Dornish Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I don't agree with this. While it certainly helps to be born into whatever group it is, there's no reason one cannot understand their perspective regardless. There are specialists in sexism that are male, and professors in racism and social inequality that are white. One doesn't have to experience these topics first hand to have a large sum of knowledge and understanding of them, though it helps.Do you think Stephen Hawking would presume to tell Neil Armstrong about walking on the moon? Knowledge is great, but it is not a substitute for experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Raids Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I also think something we can do as feminists is to all, in solidarity, agree to stop responding to Cantabile as he continues to describe women as whining moaning petty and resentful. And he's probably a trolling alt in any case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edda van Heefmstra Ruston Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 For those who don't even want to bother Googling, I've done it for you: The Systemic Birdcage of SexismRaids, I'm with you on that one. Remind me if you see me slipping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantabile Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 The arresting of vision at a microscopic level yields such common confusion as that about the male door-opening ritual. This ritual, which is remarkably widespread across classes and races, puzzles many people, some of whom do and some of whom do not find it offensive. Look at the scene of the two people approaching a door. The male steps slightly ahead and opens the door. The male holds the door open while the female glides through. Then the male goes through. The door closes after them. “Now how,” one innocently asks, “can those crazy womenslibbers say that is oppressive? The guy removed a barrier to the lady’s smooth and unruffled progress.” But each repetition of this ritual has a place in a pattern, in fact in several patterns. One has to shift the level of one’s perception in order to see the whole picture.The door-opening pretends to be a helpful service, but the helpfulness is false. This can be seen by noting that it will be done whether or not it makes any practical sense. Infirm men and men burdened with packages will open doors for able-bodied women who are free of physical burdens. Men will impose themselves awkwardly and jostle everyone in order to get to the door first. The act is not determined by convenience or grace. Furthermore, these very numerous acts of unneeded or even noisome “help” occur in counter-point to a pattern of men not being helpful in many practical ways in which women might welcome help. What women experience is a world in which gallant princes charming commonly make a fuss about being helpful and providing small services when help and services are of little or no use, but in which there are rarely ingenious and adroit princes at hand when substantial assistance is really wanted either in mundane affairs or in situations of threat, assault or terror. There is no help with the (his) laundry; no help typing a report at 4:00 a.m.; no help in mediating disputes among relatives or children. There is nothing but advice that women should stay indoors after dark, be chaperoned by a man, or when it comes down to it, “lie back and enjoy it.”The gallant gestures have no practical meaning. Their meaning is symbolic. The door-opening and similar services provided are services which really are needed by people who are for one reason or another incapacitated — unwell, burdened with parcels, etc. So the message is that women are incapable. The detachment of the acts from the concrete realities of what women need and do not need is a vehicle for the message that women’s actual needs and interests are unimportant or irrelevant. Finally, these gestures imitate the behavior of servants toward masters and thus mock women, who are in most respects the servants and caretakers of men. The message of the false helpfulness of male gallantry is female dependence, the invisibility or insignificance of women, and contempt for women.One cannot see the meanings of these rituals if one’s focus is riveted upon the individual event in all its particularity, including the particularity of the individual man’s present conscious intentions and motives and the individual woman’s conscious perception of the event in the moment. It seems sometimes that people take a deliberately myopic view and fill their eyes with things seen microscopically in order not to see macroscopically. At any rate, whether it is deliberate or not, people can and do fail to see the oppression of women because they fail to see macroscopically and hence fail to see the various elements of the situation as systematically related in larger schemes.As the cageness of the birdcage is a macroscopic phenomenon, the oppressiveness of the situations in which women live our various and different lives is a macroscopic phenomenon. Neither can be seen from a microscopic perspective. But when you look macroscopically you can see it — a network of forces and barriers which are systematically related and which conspire to the immobilization, reduction and molding of women and the lives we live…. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kungtotte Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I think you guys are taking this too personally. Five'll get you ten it's because the word rape was thrown down. It's one of Those Words. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantabile Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I also think something we can do as feminists is to all, in solidarity, agree to stop responding to Cantabile as he continues to describe women as whining moaning petty and resentful. And he's probably a trolling alt in any case.Do not twist my words. I used those descriptions for people making a big deal of this, be they man or woman, with no distinction towards gender. Human beings are human beings, period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balefont Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 How do you know which?!When it's a guy doing it for a woman in a way that events did not fall naturally for him to be in the position to be holding the door for her. Most likely, in this circumstance, it is out of a chivalric tendency rather than simple kindness and consideration.The better example is my elevator experiences. The guy is in front yet insists the women in the back get out first yet not necessarily the men in the back. The guy who refuses to accept a woman's insistence that, no, really, please, you first.Honestly, I think a lot of people hold doors for just about anyone for the simple fact that it is the polite thing to do. It's the thought process that men should do XYZ for women because they are women is what we're arguing against. And there have been plenty guys in this thread who have admitted to doing just that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merentha Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 edit: wow, completely beatenCantabile: So sexism sucks for both sexes. Good reason to try to not be sexist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantabile Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Cantabile: So sexism sucks for both sexes. Good reason to try to not be sexist.How am I being sexist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempra Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 What type of Bizzaro world is this where it is sexist for men to NOT want to beat the shit out of a girl, holding the door open promotes rape culture, and giving up your seat to a woman is equivalent to segregation? Seriously, WTF?It is not often that I agree with MinDonner, but stupid opinions deserve to be mocked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Raids Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 No Cantabile, you have only used those words to refer to women. This is an empirical question - the evidence is right in front you. You come across as someone who is conscious of the issues of sexism, but is plagued by an unconscious sexist bias of staggering proportions, to the extent that I do not think you are a real person and are a character someone has created to enact exactly what I described. If this is in fact the real you, I might spend some time thinking about that. And that's the last thing I have to say about that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebla Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I really wish people on this thread would quit equating wrestling with hitting women. Maybe they do it different now from when I wrestled 20 years ago but punching someone on the mat was illegal. Winding up on a crossface was illegal. So were eye gouges and body slams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kungtotte Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 When it's a guy doing it for a woman in a way that events did not fall naturally for him to be in the position to be holding the door for her. Most likely, in this circumstance, it is out of a chivalric tendency rather than simple kindness and consideration.I know anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much, but I've never seen this happen in Sweden. Nor anything like what's described in that essay posted above. Here people will keep holding the door if they open it, to allow others to pass through without opening the door themselves. The idea of doing it while encumbered or rushing ahead to open it for a woman is so incongruous as to be unfathomable.So I guess it's Sweden 1, Rest of the World 0? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Former Lord of Winterfell Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 <headdesk>You know what? You go on being a White Knight. If it makes you feel good and superior because you are Doing The Right Thing. I'll just keep taking advantage of poor bastards like you who leave the door open (literally and figuratively) for me to exploit your male weakness towards females. It tastes delicious.Ah, it's not that it is objectively the right thing to do at all. It is simply a social custom, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, it may very well die out. My objection is to the lack of logic in suggesting such social customs have a causative link with violence against females. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Former Lord of Winterfell Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I really wish people on this thread would quit equating wrestling with hitting women. Maybe they do it different now from when I wrestled 20 years ago but punching someone on the mat was illegal. Winding up on a crossface was illegal. So were eye gouges and body slams.Just out of curiosity, would that mean you'd have a different opinion when it comes to boxing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Raids Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Well according to Tempra I guess Sweden is a terribly sexist country that doesn't respect women, LOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosciuszko Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I know anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much, but I've never seen this happen in Sweden. Nor anything like what's described in that essay posted above. Here people will keep holding the door if they open it, to allow others to pass through without opening the door themselves. The idea of doing it while encumbered or rushing ahead to open it for a woman is so incongruous as to be unfathomable.So I guess it's Sweden 1, Rest of the World 0?FWIW I've never seen that particular behavior here either. But, eh, just because I've not noticed it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm not exactly the most observant person in the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merentha Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 How am I being sexist?Would you prefer if I added a generalized "good reason for everyone to try to not be sexist?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 No Cantabile, you have only used those words to refer to women. This is an empirical question - the evidence is right in front you. You come across as someone who is conscious of the issues of sexism, but is plagued by an unconscious sexist bias of staggering proportions, to the extent that I do not think you are a real person and are a character someone has created to enact exactly what I described. If this is in fact the real you, I might spend some time thinking about that. And that's the last thing I have to say about that.You know, maybe he only used them to refer to women because it looks like only women are really arguing against him in this thread? (unless I'm mistaken about some poster's gender, which could easily happen)I don't wanna speak for the guy or anything, but it's not open and shut here on that front. There's no evidence he'd find the argument any less "whiny" if a man was making it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merentha Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 You know, maybe he only used them to refer to women because only women are really arguing against him in this thread?Oh hey. I have a penis. And self-identify as male. iirc, so does Dornish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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