Examples of how Feminism works to benefit men

[rbstewart7263]

off handed comments toward the existence of another gender thread,

You do know that isn't a reportable offence right? And doing so would be an abuse of the report function, which is against the rules.

Ironic huh?


OT: Feminism benefits men because, as a man, I want to live in a world of equality.

It also means that my fiancee can earn the same potential money I can and then I can be a man of leisure.

Win!

Indeed tis true. Means I can whore myself out to lawyers and nurses whos fucked up schedules make them sex bandits! hrmm yes yes!

oddly enough when you exclude ceo pay which is a whopping 475/1% in favor of the ceos income. Well the gender gap in terms of pay is a meagre 5%.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Women voting has helped elect officials that may have other wise not been elected.

Women working has bettered the economy beyond my imagining. If it weren't for them in WWII, there would have been an economic and militaristic shit storm. Women working has also driven many families upwards in class; instead of having one income these families have two.

Women as leaders, both public and private, has lead to a wider range of ideas being shared.

Women in the military have probably saved many men's lives and have helped win conflicts.

tldr: in general it's hard to imagine how including the 50% of the human race after years of oppression doesn't benefit the other half.

 

[Axolotl]

Actually most married women did not work prior to WWII.

Do you have any evidence to back that up? Because I know for a fact that at least in my family, all the women worked for several generations prior to WWII.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Women voting has helped elect officials that may have other wise not been elected.

Women working has bettered the economy beyond my imagining. If it weren't for them in WWII, there would have been an economic and militaristic shit storm. Women working has also driven many families upwards in class; instead of having one income these families have two.

Women as leaders, both public and private, has lead to a wider range of ideas being shared.

Women in the military have probably saved many men's lives and have helped win conflicts.

tldr: in general it's hard to imagine how including the 50% of the human race after years of oppression doesn't benefit the other half.

very true.

Also television and videogames. without the ladies we wouldnt have the portal 2.

Some great literature too. ooku comes to mind.


editortal 1

 

[Hagi]

See above, the one person that I actually quoted is one of said people, all everybody else was told is that they didn't actually answer the Thread accordingly.

Which is the part I replied to.

They have no obligation whatsoever to do so.

Now please, tell me more about how I should wear protection and how amazingly snarky you can be as well.

Nah, judging by how you left everything out that would have been uncomfortable for you, I think you've had enough.

All points unrelated to the point I made.

You're calling out other posters, besides the one you quoted, for not doing something they have no obligation whatsoever to do.

You're claiming that other posters, besides the one you quoted, are providing shoddy arguments without yourself giving any argumentation whatsoever on that. Saying it's enough that you find it easy to prove.

Now please, stop trying to be snarky and acting like you don't care. You wouldn't have written such a huge post if you did not and just stop calling out posters on things they've no obligation to do... It's not that hard...

 

[Eynimeb]

I will admit. I'm fairly cynical about how many women truly want equality, and not preferential treatment. My experiences have not been those of 'fairness and equality for all.'

*BUT* There is a *huge* way feminism benefits men, and will benefit men more in the future. It has attacked the ridiculous gender roles that both men and women have been forced into thus far. Men may still be held to those ridiculous gender roles right now, when it comes to things like relationships and expectations of financial performance, but it's inevitable that that will change.

Feminism made the first cut, by showing the world that unfair stereotypes can be discarded, no matter how ingrained they are. It may not be going smoothly, but it *is* allowing people to determine their own identity more and more, where they would otherwise be forced into a cookie cutter shape.

Even if it means many men will never be with a woman because most women won't settle for a guy who makes less than them (now that these women are getting their careers going), or has less education than them (now that women are getting more education), or they simply don't need a man. Those men at least have a choice in who they want to be. I personally think that's a huge thing in and of itself.

Look at bronies. That would have been unacceptable in times past. Indirectly, feminism (and other such movements) *have* caused a social revolution. (edit: just to be clear on this, I'm not saying bronies are all single; these examples are seperate.)

 

[Axolotl]

Actually most married women did not work prior to WWII.

Do you have any evidence to back that up? Because I know for a fact that at least in my family, all the women worked for several generations prior to WWII.

You are kidding right?

Spoiler: Wow, our education system must be failing if you are serious

From 1890-1930, women in the workforce were typically young and unmarried. They had little or no learning on the job and typically held clerical and teaching positions. Many women also worked in textile manufacturing or as domestics. Women promptly exited the work force when they were married, unless the family needed two incomes. Towards the end of the 1920s, as we enter into the second phase, married women begin to exit the work force less and less. Labor force productivity for married women 35?44 years of age increase by 15.5 percentage points from 10% to 25%.

In the beginning of the 20th century, women were regarded as society's guardians of morality; they were seen as made finer than men and were expected to act as such.[30] Their role was not defined as workers or money makers. Women were expected to hold on to their innocence until the right man came along so that they can start a family and inculcate that morality they were in charge of preserving. The role of men was to support the family financially.[31]

Yet at the turn of the 20th century, social attitudes towards educating young women were changing. Americans and Western Europeans were now educating their women more and more, in no small part because of the efforts of pioneering women to further their own education, defying opposition by male educators. By 1900, four out of five colleges accepted women and a whole coed concept was becoming more and more accepted.[32]

In the United States, it was World War I that made space for women in the workforce, amongst other economical and social influences. Due to the rise in demand for production from Europe during the raging war, more women found themselves working outside the home. In the first quarter of the century, women mostly occupied jobs in factory work or as domestic servants, but as the war came to an end they were able to move on to such jobs as: salespeople in department stores as well as clerical, secretarial and other, what were called, "lace-collar" jobs.[33] In July 1920, The New York Times ran a head line that read: "the American Woman ... has lifted her skirts far beyond any modest limitation"[30] which could apply to more than just fashion; women were now rolling up their sleeves and skirts and making their way into the workforce.

World War II allowed for millions of jobs for women. Thousands of American women actually joined the military: 140,000 in the Women's Army Corps (United States Army) WAC; 100,000 in the Navy (WAVE); 23,000 in the Marines; 14,000 in the Navy Nurse Corps and, 13,000 in the Coast Guard. Although almost none saw combat, they replaced men in non combative positions and got the same pay as the men would have on the same job. At the same time over 16 million men left their jobs to join the war in Europe and elsewhere, opening even more opportunities and places for women to take over in the job force.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_workforce#20th_century

Most women didn't work if they were married. It was only when they we needed them to work during the world wars that they started to work in any number and having had a taste, many didn't want to go back.

And from the same article

During the 19th century, an increasing number of women in Western countries took jobs in factories, such as textile mills, or on assembly lines for machinery or other goods. Women also worked as "hawkers" of produce, flowers, and other market goods, and bred small animals in the working-class areas of London. Piecework, which involved needlework (weaving, embroidery, winding wool or silk) that paid by the piece completed, was the most common employment for women in 19th century Great Britain. It was poorly paid, and involved long hours, up to 14 hours per day to earn enough wages to survive.[27] Working-class women were usually involved in some form of paid employment, as it provided some insurance against the possibility that their husband might become too ill or injured to support the family. During the era before workers' compensation for disability or illness, the loss of a husband's wages could result in the entire family being sent to a Victorian workhouse to pay debts.

Bolded for emphasis.

Do you have any evidence to back that up? Because I know for a fact that at least in my family, all the women worked for several generations prior to WWII.

Don't know from where you got that,

I got it from the women in question telling me that they'd always worked and that their mothers and grandmothers had worked as well.

but untill well into the 70's, it was legal and customary to sack women who got married.

Customary where?

And don't think for a moment that a woman could make a career. Their jobs were strictly to support themselves on a small scale untill they married. Education was also different for women, with the 'housekeeping school' instead of tertiary education, and during secondary education, there were different programs too. My father still attended a school where the boys got biology lessons (sexual education to be precise) while the girls were separated and taught knitting during the same hours.

Which doesn't really relate to whether or not they had jobs does it? I'm not saying they had an education, I'm saying that they worked.

And after that came a time when it was equal in principle, but the enablers to turn equal rights into actual equal acces were absent. The Christian parties prevented state funding for daycare untill well into the 90's in my country, ensuring that pretty much you could have either a career or children, but never both, unless you happened to marry a very wealthy guy willing to afford the expensive daycare just to allow you to work.

But that really only applies to your country doesn't it?

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

If women are no longer seen as weak men can defend themselves as properly against female assailants as they would against male assailants without total character assassination by society.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Isn't it commonsensical that there is nothing inherently wrong with it, least until reason leaves the issue and you get whack ass extremism.

But you know what they say about common sense.

Extremism is not something inherent to a movement/ideal/philosophy or what have you. You can have extremist opposition to a movement too (Anti-Feminist Extremism?), like people who vehemently oppose an ideal based on draconian principles/codes and hearsay.

People can object to principles or ideals until the cows come home, but there are people who are just unwavering in their mindset, despite having obscenely flimsy foundations.

I don't think there is a single cultural movement that isn't met with this kind of reaction. There is no clear cut right or wrong for these people, just social principles and dogma. They certainly don't see themselves as being ignorant or prejudicial.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Isn't it commonsensical that there is nothing inherently wrong with it, least until reason leaves the issue and you get whack ass extremism.

But you know what they say about common sense.

Extremism is not something inherent to a movement/ideal/philosophy or what have you. You can have extremist opposition to a movement too (Anti-Feminist Extremism?), like people who vehemently oppose an ideal based on draconian principles/codes and hearsay.

People can object to principles or ideals until the cows come home, but there are people who are just unwavering in their mindset, despite having obscenely flimsy foundations.

I don't think there is a single cultural movement that isn't met with this kind of reaction. There is no clear cut right or wrong for these people, just social principles and dogma. They certainly don't see themselves as being ignorant or prejudicial.

Most movements seem to create more over reaction at first than anything else. Then after awhile the crazies from both sides of the "train of thought" come out of the woodwork making everyone feel dumber.

Perhaps common sense should be called intelligent common sense, and common sense called idiot sense since the common person is an idiot locked in their own little world.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I can't believe this is even still a discussion.

Labour and Economics

* By decentralizing the importance of the male breadwinner role in favour of a shared household income, feminism has enabled many men to devote more of their lives to activities besides work.

* By demanding and de-stigmatizing access to family planning, feminism has allowed families and households greater control over the number of dependant children they must support, reducing the pressure on both male and female parents to provide and enabling them to spend more of their personal income on themselves.

* Feminism has played a large role in increasing overall productivity by enabling more people to work more efficiently, effectively benefiting the wealth of everyone.

Sexual Relationships

* By enabling women's sexual autonomy, feminism has resulted in an overall reduction in sex-related stigma and enabled a wider range of people in general to have sex more often and much more freely.

* There's a good argument that feminism has greatly improved not just the quantity but also the quality of sexual relationships for all partners involved by enabling a discourse of sex which focuses on individual pleasure rather than simply on "conquest" or reproduction. Anthony Giddens calls this the dissemination of the ars erotica, and it's not a bad thing if you like pleasure.

* By creating a world in which women are seen as active sexual consumers rather than passive objects of desire, feminism (and gay rights, but let's focus on feminism for now) has enabled men to regard themselves, through the eyes of women, as objects of beauty and desire. This is a mixed blessing, but on the whole it has been very good for most men. The ability to take pride in your appearance without it being a requirement for social acceptance (as it still often is for women) is, from a capability perspective, generally a good move.

* If you're LGBT.. well.. do I even need to say anything more? The campaign for acceptance on the part of gay and lesbian intimacy and transgendered identity, while separate and hard-fought battles in their own right, would not have been anything near as possible or successful without the spread of anti-essentialism, without "gender", without ideas which were first articulated by feminists during the struggle for sexual equality.

Health

* By making gendered health issues political, feminism has allowed them to achieve public visibility and to be a matter of public interest rather than a shameful secret. It is now possible to talk about impotence, prostate and testicular cancer and other specifically male health problems in public rather than merely in a private discussion with your GP.

The result is that men today, while they still lag behind women in terms of health awareness, are more aware of their own health than at any point in history.

Affiliation and Emotion

* Aside from sex roles, feminism has also offered men new ways of interacting with other human beings away from what were once considered to be the "intrinsic" traits of aggression, stoicness and competition. The ability of men to share emotional support and friendship with women, the ability to be caring or nurturing towards children, even the ability to create close bonds with other men have all been enhanced by the move towards social equality and away from essentialist narratives of polarized gender traits.

* Through the questioning of sex-specific behavioural trends, Feminism has also broadened the emotional capability of men. It has significantly reduced the stigma, for example, on men crying in public, it has allowed men to express strong emotional attachments, and it has begun the long process of dismantling the blight of fear and anxiety which has traditionally plagued male emotional development. Moreover, feminism has given men who desire to do so a language to articulate their own liberation.

Understanding

* Probably the most important thing which feminism has ever done is to give us a language and a conceptual "toolset" with which to explain the workings of gender and inequality in our society. Obviously, this has allowed for us to talk, for the first time, about the role of women in subject areas where their existence was previously ignored, but it also given us new tools for understanding and appreciating the subject position of men.

Without feminism, we could not have "men's studies" or "masculinity studies", for that matter, we could not have "gender studies", "disability studies", "LGBT studies", "queer studies", "[ethnicity] studies", certainly not in the form or at the level we current have them. Some of these things grew out of feminism, others grew up alongside and yet shared a common language and concepts. The fact remains that feminism has made an enormous contribution to scholarship, it has enormously broadened our understanding and the way in which we can study the world around us, and that has benefited anyone genuinely interested in any kind of knowledge in this area.

To quote Michael Kimmel: Feminism is always about men. Every time a feminist has said something about women, there is at least one man standing implicitly in that sentence who is nonetheless shaped and affected by what is being said. In rare cases, what has been said has been harmful or hateful towards men, but in almost every case it has been positive, it has been about increasing male capabilities and human development.

I could do this all day. I have just wheeled this post out without even thinking or stopping to look anything up. It's absolutely not a comprehensive list.

If you don't think feminism has done anything for men, then I don't think you understand how much of the world around you has been shaped by feminism.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Isn't it commonsensical that there is nothing inherently wrong with it, least until reason leaves the issue and you get whack ass extremism.

But you know what they say about common sense.

Extremism is not something inherent to a movement/ideal/philosophy or what have you. You can have extremist opposition to a movement too (Anti-Feminist Extremism?), like people who vehemently oppose an ideal based on draconian principles/codes and hearsay.

People can object to principles or ideals until the cows come home, but there are people who are just unwavering in their mindset, despite having obscenely flimsy foundations.

I don't think there is a single cultural movement that isn't met with this kind of reaction. There is no clear cut right or wrong for these people, just social principles and dogma. They certainly don't see themselves as being ignorant or prejudicial.

Most movements seem to create more over reaction at first than anything else. Then after awhile the crazies from both sides of the "train of thought" come out of the woodwork making everyone feel dumber.

Perhaps common sense should be called intelligent common sense, and common sense called idiot sense since the common person is an idiot locked in their own little world.

Let's call it as it is, there are crazy people, stupid people and ignorant people on all fronts. Common sense is not falling into any of those 3 categories. Feel free to expand on that, but I think it would be easier to define common sense by its disqualifiers rather then its qualifiers.

Good point. It seems that anyone with any sense of introspection will eventually see the ramblings of madmen and knuckle draggers, then think to themselves "do I sound like that?" and promptly re-access priorities and perspectives.

A self-righting mechanism for society perhaps?

 

[zehydra]

I will not participate in this thread because of this:

"that you accept the position that Feminism is a movement dedicated to equality of the sexes."

but that will not prevent me from stating the fact that this understanding of Feminism is naively false.