Feminism and Political Correctness (1 Viewer)

[bassistx]

I don't think bassistx was trying to dictate how a woman should dress/act etc. I think the point she is making is that invariably, women are inherently different to men, due to both biological differences (obviously) but also social constructs that constitute what makes a 'woman'. Bassistx is not saying that exhibiting archetypally masculine characteristics/behaviours is 'wrong' per se, but is questioning whether by embracing some of the things that distinguish us from males (e.g wearing heals, make-up etc) we are really denigrating ourselves.

If my English was half as good as yours and I could articulate my argument properly, I wouldn't get so many "what's" and "dumbs".

 

[bassistx]

Well as much as guys say that I don't think it's always completely truthful... If men truly valued promiscuity as they sometimes claim to do then why all the attacks on women who dare step out of line and start sleeping around? The truth is imo most guys value promiscuity FOR THEM while seeing a chicks promiscuity with other males as diminishing her worth.

For a chauvinist you sure seem to understand it inside out. Yet you don't agree, do you?

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

I don't want to be lumped in with the argument boris's going against. I agree that women should be allowed to do whatever they want as free individuals, I've met some girls that I honestly think just want to be 'mummies' and that's fine imo as it is if you want to dress/act like a man. However, I also think there are undue/immoral social pressures to conform to certain standards and this is where I think modern feminism has something to say.

 

[Slidey]

For a chauvinist you sure seem to understand it inside out. Yet you don't agree, do you?

Fuck NTB is no chauvinist. There's a difference between a pragmatic social view of women and one that actively demeans them or can't tell they've equal rights as human beings.

 

[bassistx]

Well probably a little bit... but at least I'm honest about it.

if he admits to it, you don't need to go on to explain

 

[esquared]

I think we need to realise that for a lot of men, getting laid is really masculizing. And masculizing things tend to be reflected communally, ie. guys coming up to their mates and saying shit like "SHIT YEAH I FINGERED HER BEHIND THE BIKE RAXXX!" and hi-5ing each other and stuff. I find the ridiculous sharing of sexual conquests a bit homoerotic, but it seems to be the way that guys are wired.
Whereas in my experience, girls aren't that overt. I think this difference influences the way people approach sexuality - the shamelessness guys show kind of undermines any real criticism of their promiscuity, and because they act as though it is some kind of conquest/victory, it's automatically framed as a positive.
And because it's a victory for the guy, the flipside has to go with the girl - they've been "conquered". I guess that's where the really misogynist impression of sex as something a guy does to a girl comes from.

ie. general asshole guys subconscious ideas about sex:
Guys failing at sex = weakness
Girls being conquered by a guy = weakness
Guys getting laid = totally rad
Girls stopping guys from getting laid = standing between the man and his mission. Friget!


Ugh, its all bullshit.

sorry about the rant. i didnt sleep last night, im a bit overtired.

 

[Tulipa]

emasculate: deprive of strength or vigor/to castrate a male.

Methinks you got your verbs mixed up.

 

[esquared]

ugh yes. told you im tired.
masculinize. i guess is the best word.

 

[Slidey]

if he admits to it, you don't need to go on to explain

Fuck you've got such a retardly black and white view of the universe. Learn to read quantifiers and qualifiers or you're going to continue getting nowhere fast in social interaction.

 

[boris]

You fail at life.

.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

Fuck you've got such a retardly black and white view of the universe. Learn to read quantifiers and qualifiers or you're going to continue getting nowhere fast in social interaction.

I know right? I mean... I don't understand how admitting the folley of your own mind makes you a worse person. Recently I admitted to a friend of mine that I think I probably would cheat on a girl given the right circumstances and she thought it was just terrible, to me I was just being a lot more honest with myself/her than most people are :\

I doubt I ever would cause I'm oh so nice, but people prefer to hear lies about how we're all perfectly moral.

 

[bassistx]

I think we need to realise that for a lot of men, getting laid is really masculizing. And masculizing things tend to be reflected communally, ie. guys coming up to their mates and saying shit like "SHIT YEAH I FINGERED HER BEHIND THE BIKE RAXXX!" and hi-5ing each other and stuff. I find the ridiculous sharing of sexual conquests a bit homoerotic, but it seems to be the way that guys are wired.
Whereas in my experience, girls aren't that overt. I think this difference influences the way people approach sexuality - the shamelessness guys show kind of undermines any real criticism of their promiscuity, and because they act as though it is some kind of conquest/victory, it's automatically framed as a positive.
And because it's a victory for the guy, the flipside has to go with the girl - they've been "conquered". I guess that's where the really misogynist impression of sex as something a guy does to a girl comes from.

ie. general asshole guys subconscious ideas about sex:
Guys failing at sex = weakness
Girls being conquered by a guy = weakness
Guys getting laid = totally rad
Girls stopping guys from getting laid = standing between the man and his mission. Friget!


Ugh, its all bullshit.

sorry about the rant. i didnt sleep last night, im a bit overtired.

That made me melt

For they cannot be taken seriously if they were to be smart AND pretty. (the dumb blonde stigma etc)

So I suppose to be taken seriously, you need to be ugly.
All I'm saying is that every other language continues to have its feminine and musculine words except the English language (correct me if I'm wrong?). We have our physical differences and that is reflected in language. It's how we differentiate between the sexes (in a non-derogatory way):
e.g.
The actor ate cake
The actress ate cake

Huge difference. With the first one, it's confusing because you don't know their gender. I honestly don't see anything wrong with "amiga" and "amigo". I wouldn't like be referred to in the musculine form - that just emphasises that men are superior and any feminine words must be eliminated. Male = power.

Chadd: I don't have anything against people who are honest. I'm not being black/white/no shades of grey, but you responded to the accusation and that was good enough for me. Doesn't mean you go into the black pile, though. But it might've shut up Slidey if I'd said "you possess some chauvinistic characterisitics" instead

 

[scaredytiger]

okay. so i read most of the first page and the last page, (the thread was too long, it started hurting my brain) so forgive me if i missed something.

feminism, in its core form, like any anti-discrimination movement, is about freedom.

feminism should be embraced by all women. in its true light, it is about having the freedom to be a corporate woman OR a housewife. it is about having the right to be female in any job, to have fair wages, and to be accepted as a human being.


feminism is not about makeup
feminism is not about hair removal
feminism is not about the clothes you wear
feminism is not about your life choices
feminism is not about dominating the male species


it is about freedom and choice. the choice to become a lawyer, or a social worker, or something else entirely. the choice to wear jeans or wear a skirt. the choice to have children or not.

(note: the following are general statements, and meant as such)

women do not have the same brains as men. they generally have better language skills and express themselves better verbally. they also have less visio-spacial capacity. they are more compassionate, have better connections between left and right brains. they will multitask better, while males tend to focus better. they are better at looking at things outside the box, while males will often be better at linear thinking.

this means a woman will be likely to excell at:
teaching, nursing, childcare, literature studies, sociology and the like.

they will have a disadvantage in:
maths and science areas, especially higher maths. maps are harder to read for females, etc.

there are exceptions. so dont bite my head off telling me im wrong and you are proof. for example, my best subject is maths. and im an apathetic little bitch. so i know, okay?

so yes, im a feminist. because i realise that its about being able to do what YOU want. not doing what you think a feminist would do.

and yes. i rant.

 

[Slidey]

okay. so i read most of the first page and the last page, (the thread was too long, it started hurting my brain) so forgive me if i missed something.

feminism, in its core form, like any anti-discrimination movement, is about freedom.

feminism should be embraced by all women. in its true light, it is about having the freedom to be a corporate woman OR a housewife. it is about having the right to be female in any job, to have fair wages, and to be accepted as a human being.


feminism is not about makeup
feminism is not about hair removal
feminism is not about the clothes you wear
feminism is not about your life choices
feminism is not about dominating the male species


it is about freedom and choice. the choice to become a lawyer, or a social worker, or something else entirely. the choice to wear jeans or wear a skirt. the choice to have children or not.

(note: the following are general statements, and meant as such)

women do not have the same brains as men. they generally have better language skills and express themselves better verbally. they also have less visio-spacial capacity. they are more compassionate, have better connections between left and right brains. they will multitask better, while males tend to focus better. they are better at looking at things outside the box, while males will often be better at linear thinking.

this means a woman will be likely to excell at:
teaching, nursing, childcare, literature studies, sociology and the like.

they will have a disadvantage in:
maths and science areas, especially higher maths. maps are harder to read for females, etc.

there are exceptions. so dont bite my head off telling me im wrong and you are proof. for example, my best subject is maths. and im an apathetic little bitch. so i know, okay?

so yes, im a feminist. because i realise that its about being able to do what YOU want. not doing what you think a feminist would do.

and yes. i rant.

Lots of incorrect generalisations of neuroscience there hay. 'Left' and 'right' brains don't even exist as valid scientific concepts in psychology.

And even supposing they were, you really confused their supposed definitions; visual/spatial/kinesthetic learning (supposedly the right brain) is associated with increased emotional complexity and higher abstraction (non-linear processing). Auditory learning (supposedly the left brain) in comparison is associated with linear, logical processing. These learning-processing associations tend to be accurate, however their association with brain hemispheres is extremely weak and unfounded.

You also claim males focus better. It is in fact the opposite; females focus better and have better stimulus control. This is one of the reasons ADHD tends to go unnoticed longer in girls whilst is typically acutely obvious in males.

Further, most studies suggest girls do fine at maths and science and the deviations we see in reality are due primarily to nurture not nature (i.e. social attitude, not brain chemistry).

 

[scaredytiger]

a masculine brain has a better makeup for see a diagram on paper and putting it into a 3d object in their minds. thats what i meant about viso-spacial capacity

and the way information is stored in the brain is different.

girls do fine in maths and science, yes.

but youll find that most of the science courses in NSW are based on writing what the concepts are as much as mathematical skill. and youll find theres many more males understanding ext 1 & 2 maths.

are you trying to tell me that the presence of different hormones in ones brain does not affect what aspects of thought they are suited to?

 

[Slidey]

a masculine brain has a better makeup for see a diagram on paper and putting it into a 3d object in their minds. thats what i meant about viso-spacial capacity

Really? Source?

and the way information is stored in the brain is different.

Yeah? In what way? I've read studies that show boys (and people with ADHD) have larger amygdalas than girls, and the average for their sex, respectively. The amygdala is the area of the brain most often associated with being "right-brained", but it is also the emotional, parallel processing area of the brain, which you are claiming is stronger in girls, not boys.

Regardless, the amygdala deviations might influence what boys prefer to do in comparison to girls, but increasing ability to do it doesn't seem to be the case; boys and girls still tend to process memory the same way.

Not to mention that for people with ADHD, the enhanced amygdala growth is not genetic, but a response to ADHD; the brain tries to compensate for deficits in focus, stimulus-ordering and temporal/spatial scheduling by increasing amygdala strength.

If it is societal for ADHD, then it's easily possible it's also societal for males, considering the obvious differences in what society expects and how it treats males compared to females.

but youll find that most of the science courses in NSW are based on writing what the concepts are as much as mathematical skill.

Yeah, which is why, being a spatial learner, I found them very difficult. For some reason the BOS has converted the courses to rote learning. Gifted people (PC term for high intelligence), people with ADHD, and most boys respond poorly to rote learning, whilst girls tend to respond to it better as it is more closely associated with auditory processing.

and youll find theres many more males understanding ext 1 & 2 maths.

And you'll find society in general encourages boys, not girls, to do maths, no?

If I were to approach this from a completely objective perspective, tbh I'd be applying Occam's razor and going with the hypothesis that deviation in appreciation for maths between males and females was due to societal expectations (since we already know this to be a strong correlation), rather than trying to claim it's due to some sort of difference in the black box that is the brain.

are you trying to tell me that the presence of different hormones in ones brain does not affect what aspects of thought they are suited to?

Pretty much; the neurotransmitter deviations are not large enough to produce the social differences we actually see in humans. You seem to be picking up any old hypothesis in sociology and popular 'science' and trying to use it to validate some sort of biological basis for a logic/emotion dichtomy between men and women. In reality it's far more logical that the majority of social differences between men and women are due to the creation of an arbitrary binary class system (based on sex). I've read compelling evidence which suggests human society wouldn't have progressed to this point without such a sex-based social system.

It's far more likely to be due to neuroplasticity than it is genetically determined brain chemistry deviation. As an example: a person from an east Asian culture thinks differently to an American person, and approaches problem solving from a different perspective. It's not because of brain chemistry difference or genetics, but because of the impact of society on brain development. East Asians found relative judgements easier (and absolute ones harder) whilst the reverse was true for Americans, and they used different areas of the brain to solve the same problem. (Probably explains why most Americans don't understand British humour, and can so easily blind themselves into believing in things like creationism)

Basically, I think you really underestimate neuroplasticity.

 

[scaredytiger]

my source is "BrainSex: The Real Differences Between Men and Women" by Anne Moir & David Jessel


is it not possible, that male and female brains choose different ways to utilise the parts of the brain?

hormones are present from before birth, they define which way your body is created. surely they would affect the blueprint of your brain at that stage, at least.


btw. amen to the stuff on rote learning.
physics = hard.
i get all the maths right
but i think the main thing i learnt other than that is:
"edison electricuted a elephant named topsy, now we hate him"

which im sure wont be very useful in the exam.
doesnt help we have a retard who writes our worksheets and talks about "fluxies" getting their tail feathers cut off. and then goes into a random social comment in the middle of an explanation.

yes. i got off the topic. shh.


oh and my family has always been pushed in maths(mathematically gifted family), with no gender bias. my brother still is the best. electrical engineering degree and all. not to say that i/my sisters, i topped my year without fail in advanced maths until i skipped a year. (effectively skipping year 10) i went to queensland and topped maths there, then came back halfway through last year and messed up my knowledge of the curriculums. ie. maths b =/= 2Umaths.

anyhow, i should get ready for school.
</rant>

 

[boris]

Moir and Jessel explain that the presence or absence of hormones is as important as XX or XY chromosomes in determining the sex of a fetus.

No shit, welcome to Human Reproduction 101.

Men's brains are more specialized (which has advantages and disadvantages). Their abilities are those centered in the right hemisphere of the brain -- understanding spatial relationships and abstractions, seeing shapes and patterns, grasping the big picture. Women's abilities are less specific: The two spheres of the female brain are able to communicate more easily. Their strengths, however, lie in the left hemisphere -- verbal and linguistic skills; assimilating practical, concrete information; keeping track of the details.

I've actually heard this before, it's not new and it's quite legit.

http://www.natall.com/national-vanguard/116/bookreviews.html

 

[Captain Gh3y]

http://www.natall.com/national-vanguard/116/bookreviews.html

umm nice source

 

[Slidey]

my source is "BrainSex: The Real Differences Between Men and Women" by Anne Moir & David Jessel

Sounds like popular science; you can find a popular science book defending any "scientific" theory. I'm not convinced; I'd prefer some reference studies.

is it not possible, that male and female brains choose different ways to utilise the parts of the brain?

As stated before; yes, however as that study of Asians/Amercians proved, the basis for this difference can be 100% societal rather than genetic.

Furthermore, your original point was that boys are actively significantly better at some things compared to girls, and vice versa; even accepting some amount neural variation due to genetics, how can you claim such a thing true when you've got so much influence from society?

I'm not somebody who denies genetic involvement in brain chemistry. But I think it is an idiot who believes society plays a minimal role in brain differentiation between sexes; evidence points to it having the ultimate deciding role in how a person develops neurologically.

hormones are present from before birth, they define which way your body is created. surely they would affect the blueprint of your brain at that stage, at least.

Don't confuse growth hormones with neurotransmitters. It's actually predominantly growth hormones (enzymes, not amines) produced by the gonads that determine sexual structure and difference. Namely: FSH, LH, LHRH.

btw. amen to the stuff on rote learning.
physics = hard.
i get all the maths right
but i think the main thing i learnt other than that is:
"edison electricuted a elephant named topsy, now we hate him"

I hated the maths in physics and chemistry. I didn't really 'get' it. I'm better at holistic concepts - which is why I loved the more wordy stuff in physics/chem (not the rote learning or the word problems, but the big concepts). My favourite subjects were advanced English and 4-unit maths. Everytime I did an English essay I made it up from scratch and the one I did in the exam tended to be at least 50% different conceptually to the draft I'd practiced.

which im sure wont be very useful in the exam.
doesnt help we have a retard who writes our worksheets and talks about "fluxies" getting their tail feathers cut off. and then goes into a random social comment in the middle of an explanation.

yes. i got off the topic. shh.

lol. Is that biology? Never did bio at school. Caught up through molecular bio and animal/plant bio at uni.

oh and my family has always been pushed in maths(mathematically gifted family), with no gender bias. my brother still is the best. electrical engineering degree and all. not to say that i/my sisters, i topped my year without fail in advanced maths until i skipped a year. (effectively skipping year 10) i went to queensland and topped maths there, then came back halfway through last year and messed up my knowledge of the curriculums. ie. maths b =/= 2Umaths.

It's more than familial. You've got an entire society that implicitly (often explicitly) believes boys are better than girls at maths, and encourages a language/logic dichotomy.

For all the effect your family has on shaping you, it is dwarfed by that of society (unless you're home-schooled and don't watch TV or something).

anyhow, i should get ready for school.

Why, so you can do some more rote learning and spend some more time waiting for the other kids to catch up with you? Haha enjoy your day.

I've actually heard this before, it's not new and it's quite legit

I've heard it before, too. I used to be a proponent until I discovered 'left' and 'right' brained (based on hemispheres) is dismissed as pseudo-science by neurologists and psychologists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_function

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum#Sexual_dimorphism

Again, I'd be very interested in reference studies.

Study finds females significantly outperform males on timed tasks, also finds males outperform females in many aspects of verbal communication: http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=4717