Sweden Moves Towards Gender Neutrality [Support Thread]

[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.

 

[Aramis Night]

[ 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.

Then you're advocating for Vox Day, Fitzgerald, and Masterson to be drummed out of any MRA functions or representation?

We'll seeing as how i don't count myself as an MRA, i don't see how its my business. I think they have some good points, but because of the attitudes that some of them have on the male supremacy side, I'm not one of them. If egalitarian feminists had any decency they would take the same stance. But they would rather defend their apathy and whine when others paint them with the same brush as those they have chosen to show solidarity with who advocate for male hatred.

 

[Shock and Awe]

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/

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."?

Then just google Men Going Their Own Way and The Spearhead.

I'm sorry did you even read that article, or just look at the title and think it supported what you were arguing? The man was exploring reasons he believed that women could be under represented in academia and it seems that one of them could have been how men and women tend to think. This is a real far cry from "men are better at everything because they are". If thats the best you can come up with I think I can rest my case.

And are you really bringing up Spearhead and MGTOW as a representative of Men in general? Is that your argument? Then by your logic all women think that men should be sterilized, subjugated, and a bunch of other scary S words like Femtheist [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvEJfN-jiS4]. Except thats wrong, because stereotyping a whole group off the actions of a small group is stupid.

 

[likalaruku]

Was it Sweden or Norway that makes gender neutral toys & their TV ads are always girls playing with traditionally masculine toys?

 

[Aramis Night]

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.

You have freedom of association. I'm not saying anything about kicking people out of anything. I get that it may not be in your power to do so and that is a failing of the people responsible for the hierarchy of that group. But you can always choose to disassociate yourself from any group that does not meet your standards.

And for men judging other men. It should be that way. I judge everything. Everyone should. There is nothing wrong with having standards. There is nothing wrong with judging. The only way it can be bad is if the criteria for judgement is bad. People are already judgemental. I just prefer to not be a hypocritical liar about it. I have standards that i strive to live by. I'd like to believe i'm not alone. I judge no one more harshly than i do myself. I believe that people should have the right to do with their freedom as they want. For example I believe that drugs should be legal for anyone to use. I however do not even smoke or drink and have no desire to. It is an example of standards i have for myself that i do not place on others.

I believe that men and women should have identical legal rights and subject to the same penalties. I also believe it is wrong to keep a little boy from playing with a toy car when doing so harms no one.

 

[Darken12]

I'm not saying its ok. However i do get why they went that route.

Then what's the problem with a woman going with a similar route too? Or is horrible offensiveness a male-only affair?

They chose the low hanging fruit of rapping/torturing women because it is the easiest and most universally despised act one can do.

By that same rationale, she could be aiming for the "low hanging fruit" among MRAs and men in general. It could be that her target to offend is much more reduced. Instead of "everybody, and especially women" as the gore metal bands, she could have narrowed her target to just "men". And I'm sure there's at least one of these bands that targets exclusively violence against women, if that's your issue.

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.

You do realise that the gross offensiveness of those metal bands is popular almost exclusively with teenagers, right? Their parents might not take them to their concerts, but the puerile immaturity of the lyrics and subject matter appeals primarily to teenagers who want to be dark and edgy. The problem cannot be teenage exposure, because that already happens.

But you can always choose to disassociate yourself from any group that does not meet your standards.

The group meets my standards because I do not consider the ravings of one member to represent the entirety of the group. I am a feminist and I actively oppose gendercide. She does not represent me, and I will not let her views ruin all the good that the movement as a whole has done for humanity.

It is an example of standards i have for myself that i do not place on others.

And I am the same way. Yet I think it quite silly to let someone determine what group I belong to, simply because they have outrageous ideologies. If that were the case, I would have to renounce to my labels of human, man, Argentine, white person, LGBTQ+ person, Latin American, feminist, equalist, LGBTQ+ activist, writer, biochemist, student, worker, reader and so on. There will always be an extremist in every group I belong to, and I refuse to let those people define who I am. Whatever I am, I will be in spite of them and not because of them.

I believe that men and women should have identical legal rights and subject to the same penalties. I also believe it is wrong to keep a little boy from playing with a toy car when doing so harms no one.

As I mentioned before, we don't have the whole story. We don't know if, in fact, boys playing with toy cars harmed no one. I have personal experiences where banning a specific toy to avoid excessive strife was seen as a positive idea. I can conceive that a similar situation MIGHT have happened.

 

[Toy Master Typhus]

I believe that men and women should have identical legal rights and subject to the same penalties. I also believe it is wrong to keep a little boy from playing with a toy car when doing so harms no one.

As I mentioned before, we don't have the whole story. We don't know if, in fact, boys playing with toy cars harmed no one. I have personal experiences where banning a specific toy to avoid excessive strife was seen as a positive idea. I can conceive that a similar situation MIGHT have happened.

I can't even begin to fathom what kind of mental mindset you are in to consider that what a boy chooses to play with fucks up a girl's image. If anyone is so dependent on what others do to create their self image I don't feel any pity for them if they are disliked.

Man is only free when they refuse to give a damn what society thinks of them.

 

[distortedreality]

We don't know if, in fact, boys playing with toy cars harmed no one.

Um......how would a boy playing with cars hurt anyone?

I agree that a child's gender identity is influenced by their interactions and environment from an early age, but I fail to see how playing with toy cars could influence a child of either sex in any inherently negative way, and I don't see how any sort of research of this would be beneficial or worth while to anyone.

Excessive strife? From playing with toy cars? Unless the child has a specific drive to shove their toys into places they shouldn't, I can't equate excessive strife with toy cars.

 

[Aramis Night]

I'm not saying its ok. However i do get why they went that route.

Then what's the problem with a woman going with a similar route too? Or is horrible offensiveness a male-only affair?

Umm... I just said. It isn't ok. You just quoted me saying that in fact. Why are you ignoring that?

They chose the low hanging fruit of rapping/torturing women because it is the easiest and most universally despised act one can do.

By that same rationale, she could be aiming for the "low hanging fruit" among MRAs and men in general. It could be that her target to offend is much more reduced. Instead of "everybody, and especially women" as the gore metal bands, she could have narrowed her target to just "men". And I'm sure there's at least one of these bands that targets exclusively violence against women, if that's your issue.

And as i said before, It's not ok. And emily autumn is not marketed to MRA's. Her market tends to in fact be women mostly. And i find it incredibly disturbing if this is something they support.

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.

You do realise that the gross offensiveness of those metal bands is popular almost exclusively with teenagers, right? Their parents might not take them to their concerts, but the puerile immaturity of the lyrics and subject matter appeals primarily to teenagers who want to be dark and edgy. The problem cannot be teenage exposure, because that already happens.

And again, not ok with it and i do not relate to it. I find it offensive, though i understand that is the goal.

But you can always choose to disassociate yourself from any group that does not meet your standards.

The group meets my standards because I do not consider the ravings of one member to represent the entirety of the group. I am a feminist and I actively oppose gendercide. She does not represent me, and I will not let her views ruin all the good that the movement as a whole has done for humanity.

Valerie Solanas didn't just rant and rave. She attempted to murder multiple people over imagined slights and encouraged others to do the same on a grand scale. Her victim's were not the same after what she did, ever.

It is an example of standards i have for myself that i do not place on others.

And I am the same way. Yet I think it quite silly to let someone determine what group I belong to, simply because they have outrageous ideologies. If that were the case, I would have to renounce to my labels of human, man, Argentine, white person, LGBTQ+ person, Latin American, feminist, equalist, LGBTQ+ activist, writer, biochemist, student, worker, reader and so on. There will always be an extremist in every group I belong to, and I refuse to let those people define who I am. Whatever I am, I will be in spite of them and not because of them.

It is one thing to be a member of a group with people you don't agree with, but when the whole point of the group is one goal and you have members actively working against it. That is definitely the line in the sand moment. The fact that feminists never had that is why they lack credibility with me and many others. You are free to brush it off as meaningless, but some of us actually care enough about equality to not see it as so trite.

I believe that men and women should have identical legal rights and subject to the same penalties. I also believe it is wrong to keep a little boy from playing with a toy car when doing so harms no one.

As I mentioned before, we don't have the whole story. We don't know if, in fact, boys playing with toy cars harmed no one. I have personal experiences where banning a specific toy to avoid excessive strife was seen as a positive idea. I can conceive that a similar situation MIGHT have happened.

The article indicated that the toy being banned was for reasons of not wanting to reinforce/introduce gender roles.

Sorry my responses are underneath your quotes. Not used to how this forum does quotes and i'm not html knowledgeable.

 

[Darken12]

I can't even begin to fathom what kind of mental mindset you are in to consider that what a boy chooses to play with fucks up a girl's image. If anyone is so dependent on what others do to create their self image I don't feel any pity for them if they are disliked.

Man is only free when they refuse to give a damn what society thinks of them.

What? Where did I ever bring up girl's image? Huh? Are we both reading the same posts?

Excessive strife? From playing with toy cars? Unless the child has a specific drive to shove their toys into places they shouldn't, I can't equate excessive strife with toy cars.

In my personal experience, trading cards were banned at my primary school because they caused a lot of verbal and physical fighting between children. Very vicious, too. They were such an expensive and overvalued item (third world country here, btw) that they were considered a social status symbol in the playground hierarchy, and because they were so excessively overvalued, we resorted to really extreme measures to get our hands on them, we reacted very violently when we perceived that a trading wasn't fair or when the games that the trading cards were for didn't go our way (or someone was perceived to have cheated), and a host of other problems (stealing, distracting attention from the class, etc). There were a couple of weeks (or maybe more?) where the school slowly spiralled out of control.

While I'm not saying that this is necessarily what happened, I can imagine that toy cars were overvalued (because of kids gender-coding them as male and therefore more "awesome"), and that generated strife among kids (if it helps with the visualisation, imagine the toy cars were considered a luxury item, with all the hierarchical consequences that implies).

The article indicated that the toy being banned was for reasons of not wanting to reinforce/introduce gender roles.

Yes, and we don't know what exactly the problem was. Yes, perhaps the problem was that boys tended to favour it (in which case yes, the decision is too hasty and not well thought-out). However, it could be that the gender-coding generated a situation like the ones I describe in this very post (above).

 

[distortedreality]

In my personal experience, trading cards were banned at my primary school because they caused a lot of verbal and physical fighting between children. Very vicious, too. They were such an expensive and overvalued item (third world country here, btw) that they were considered a social status symbol in the playground hierarchy, and because they were so excessively overvalued, we resorted to really extreme measures to get our hands on them, we reacted very violently when we perceived that a trading wasn't fair or when the games that the trading cards were for didn't go our way (or someone was perceived to have cheated), and a host of other problems (stealing, distracting attention from the class, etc). There were a couple of weeks (or maybe more?) where the school slowly spiralled out of control.

While I'm not saying that this is necessarily what happened, I can imagine that toy cars were overvalued (because of kids gender-coding them as male and therefore more "awesome"), and that generated strife among kids (if it helps with the visualisation, imagine the toy cars were considered a luxury item, with all the hierarchical consequences that implies).

Two very different things.

I grew up with trading cards (baseball and basketball mainly, but also marvel, football etc). We had the same thing at our public school - trading cards were banned, apart from once or twice per school term where we were allowed to bring in the cards. We were, on the other hand, allowed to bring in toy cars on any day we pleased if we chose to do so. That should tell you how unrealistic your statement was.

I think this is the problem people run into when they try to apply a specific theoretical framework that they subscribe to, to everyday life where the theory doesn't necessarily fit. In your case, you're making assumptions of something that you admittedly have no direct experience of, and applying your theoretical framework around it. Surely you can see why that would be problematic?