Like a good example would be when MRA bring up that there is only one male-centered domestic violence shelter in America, and hundreds of female ones. And the question they ask is why can't we take a few of those female shelters and funding and turn them into male shelters, when the real question is why can't we take some military funding and use it to make more men and women abuse shelters.
The real question is why does any shelter that receives funding have to be one for women? Unfortunately that one has a pretty simple answer that's tied into VAWA and the gendered language it uses. That gendered language is not an accident, because the previous and woefully insufficient federal domestic violence law the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act was not so awash in gendered language.
It's also notable that VAWA has the almost standard disclaimer that programs funded by it are not allowed to discriminate with respect to the usual list of traits including sex, but then afterward includes a provision that a funded program may discriminate with respect to actual or perceived sex or gender (and yes, this can fuck over trans people too, not just cis males) if it really feels it needs to, and that doing so doesn't violate the not being allowed to discriminate thing so long as they provide some kind of alternative -- kinda like "separate but equal" but without the “but equal" part even being suggested. It's also notable that all programs funded by VAWA must serve women.
If you wonder who might oppose moving that kind of law to more gender neutral language, look to the UK. Because that's an argument that's been going on for a good chunk of the last year over there. Do you notice anything funny about what sorts of ideologies regarding sex and gender many of the opponents of that seem to have in common?
Yes, and, as always, we have to remember that the majority of combat positions (in Western militaries) are held by men because women aren't allowed. Women are fighting for the right to serve, but haven't got that far (yet).
In the US at least, all positions are currently open to women, and have been for a few years. There's actually a case on the Supreme Court docket arguing that this fact changes the situation enough to reconsider the previous case regarding Selective Service. The case on the docket is called National Coalition For Men vs Selective Service. The original lawyer for the case and VP of NCFM was murdered last year, which is how they ended up with an ACLU lawyer taking the case in his stead.
Want to take bets on whether they'll come up with a new excuse why selective service should only apply to men, require women sign up too, or abolish it altogether? I'm pretty sure that second one is the least likely result, and if it happens it will just be a very temporary bridge to the third.
How about enjoying equal rights and privileges as human beings?
That's a surprisingly MRA-friendly position to take. Unless you just pretend that laws, policies and procedures that discriminate against men (for example, Selective Service as mentioned immediately above) don't count, which I suspect you just might.
I know you feel a law requiring corporate boards to be at least half women (no maximum, of course) isn't a problem, for example. What if one were to propose a law requiring at least half of all incoming college students and graduates be men (men are currently underrepresented in both), would that be acceptable or is that different? It would be a brute force counter to a disparity that's been going on for decades, after all.
They make good points about injustice towards men, and then they do a heel-turn and accuse feminism of making things worse.
Do you believe that the laws and their application should be gender neutral? So there was a push a few years back in the UK to not give women prison sentences except in the most extreme cases (no changes needed in how to punish men, of course it's OK to imprison them), and a more recent to make domestic violence law in the UK gender neutral. Who do you think supported the first and opposed the second, and what sorts of ideologies do you think they tend to identify with?
Women do not need to earn the right to join society.
Instead, they should be specially reserved positions so that they aren't forced to have to compete with men? This of course only applies to anything beneficial or prestigious that women do not make up at least half of - any negative aspect of society that women are less than half of doesn't imply any change needs made, and any positive thing that women are half or more of definitely doesn't need that kind of brute force adjustment in favor of men.
I see where you are confused. The actual complaint is that these male directors are being picked based on that they are male and that they know others on the board. Not on their ability
...and the best conceivable response is to explicitly reserve a minimum of half the positions for women forevermore? Because laws and policies like that one don't get repealed as soon as the supposed discrimination they're meant to challenge becomes less of a "problem". Look at policies and programsintended to fix the problem of there not being enough women in college for examples.
women can and do get pregnant and are able to opt out of dangerous duty.
I've always felt that women in the military that might be deployed should be subject to mandatory contraception. We've done far worse to men who are functionally government property. But the opposite happens with military women, we actually loosen standards for them (specifically just for the women - different physical fitness standards, different uniform standards, etc).
Yep, I think workplace death mainly happening to men is systemic sexism. But, no one is intentionally doing it.
I could give you that, but have you ever noticed the conversation that feminists tend to want to have about the topic if they bring it up unprompted? The last time I saw feminists talk about workplace deaths it was to say that the leading cause of workplace deaths of women was homicide, while it's much farther down the list for men. Which is true, but that's not because women are uniquely imperiled as it was used to imply, but rather because men and women are killed by homicide in the workplace at a similar rate, there's just a whole bunch of things that kill way more men in front of it on the list.
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