Gender and violence issues

[Zaevod]

I don't know if this is the kind of thing most people would be willing to discuss, here. In fact, I'm not sure what is the community's general position in regards to ideologies such as feminism (I was banned from TvTropes for daring to voice my disagreement with feminism).

Anyway, I found this video on the subject which I found very interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw_U...&feature=share

In general, it explains how women are far more determinant and responsible than society believes they are in the cycle of violence, in several different ways.

It's long, but very complete and quite revolting in a few parts. The author cites a lot of sources. I can't check the validity of all the statistics in the video, but they seem to be coherent.

It would be interesting if a feminist took the time to watch and attempt refute each point, though I'm pretty sure some would just make generic accusations of "gish gallop" (has happened before), which is a very convenient way of not having to bother to make an argument. Something other than "the studies are biased" would also be good. Of course no study is completely free of bias, but when several figures agree like that, there's something definitely worth looking into.

[devonin]

Before this starts (and inevitably gets out of hand) I'd just like to make sure Zaevod and everyone else is aware that "Several figures agree" does not in any way suggest that something is worthy of significant consideration.

Statistical analysis can imply that cancer causes cellphones, and that the popularity of firefox is tied to the popularity of wiccanism. Also that pirates were the only thing keeping AIDS under control.

Be careful you don't assume something is true because "a bunch of people say it" or "A number of statistics agree"

[choof]

are we talking feminism as in "womyn" or feminism as in "full gender equality"

[Zaevod]

Feminist equality is really "equality under the feminist worldview" which often includes blaming everything on "the Patriarchy". In other words, it's highly debatable.

Originally Posted by devonin

Before this starts (and inevitably gets out of hand) I'd just like to make sure Zaevod and everyone else is aware that "Several figures agree" does not in any way suggest that something is worthy of significant consideration.

Statistical analysis can imply that cancer causes cellphones, and that the popularity of firefox is tied to the popularity of wiccanism. Also that pirates were the only thing keeping AIDS under control.

Be careful you don't assume something is true because "a bunch of people say it" or "A number of statistics agree"

Sorry, several figures agree and at least appear to be well funded. I can't say that they are absolutely true, obviously, but they seem to come from respectable sources.

Did you really mean "cancer causes cellphones"?

[dAnceguy117]

Originally Posted by Zaevod

Feminist equality is really "equality under the feminist worldview" which often includes blaming everything on "the Patriarchy"

is this part of a definition, or is this based on your own observation? could you post a source?

do you disagree with the idea and goal of gender equity?

[Izzy]

I don't see anything inherently wrong with gender equality other than genders not being the same so they are already fundamentally different. However, most of the time when I hear about feminism it seems to be about wanting women to be superior and not equal.

Maybe it is possible to be equal but different. There would still be people complaining though.

[Zaevod]

Originally Posted by dAnceguy117

is this part of a definition, or is this based on your own observation? could you post a source?

It's based on the observation of many, actually. You can't merely take the dictionary definition of a movement or ideology and claim that that's all it is; you need to take into account the impact it has on reality.

Watching that video helps, as it refutes many claims commonly held by feminists. This also helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIjLJWHJUo

do you disagree with the idea and goal of gender equity?

No, but you need to define equality in this context. Men and women are, by default, not equal. You need to define whether you want equality of opportunity (which I support) or outcome (which needs to be enforced through different means, and I don't agree with). If opportunity is equal (in some cases, women have more opportunity through things such as quotas) outcome will not necessarily be the same, because men and women don't have the exact same interests, on average.

[Pseudo Enigma]

ehhh I mean, a woman pretty much gets knocked out of commission for ~9 months if they have a child. That in itself is a big reason I don't think men and women can ever be equal and must have roles.

All humans would probably be equal if we had no sexuality. Anyone wanna get their nuts chopped off?

[dAnceguy117]

Zaevod: that's why I used "equity" instead of "equality." different genders are most definitely not identical. equity means fairness, and I would say that giving an entire school class a 95% on an exam regardless of what answers they wrote down is not fair. equal opportunity is fair.

you may not be disagreeing with feminism but rather with what some people who identify as feminists are saying. if you're not using a specific definition for an ideology, then how can you disagree with the ideology?

Originally Posted by Pseudo Enigma

ehhh I mean, a woman pretty much gets knocked out of commission for ~9 months if they have a child. That in itself is a big reason I don't think men and women can ever be equal and must have roles.

any person can get knocked out of commission for some amount of time if they get sick or injured. based on the above statement what kind of role do you think is suitable?

[Zaevod]

Originally Posted by dAnceguy117

Zaevod: that's why I used "equity" instead of "equality." different genders are most definitely not identical. equity means fairness, and I would say that giving an entire school class a 95% on an exam regardless of what answers they wrote down is not fair. equal opportunity is fair.

you may not be disagreeing with feminism but rather with what some people who identify as feminists are saying. if you're not using a specific definition for an ideology, then how can you disagree with the ideology

An extreme example to illustrate my point: if nazis came to you and defined nazism as the ideology that fights for the true greater good of humanity, would you start to defend nazism?

A lot of self-declared feminists claim to fight for equality but have done and said distasteful things. Claiming that they are "not true feminists" is a "no true scotsman" fallacy.

[Pseudo Enigma]

Originally Posted by dAnceguy117

any person can get knocked out of commission for some amount of time if they get sick or injured. based on the above statement what kind of role do you think is suitable?

I'm quite content with being the one who has to get a job and provide for my future family, as long as someone is there to stay home and keep things in order. That kind of woman seems really rare nowadays though lol.

I guess if it has to be one way or the other I wouldn't mind sitting around minding the children either.

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Pseudo Enigma

I wouldn't mind sitting around minding the children either.

The fact that you'd describe that role as "sitting around" shows how little you understand it.

[Pseudo Enigma]

Originally Posted by devonin

The fact that you'd describe that role as "sitting around" shows how little you understand it.

Nice stab. If I don't understand it, then explain your knowledge of the subject. I am, after all, only 18 and haven't had any chance to see anything for myself.

I'm not so naive to think that taking care of children is a walk in the park. I have 3 nephews and they're true terror. I also had to act as the mature older brother of two hyperactive children, and my mother wasn't very good at what she did.

[choof]

that wasn't a stab, your post really did show how little you know about raising a child. or at least, extended periods with children.

[Pseudo Enigma]

Okaayy, so I guess I need to watch my posts to make sure you guys don't grab the wrong meaning from it? Of course I didn't mean literally sitting around. Only a retard would think that. Taking care of children is far from it, and it's stressful as hell. Being a parent is pretty much the only profession that you will never get paid for. Thus why I think it is an important role that one partner must take.

Can we move on or are we going to nitpick my post more?

[Zaevod]

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Does that mean that we should treat first wave, second wave, third wave, and radical feminism all as the same thing? Feminism is a category of various beliefs, rationales, and scholarships. It's not a singular movement like you seem to be under the impression it is.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all those feminisms share some common tenets, as far as I'm concerned: the Patriarchy, male privilege and female oppression being among the most universal of them. Saying that feminism is for equality practically implies that equality can be obtained by focusing on female issues (unless that "fem" part is just a coincidence).

My point, and the point of the videos I posted, is that things are not so simple.

[Zaevod]

Just to be clear: I didn't create this thread to specifically bash feminism, but to challenge the notion that violence is primarily a male trait, and that women are the primary victims. You see a lot of discussion about violence against women on the mainstream, but a lot of people don't take male victims or female perpetrators seriously.

[Zaevod]

Actually, the video does cover some of these claims.

As for the excuse of the woman "being stressed out" as a mitigating factor... I can't imagine anyone claiming the same thing for a man under the same circumstances.

Your post also contains the conclusion that women were more oppressed in its premises. In short, everyone is oppressed in different ways. Society just gives a lot more sympathy for female issues.

Maybe you should check the videos of a woman named Karen Straughan. She elaborates on a lot of these points. I can't write too much at the moment because I'm on my phone, but I will, later.

[Zaevod]

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

So you're saying it's double standards, that if a woman abuses her kid feminism lets her off the hook while if a man abuses his kid feminism paints him out to be the scourge of the earth? Well, that's not the case, but at times it can seem as such and that's part of what feminism is trying to change.

So it seems. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/story.html?id=9270200

I don't deny that there are many well-intentioned feminists, but feminism is not just composed by those people, in the same way christians are not just composed by mormons or catholics. Making a sweeping claim about what feminism is trying to do, when many self-proclaimed feminists actually contradict that, is a little problematic.

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Yeah, men are oppressed too. They have different definitions of success to adhere to, are prescribed to behave in different ways, get harsher prison sentences on average, etcetc. But, because all groups experience distress does that mean we're not allowed to try to better them? A lot of races are oppressed in different ways, and so are people of different financial status. Working out women's issues is not to detract from working out men's issues, it's just a different line of work.

You can, in fact, work on women's issues. That's great. However, many feminists assert that feminism is THE ultimate authority on gender issues, and nothing else is necessary because they will take care of everything. Evidently, this is not true.

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Also, our society doesn't give more sympathy to female issues over male issues, it's that there's more female issues to give sympathy to.

It looks like you didn't watch the entire video. Sorry, but men are about half of the victims of domestic violence and yet a lot of people still refer to domestic violence as "violence against women".

There are people who laugh on national television about an innocent man who had his penis cut off by his wife:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muuFygvXPAM

Genital mutilation on males is still accepted and even condoned by a large part of the western population, while female genital mutilation is nearly universally recognized as unacceptable in our culture.

We even have a trope that addresses this disparity: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...pendableGender

I could go on. Women gain a lot more sympathy than men for the same issues, in general. Women are also seen as less responsible when doing the same crimes, so they get lighter sentences. As a whole, society treats women as children and men as disposable, which is both misogynistic and misandric.

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

At the end of the day, there is an extraordinarily massive body of work by feminists and non-feminists alike that say women face more disadvantages than men on issues pertaining to gender alone. The research that has passed through hundreds of thousands of hands and has been going on for more than a century now is not in your side of the argument's favor.

My objective is not to make a competition of suffering between men and women. I don't think it's possible to determine which gender suffers the most, on absolute terms.

Still, people see more issues that women face because people care more about issues that women face, and are more willing to do research based on that. Men constitute 93% of worplace related deaths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality) as well as 80% of suicides(http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-...a-z/S/suicide/). Men have been historically forced to throw their lives away at wars. Men are the majority of rape victims when you take prison rape into consideration, as well as the majority of victims of assault in general. They get harsher sentences for the same crime, etc, etc...

Perhaps you'd be willing to listen to a woman on the subject? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqEeCCuFFO8

[Cavernio]

Before reading the thread, after watching the video.
~18:00 No, you hold men to too high a standard, not women to too low a standard.
It's perfectly valid and RIGHT to say something like 'But women spend three times as much time raising children'. The correct male/female ratio SHOULD be viewed as the way one automatically thinks, because that is the accurate way of viewing it. It's like when I worked at UPS and I because twice as many shipments of mine were being looked at, they found twice as many errors as for people who only had half as many shipments being looked at, but then thought I was doing twice a bad a job as them. The same principle applies here.

The prison rape discussion fails to point out the obvious that it clearly shows that it's men who were doing the raping of other men.

Spanking, as discussed in this video, has not separated spanking from the overall beliefs and actions of the parent who spanks holds. ie: spanking is obviously going to be related to other actions that are going to also be detrimental to a child. I am intrigued by this though, and I might look up more studies about this just in my own time, about women and spanking and also about negative effects of spanking.

The very end of the video walks a very tight line...how many women teachers who want to teach older kids get asked 'Oh wouldn't you rather teach this grade 2 class?'
And yup, if men don't help raise kids, of course women are going to be raising kids more...that's not new, and more male involvement with raising kids is one of those things that a lot of feminists would like.
I wonder if that McGill study at the end that showed that the most important factor for empathy is men in a child's life, ever had kids in that study that had no female nurturers? The take-away message from that study, to me, is if there is a 2nd nurturer to a child, possibly one that is not with them all the time so there's an opportunity to miss them such that their interactions will be different and more meaningful for the time they have them, than the relationship they'll have with the primary caregiver. The sex of the parent seems like it would be irrelevant.
EVERY child will have a primary caregiver or else the child probably won't be alive. The baseline, therefore, for learning to empathize from social interaction isn't going to be 0, they will already have some level of empathy learning/developing from the primary caregiver, and they will ALWAYS have that, yet we're given to believe from the video that having a father involved is the single most important thing for a child to develop empathy. Yes, given the baseline of 'some amount of empathy granted by having a primary caregiver', it's not that surprising that a secondary, loving caregiver is the biggest factor above and beyond this non-0 empathy baseline.

I have specifically seen the term "feminism" applied to inequalities between men and women only, without it necessarily meaning that women must arise only to power. I'm not sure that's a great definition of the word, but there it is.

In any case, yes, of course there are inequalities for men where society treats them unfairly. 'It wouldn't be creepy for you or us to hang around the park, but it would be for me (a man)'
The only thing in this video where women have apparently overstepped a boundary pushed by feminism, is when the paternity of a child doesn't matter for who has to support the child...although even that is a little sketchy because it's ultimately the child who we should be looking at, and if the child themselves thinks that their dad is their dad, it'd be a terrible thing to find out when you're 5 or something that your dad, upon finding out you're not their biological kid, suddenly wanted nothing to do with you. That is, I suppose, separate from making a man pay money to support a child though anyways. It's really a social cop-out though I suppose, because that kid needs financial support from somewhere, and there's a reason the actual dad isn't paying support, and the government doesn't want to have to foot the child support.