GunsmithKitten said:
Yet those same dangerous jobs are heralded in society and are paid higher, wouldn't ya know, while housework is almost universally scorned as the domain of the lazy and lowest common denominator.
While housework is probably derided to some extent by many yes, it's not exactly a top paying or glamourized job to be working in a coal mine and/or sewer either. I don't see anyone heralding the job of garbage man, nor do I see many women in said job.
I don't think you could then either really honestly say that physical strength or upper body strength is justification that many of these jobs are just impractical for women to do, it's not like you need to be exceptionally strong for most of them. E.g. operating power tools or w/e.
The potential inherent dangers of being a man are definitely ignored more than the potential inherent dangers of being a woman, in fairness. It is factual that there are many and it is factual that many men (and very much mostly men) are forced into working very dangerous and crappy jobs by the reality of their circumstances. Main difference is that nobody cares.
I mean, it's like "wasn't it **** to be a woman 100 years go?", yes, I suppose it was... but at the end of the day, I'd still know what I'd rather be from 1914-1918 in Europe.
Nobody ever really seems to be allowed point out how terrible the alternative might be.
Schadrach said:
I've seen it used as I described above to argue that gay rights are really about misogyny and thus we should really be talking about women's rights instead. It's silly, it's fallacious, but you see it fairly often.
Yes, this IS a good one I've noticed.
Ever notice there seems to be a conscious or semi-conscious effort to drive a wedge between homosexual men and heterosexual men? It's back to this whole "straight white man" business where extremists go off on a deluded tin-foil hat ramble, where the SWM is implicitly the root of all evil, or the discussion is structured to give such an impression.
The implication apparently being that not being any one of those 3 gets you off scot-free and absolves you of the sins you otherwise would have inherited through some sort of Lamarckism.
The implication being that homosexual men hardly count as men at all, and certainly must be blatantly distinct from most men to even the most casual glance. And they're all effeminate. All of them. Meanwhile there are no heterosexual men who could be described as effeminate (only the gays do that. Always. Even in the 80s). Why... *mock surprise* isn't it a strange conclusion... we appear to have separated the homosexual men from the heterosexual, placing them in a position far closer to that of women, as though men's issues are not theirs and heterosexual men are drawn against both. It's almost as though the discussion were contrived to give such an outcome from the beginning. Amazing ^_o
Then we no longer need talk about the rights of homosexual men as though they were men who didn't have rights, eliminating the need to discuss men's rights in the first place.
Lesson is, I think: It's important to remember there are deluded crazies everywhere to every degree with every opinion you can imagine. Probably the most dangerous of these are the ones that rest in certain sweet spots where they're not quite out-there enough to appear totally mad, but just enough to take a semi-reasonable discussion and be seen as legitimate enough to be allowed take it somewhere surreal.
Schadrach said:
My own university was not terribly far off parity for overall student body when I attended, but the college of engineering as a whole was 7:1 male:female (economics, nursing, dental hygiene, and printing were all pretty female dominated and balanced the overall out), and the computer science department was 14:1. There was one woman graduating comp sci at the same time I did, and she was an exchange student from...Korea, I think. This was around the turn of the millennium.
Yeah, it was something similar in my CS course. I think there may have been about 5 or 6 throughout the whole 4 years (think some seemed to have come later, maybe some left at some point) from at the start maybe... 70 or so people total.
Pity, I suppose, thinking back.
hooksashands said:
And you know what? It pisses me off too. They ruin it for ALL OF US, not just the girls. Put yourself in my shoes for one moment. Because of all this bullshit, I now have a target painted on my back for no other reason than being a guy who likes videogames. Suddenly all my motives are suspect. Don't like a female character? Sexist. Disagree with Anita Sarkeesian's solutions involving censorship? Sexist. Playfully flirt with someone in a game lobby? Sexist. These are all things that have happened to me. I know what it's like to be persecuted based on gender.
Ya, and when we get to the "you don't know what it's like, you're looking at X from the outside" business, people should keep this in mind.
It's not nice to feel like you have to watch your every word/move because you're assumed by default because of your gender/sexuality/race to be some sort of Nazi sociopath rapist without a problem in the world, and you know damn well you will NEVER get the benefit of the doubt primarily because nobody actually cares if you're any of those things because it's more about appearances and political reasons.
It's not fair to expect people to try and put themselves in your shoes, if you're not willing to genuinely try and do the same and imagine what it would realistically feel like to be in theirs, and not disregard their concerns out of hand because of some old-fashioned preconception you so desperately don't want to challenge.
Mechalynx said:
As a gamer for most of my conscious life, just happening to be of female persuasion, this looks like a horrible idea to me. It basically limits the free speech, or as Simon Phoenix would say, their right to be assholes. Paying assholes at that. Some sort of punishment is due for the biggest offenders, but I can see the franchise lose customers fast if they are permanently prevented from getting full use of the product they paid for.
Yeahhhh... kinda much along the lines of what I was feeling.
In the sense that: surely we can agree there is or can be a lot of rather extreme activity that goes on in online games which ought to be stopped. I'd rather call it harassment. You know the kind. When people are properly targeted and disproportionately attacked. Such as whenever any woman use voice chat in a game ever
, well maybe slight exaggeration but probably just about. That kind of "high-end" stuff surely needs to be rooted out.
But then on the lower end, I think it's only right and practical that people have the "right to be assholes" as you say. Not even because it may be right or desirable even, but just that you have to have some kind of personal discretion I think. Then people can hold themselves back appropriately... or not. Mute them, kick them, whatever. It can police itself at that point and will turn out reasonably fine. Would we really want an anger-free and reasonable interweb anyway? It's part of what makes it the interweb. We can't have people afraid to loosen up and relax and maybe say things they shouldn't sometimes.
Women in games surely get a lot of pure harassment though more than just about anyone else (Except maybe 12 year olds >__> but who cares). There's a lot of bull**** when it comes to the topic of sexism IMO at least, but I think this one is hard to argue.
