Feminism, The Next Installment

[BLU-RAY]

Fucking magnets, indeed.

[karaddin]

I just googled thst cathy brennan person and wow ........ That is some really twisted stuff she is doing.

http://rationalwiki....i/Cathy_Brennan

"Brennan, as with other transphobic feminists, seems to believe that the only reason that people designated male at birth would identify as, live like, or transition to females, is because they want to enter female-only spaces and rape. This appears to be the entire premise of her letter to the UN.[3]"

Oh I see they already have this latest incident with the email in there including the pastebin of it.

[karaddin]

A long time ago, I attempted to get involved with a feminist group, it wasn't radical, but I could feel an undercurrent that made me feel very uncomfortable, so I simply drifted away. Never went anywhere near that territory, again. I don't know how much things may have changed, but if I read something on a feminist site, I won't even post a comment. I don't seem to have the ability to discern where the welcome mat is out and where it isn't.

The I see people say things like this.

Then, I want to get involved because I realize that there are people who who use an incredibly small sample and apply what they observe of it to the entire feminist movement and feel the need to get involved, but don't know where I can safely do it. I suppose, in my own way, I'm guilty of the same thing from the opposite end of the spectrum. What a damned dilemma.

Well you are getting involved here and that's been the first step for me as well. You also have your blog which you use to highlight issues that you want people to be aware of. I'm cultivating a tiny but growing diverse group of followers on twitter (trans/feminist/australian politics/daniel abraham and ty franck book lovers). It's baby steps and I'm not sure what the next is for me as I'm really doing nothing so far, but it at least makes me feel better :P

Well actually I'd like to get an opinion piece or two published, but I'd probably stick to trans issues rather than broader feminist issues at least to start off with for that, although perhaps I'd include something on intersectionality.

ETA: Castel - mmm he has done that, but doesn't seem satisfied with the mere derail, and it has continued to have some on topic discussion at least.

[Kat]

[mod] Well, if this thread continues to get derailed I'm going to nuke the entire subthread, so get back on topic to the more interesting stuff that came before, please.

[karaddin]

I should point out that, from the studies I've seen, men actually earn slightly more due to their looks. (the "beauty premium" is slightly higher for men than for women)

I think this would at least in part be due to the fact that there are also negatives often associated with beautiful women, where this rarely applies to men. A beautiful woman is often assumed to be lacking in intelligence, work ethic and competence at doing much of anything. A masculine handsome man doesn't suffer any penalties from his attractiveness, I think the assumption of lower intelligence probably applies to men who are more "beautiful" rather than handsome, a man that looks like a male model, but outside of that it just helps him be more popular which spills over into all sorts of benefits.

Just saw this article: http://www.nsf.gov/s...st/theme2_1.cfm

We already know that epigenetic control of X-chromosome silencing in men is responsible for dosage compensation in mammals, so this seems like a good addition to the pile. The induction of inter-sexed mice by knocking out a key gene is a good demonstration on the importance of epigenetic control. I think we will continue to learn more about inter-sex development and how it translates into human behaviors regarding gender identities.

I wish I understood this well enough to fully follow the implications of it, but I certainly think analysis of gender through this lens can belong in both LGBTQ and this thread. If you wanted to spell it out in layman speak for me I'd be grateful :P

[Robin Of House Hill]

Well you are getting involved here and that's been the first step for me as well. You also have your blog which you use to highlight issues that you want people to be aware of. I'm cultivating a tiny but growing diverse group of followers on twitter (trans/feminist/australian politics/daniel abraham and ty franck book lovers). It's baby steps and I'm not sure what the next is for me as I'm really doing nothing so far, but it at least makes me feel better :P

I still have the feeling of being on the periphery. It may not be something I can overcome.

[Theda Baratheon]

I always feel really ''wrong'' when people make this fucking stupid observations of women in jobs like working in television just relying on their looks and oh no, gender roles, fuck that, I have always wanted to be an actress; I love to act, I love to perform and I just hate that I have to feel that as a feminist I should want to do something different, Museum Curator is my number 2 career choice, but seriously when idiots (not feminists, but people like Pero) make these dumb comparisons and imply women are just power hungry and lazy and just want to work in front of a camera using their looks or marry a rich guy instead of having a career in the STEM fields, it really bugs me. It makes me feel like a stupid cliche, ~~the young girl wanting fame and to be an actress, how vapid~~

:( No. I dunno, my post probably doesn't make any sense, but I hate being made to feel like my dreams are shallow.

[Pero the first of His name]

I always feel really ''wrong'' when people make this fucking stupid observations of women in jobs like working in television just relying on their looks and oh no, gender roles, fuck that, I have always wanted to be an actress; I love to act, I love to perform and I just hate that I have to feel that as a feminist I should want to do something different, Museum Curator is my number 2 career choice, but seriously when idiots (not feminists, but people like Pero) make these dumb comparisons and imply women are just power hungry and lazy and just want to work in front of a camera using their looks or marry a rich guy instead of having a career in the STEM fields, it really bugs me. It makes me feel like a stupid cliche, ~~the young girl wanting fame and to be an actress, how vapid~~

:( No. I dunno, my post probably doesn't make any sense, but I hate being made to feel like my dreams are shallow.

Ok

1. There are no people like me, only me.

2. I did not say all women are like that. I was talking about the rise of both numbers.

3. What i was talking about is the opinion that we surely lose a lot of women from STEM due to the increasing appeal of named proffessions. I was mostly talking and expressing concern for young girls, who under the influece of society (either parents, friends, media or something else), dream of being models or glamurous housewives.

4. I think you underestimate some things.

a) the growth of "eye candy" fields

B) the human strive to get by easily and with less work

c) the difference of people outside the groups you socialize with

5. Once again, i did not mean to provoke.Although, i knew i would probaby find strong opposition since what i wrote could be interpreted as an attack on women. It was more criticism of human nature and the society and an attempt to discuss fixing the problem. I was hoping less auto-defence and even people thinking similar thoughts about the issue.

I already said men could be criticised even worse. For example, i am sure we lost a lot of men from going in direction of STEM because of being encouraged to choose sports thus not developing or neglecting affinities that could lead them to STEM.

6. I think acting is awesome, i never named it as one of those proffessions. There are a lot of productions in which looks play a significantbrole but if we put all acting in that boc we can put almost any other job as well. Good luck with it!

I did not say the fields i listed are without any skill nor that i disrespect them (but i have more proffessional respect for some others). Well, i might have a bit of disrespect for some proffessions, those i deem overly BS, trickery or unhelpful.

7. If you knew me more i would accept calling me idiot for certain things but this would not be one of them.

[Theda Baratheon]

Apologies for using the word idiot and then using your forum name, that was childish. But the best anyone can do is to just enforce that young girls can do whatever they want. As long as teachers, parents, and other authority figures are enforcing this then at least there is always a choice. And if after all this, a girl wants to be a housewife, then what's wrong with that? I don't understand. There is so superior and inferior, there is only people and my wish for everyone to just choose to do whatever the hell they want to do.

[Tempra]

I think the "it's on her" argument is being used with a little too little nuance for my liking.

I think on one extreme, you'll have women in abusive relationships who simply couldn't find the mental strength to get away. One might argue that this is "it's on her," too, right?

What I am not seeing in the "it's on her" conclusion here is the acknowledgement that these decisions are not made in a vacuum. Take for instance a woman who is raised in a very conservative Christian household where women are taught to, and shown, and conditioned, to be subservient to men (think the fringe groups of Mormons, for instance). Perhaps later on she grows up and manages to move away from them and finds her own path. But still, she has trouble asserting herself against male authority figures. It's all on her, too?

When it comes to women acting dumb or giving up opportunities to advance in order to maintain their appeal to some men, it is not, imo, entirely all on her. It's also on the guys who do find it difficult to date and fall in love with women who are smarter and more successful in careers than they are, right?

I concede that external factors can influence our decision making, sure. Some factors, such as an abused spouse receiving physical and/or financial threats, may be so great that assigning blame for doing or not doing X would be grossly unfair. I don't believe that is the case here. Not by a long shot.

Should the rich and powerful men at HBS want to date only meek, non-intimidating women? No, they're obnoxious jerks that are blameworthy in their own right. Does that male behavior in any way excuse or minimize the personal responsibility that the female students have to focus on their academics? Nope. I treat men exactly the same on this issue. I know several guys who have maxed their credit cards and spent their savings trying to impress women who only date rich guys (or who generally labored under the assumption that women care about the size of a man's wallet). Are those women gold diggers? Yep, and a few other choice adjectives. Are these women to blame for the guys' poor decisions to spend well beyond their means? Nope, it's their own damn faults.

Wow. I think I have actually found a topic on which I agree with Tempra, for the first time in my life. Despite business school being the last place I would ever want to go, I can understand most of that article. But were I trying to socially engineer HBS, I'd probably do it in favor of discouraging intra-school dating. In particular, it just seems like a recipe for weird archaic competitiveness.

In the interest of disclosure, my mother always wanted one of her daughters to go to business school. She was in one of the first MBA classes at Stanford that allowed women, though, so I guess I was raised by someone who is more like a 2nd wave feminist and/or someone who, like Raidne described earlier, feels more comfortable with women who just straight up say what they want. Unfortunately I then had to train myself NOT to do this again because its not exactly favored amongst the education crowd. :rolleyes:

Interesting. My mom taught business law at a business school where she was the first full time female faculty member. During her first year, none of the male professors, except the dean that pushed to hire her, would acknowledge her existence let alone speak with her or treat her like a peer. So the idea that some women at HBS, in 2013, would act meek and non- intimidating to please a man is totally foreign to me.

[Pero the first of His name]

From previous post:

"I did not say the fields i listed are without any skill nor that i disrespect them (but i have more proffessional respect for some others). Well, i might have a bit of disrespect for some proffessions, those i d eem overly BS, trickery or unhelpful."

Housewives also have my big respect of course.

I was never talking about superior and inferior nor criticising the freedom to choose.

All i was saying is that the appeal in some jobs (largely stimulated by society) is taking away from the interest in other jobs.

[Robin Of House Hill]

@Pero,

I'm sorry you find feminism such a threat to your right to determine which jobs are important and which are not, for us lazy folk who want to get by doing less. But I am really heartened by the fact that you do find it a threat.

[Guest Raidne]

Pero - Check out "Raunch Culture" by Ariel Levy. Her argument has similarities to yours, but is much more valid. Otherwise, I'm not going to agree to limit this thread to a subject by an author who uses the phrase "women" to mean, and only mean, "hot sexy women."

[Guest Raidne]

Not a man, Tempra. Everyone. Doesn't sound like your Mom would have experienced discrimination from other women at work.

[Guest Raidne]

Kat - Can you talk more about training yourself to NOT be so direct with coworkers? How does it feel? How do you feel about the women you know who need you to change your communication style like this? I'm learning this right now, and I can't seem to manage to sort out and identify what I'm feeling like.

[Res ipsa loquitur]

I always feel really ''wrong'' when people make this fucking stupid observations of women in jobs like working in television just relying on their looks and oh no, gender roles, fuck that, I have always wanted to be an actress; I love to act, I love to perform and I just hate that I have to feel that as a feminist I should want to do something different, Museum Curator is my number 2 career choice, but seriously when idiots (not feminists, but people like Pero) make these dumb comparisons and imply women are just power hungry and lazy and just want to work in front of a camera using their looks or marry a rich guy instead of having a career in the STEM fields, it really bugs me. It makes me feel like a stupid cliche, ~~the young girl wanting fame and to be an actress, how vapid~~

:( No. I dunno, my post probably doesn't make any sense, but I hate being made to feel like my dreams are shallow.

Theda, this post of yours fills me with sadness. Feminism should be about a womans choice to do what SHE wants to and what she can accomplish, not what other women tell her to do, or what a ideology claims feminist thought and behavior entails. If you want to act, be an actress, or the curator, and damn what others may think of your choice. To thine own self be true, as Shakespeare so aptly said. The beliefs of others about what you do and who you are should not form the basis of what you internalize about yourself.

I do agree with many of the above posters that people present themselves in different ways in different contexts and situations; that is not a negation of self but an understanding that one cant act the same way in a courtroom as one can in a bar or a graduate or college class.

[Pero the first of His name]

@Pero,

I'm sorry you find feminism such a threat to your right to determine which jobs are important and which are not, for us lazy folk who want to get by doing less. But I am really heartened by the fact that you do find it a threat.

Where did i discuss the importance of jobs?

I only talked about how choices are made.

I do not think you read half of what i write.

And how did i show i am threatened?

Opinions i show here and problems i would like to solve represent the opposite of my man-pig side.

Please write less bandwagon nonsense.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Theda, this post of yours fills me with sadness. Feminism should be about a womans choice to do what SHE wants to and what she can accomplish, not what other women tell her to do,

Or men. I think Theda's reaction to a post that was deliberately provocative, was an honest one. While I have issues with TV networks making being eye candy a prerequisite, I have no issues with someone selecting that aspect of broadcasting for a career.

@Pero,

4. I think you underestimate some things.

a) the growth of "eye candy" fields

B) the human strive to get by easily and with less work

When you relegate a job to, "eye candy", status you are clearly diminishing its importance. But, you already know that.

Sorry, but this is likely to be our last conversation.

[TerraPrime]

3. What i was talking about is the opinion that we surely lose a lot of women from STEM due to the increasing appeal of named proffessions. I was mostly talking and expressing concern for young girls, who under the influece of society (either parents, friends, media or something else), dream of being models or glamurous housewives.

This is not supported by facts or studies and is a construct of your one person's observation. In order for your claim to be valid, you'd have to show that young girls and women switch careers from STEM areas to models, pornography, and other professions that you deem to be reliant on good looks. The data for this simply does not exist. In interviews with students (both male and female) who left STEM to become other majors, the areas are usually businesss, or engineering. They don't leave STEM fields to become strippers or celebrities.

On the other part of your claim, you'd have to show there's a rise in our cultures adoration of these professions, compared to before. Then, you'd have to show that the percent of women who enter into the workforce now choose more of the look-reliant professions than STEM fields.

So the bottom line is that you are providing insights to a problem but you have yet to provide evidence for. There *is* a problem of under-representation of women in STEM areas, but your proposal that it is a result of girls being lured away into these other professions is not supported.

[Pero the first of His name]

Pero - Check out "Raunch Culture" by Ariel Levy. Her argument has similarities to yours, but is much more valid. Otherwise, I'm not going to agree to limit this thread to a subject by an author who uses the phrase "women" to mean, and only mean, "hot sexy women."

I have now introduced myself to Levy's rauch culture as much as wiki goes.

I agree with how she defined it but i do not agree with all her criticism of it.

She is talking about the pressure to look good, objectification, how women are expected to "put out" but viewed as whores at the same time.

I am writting about how that culture creates jobs and how women go for them before other jobs.

I am not critiquing the choice nearly as much as i am just explaining the phenomenon.

Anf neithet Levy or me equated "woman" with "hot, sexy woman" so depending on what you mean by that you got one or both wrong.