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> or is this a one way deal? FFS, dude. Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them. No old fashioned norms are still

> or is this a one way deal? FFS, dude. Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them. No old fashioned norms are still levied on them everytime a woman speaks to them. They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to. To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just being a dick.

xor1 9y ago
>Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. Power isn't based on gender, it's based on wealth. Do you think abuse of power will suddenly end once the majority of wealthy individuals are women instead of men?
- blackrose 9y ago
  Power is enacted through multifarious means, with wealth being one of them. Wealth isn't a requisite for power. Generally in the US, positions of power are held by men, because of (or in spite of) an interconnected system of laws, norms, and a history of (generally) men telling people what to do. And those gender-based ideas enacted in laws and norms and our culture have percolated through our society to affect everyone in ways we often can't detect. The point is that yes, for these reasons and many others, we should "believe women when they report harassment in the workplace."
  - xor1 9y ago
    >Power is enacted through multifarious means, with wealth being one of them. Wealth isn't a requisite for power Name the other sources of power in the United States in the year 2017. Whatever you can come up with, none of it is as significant as wealth. >The point is that yes, for these reasons and many others, we should "believe women when they report harassment in the workplace." You did not answer my question. Do you think abuse of power will suddenly end once the majority of wealthy individuals are women instead of men?
    - blackrose 9y ago
      It could be you or your family having connections to powerful people. Being famous. But what's important as it pertains to our conversation: being in an authoritative position, e.g. a teacher, law enforcement officer, manager, or company executive. All of these people can have an influence, or "power," over others -- including, but not limited to, women. As your question doesn't really have anything to do with our debate, I respectfully decline to answer. It was nice talking.
camelite 9y ago
> Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them. If you "believe women who report sexual harassment", and more specifically, if you believe women who report sexual harassment in "less clear cut" scenarios than Susan Fowlers, then you are deliberately stacking the deck against the specific men who are accused of sexual harassment, some of whom will invariably be innocent. How much comfort the fact that other people with the same genetalia tend to fill the boardrooms provides to the accused, I will leave to your imagination. > They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to. Men aren't reminded constantly by their culture to do things they don't want to do? Where do you live, because it sounds like paradise to me. > To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just being a dick. It's neither. It was an attempt to puncture what I saw as misguided rhetoric. A good old WhatAboutTheMen is an efficient approach because the commenter's default reasoning for not "just believing" men would likely mirror mine for not "just believing" women. And so I don't have to spell it out for them.
- parzivalm 9y ago
  Seems to me that the some of whom will invariably be innocent will be significantly low. Saying "just believing" isn't the best phrase the OP could have picked but neither was your rhetoric. It just contributes to the divide between men and women.
  - camelite 9y ago
    My rhetoric has the advantage of being true.
- zipppy 9y ago
  I'm not going to nitpick about any individual discussion points you guys have going on, but I'll chime in to say that your approach to thinking about men/women in our society seems...disingenuous. We can imagine utopia and then imagine how we would treat people in that setting. That seems to be what you're doing. But if we're not actually in utopia, then we really are tipping the scales in some way. And that does suck, and sometimes that means that one group is going to be treated unfairly, but often it's about the lesser of evils.
metaphorm 9y ago
do you honestly believe that there aren't difficult and often unrealistic social pressures put on men?
- blackrose 9y ago
  Generally speaking, as a group, yes -- especially when compared to the social pressures put on women. Yes, that's changing, but we still have a way to go. Happy to hear any difficult and unrealistic social pressures you think we regularly face today.
  - metaphorm 9y ago
    I don't want to get into a back and forth with you on this topic so I will politely decline your request. I just wanted to say that it seems to me like you are speaking about broad generalizations and that is not the same thing as speaking about real people or individuals. Also, that your generalized idea of men is based on the premise that that general man is a wealthy and powerful person, but this is not the case for most men.
  - mhermher 9y ago
    Now you sound willfully ignorant too.
    - dang 9y ago
      Please don't post uncivilly, even when others have also been breaking the rules.
  - novia 9y ago
    For those of you wondering where blackrose is coming from here, this youtube video might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD6z64aov3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD6z64aov3o
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erikpukinskis 9y ago
I am extremely pro feminist, but I believe this particular tactic is one of feminists most self destructive anti-patterns. It's one thing to say women have substantially more cards stacked against them on average. But it's another to say men have no cards stacked against them. Your position is particularly harmful to feminist aims, because one of the core feminist teachings that we need to get through is this: Don't assume a woman is a certain way because of stereotypes. Between group differences are smaller than within group differences. Women can be less sporty than men on average, while still almost half of women are more athletic than the average man. Similarly, women can have more cards stacked against them on average, while still nearly half of men have more cards stacked against them than the average woman. The place we need to get to, which I believe intersectional feminism advocates, is to understand each person and situation individually, and consider that there are always many axes of oppression operation simultaneously. To address your assertion directly: that a male victim of sexual harassment has no cards against him, consider this: The flip side of "boys will be boys", a meme used to let rapists go unpunished, is "boys must be boys", a meme that men always want sex and therefore if he had a drunken hookup he must have wanted it. This goes far beyond the less accepted (though still frighteningly effective) meme of "she was drunk so she must have wanted it". Women are not presumed to want sex all the time. I consider that a card stacked against men. We have precious little shared framework for thinking and talking about the times we don't want sex. It's not equivalent to the deck of cards that is patriarchy, but it's a card. I think feminism will profit greatly from taking a stance on how people should be treated better, rather your stance, which is a stance on which people should be treated better (women). I still believe WATM is usually a derailing technique used to distract from discussions of women's rights, I just don't believe that in the current climate it benefits the feminist movement to respond to them as such. It doesn't take much effort to say "sure, men too" and doing so reinforces other key feminist rhetoric.
- blackrose 9y ago
  I was mostly trying to point out how ridiculous camelite's argument sounded. I thought maybe we should instead have a serious conversation about the events leading up to Uber's current troubles, and how they reflect on our society and our own individual mindsets. But apparently this isn't the place for that. Anyway, yeah, of course everyone has different circumstances. I didn't mean literally no men, just as the grandparent comment didn't mean literally believe all women. I was speaking generally in order to be comprehendible to a guy speaking generally and hypothetically.

xor1 9y ago

>Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. Power isn't based on gender, it's based on wealth. Do you think abuse of power will suddenly end once the majority of wealthy individuals are women instead of men?

blackrose 9y ago
Power is enacted through multifarious means, with wealth being one of them. Wealth isn't a requisite for power. Generally in the US, positions of power are held by men, because of (or in spite of) an interconnected system of laws, norms, and a history of (generally) men telling people what to do. And those gender-based ideas enacted in laws and norms and our culture have percolated through our society to affect everyone in ways we often can't detect. The point is that yes, for these reasons and many others, we should "believe women when they report harassment in the workplace."
- xor1 9y ago
  >Power is enacted through multifarious means, with wealth being one of them. Wealth isn't a requisite for power Name the other sources of power in the United States in the year 2017. Whatever you can come up with, none of it is as significant as wealth. >The point is that yes, for these reasons and many others, we should "believe women when they report harassment in the workplace." You did not answer my question. Do you think abuse of power will suddenly end once the majority of wealthy individuals are women instead of men?
  - blackrose 9y ago
    It could be you or your family having connections to powerful people. Being famous. But what's important as it pertains to our conversation: being in an authoritative position, e.g. a teacher, law enforcement officer, manager, or company executive. All of these people can have an influence, or "power," over others -- including, but not limited to, women. As your question doesn't really have anything to do with our debate, I respectfully decline to answer. It was nice talking.

camelite 9y ago

> Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them. If you "believe women who report sexual harassment", and more specifically, if you believe women who report sexual harassment in "less clear cut" scenarios than Susan Fowlers, then you are deliberately stacking the deck against the specific men who are accused of sexual harassment, some of whom will invariably be innocent. How much comfort the fact that other people with the same genetalia tend to fill the boardrooms provides to the accused, I will leave to your imagination. > They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to. Men aren't reminded constantly by their culture to do things they don't want to do? Where do you live, because it sounds like paradise to me. > To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just being a dick. It's neither. It was an attempt to puncture what I saw as misguided rhetoric. A good old WhatAboutTheMen is an efficient approach because the commenter's default reasoning for not "just believing" men would likely mirror mine for not "just believing" women. And so I don't have to spell it out for them.

parzivalm 9y ago
Seems to me that the some of whom will invariably be innocent will be significantly low. Saying "just believing" isn't the best phrase the OP could have picked but neither was your rhetoric. It just contributes to the divide between men and women.
- camelite 9y ago
  My rhetoric has the advantage of being true.
zipppy 9y ago
I'm not going to nitpick about any individual discussion points you guys have going on, but I'll chime in to say that your approach to thinking about men/women in our society seems...disingenuous. We can imagine utopia and then imagine how we would treat people in that setting. That seems to be what you're doing. But if we're not actually in utopia, then we really are tipping the scales in some way. And that does suck, and sometimes that means that one group is going to be treated unfairly, but often it's about the lesser of evils.

metaphorm 9y ago

do you honestly believe that there aren't difficult and often unrealistic social pressures put on men?

blackrose 9y ago
Generally speaking, as a group, yes -- especially when compared to the social pressures put on women. Yes, that's changing, but we still have a way to go. Happy to hear any difficult and unrealistic social pressures you think we regularly face today.
- metaphorm 9y ago
  I don't want to get into a back and forth with you on this topic so I will politely decline your request. I just wanted to say that it seems to me like you are speaking about broad generalizations and that is not the same thing as speaking about real people or individuals. Also, that your generalized idea of men is based on the premise that that general man is a wealthy and powerful person, but this is not the case for most men.
- mhermher 9y ago
  Now you sound willfully ignorant too.
  - dang 9y ago
    Please don't post uncivilly, even when others have also been breaking the rules.
- novia 9y ago
  For those of you wondering where blackrose is coming from here, this youtube video might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD6z64aov3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD6z64aov3o

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erikpukinskis 9y ago

I am extremely pro feminist, but I believe this particular tactic is one of feminists most self destructive anti-patterns. It's one thing to say women have substantially more cards stacked against them on average. But it's another to say men have no cards stacked against them. Your position is particularly harmful to feminist aims, because one of the core feminist teachings that we need to get through is this: Don't assume a woman is a certain way because of stereotypes. Between group differences are smaller than within group differences. Women can be less sporty than men on average, while still almost half of women are more athletic than the average man. Similarly, women can have more cards stacked against them on average, while still nearly half of men have more cards stacked against them than the average woman. The place we need to get to, which I believe intersectional feminism advocates, is to understand each person and situation individually, and consider that there are always many axes of oppression operation simultaneously. To address your assertion directly: that a male victim of sexual harassment has no cards against him, consider this: The flip side of "boys will be boys", a meme used to let rapists go unpunished, is "boys must be boys", a meme that men always want sex and therefore if he had a drunken hookup he must have wanted it. This goes far beyond the less accepted (though still frighteningly effective) meme of "she was drunk so she must have wanted it". Women are not presumed to want sex all the time. I consider that a card stacked against men. We have precious little shared framework for thinking and talking about the times we don't want sex. It's not equivalent to the deck of cards that is patriarchy, but it's a card. I think feminism will profit greatly from taking a stance on how people should be treated better, rather your stance, which is a stance on which people should be treated better (women). I still believe WATM is usually a derailing technique used to distract from discussions of women's rights, I just don't believe that in the current climate it benefits the feminist movement to respond to them as such. It doesn't take much effort to say "sure, men too" and doing so reinforces other key feminist rhetoric.

blackrose 9y ago
I was mostly trying to point out how ridiculous camelite's argument sounded. I thought maybe we should instead have a serious conversation about the events leading up to Uber's current troubles, and how they reflect on our society and our own individual mindsets. But apparently this isn't the place for that. Anyway, yeah, of course everyone has different circumstances. I didn't mean literally no men, just as the grandparent comment didn't mean literally believe all women. I was speaking generally in order to be comprehendible to a guy speaking generally and hypothetically.