Feminism Redux

[Guest Raidne]

By feminists? I need to hear that story in full to find it credible. I've never actually seen a person spit on another person in real life.

Was she formerly a member of a lesbian separatist movement? What's the full story here?

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

Don't really understand this thread. But then i dont really understand feminism. Whats it trying to acheive? A denial of reality?

Men and women are different. There is nothing else to say.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

:rofl:

[tzanth]

I use post-modern for the racial/multicultural/socioeconomic class distinctions because these are generally focuses of post-modern critiques. I would not call that perspective third-wave feminism because it started not too long after second-wave feminism therefore doesn't describe another generation or anything like that. It's a critique that points out problems with and solutions to second-wave feminism, from within the framework of second-wave feminism.

To each their own. :dunno: I see nothing wrong with acknowledging the powerful affect that the post-modern critique had on feminism, and calling that the third-wave. That, at least, has always been my definitional understanding... Removing the racial/class aspect from third wave feminism bothers me as it seems to reaffirm the reason that such critiques were raised in the first place; namely that the dominate feminist discourse in the west is really only willing to play lip service to the plight of "other" women. I know that you are not advocating this, and I do understand where you are coming from, but it bothers me nonetheless.

Don't really understand this thread. But then i dont really understand feminism. Whats it trying to acheive? A denial of reality?

Men and women are different. There is nothing else to say.

You're own reality is a bit suspect, seeing as men and women are not necessarily the only sexes out there... but I digress. :P

No one is denying biological differences between people. The idea is to eliminate differences in treatment.

[Black Dow]

Sports are one area in which certain biological differences between groups are significant. I would suggest, however, that the way in which we deal with these differences is very much the result of constructed gender roles. Large physiological differences exist between groups within the same sex categories, yet such differences do not necessitate seperate "leagues." The sexed separation of sports, while in part based on biological characteristics, is therefore also largely the result of the traditionalist designation of sports as a male gendered activity.

Well, in basketball, American football, baseball, and hockey, such differences do necessitate separate leagues. (I'd say that the same is true in most other sports as well but I'll leave that for others to debate, as I am not going to debate sports that I do not watch or play).

Here's why the physical differences necessitate separate leagues, using professional basketball as an example.

In America, there's one major men's basketball league, and that's the NBA. There's one major women's basketball league, and that's the WNBA.

Now, let's do away with these separate leagues that are a result of 'the traditionalist designation of sports as a male gendered activity' and let's have one co-ed basketball league. Since we are assuming the original separation of the leagues in the first place was a result of traditionalist designations as opposed to actual physical differences, there will be no need for quotas in this new co-ed league. Let the best man or woman play.

And guess what the result of this would be?

The rosters would be identical to those of the current NBA, and not one woman would have an opportunity to play major professional baskeball. Why? Because there hasn't been one woman, ever, who could competitevely play on a NBA roster. Any women wishing to play professional basketball could either hope to make a minor league team (a highly unlikely proposition at best)...or perhaps find an old-timers men league to play in (we do at least know that women's tennis players n their primes can compete with men tennis players old enough to be granddaddies)...or...start a women's only professional basketball team. And we'd be right back to where we are right now.

[Ocean of Notions]

Tbh, i just wanted to change this thread into a sport conversation because i'm too ignorant to understand most of what's been said. :leaving:

Then maybe you should start a separate thread about the topic you actually want to discuss.

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

Well yeah, but my post wasn't serious.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Poe's Law: not just for religion.

[Happy Ent]

[...]

The rosters would be identical to those of the current NBA, and not one woman would have an opportunity to play major professional baskeball.

[...]

I’ve never found that argument very strong, because (unless I’m mistaken) you would also need to argue that there should be a basketball league for men under 1,80 m. I mean, how else should they ever be allowed to player major professional basketball.

Or, say, if the Olympics had separate running events for the 100 to 400 m distances for everybody who is not a male of recent West African descent.

See? There is no reason to accept sex as a valid grouping for sports performance. You might as well use height or race. (How about a Chess championship for non-Jews?) Yet all these other suggestions would strike us as grotesque. So why are we prone to accept the idea of a “special league†for women? I can see few other explanations that cultural, and that would seem to be exactly the kind of structures that feminism want to make us aware of – and sceptical about.

[denstorebog]

I’ve never found that argument very strong, because (unless I’m mistaken) you would also need to argue that there should be a basketball league for men under 1,80 m. I mean, how else should they ever be allowed to player major professional basketball.

Exactly. Same goes for the division of roles in the military, certain job positions and other issues. I always hear about 'difference of physical strength' as an overriding argument. If that's really the reason, then we should at least have the decency to see it through and actually enforce it. Use actual physical tests to determine qualifications and weed out the women *and* men who don't meet whatever standards. Sure, the top tier of men may be stronger than the top tier of women, but whenever I notice how many of the women I see in daily life are, say, taller and potentially stronger than their average male counterparts, it becomes apparently ridiculous that the 'strength / height / build matters' argument is passed on without actually being enforced. We're basing gender perceptions on the perception of the 'most exemplary representatives' of each gender. The slightly built geeks get to join the fun while the average woman is kept out, and 'strength matters' is *still* widely accepted and believed as an argument?

The importance of strength, height, etc. is thrown around a lot, but it's certainly not the deciding factor in reality.

[mormont]

I’ve never found that argument very strong, because (unless I’m mistaken) you would also need to argue that there should be a basketball league for men under 1,80 m. I mean, how else should they ever be allowed to player major professional basketball.

Or, say, if the Olympics had separate running events for the 100 to 400 m distances for everybody who is not a male of recent West African descent.

See? There is no reason to accept sex as a valid grouping for sports performance. You might as well use height or race. (How about a Chess championship for non-Jews?) Yet all these other suggestions would strike us as grotesque.

Not really. We use weight as a valid grouping in boxing, weightlifting, wrestling, and many other physical sports. We use age as a valid grouping in pretty much all sports, and not just for children - there are very lucrative senior tours in tennis and golf. We use professional/amateur divisions and divisions based on equipment used (in motor racing, for example) and all sorts of other groupings. Why should we pay the highest finishing amateur in the Open anything at all, let alone give him a trophy, if he finishes behind dozens of pros who get nothing? Shouldn't he have to compete on an equal basis with the pros? If he's not good enough, why should he get anything?

If we can use weight as a division, we can use sex. End of story, really.

I do agree that reward should be based on what people want to pay to see, incidentally. This argument is actually the main reason so many tennis tournaments pay equal prize money: for all that the men play two more sets and are physically stronger than the women, women's tennis is just as big a draw. The same argument explains why heavyweights tend to get bigger purses than featherweights - but not always. A world-class featherweight boxer wouldn't last two rounds with an average heavyweight, but gets a bigger purse. If you want to be offended by unfair rewards in sport, I suggest you be offended at that. ;)

[ljkeane]

I do agree that reward should be based on what people want to pay to see, incidentally. This argument is actually the main reason so many tennis tournaments pay equal prize money: for all that the men play two more sets and are physically stronger than the women, women's tennis is just as big a draw.

Actually I don't think this is the case, if you look at viewing figures and attendance for men's tennis compared to women's tennis it is actually significantly higher. I think that those in charge have just come to the decision that the potential benefits of equal pay outweigh the costs which I don't think is unreasonable.

To be fair in the past although feminists weren't arguing that women should play in the same league as men players such as Billie Jean King were arguing that they should play 5 sets. That is one of the things that annoys me about women's tennis today they are happy to accept equal pay but they don't object to the fairly condecending rule that women should only play 3 sets because it makes it easier for them.

[MinDonner]

While I'm sure that the pay disparity between world-class tennis players is of great concern to all the world-class tennis players on the board, it's odd to see how often this is brought up as an example. Why does this suddenly merit more discussion than all the other pay disparities that actually affect a lot of people (maybe even someone you know!), not just a handful of celebrity sportspeople? Oh, right, cos this is an excuse to bash those irrational feminazis. Carry on. :thumbsup:

[Happy Ent]

If we can use weight as a division, we can use sex. End of story, really.

Oh, I think we can use sex. I think it is a valid separation. I do want to discriminate, by sex, age, height, IQ, etc. I do not think that people should be treated equally, or that playing fields should be levelled. Quite on the contrary. I’m a Rawlsian and I think we should build a society where everybody has the possibility to live a decent life. And that entails treating people differently, because people are different. (We can then discuss the fault lines along which these treatments should happen, i.e., exactly which stereotypes we use for classification when confronted with the need for a discrete partition. Sex? Race? Autism? And that’s a difficult and emotionally charged debate.)

What I’m puzzled about is that some people think that feminism is about equal treatment. It isn’t.

If you want to be offended by unfair rewards in sport, I suggest you be offended at that. ;)

I’m not offended at all. Sports is for entertainment. In Denmark, Saturday afternoon sports programming is dominated by women’s professional handball. Not men’s soccer. And I do understand the appeal of looking at women in tight shorts, and the appeal of openly expressed emotion, instead of watching a 2nd division men’s game, which may be technically on the same level. (I don’t know, so the example may be wrong. I don’t watch much sports.)

[The Anti-Targ]

Sport is different from "normal" careers to a certain extent. To all intents and purposes there is no point in opening up top level sports for women to compete with men for those sports for which the outcome is determined by size/strength/speed. Because the best man in the world at these things will always be better than the best woman, which means no woman will ever win. And in the end top level sports is all about the winning.

Lower tier grades have much more of a mixed bag of abilities, and there is no reason for there to be any exclusion based on sex. Most of our junior school level team sports have unisex teams. Highschool (post puberty) is pretty much where the segregation starts.

When it comes to other careers involving size/strength/speed, it's not about the winning, but about meeting the minimum criteria for being able to do the job. In those situations there is no justification for preventing women from involvement at any level. It's just a given that fewer women will meet the physical minimum criteria required.

The bigger issue really is equal pay for equal work. And the elimination of the "you've been out of the work force for X number of years so you get paid less" bullshit. There isn't a job in the world where if you have 10 years experience, then take 5 years off, you can't be working at full competency within a few weeks, a month tops. We are meant to be living in a meritocracy, that means time served isn't meant to determine who gets paid the most, it's about ability and competence and performance. If your performance is equal to the person who's been doing it for 15 years, and you've only done it for 10 years, then you should be paid the same.

[Balefont]

and get the miracle of birth. So you have nothing to complain about. :thumbsup:

what?

[Balefont]

You can argue for days why women may be less skilled at sport,

what?!

[ljkeane]

Oh, right, cos this is an excuse to bash those irrational feminazis. Carry on. :thumbsup:

I think sport is interesting because it is one of the few jobs were you can make a reasonable argument (whether you agree with it or not) for disparities in wages between men and women. I think in most fields pretty much everyone would agree that there is no particular reason why women cannot do a job as well as men so if they are doing the same job to the same standard they should get paid the same, there is not much room for debate there.

[mormont]

What I’m puzzled about is that some people think that feminism is about equal treatment. It isn’t.

It all depends what one means by 'equal'. Usually, those who prefer to use that term in its most simplistic sense are actually critics of feminism seeking to advance arguments like the old 'but women are crap at sports' chestnut. Actual feminists prefer to talk about 'fair' treatment, in my experience. When they do use the term 'equal' treatment, they're talking about treatment that is free of (correctable) systematic inequality.

Thus, while it's true that women probably wouldn't be able to make it into a top-level rugby team, this isn't the devastating blow to the roots of feminism that some people seem to imagine it is. Still less does it provide any support for the idea that inequality in pay in, say, high finance can probably be safely ascribed to sex differences and left alone.

I think sport is interesting because it is one of the few jobs were you can make a reasonable argument (whether you agree with it or not) for disparities in wages between men and women.

Actually, you can't. As I've said, reward in sport is ultimately determined by how popular the sport is with the viewing public. While that might in many sports be secondarily influenced by the sex of the competitors, that isn't the same as saying there's a reasonable argument for disparities in wages on the basis of sex (or there would be no sports where men and women are paid the same).

It's a key distinction: secondary effects of a characteristic such as sex or physical disability are one thing, and are recognised as potentially justifiable. (I stress 'potentially' - you have to show the justification.) Direct discrimination is another thing altogether, and that's what you're talking about.

I think in most fields pretty much everyone would agree that there is no particular reason why women cannot do a job as well as men so if they are doing the same job to the same standard they should get paid the same, there is not much room for debate there.

Unfortunately, there is a debate, mostly caused by people coming at the argument backwards. That is, on being shown that women are in fact being paid less than men for the same job, they start from the presumption that women must for some reason be performing less well, refusing to contemplate the idea that unjustifiable discrimination still exists.

[ljkeane]

Actually, you can't. As I've said, reward in sport is ultimately determined by how popular the sport is with the viewing public. While that might in many sports be secondarily influenced by the sex of the competitors, that isn't the same as saying there's a reasonable argument for disparities in wages on the basis of sex (or there would be no sports where men and women are paid the same).

Actually you kind of can, while the levels of pay are determined by the popularity of a certain sport within the sport pay is largely determined by the levels of performance and this is were you can see a real disparity between men and women.While this is not the case in all sports, it is in most.

If you want to frame the argument in terms of revenue generated then the vast majority of men's sports outperform women's sports by a significant margin.

My point was that in sports you can actually see real disparities in performance between men and women which is not the case in most fields, even those that have minimum requirements for strength and stamina were you might expect to see fewer women working in those jobs once the women meet those requirements you would expect women to be paid the same.