Sweden Moves Towards Gender Neutrality [Support Thread]

[felbot]

well I am Swedish and this is the first time I am hearing about this so that should tell you how well its catching on.

personally it seems really stupid to re use an old word for such a silly purpose but then again the politicians don't have anything else to do all day but ruin nature so I guess it's good to keep them busy on something else.

 

[Darken12]

Source? Not some backwaters blog, but in something entertainment related that wasn't regarded with controversy. Something that a mainstream person not looking for it might come across.

Depends on how mainstream you find gory bands like Devourment. You know the type, the metal bands with gruesome album covers who sing about rape, murder and cannibalism. I know that I've seen their ilk on Ye Olde Music Stores (before Apple Store and the like).

 

[IamQ]

Gender neutral words and toys!? Wha-... why?

When did it happen that being called 'he' or 'she' is suddenly not done?

Looks like worldpeace can only be achieved by forcing everyone to be the same. No distinction, no flavor, just a saltless grey society.

Being a Swede, my take on the word is that it's purpose is more to be used when the gender isn't assigned yet. Like if you have a suspect, but no identity, or if you're just talking about people in general.

Gender neutral toys though, those needs to go. Just keep making toys like you do now, and let the kid decide for themselves.

 

[Shock and Awe]

I don't plan on arguing over the validity of a metaphor. The point is that traits are considered "feminine" and "masculine" are both essential to any society. To value one essential trait over another is a personal preference that does not change the fact that we'd still be screwed without the other.

Not exactly.

As many have pointed out, women's only feature as a gender is the ability ot have children. That's it.

Men can simply breed with us, then be done with us. They can handle every other function needed better than women can. We are only necessary for breeding.

But of course, that's what the misogynists say, but yet noone takes them to task. Only us feminists.

Where do you live that people say that? I live in the deep south and you won't hear say shit like that. Who is "the misogynists" anyway? Is there some secret misogynist society that I don't know about whispering in peoples ears "Women are inferior at manual labor and math."?

 

[Aramis Night]

Ok, that Vox Day guy is a misogynistic prick

Or is he just someone who recognizes that men and women have differences and properly concludes that one is, as is the case with things that are different, one is superior to the other?

Did you read the synopsis, or customer reviews at all, or just automatically assume it was straight up manifesto of woman hatred?

I did, and it simply mirrors the beliefs of people like Vox Day and Matthew Fitzgerald. Why assume it's kidding?

I recently acquired the new CD by Emilie Autumn. She isn't for everyone but i do like her music and i think she is immensely talented. She also has a pretty strong following. I was listening to the title track of her new album and some of the lyrics really dismayed me. In it she calls for going to war with the world, and then clearly states "or at least 49% of the people in it" and proceeds to talk about killing those people in her usual prose. Now the aforementioned 49% that she mentions going to war and killing are clearly men.

After trying to collect my thoughts about this, it dawned on me that while i've had the displeasure of hearing from actual women-haters, i've never heard a single one actual call for the mass killing and slaughter of women. I've heard them try to posit how they think the world would be better if we reduce women to 2nd class citizens, i've never heard them call for any gendercide. But here i was listening to a song where the person who i have been a fan of and supported was calling for war against me simply because i'm male.

And this was on a CD that many people will buy and listen to. Not some backwoods blog lost in the internet. While some may think that she was kidding or playing with hypotheticals to tell a story, it isn't entirely obvious from casually listening to the song. A Lot of women are huge fans of this woman and her work. What does it say about them? Do so many women truly identify with this? It is honestly a little scary. Is its all out of humour? I see no immediate indicators.

In fact some women have in fact published books that sold rather well that advocated for the death of my entire gender. Should i assume its all harmless and all of the hatred towards me for being male, is a joke?

Anything but. These are dangerous people and you're quite right to be concerned. I wouldn't even give them that much, honestly, since they're just spouting the same lunacy that Valerie Solanis did back in the day.

Though there haven't really been any misogynists calling for gendercide, there have been those calling for us to be reduced to little more than livestock. That's not better in my book.

Valerie Solanis is known as a feminist. Why is she known as a feminist universally and yet she called for gendercide in her own published work, on top of attempting to kill as many men as she could. How can anyone try to claim that feminism is for equality of the genders when someone who wants to kill a whole gender is regarded as a feminist? Does anyone else not see how backwards this is? I suspect i'm not.

If feminist is a person who believes in equality between the sexes, then a radical feminist by any sane definition should be a person who is for equality between men and women to an extreme, not gendercide. But the fact that radical feminists do in fact encompass those that believe in wiping out a whole gender kind of tips the hand on what feminism really is. And it obviously isn't equality unless they believe that the path to equality begins after they wipe all males out. If i was a radical racist vs. just a racist, that doesn't take away my being racist. Only the degree of my hate and how far i'm willing to go to see it realized.

At the risk of godwin's law: Why do we typically despise neo-nazi's? They were not involved in the holocaust. Why do we see them in the same light as the old german version? Because of the word nazi which is a tribute to those that came before them which they agreed with. Same can be applied to the term feminist. Wave is irrelevant. Just as adding Neo- is also irrelevant to distancing oneself from them. It shows agreed upon principles.

To bring this back OT: Whenever i see anything that clearly was a feminists idea being implemented in government, it concerns me a great deal. Since that is not a group of people with my gender's interest at heart. If they were so about equality then they wouldn't have thrown Warren Farrell under the bus after he brought up some valid concerns about men's conditions even though he sat on NOW's(largest feminist organization in the world) board. Valerie Solanas wouldn't be a well known feminist(even on her wikipedia page). And teachers wouldn't be keeping little boys from being able to play with a toy car.

 

[Aramis Night]

Source? Not some backwaters blog, but in something entertainment related that wasn't regarded with controversy. Something that a mainstream person not looking for it might come across.

Depends on how mainstream you find gory bands like Devourment. You know the type, the metal bands with gruesome album covers who sing about rape, murder and cannibalism. I know that I've seen their ilk on Ye Olde Music Stores (before Apple Store and the like).

Cant say i'm familiar with the band but i'm familiar with the type of music. Those bands are not being sexist so much as misanthropic. It's equal opportunity hate that targets pretty much everyone. A poor comparative example of what i was looking for. But it does speak to my point. As bad as what they want to do to women may be, they want to do at least as badly if not worse to men if the songs are to be believed. Skip to the next track and it will probably be a song about infant buffet's are something similar. They try to be unPC for its own sake with rhyme but no reason.

 

[Darken12]

Cant say i'm familiar with the band but i'm familiar with the type of music. Those bands are not being sexist so much as misanthropic. It's equal opportunity hate that targets pretty much everyone. A poor comparative example of what i was looking for. But it does speak to my point. As bad as what they want to do to women may be, they want to do at least as badly if not worse to men if the songs are to be believed. Skip to the next track and it will probably be a song about infant buffet's are something similar. They try to be unPC for its own sake with rhyme but no reason.

Ah, yes, you went for the defence I expected you to go for. So, my counter: if we are quick to excuse a band's overt misogyny (and no, they never want to rape the men, that one's just for the women. And the more visceral, torturous murders are just for the women too; I've read some lyrics, they are both horrible and with a clear gender slant), why do we not extend the same courtesy to this other woman? Why do we not just dismiss her as a harmless, shock-seeking individual, instead of burdening an entire movement with her actions? Why is it that when a man dedicates an entire track gleefully describing how much he wants to rape, torture, kill and cannibalise all women, he's just a harmless, unPC, shock-seeking individual that in no way represents a movement or gender, but when a woman sings about killing all men, she suddenly represents something much more than herself?

 

[Professor James]

I have no problem with gender neutral words but I'm not so sure on removing and changing toys. Also, I don't want to sound like an alarmist or conspiracy theorist but one of the first things I thought about while reading this article was the society of Oceania from 1984.

Plus this...

Is the most hilarious thing I've seen all day,nay, all week

 

[Genocidicles]

Ah, yes, you went for the defence I expected you to go for. So, my counter: if we are quick to excuse a band's overt misogyny (and no, they never want to rape the men, that one's just for the women. And the more visceral, torturous murders are just for the women too; I've read some lyrics, they are both horrible and with a clear gender slant), why do we not extend the same courtesy to this other woman? Why do we not just dismiss her as a harmless, shock-seeking individual, instead of burdening an entire movement with her actions? Why is it that when a man dedicates an entire track gleefully describing how much he wants to rape, torture, kill and cannibalise all women, he's just a harmless, unPC, shock-seeking individual that in no way represents a movement or gender, but when a woman sings about killing all men, she suddenly represents something much more than herself?

Valerie Solaris is a feminist, whilst this man has not had his political views regarding gender brought up.

If he turns out to be a men's rights activist then it would seem like he's being more than just being unabashedly un-PC, but as far as we know he is not.

 

[Darken12]

Valerie Solaris is a feminist, whilst this man has not had his political views regarding gender brought up.

If he turns out to be a men's rights activist then it would seem like he's being more than just being unabashedly un-PC.

So if one member of a group (especially a group that contains millions of members worldwide) does something horrible and extremist, we assign their actions as the views of the entire group?

Because I'm pretty sure we're constantly warning others not to do that.

 

[Aramis Night]

Cant say i'm familiar with the band but i'm familiar with the type of music. Those bands are not being sexist so much as misanthropic. It's equal opportunity hate that targets pretty much everyone. A poor comparative example of what i was looking for. But it does speak to my point. As bad as what they want to do to women may be, they want to do at least as badly if not worse to men if the songs are to be believed. Skip to the next track and it will probably be a song about infant buffet's are something similar. They try to be unPC for its own sake with rhyme but no reason.

Ah, yes, you went for the defence I expected you to go for. So, my counter: if we are quick to excuse a band's overt misogyny (and no, they never want to rape the men, that one's just for the women. And the more visceral, torturous murders are just for the women too; I've read some lyrics, they are both horrible and with a clear gender slant), why do we not extend the same courtesy to this other woman? Why do we not just dismiss her as a harmless, shock-seeking individual, instead of burdening an entire movement with her actions? Why is it that when a man dedicates an entire track gleefully describing how much he wants to rape, torture, kill and cannibalise all women, he's just a harmless, unPC, shock-seeking individual that in no way represents a movement or gender, but when a woman sings about killing all men, she suddenly represents something much more than herself?

Well probably because the band you're referring to(which i acknowledge i don't know about)is going out of its way to try to be offensive as bands in that genre all tend to. Most media tends to do that rather casually. If you want to offend people, singing about doing terrible things to men doesn't have the same impact because we are predisposed to caring about the fates of women more. It's why we don't often show on screen graphic deaths of women nearly as much as we do men.

I'm not defending them doing this. I find most of that whole genre to be in terrible taste, but that is what they intend. They are immature and believe in this sort of pointless rebellion for its own sake. That is a large part of the reason why this sort of music was never mainstream. And no, i agree with you that this sort of thing does represent a genre of music. And it is a damn good reason to not want to associate with it since that is a lot of what the genre represents. But this band and people like them make a lot of other tracks about brutalizing people that are not women either. It's the whole sad "look at me, i'm evil and piss off your parents and offend everyone genre".

 

[distortedreality]

There's a reason that academia and entertainment make terrible bed-fellows.

Some of the posts in this thread are pretty good examples of this.

 

[Darken12]

Well probably because the band you're referring to(which i acknowledge i don't know about)is going out of its way to try to be offensive as bands in that genre all tend to. Most media tends to do that rather casually. If you want to offend people, singing about doing terrible things to men doesn't have the same impact because we are predisposed to caring about the fates of women more. It's why we don't often show on screen graphic deaths of women nearly as much as we do men.

I fail to see how that's a valid defence. It almost sounds like condoning misogyny because it makes for better shock value; so if your goal is to shock, it's a-okay to go for misogyny. But not misandry, because That's Just Wrong.

I'm not defending them doing this. I find most of that whole genre to be in terrible taste, but that is what they intend. They are immature and believe in this sort of pointless rebellion for its own sake. That is a large part of the reason why this sort of music was never mainstream. And no, i agree with you that this sort of thing does represent a genre of music. And it is a damn good reason to not want to associate with it since that is a lot of what the genre represents. But this band and people like them make a lot of other tracks about brutalizing people that are not women either. It's the whole sad "look at me, i'm evil and piss off your parents and offend everyone genre".

I fail to see how misogyny (because no matter how much you defend that it's gender-equal misanthropy, there IS a gendered component of extra brutality towards women; see my previous point about torture and rape) is more defensible when the intent is to shock, and when it's surrounded by all-purpose brutality and evil. Should that woman have composed songs about murdering everyone, too? Would that have made the song about killing men better?

 

[Aramis Night]

Valerie Solaris is a feminist, whilst this man has not had his political views regarding gender brought up.

If he turns out to be a men's rights activist then it would seem like he's being more than just being unabashedly un-PC.

So if one member of a group (especially a group that contains millions of members worldwide) does something horrible and extremist, we assign their actions as the views of the entire group?

Because I'm pretty sure we're constantly warning others not to do that.

Actually men do this pretty often. If a man lacks conviction or courage to stand up for what he believes in then we do not acknowledge that individual as a man. We sometimes even joke about having our man card revoked if we are ever caught engaging in certain behaviour that we feel is beneath us. And surprise, there are millions of us. If i'm in a group and i hear about other members of that group engaging in terrible behaviour and they are still associated with said group after it comes to light, If it offends me enough, i will remove myself from identifying with that group. Promoting gendercide/genocide is way over the line of what most people would stand for. It is a shame feminists don't have those types of standards. They just slap the term "radical" or 2nd wave on them and pretend the "radicals" don't reflect on them since they don't actually disagree with them enough to throw them out.

We don't call men that advocate for gendercide or picking on the weak or abusing their women, "radical men". We call them scum(irony) or a number of other more and less colourful adjectives. None of them positive.

 

[Aramis Night]

Ok, that Vox Day guy is a misogynistic prick

Or is he just someone who recognizes that men and women have differences and properly concludes that one is, as is the case with things that are different, one is superior to the other?

Did you read the synopsis, or customer reviews at all, or just automatically assume it was straight up manifesto of woman hatred?

I did, and it simply mirrors the beliefs of people like Vox Day and Matthew Fitzgerald. Why assume it's kidding?

I recently acquired the new CD by Emilie Autumn. She isn't for everyone but i do like her music and i think she is immensely talented. She also has a pretty strong following. I was listening to the title track of her new album and some of the lyrics really dismayed me. In it she calls for going to war with the world, and then clearly states "or at least 49% of the people in it" and proceeds to talk about killing those people in her usual prose. Now the aforementioned 49% that she mentions going to war and killing are clearly men.

After trying to collect my thoughts about this, it dawned on me that while i've had the displeasure of hearing from actual women-haters, i've never heard a single one actual call for the mass killing and slaughter of women. I've heard them try to posit how they think the world would be better if we reduce women to 2nd class citizens, i've never heard them call for any gendercide. But here i was listening to a song where the person who i have been a fan of and supported was calling for war against me simply because i'm male.

And this was on a CD that many people will buy and listen to. Not some backwoods blog lost in the internet. While some may think that she was kidding or playing with hypotheticals to tell a story, it isn't entirely obvious from casually listening to the song. A Lot of women are huge fans of this woman and her work. What does it say about them? Do so many women truly identify with this? It is honestly a little scary. Is its all out of humour? I see no immediate indicators.

In fact some women have in fact published books that sold rather well that advocated for the death of my entire gender. Should i assume its all harmless and all of the hatred towards me for being male, is a joke?

Anything but. These are dangerous people and you're quite right to be concerned. I wouldn't even give them that much, honestly, since they're just spouting the same lunacy that Valerie Solanis did back in the day.

Though there haven't really been any misogynists calling for gendercide, there have been those calling for us to be reduced to little more than livestock. That's not better in my book.

Valerie Solanis is known as a feminist. Why is she known as a feminist universally and yet she called for gendercide in her own published work, on top of attempting to kill as many men as she could. How can anyone try to claim that feminism is for equality of the genders when someone who wants to kill a whole gender is regarded as a feminist? Does anyone else not see how backwards this is? I suspect i'm not.

If feminist is a person who believes in equality between the sexes, then a radical feminist by any sane definition should be a person who is for equality between men and women to an extreme, not gendercide. But the fact that radical feminists do in fact encompass those that believe in wiping out a whole gender kind of tips the hand on what feminism really is. And it obviously isn't equality unless they believe that the path to equality begins after they wipe all males out. If i was a radical racist vs. just a racist, that doesn't take away my being racist. Only the degree of my hate and how far i'm willing to go to see it realized.

At the risk of godwin's law: Why do we typically despise neo-nazi's? They were not involved in the holocaust. Why do we see them in the same light as the old german version? Because of the word nazi which is a tribute to those that came before them which they agreed with. Same can be applied to the term feminist. Wave is irrelevant. Just as adding Neo- is also irrelevant to distancing oneself from them. It shows agreed upon principles.

To bring this back OT: Whenever i see anything that clearly was a feminists idea being implemented in government, it concerns me a great deal. Since that is not a group of people with my gender's interest at heart. If they were so about equality then they wouldn't have thrown Warren Farrell under the bus after he brought up some valid concerns about men's conditions even though he sat on NOW's(largest feminist organization in the world) board. Valerie Solanas wouldn't be a well known feminist(even on her wikipedia page). And teachers wouldn't be keeping little boys from being able to play with a toy car.

Do I get to apply to same standard to MRA's, as the most extreme of them advocate returning women to the status of chattel? You would think that extremists in men's rights would simply be extreme in wanting men's rights and not wanting women to become livestock.

I've never actually heard the term extreme mra referring to anyone. Or radical mra for that matter. Is there a wikipedia article with a persons being described as such. Going by mainstream sources after all. No need to bring up some obscure backwoods blog.

 

[Korica]

Sweden being awesome! Man I need to move to scandinavia...

 

[Darken12]

Actually men do this pretty often. If a man lacks conviction or courage to stand up for what he believes in then we do not acknowledge that individual as a man. We sometimes even joke about having our man card revoked if we are ever caught engaging in certain behaviour that we feel is beneath us. And surprise, there are millions of us.

You speak of this as though it were a good thing. It's not. It's actually an incredibly harmful ideology that generates needless division and strife.

If i'm in a group and i hear about other members of that group engaging in terrible behaviour and they are still associated with said group after it comes to light, If it offends me enough, i will remove myself from identifying with that group.

Every single group has at least one extremist. It's simple statistics. If that rationale were valid, none of us would be part of any group whatsoever, and therefore we could never achieve any progress or change that required the strength of an entire group.

Promoting gendercide/genocide is way over the line of what most people would stand for. It is a shame feminists don't have those types of standards. They just slap the term "radical" or 2nd wave on them and pretend the "radicals" don't reflect on them since they don't actually disagree with them enough to throw them out.

Feminism is not a hierarchical group. There is no authority. Nobody can "kick" anyone out of feminism, any more than an MRA can kick a "radical" MRA who spews misogynistic hate speech.

We don't call men that advocate for gendercide or picking on the weak or abusing their women, "radical men". We call them scum(irony) or a number of other more and less colourful adjectives. None of them positive.

And yet you cannot remove them from the group they belong to (men). I would call that woman a horrible person, and I would repeatedly state that I do not subscribe to her school of feminism, but there's nothing more I can do.

 

[distortedreality]

Where do you live that people say that?

The real world.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/1/14/summers-comments-on-women-and-science/

Did you read that article before you posted it?

It just doesn't really seem to support anything you've said, that's all. Feel free to prove me wrong.

captcha - easy as cake. Yes, it should be captcha.

 

[Toilet]

Race is a myth.
There are no significant biological differences between anyone of any "race."
All variations can be attributed to biological mutation, and offer no significant reason to qualify as a category.

You just contradicted yourself, the significant biological differences between races are the biological mutations that were used to adapt to a particular area and people do categorize other people depending on those traits. It's basic genetics, all races have different genotypes and their phenotypic traits are displayed depending on those genes. You cant look at a man whos genes originate from Africa and a man whos genes original from east Asia, look at the differences like the epicanthal fold, skin colour, height, hair, eye colour, ect ect and say "Race doesn't exist, it's a myth and is a social construct." you just cannot debunk years of science by closing your eyes and pretending it isn't there, reality doesn't work that way.

Then again this entire conversation could be moot because one or maybe both of us is confusing "race" and "ethnicity". It's a grey area, because people think they is a distinction between the two and some people think there isn't. I could be opening a whole new can of worms.

While I think adding a neutral pronoun is good for practical reasons I don't really see how this is a feminist issue.

This is THE feminist issue. The ultimate goal of feminism is to dismantle patriarchal constructs of gender roles and societal norms. The movement is ultimately dedicated to total equality, not simply women's rights.

It's adorable that you think that, since when has feminism been interested in total equality. The term you are looking for is egalitarian.

You're proving my point, absolutely none of the differences between the "races" are anything but mutation, none of them cause enough variation to justify racial categorization. The key word at hand is SIGNIFICANT. Also, Everyone's genes originate from Africa.

Did you not read what I wrote, you just ignored my main points? I made clear definitions of significant racial differences that are prime definitions of each race/ethnicity. Africa is theorized of being the Cradle Of Civilization but you are missing the point I made when I asked you to compare the phenotypes of people whos recent ancestors originated from those geographical areas. Saying everyone originated from Africa is moot because that is theorized to have happened during the birth of humanity and prehistory and there has been a few genetic and mutagenic changes since then where humans moved to different geographical areas. All humans in the world are categorized as homo sapiens but we use racial terms (Asian, Indian, Native American, Caucasian, African, ect ect) to differentiate between physical characteristics.

You have failed to give any evidence proving your point, all your have claimed is that race isn't real and there isn't significant justification to define people by the physical characteristics that are found within that race despite the points I bought up. All I have heard is that "We shouldn't define people by their race because it's a social construct." What is wrong with social constructs anyway? Are they all inherently negative?

All this postmodernist bullshit on race and gender is infuriating to argue against, people reject evidence because whoop it doesn't count because it's a construct.

 

[Aramis Night]

Well probably because the band you're referring to(which i acknowledge i don't know about)is going out of its way to try to be offensive as bands in that genre all tend to. Most media tends to do that rather casually. If you want to offend people, singing about doing terrible things to men doesn't have the same impact because we are predisposed to caring about the fates of women more. It's why we don't often show on screen graphic deaths of women nearly as much as we do men.

I fail to see how that's a valid defence. It almost sounds like condoning misogyny because it makes for better shock value; so if your goal is to shock, it's a-okay to go for misogyny. But not misandry, because That's Just Wrong.

I'm not defending them doing this. I find most of that whole genre to be in terrible taste, but that is what they intend. They are immature and believe in this sort of pointless rebellion for its own sake. That is a large part of the reason why this sort of music was never mainstream. And no, i agree with you that this sort of thing does represent a genre of music. And it is a damn good reason to not want to associate with it since that is a lot of what the genre represents. But this band and people like them make a lot of other tracks about brutalizing people that are not women either. It's the whole sad "look at me, i'm evil and piss off your parents and offend everyone genre".

I fail to see how misogyny (because no matter how much you defend that it's gender-equal misanthropy, there IS a gendered component of extra brutality towards women; see my previous point about torture and rape) is more defensible when the intent is to shock, and when it's surrounded by all-purpose brutality and evil. Should that woman have composed songs about murdering everyone, too? Would that have made the song about killing men better?

Well yes. Obviously people looking to offend others are going to go with what is likely to offend more. Harming women offends women as well as men. So yeah, they are picking the low hanging fruit to offend more people. I know women have a hard time understanding this but men really don't have the same sort of natural empathy for each other women do for each other. The band is likely made up of men who understand this and are taking advantage of that fact. I'm not excusing it. I'm not saying its ok. However i do get why they went that route.

They are in a genre where they have to be more offensive than the other bands in their genre to stand out. Mutilating/killing/eating men and babies has been played out among them and no longer serves to evoke the same emotional response. So they had to find a way to turn up the offensiveness to 11 to stand out among their peers. They chose the low hanging fruit of rapping/torturing women because it is the easiest and most universally despised act one can do.

And no, if emily autumn then turned around and did another song about killing everyone, it would not then be ok. Unlike the band/genre you mentioned, she is not in a genre where offensiveness for its own sake is the point. Her concerts are the sorts of things where people take their teenage daughters.