Giftfromme said:
You look at a girl and she doesn't keep eye contact? She could be shy you know.
...Relevance to what I said? Because I'm not seeing any.
Forgive me if I sound a little condescending. I'm trying not to be, but I don't see how this is in any way difficult to understand.
Sexual harassment refers the act of making
persistent and/or
unwanted sexual advances. Sometimes, yes, you can't know whether an advance was unwanted or not,
but you can usually have a pretty good guess. If you do something in full knowledge that it might make someone else uncomfortable, own your actions, don't push them off onto someone else because some bitches be totally down with that, accept that you were perfectly okay with the risk that you were making someone uncomfortable with your actions on the off-chance it might get you in their pants. What does that say about you? What does it say about the entire male gender role?
You're trying to break this down into "unacceptable" actions in order to demonstrate that having any kind of personal integrity in this regard is impossible. It's really not and I refuse to believe you're incapable of reasonable judgement in this regard. Staring at someone is fine. Staring at someone persistently when it's obvious (or should be obvious) that they don't want you to is pathetic. Hitting on someone is fine. Whipping your cock out at them or following them down the street is pathetic.
I'd say the worst part about being in any way pro-feminist is having to argue with men who will go to extreme lengths to defend the idea that they are fucking morons. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? Let's face it, you're perfectly capable of exercising sound judgement in this regard, and maybe the reason you sometimes don't is because sometimes the risk of harassing someone just doesn't seem like a very big deal to you, and why the fuck should it?
..unless of course you're willing to account for someone else's feelings as something more than a prolonged puzzle sequence with vagina as a reward.
If it's not obvious, I'm deliberately exaggerating. I'm not actually accusing you of anything, like I said I just have no fucking idea how anyone in the 21st century doesn't understand how to avoid harassing someone.
Giftfromme said:
But what is the point of enforcing equality in this arena?
Who is talking about enforcing equality?
Giftfromme said:
ou can't nor should you enforce people change their opinions on this arena.
I'm not. I'm arguing that they should.
Third time this thread, feminism is not mind-control.
Giftfromme said:
These opinions are formed over centuries and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand or considered irrelevant.
Why not? Is there some merit to these opinions? What do they actually do?
Giftfromme said:
You can negotiate gender roles and relationships over the course of a larger society, but you should never serve to neutralize these. That would defeat the ongoing negotiation in society on gender roles etc.
...
At this point, I'm really really confused as to what you think feminism is and, more importantly, what it does. Again, it's not mind control.
Giftfromme said:
These come with a long history and are not trivial or should be discarded.
Wrong on every count.
These ideas have always changed, were always trivial, and have always been discarded when they outlived their usefulness. Even today, there are multiple competing ideas about what constitutes each of these things, in fact our friend in picture number one represents just such a position. In terms of its mutability, our society is no different to any previous one. The only difference is that we have a new vocabulary with new concepts which enables us to actually talk about it.
Your logic, if I'm reading it correctly, is basically that society shouldn't change because it must be how it is for a reason. That's circular.
Giftfromme said:
It's not just men who decide social values, it's women too.
Relevance?
You're right, of course, but I don't see any relevance to anything.
Feminism, certainly modern feminism, isn't really about who "decides" social values, it's about who the beneficiaries are. Just because you're given a "decision" doesn't mean the decision is always fair.
Giftfromme said:
When we talk about evolutionary history, you need to understand that it's mostly institutions that we have put a blanket over our age-old ways that stops us from acting like we used to.
Oh right..
..so, if institutions can do that, why is evolutionary history even relevant?
Giftfromme said:
Surely in our new evolved society, such a trait, behaviour etc (or whatever you call it) that in fact evolved while we were on the savannah should have been wiped out by now?
Let me explain to me what you just did.
1) You took an incident which occurs
in a modern society.
2) You randomly decided it is not only an instinct rather than learned skill (proposing a whole load of original assumptions in the process, which I'll cover in a second) but evolved in a very specific environment and for a specific purpose, all without any evidence beyond the fact that it exists and must have a cause.
3) You used this to make a broad claim about the nature of every single person in the world.
In order for this to be accurate, we have to propose several original or contested assumptions.
1) That early hominids formed long-term pair bondings.
2) That despite doing so, they would still mate with other individuals in secret.
3) That there was some reason why it was important to know when this was happening.
There's a much simpler explanation, which is generally when you marry someone you spend a large proportion of your time with them. It's very hard to lie perfectly to someone who knows you very well, particularly when said lie manifests in your behavior.
This is just random theorizing. I know it's bad form to critique a study you've never read, but I fail to see how this one could have produced the conclusion you stated scientifically.
Giftfromme said:
Dunno what else to say about the rape thing. Biological urges are powerful and any amount of mental acrobatics can be done to justify a particular act. A man might look at all the advertising and think that everyone bar him is getting laid. He might then use that as an excuse to get rape if he's desperate enough. Anything could be used as an excuse. Education will hardly stop that from happening.
If "biological urges" are so powerful that men simply can't control their urge to rape, then why don't all men do it? Why do some women? Why do so many men rape their current or former sexual partners? Why do men in seemingly healthy sexual relationships commit rape? Why do some rapists fail to ejaculate or get an erection during the act?
"Desperation" really doesn't seem to come into it for most people who commit the crime.
It's impossible to concretely say at this point to say if "education" can genuinely effect men's chances of committing rape, but there is too much evidence that it can to simply dismiss the possibility out of hand based on unwarranted personal conviction. There are plenty of studies suggesting rape myth acceptance as a strong predictor of the likelihood of someone committing rape, for example.
