compare the suffragettes to the civil rights movement but not modern/third wave feminism

 

I am merely making the point that the civil rights movement only improved things for a subset of people and not all people. You said you do not identify with any movement that doesn't improve things for all people.

 

Edit: And saying that I am comparing modern feminism to the civil rights movement is a straw man. You are completely misrepresenting my argument.

 

Edit 2: And you are also really cherry picking your arguments. You have been given a lot of examples clearly showing how women are at a disadvantage in so many ways and you come back with a handful of half baked examples to justify why you don't agree with feminism.

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I am merely making the point that the civil rights movement only improved things for a subset of people and not all people. You said you do not identify with any movement that doesn't improve things for all people.

 

Edit: And saying that I am comparing modern feminism to the civil rights movement is a straw man. You are completely misrepresenting my argument.

well, maybe i misunderstood, but if i was around when MLK was i would have asked him what he thought about POC being racist towards white people, and if he said it was of no concern of his or the movement i would have had issues with that, I'm not trying to put words in his mouth though, I don't know what his stance on that was

 

edit: i wouldn't say that ignoring mens issues was a half baked reason

 

edit2: thinking about it, didn't MLK want equal justice for all American citizens? so i assume he would be against discriminating against white people, so if there were disadvantages to being white he would want to help those disadvantaged white people 

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All right, I give up. I had hope you would come around but I just don't see it happening at this point. Just please know that there are some very intelligent people in here giving you incredibly good reasons for supporting feminism and you are responding with very unintelligent answers and ignorant stances.

 

No hard feelings man but I'm out.

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