Poll: Emma Watson's Speech on Gender Equality

[wetnap]

SANITY! AT LONG LAST SANITY!

Seriously though, it's a good speech. Hopefully it goes somewhere.

It was terrible.

Instead of spending her time talking about real sexism in the world, she just reinforced the idea that western feminists are entitled women who are just trying to find anything to complain about.

So she was called bossy by her brothers for wanting to direct a play, non context, perhaps she was bossy, and her bossy attitude got her the role as the bossy hermione character she got to play, seems like she got rewarded for it, to a tune of 30 million dollars. So complaining about how you were treated as a kid in one incident is simply bonkers, kids pick on one another, reading too much into it is absurd. Her other example..her female friends stopped playing sports because they didnt want to be athletic, yea? So what. Is that trivial thing really evidence of "sexism" or the fact that men and women have different interests. I highly doubt those same friends followed sports the same way many male sports fan do, and male sports fans do not necessarily play the sport themselves either, its not because they are worried about their bodies, its because they don't want to, or they are lazy. But if one wanted to use the feminist mindset, it must be misandry that stops those mens from playing sports when they get older, held back by society, forced to be content watching from the side lines....
blaah...

She is part of the most privileged class in the world, white western wealthy attractive female. And she has the temerity to whine about supposed sexism in britain? It was laughable. She has more rights than men even, she gets to decide if a man becomes a father even against his consent, she can kill the child or force him to be a father, she has more right than a man. And that's just a start.





And this doesn't happen in a "misogynist" society.


If emma had to face paying up that level of support to her ex husbands based on her peak harry potter wages till her death, I don't think feminists would be so quiet on the issue. Feminists aren't for equality, they are for female advantage at any cost, and without regard for reason, so her attempt to rehabilitate the label is going to fall on death ears. You don't get people like Anita Sarkeesian being rewarded to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars by damseling herself if feminism doesn't have a problem. You don't have her protected with a wall of silence if the society is as sexist as claimed, well in the direction feminists want to claim it as being.

 

[DementedSheep]

It depends on the issue really.

Men generally are expected to be the stronger sex, but thats because we are. Not saying we don't have feelings, but we won't get anywhere as a society if we all go around being big blubbery messes because Phil wore the same shirt to the office today.

Yes, men need support for stuff like suicide, domestic abuse, rape. We also need our rights as a part of raising a child recognized.

My girlfriend is a feminist, but recognizes the need for gender roles, because if shes having a bad day, if I let her mood ruinine we'd just ***** and moan at each other and then the dogs wouldn't get walked. And if the dogs don't get walked then they shit and piss all over the house, then we're in a bad mood and there's shit and piss all over everything.

And that is an apt metaphore for the whole situation. Someone has to suck it up and get on with things, or it'll all get covered in shit. And piss.

What the hell? not all of us women (in fact very very few and I only say that because there is always someone somewhere) are stupid blubbery messes who cry over who wore the same shit and if she bitches and moans so much she can't even walk the dog when she had a bad day that sounds like an issue with her specifically.
Personally I'm all for ramping up the shame for women who are like that instead of making them think its ok because their just a women and women are expected to be pathetic. It should not be encourage or supported.

Edit: fixes, I suck at typing on this thing.

 

[josemlopes]

Basicly, everyone has to deal with their shit and no one as an easy ride. Add to that the feeling that the grass is always greener on the other side and its obvious that for some reason the other person always seems to have it easier.

 

[briankoontz]

It goes back to the first fact about slavery - a chain enslaves both sides - the one holding it and the one being held by it. The act of freedom, of breaking the chain, releases BOTH parties.

Gender equality greatly benefits both sides, as long as one perceives freedom, not power, as the primary goal in life. Gender equality is freedom for BOTH genders.

Emma Watson is wise beyond her years.

 

[DementedSheep]

What the hell? not all of us women are stupid blubbery messes who cry over who wore the same shit and if she bitches and moans so much she can't even walk the dog when she had a bad she can't walk the dog that sounds like in issue with her specifically.
Personally I'm all for ramping up the shame for women who are like that. It should not be encourage or supported.

Be fair, she could be walking the dog and encounter someone wearing the same wellies. Or, worse, walking the same (breed of) dog.

Oh the horror! You're right its better to just stay in the house.


Y'know my mom and I once wore the same shirt. To this day it makes me cry just thinking about it. *sob*
Now excuse me while I stuff my face with chocolate until the pain goes away.

 

[Westaway]

Nah I'm pretty sure gender roles exist because of biology, not social pressure.

 

[Tom Roberts]

I would say it was more confining when i was a teenager. The whole dont show emotions, dont ask for help did hinder me back then. As you get older, you start building up your "like I give a #$%^" stat.

I remember a documentary about Royal Marine A&MW commandos being trained. Had a guy talking about the aftermath of a battle, and telling them that it was alright to cry if you've just seen your mates die, forget it being "unmanly".

(As an aside, they also carry tampons in their survival kits, cotton wool is good for starting fires. Evidently Royal Marine commandos would never do well in sitcoms, cause they aren't embarrassed by tampons.)

As another aside they (tampons) are also excellent for soaking up blood (shocking!) and sealing the hole left once the two-way rifle range has been participated in. They even have that nifty applicator to slide in the hole easily if you can't see the wound well, cause it's say in your back.

 

[Weaver]

Why would you pick Emma Watson to be a UN Ambassador? What does an English Lit. degree and being in Harry Potter have to do with the political skill-set required here? I know this is a bit not part of the discussion, but I was pretty surprised to be honest.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

Almost certain she's not allowed to kill children either, though if that's on the cards maybe I could use her as a boogieman for the kids who keep kicking footballs into my garden.

That gave me a good laugh. "OI! One more football lands in my garden and Emma Watson'll come and kick the seven bells out of you!"

Seriously though, even I don't feel confined by gender male gender roles and masculinity, and I'm from Barnsley, a town where you are declared a "poof" if you don't go out every Friday night to get pissed and start fights with people who support the football team from the next town over. And I don't like football. I never really got an accent either, which is odd, seeing as though I have lived here all my life.

But then again, maybe I am confined but just don't really notice. I mean, I find I have to maintain a balance between pretending to be macho (or 'ard if you're from here) enough to not get beaten up, and not acting so much like "an 'ard lad" that people challenge me.

Actually though, thinking about it, I spend most of my time at home anyway, so even the above issue very rarely comes up, which basically means I don't even slightly have to think about gender roles. In fact the only gender stereotype that I follow is that I can use most basic tools to an acceptable degree, and even that wasn't a conscious decision to follow a gender role.

The women of my town (and generally the North of England) don't really conform to gender roles or stereotypes anyway, from what I've seen, and spend just as much time out getting smashed vomiting all over the town centre as the men, and are generally far from submissive, and indeed are often the loudest and most dominant in a group.

Now that is an odd thought. Turns out a town that still uses the word "thee" and misses the days when coal mining was a major industry is apparently quite modern in terms of gender equality. I think my point is that how confined to your gender roles you feel rather depends on where you are as much as anything.

 

[renegade7]

I really wish "Men's Rights" didn't have such an aggressive and hostile connotation. There are really are gender issues facing men that are a result of their being male and even though they ultimately have the same origins as the gender issues that women face there has not been equal progress in eliminating them.

The first point is the family gender roles men have to face. If you make less than your wife, people look down on you regardless of what your job is, and even the woman is affected by these roles. If you're over 30 and not married, good luck getting a raise or promotion at work: society considers unmarried men immature and untrustworthy. Even worse if you don't have kids.

And it's a double whammy of suck, because half of all marriages end in divorce. And that's NEVER good news for a man: even if you make substantially less than your wife, you're STILL going to be making "maintenance" payments and lose custody of your children. Maybe that's justified in some cases, but I can't believe that it's justified in all: divorce court proceedings are heavily unbalanced against men.

The modern face of depression is that of a woman. You NEVER see men in ads for anti-depressants, you rarely see male advocates for mental and emotional health, and while a teenage girl with ADHD is going to be written off as playful and imaginative, a teenage boy with ADHD is considered stupid. Men face depression just as much as women do, but because society says that it's "unmanly" to acknowledge your emotions they're told to stay quiet about it.

And the same goes for eating disorders. Turns out, teenage males have eating and body image disorders just as frequently as females. But because "body image" has ended up labeled a female issue, I doubt we're going to be seeing similar awareness campaigns for men's anxiety issues any time soon.

Prostate and testicular cancer claim similar numbers of lives as ovarian and breast cancer. Yet, funding for those two is several orders of magnitude less.

Male genital mutilation remains acceptable, in fact in some cases even desirable, in the US. Some traditional subcultures in the US even go so far as to perform the mutilation by BITING the foreskin off.

Homosexual men and boys are treated with far more hostility than homosexual women and girls.

Now, even though feminism is touched upon in a few of those, this was a statement of just a few of the issues that men face, not an attack on feminism or an attempt to provoke yet another round of "who's got it worse: feminism/MRA edition". Actually, feminism and progress towards gender equality for females is what has helped to start the male rights movement: horror stories of female genital cutting have been a primary driver in activism against male genital mutilation. If we didn't have women in the first place saying that maybe it isn't necessary to follow the traditional role of never working and being little more than a brood queen, then we wouldn't have men coming to similar realizations about the possibility of shaking off similarly backwards gender roles. SOMEONE had to get the ball rolling on eliminating unwanted gender roles, and in this case it just happened to be women.

So I agree with Watson. We need to acknowledge that men face social issues directly related to their being men, and we need to deal with them.

 

[Patrick Buck]

No. But, however, it would, if I weren't so anxiety prone. My anxiety holds me back more than anything, if I got through that, i imagine the sexism would start to matter more though. :S

 

[vid87]

I want to say no in that I openly embrace certain "feminine" qualities (sensitivity, open to talking and expressing feelings) while still liking more "masculine" things (action/adventure, martial arts). I find though that I still feel certain pressure for not "measuring up" in some ways - I can't stand talking about sports or cars and I'm such a lightweight it takes at most 2 drinks to knock me out. At least in terms of the latter point as an example, BOTH genders can drink me under the table and, while I know things are just as they are, I still feel weird about it even though I don't want to. It's like I used to at least relate to one end of the spectrum; now it just feels like I can't relate to either. I also find that, as someone who wants to be a writer, I have trouble figuring what would be considered a "good" female character without accidentally coming off as ignorant - not in the "she loves shoes!" way but whether or not she should begin as essentially Batman.

I will say that there is something deeply disturbing about modern masculinity and that those who rail against social change are trying to puzzle out something complex. We really need to find out what it is so crap like the following stops:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/emma-watson-speech-nude-photos-threat/

 

[vid87]

I really wish "Men's Rights" didn't have such an aggressive and hostile connotation. There are really are gender issues facing men that are a result of their being male and even though they ultimately have the same origins as the gender issues that women face there has not been equal progress in eliminating them.

The first point is the family gender roles men have to face. If you make less than your wife, people look down on you regardless of what your job is, and even the woman is affected by these roles. If you're over 30 and not married, good luck getting a raise or promotion at work: society considers unmarried men immature and untrustworthy. Even worse if you don't have kids.

And it's a double whammy of suck, because half of all marriages end in divorce. And that's NEVER good news for a man: even if you make substantially less than your wife, you're STILL going to be making "maintenance" payments and lose custody of your children. Maybe that's justified in some cases, but I can't believe that it's justified in all: divorce court proceedings are heavily unbalanced against men.

The modern face of depression is that of a woman. You NEVER see men in ads for anti-depressants, you rarely see male advocates for mental and emotional health, and while a teenage girl with ADHD is going to be written off as playful and imaginative, a teenage boy with ADHD is considered stupid. Men face depression just as much as women do, but because society says that it's "unmanly" to acknowledge your emotions they're told to stay quiet about it.

And the same goes for eating disorders. Turns out, teenage males have eating and body image disorders just as frequently as females. But because "body image" has ended up labeled a female issue, I doubt we're going to be seeing similar awareness campaigns for men's anxiety issues any time soon.

Prostate and testicular cancer claim similar numbers of lives as ovarian and breast cancer. Yet, funding for those two is several orders of magnitude less.

Male genital mutilation remains acceptable, in fact in some cases even desirable, in the US. Some traditional subcultures in the US even go so far as to perform the mutilation by BITING the foreskin off.

Homosexual men and boys are treated with far more hostility than homosexual women and girls.

Now, even though feminism is touched upon in a few of those, this was a statement of just a few of the issues that men face, not an attack on feminism or an attempt to provoke yet another round of "who's got it worse: feminism/MRA edition". Actually, feminism and progress towards gender equality for females is what has helped to start the male rights movement: horror stories of female genital cutting have been a primary driver in activism against male genital mutilation. If we didn't have women in the first place saying that maybe it isn't necessary to follow the traditional role of never working and being little more than a brood queen, then we wouldn't have men coming to similar realizations about the possibility of shaking off similarly backwards gender roles. SOMEONE had to get the ball rolling on eliminating unwanted gender roles, and in this case it just happened to be women.

So I agree with Watson. We need to acknowledge that men face social issues directly related to their being men, and we need to deal with them.

I'd like to add the modern entertainment trope that men, by and large, are blithering idiots. In recent years, it's gone from being simply ignorant of certain roles or concepts to being so incapable of functioning you start to wonder how these people lived before they got married (that's the satire in Peter Griffin being actually classified as mentally retarded), which, especially with the "not good with children" idea, reinforces the stereotype of unfit parenthood that we see demonstrated in real life.

 

[vid87]

[double post, sorry]

 

[mitchell271]

Honestly? Not at all. As callous as this sounds, it's because I don't care how people think about me.

I don't go to the gym to get ripped and be masculine, I go because I want to stay healthy.
When I dealt with depression, I was open about it and saw a therapist because I wanted to get better.
When I do something traditionally feminine, like cook, do housework or anything else along those lines, I do them because they're good skills to have and they need to be done.
I'm open with my emotions because everything is easier if people are open with each other instead of passive-aggressive bullshit.

A couple of times, I've been told to be more masculine. Every time, I've asked "Why?", and I always get the same answer. "Because people will treat you differently and they expect things from a man." I reply with, "Well those people must not be able to understand anything other than what they're told. That's backwards and pointless."

In short, I agree completely with her. No one should worry about being masculine or effeminate. Do what you want to, how you want to and if someone disagrees, they probably aren't that good of a person anyways.

 

[Adaephon]

I can't say that I've ever experienced much real sexism or been forced to act a certain way due to my male-ness, but I definitely have for being a father. I mean I've had people actually call the cops on me because I was walking with my kids and, since I am a man and their mother wasn't with me, I was just obviously kidnapping them (although the cops were very apologetic and nice about the whole thing and even let me and my daughters ride home in the squad car and they got to turn the siren on which was pretty cool). That is just wrong, I mean nobody would see a woman with her kids and assume she was going to try and murder them or something, but with men it can sometimes be assumed?

On the other hand there was one pretty funny example of this back when I was in highschool and I tried to sign up for a sewing class and I was told that, as the only man signed up, I would make the other students too uncomfortable to allow me to attend classes. Which is something I should probably have been mad about but all I could do was laugh and ask how their feelings should be any of my concerns and then spending the next ten minutes annoying the hell out of the school counsellor by asking how exactly I would make people uncomfortable just by having a penis (it wasn't like I was trying to force my way into an all-girls school I just wanted to attend a class at an already mixed-gender place).

 

[Nion]

I'm not really seeing why people are praising Emma Watsons speech so much. She, and the organization the speech is for, is basically going "I can see that men are hurting, but you know what would be really great? If you'd all man up and focus on fixing women's problems."