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> The term gender apartheid refers to the economic and social sexual discrimination against individuals because of their gender or sex. I hate these post-moder

by tomp 11y ago

> The term gender apartheid refers to the economic and social sexual discrimination against individuals because of their gender or sex. I hate these post-modern redefinitions of terms. By this definition, US is gender apartheid (men are subject to involuntary draft), as well as the UK and many other EU countries (men have to work longer to get pension). That's as ridiculous as when some people equate rape with drunk sex or sexual harassment with catcalling. It really reduces the the victims of actual crimes (rape, harassment, and apartheid).

afshin 11y ago
When social and political phenomena are examined more closely, they need classification and designation. Disliking a new term for an old or previously unexamined phenomenon seems curmudgeonly.
- tomp 11y ago
  No, I disagree. I think it makes sense to use different terms for normal, reasonable, moral behavior (draft, drunken sex), and for objectionable, inexcusable behavior (apartheid, rape).
blowski 11y ago
Apartheid refers to the idea of 'separateness', the state treating a particular group differently in a significant number of ways purely because of some identifying characteristic. Clearly, there are ways in which all states do this and for different reasons. Men having to work longer to get a pension is a historical relic, and one which most countries are moving away from. The laws covering conscription in the US also date back to the early 1980s. Since there has been no involuntary draft since the 1970s, it has hardly had an effect on life for most Americans. Compare this to Saudi Arabia where women continue to be severely punished for breaking laws that apply only to women, have much curtailed rights compared to men, and clearly have very 'separate' lives to men in Saudi Arabia. Whether you call it segregation, apartheid, or whatever you want - there is much greater gender inequality in Saudi Arabia than there is in most of the EU and USA. Women in Saudia Arabia are subject to severe repression, in the same way that blacks suffered from severe repression in South Africa during the Apartheid era, and in a way that few people could genuinely complain in the USA or EU.
- tomp 11y ago
  Yeah, I agree completely with you. SA is much worse than US (incomparable, really). That's exactly why I'm objecting to using the same term for both. Or rather, I think Wikipedia's definition is... fucked.
throwawaz6729 11y ago
x
- blowski 11y ago
  You have to sign up for "Selective Service" so that, if suddenly the US government did want to conscript all young men, they have a record of who's eligible. Only men are required (and are even allowed) to sign up for Selective Service. As you can imagine, some politicians do everything they can to maintain the status quo, while others try to get the legislation banned by the Supreme Court.
  - throwawaz6729 11y ago
    can you talk abut why "if they did want to conscript all young men" it means that they are subject to involuntary draft currently? What I mean is that it would take a positive action to instate a draft, right? Would it be harder legally to "want to conscript all people (men and women)"? What I mean is even though women are not registered for selective service, if you were to "enable" conscription couldn't you just also require that they register? If this is the case isn't it fair to say instead of "men are subject to involuntary draft" it is more accurate to say "men are one record-keeping action closer to an involuntary draft"? If there's a bigger difference I'd like to understand that difference.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
"Men have to get drafted!!!" is one of those tells that indicate that a person using it does not have any actual good arguments.
CydeWeys 11y ago
> That's as ridiculous as when some people equate rape with drunk sex or sexual harassment with catcalling. It really reduces the the victims of actual crimes (rape, harassment, and apartheid). I don't think you have any clue how bad women have it in Saudi Arabia, or you wouldn't be denigrating them as "not actual victims". Here's a hint: There are no prohibitions against statutory rape or marital rape. In other rape situations, the woman is more likely to face punishment for speaking about it than her rapist is. Women also cannot drive, vote, or travel freely in public alone, and must always be wearing clothing that covers them from head to toe lest they be harassed by religious police and scores of men. If your argument is that we shouldn't be calling the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia "gender apartheid" because it isn't really all that bad, then you're just flat out wrong.
- sydneysider 11y ago
  Women not driving can't always be a bad thing can it? ;)
- golergka 11y ago
  > If your argument is that we shouldn't be calling the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia "gender apartheid" because it isn't really all that bad, then you're just flat out wrong. I don't think that anyone argues about shades of wrong here. The argument is about the word "apartheid" because it actually denotes something much more exact than "being a dick to some group of people".
- hk__2 11y ago
  Just FYI women can vote in Saudi Arabia but only for municipal elections and only since 2015: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-15052030 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-15052030
- Spivak 11y ago
  Women in Saudi Arabia live absolutely shitty lives at the hands of their male oppressors and the parent isn't disputing that. That doesn't make it apartheid. The only purpose of trying to redefine apartheid to refer their situation is because it's a scary word that has more universally negative connotations. "Women in Saudi Arabia are currently the victims of an ongoing genocide" A genocide of their freedom and liberty as individuals. We can do better than this kind of rhetoric -- it's already horrifying on its own, there's no point in trying to associate it with other terrible, unrelated acts in history.
elcapitan 11y ago
At least they didn't call it gender holocaust. Or maybe that also exists and the proof is the wikipedia article.
- themartorana 11y ago
  Maybe if the point was to impart on an audience that millions of women in SA are being rounded up and slaughtered, it would be a good term. Like, it's a great way to describe what happened in Rwanda.
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
This "drunk sex = rape" thing is just BS though isn't it? From the same source as the propaganda about Christmas being banned or Obama being a secret Muslim. It's so obviously untrue it only acts as a shibboleth.
- orangecat 11y ago
  This "drunk sex = rape" thing is just BS though isn't it? Sadly no. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a33751/occidental-justice-case/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a33751/occidental-justi... is a recent example, and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-r-marsh/why-college-drunk-sex-rap_b_5352121.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-r-marsh/why-college-drun... is a "victim's rights advocate" literally arguing that all drunk sex is rape.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    The piece you link does not stake out radical territory. The core point is this: Consenting to one type of sexual interaction does not mean you consent to everything else. Even assuming that the victim did voluntarily and knowingly remove her clothes, this in no way means she consented to a kiss, let alone full-blown sexual intercourse. Consent is an ongoing process. Even if she had initially consented to engage in sexual activity, any subsequent request to stop needed to be respected. Otherwise, that’s rape. It nicely avoids the semantic fuzziness invoked by "drunk", which might mean different things to different people.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    Your first link includes this description: "He would later describe that night as the drunkest he's ever been, and a neighbor from down the hall would describe his level of intoxication as a "shitshow." He was "slurring his words, stumbling over the others when he got up." That kind of drunk." The girl involved was, by independant reports, about the same level. Both had vomited repeatedly(!) as a result of their level of intoxication. This is far away from the bizarrely popular notion that any sexual activity after a couple of beers is considered rape. If either of these people had ended up having sex with someone who was sober, then that person would clearly have been taking advantage of them in their compromised state. The only reason it's any kind of gray area is because both people appear to have been utterly out of it, and it seems the only reason that this particular case got picked up was because the college had a history of ignoring and downplaying sexual assults and rapes to such a degree they were getting sued over it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

by tomp 11y ago

afshin 11y ago

When social and political phenomena are examined more closely, they need classification and designation. Disliking a new term for an old or previously unexamined phenomenon seems curmudgeonly.

tomp 11y ago
No, I disagree. I think it makes sense to use different terms for normal, reasonable, moral behavior (draft, drunken sex), and for objectionable, inexcusable behavior (apartheid, rape).

blowski 11y ago

Apartheid refers to the idea of 'separateness', the state treating a particular group differently in a significant number of ways purely because of some identifying characteristic. Clearly, there are ways in which all states do this and for different reasons. Men having to work longer to get a pension is a historical relic, and one which most countries are moving away from. The laws covering conscription in the US also date back to the early 1980s. Since there has been no involuntary draft since the 1970s, it has hardly had an effect on life for most Americans. Compare this to Saudi Arabia where women continue to be severely punished for breaking laws that apply only to women, have much curtailed rights compared to men, and clearly have very 'separate' lives to men in Saudi Arabia. Whether you call it segregation, apartheid, or whatever you want - there is much greater gender inequality in Saudi Arabia than there is in most of the EU and USA. Women in Saudia Arabia are subject to severe repression, in the same way that blacks suffered from severe repression in South Africa during the Apartheid era, and in a way that few people could genuinely complain in the USA or EU.

tomp 11y ago
Yeah, I agree completely with you. SA is much worse than US (incomparable, really). That's exactly why I'm objecting to using the same term for both. Or rather, I think Wikipedia's definition is... fucked.

throwawaz6729 11y ago

blowski 11y ago
You have to sign up for "Selective Service" so that, if suddenly the US government did want to conscript all young men, they have a record of who's eligible. Only men are required (and are even allowed) to sign up for Selective Service. As you can imagine, some politicians do everything they can to maintain the status quo, while others try to get the legislation banned by the Supreme Court.
- throwawaz6729 11y ago
  can you talk abut why "if they did want to conscript all young men" it means that they are subject to involuntary draft currently? What I mean is that it would take a positive action to instate a draft, right? Would it be harder legally to "want to conscript all people (men and women)"? What I mean is even though women are not registered for selective service, if you were to "enable" conscription couldn't you just also require that they register? If this is the case isn't it fair to say instead of "men are subject to involuntary draft" it is more accurate to say "men are one record-keeping action closer to an involuntary draft"? If there's a bigger difference I'd like to understand that difference.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago

"Men have to get drafted!!!" is one of those tells that indicate that a person using it does not have any actual good arguments.

CydeWeys 11y ago

> That's as ridiculous as when some people equate rape with drunk sex or sexual harassment with catcalling. It really reduces the the victims of actual crimes (rape, harassment, and apartheid). I don't think you have any clue how bad women have it in Saudi Arabia, or you wouldn't be denigrating them as "not actual victims". Here's a hint: There are no prohibitions against statutory rape or marital rape. In other rape situations, the woman is more likely to face punishment for speaking about it than her rapist is. Women also cannot drive, vote, or travel freely in public alone, and must always be wearing clothing that covers them from head to toe lest they be harassed by religious police and scores of men. If your argument is that we shouldn't be calling the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia "gender apartheid" because it isn't really all that bad, then you're just flat out wrong.

sydneysider 11y ago
Women not driving can't always be a bad thing can it? ;)
golergka 11y ago
> If your argument is that we shouldn't be calling the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia "gender apartheid" because it isn't really all that bad, then you're just flat out wrong. I don't think that anyone argues about shades of wrong here. The argument is about the word "apartheid" because it actually denotes something much more exact than "being a dick to some group of people".
hk__2 11y ago
Just FYI women can vote in Saudi Arabia but only for municipal elections and only since 2015: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-15052030 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-15052030
Spivak 11y ago
Women in Saudi Arabia live absolutely shitty lives at the hands of their male oppressors and the parent isn't disputing that. That doesn't make it apartheid. The only purpose of trying to redefine apartheid to refer their situation is because it's a scary word that has more universally negative connotations. "Women in Saudi Arabia are currently the victims of an ongoing genocide" A genocide of their freedom and liberty as individuals. We can do better than this kind of rhetoric -- it's already horrifying on its own, there's no point in trying to associate it with other terrible, unrelated acts in history.

elcapitan 11y ago

At least they didn't call it gender holocaust. Or maybe that also exists and the proof is the wikipedia article.

themartorana 11y ago
Maybe if the point was to impart on an audience that millions of women in SA are being rounded up and slaughtered, it would be a good term. Like, it's a great way to describe what happened in Rwanda.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

This "drunk sex = rape" thing is just BS though isn't it? From the same source as the propaganda about Christmas being banned or Obama being a secret Muslim. It's so obviously untrue it only acts as a shibboleth.

orangecat 11y ago
This "drunk sex = rape" thing is just BS though isn't it? Sadly no. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a33751/occidental-justice-case/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a33751/occidental-justi... is a recent example, and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-r-marsh/why-college-drunk-sex-rap_b_5352121.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-r-marsh/why-college-drun... is a "victim's rights advocate" literally arguing that all drunk sex is rape.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  The piece you link does not stake out radical territory. The core point is this: Consenting to one type of sexual interaction does not mean you consent to everything else. Even assuming that the victim did voluntarily and knowingly remove her clothes, this in no way means she consented to a kiss, let alone full-blown sexual intercourse. Consent is an ongoing process. Even if she had initially consented to engage in sexual activity, any subsequent request to stop needed to be respected. Otherwise, that’s rape. It nicely avoids the semantic fuzziness invoked by "drunk", which might mean different things to different people.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Your first link includes this description: "He would later describe that night as the drunkest he's ever been, and a neighbor from down the hall would describe his level of intoxication as a "shitshow." He was "slurring his words, stumbling over the others when he got up." That kind of drunk." The girl involved was, by independant reports, about the same level. Both had vomited repeatedly(!) as a result of their level of intoxication. This is far away from the bizarrely popular notion that any sexual activity after a couple of beers is considered rape. If either of these people had ended up having sex with someone who was sober, then that person would clearly have been taking advantage of them in their compromised state. The only reason it's any kind of gray area is because both people appear to have been utterly out of it, and it seems the only reason that this particular case got picked up was because the college had a history of ignoring and downplaying sexual assults and rapes to such a degree they were getting sued over it.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]