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>But after a lifetime in service of the feminist cause, she took on the case of a friend whose son she came to believe had been wrongly convicted of rape and wo

• epx 7y ago
  Quite an optimistic view. Hope you are right.
  • trianglem 7y ago
    What exactly is optimistic about the post?
• wutbrodo 7y ago
  Exactly, racism is much more of a fully-stable equilibrium than sexism, since full dehumanization of the other sex is always going to be impossible, if only due to adjacency. And adjacency can be critical to rights movements: one of the big successes of the gay rights movement was combating the stereotype of evil deviants through a strategy of positioning gay people as neighbors, brothers, sons, etc; regular people who just happened to have a different sexuality. By contrast, there's nothing stopping racial groups from tending towards being fully segregated from one another, to the point that people stop thinking of the other race as full humans instead of fuzzy stereotypes.
  • closeparen 7y ago
    > full dehumanization of the other sex is always going to be impossible, if only due to adjacency No surprise, then, that it shows up in the segment of men who are not "adjacent" to any women.
    • neohaven 7y ago
      Nor is it a surprise that it shows up in any segment of children not exposed to healthy male influences. That knife cuts both ways.
    • new2628 7y ago
      Why leave out the symmetric case of women who are not "adjacent" to any men?
    • wutbrodo 7y ago
      Right, that's one source of sexism, but not by any means a complete picture. The stereotype of the lothario who thinks of women as inferior is yet another one, as is the feminist who mocks both toxic masculinity and male tears. You're never going to entirely escape from those who are just shitty people, but at the societal level, sexism is unique in that the groups of potential victims and potential perpetrators are intimately forced together, ij a way that isn't necessarily the case for racism or homophobia (when gay people are forced into the closet).
  • pjc50 7y ago
    > full dehumanization of the other sex is always going to be impossible <gestures to entire history of sexism> .. I mean, the Saudi king has lots of wives but until recently wouldn't allow any of them to drive? For a closer example, there are plenty of married Republican politicians who are willing to make statements on abortion that imply they have no idea how the reproductive system works.
    • NateEag 7y ago
      > For a closer example, there are plenty of married Republican politicians who are willing to make statements on abortion that imply they have no idea how the reproductive system works. Such as?
• mieseratte 7y ago
  Given the popularity of social justice causes, I have a hard time believing this is a material factor. People seem rather up in arms about racism or even just adverse impact on this day and age.
  • seph-reed 7y ago
    Up in arms is very different from understanding/empathizing. IMO, it's generally an indication of the opposite.
  • drharby 7y ago
    Seemingly not rascist and being rascist are two distinct qualities. It has been my experience on the receiving end of rascism that it is done quietly with plausible deniability
    • mieseratte 7y ago
      If it’s plausibly deniable, how do you know it’s racism?
      • cma 7y ago
        Presumably you can’t in any one case, but may be able to when looking at them in aggregate.
  • TheCoelacanth 7y ago
    Social justice causes are popular to talk about, not to actually do something about.
• bhk 7y ago
  Your thesis presumes some democratic mechanism, as juries ultimately are. Unfortunately, an increasing number of the laws we are subjected to in the United States are bureaucratic edicts removed several levels from democratic checks and balances. It appears to me that these are more readily steered by lobbying groups -- which by their nature agglomerate polarized supporters. How else can you explain this Title IX perversity?
• notfashion 7y ago
  I'm not sure the scenarios "some of my best friends are of the opposite sex" or "some of my best friends are of another race" have much bearing on sexism or racism. Loving someone from a different category doesn't automatically dissolve all antagonism or prejudice—it might just override it in a specific case. Relationships are multidimensional. You would need to provide evidence that these bonds of love/affection somehow erode prejudice toward a given 'other' in general. There are many historic cases of celebrities who have been widely accepted despite massive ongoing prejudice against the group of which they are a member. Affection for celebrities is not the same as familial love, but I do think this suggests that the way people feel about individuals doesn't translate in a simple way to their attitudes to whole groups.
  • tkel 7y ago
    Exactly. For example Thomas Jefferson fathered 6 children with a slave of his. The millions of men who believed their wives had no right to vote, that it wasn't their place. The parents who shame their kids for their sexuality or gender identity. Prejudice and love can co-exist.
    • hirundo 7y ago
      You're offering Sally Hemings' children as evidence of love rather than lust? Why?
    • esyir 7y ago
      There were also women that were nonchalant, or even the large female anti-suffrage movements as well. Suffrage was seen by some (yes, women) as a threat to the family structure, amongst other reasons for oppision. Framing this as "prejudice" alone ignores the culture/opinions of the people of this era.
      • tkel 7y ago
        Yeah, we call that internalized misogyny
• tzs 7y ago
  How would bias toward gay people fit in with that? A lot of people don't know (or at least aren't aware that they know) anyone gay, but bias toward gay people has dramatically fallen over the last couple of decades. There was a recent episode of "Hidden Brain" on NPR that talked about this [1]. This part is particularly interesting: > In a thought experiment, Mahzarin and her colleagues have extended the trend lines of the data to see how long it would take for bias to be entirely eliminated. To be clear, this isn't a prediction about what is going to happen. It just shows you the speed at which different biases are changing. What they found is that this would have anti-gay bias all but eliminated in 9 more years. By contrast, it's about 60 more years for anti-black biases to be eliminated, 140 years for skin tone biases against darker skin to go away. Biases against the elderly and the disabled and the overweight do not go away within the next 150 years. Most families include the elderly and the overweight, so the idea that familiarity breeds acceptance would predict that those biases should be going away quicker than biases against gays. (To reiterate, the timeframes aren't predictions of what will happen. They are just comparisons of the rates that those biases are changing right now). [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/709567750/radically-normal-how-gay-rights-activists-changed-the-minds-of-their-opponents https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/709567750/radically-normal-ho...
  • danharaj 7y ago
    > A lot of people don't know (or at least aren't aware that they know) anyone gay This is becoming increasingly less true because it is becoming safer and more respectable to be out. This creates a tight feedback loop of acceptance which makes people feel safer coming out.
    • kerkeslager 7y ago
      This didn't happen by accident, either: If you read i.e. Harvey Milk's "you must come out" speech, you'll see that the explicit intention of campaigns to get gay people to come out was to educate the public that they do in fact know people who are gay.
  • blotter_paper 7y ago
    >Most families include the elderly and the overweight, so the idea that familiarity breeds acceptance would predict that those biases should be going away quicker than biases against gays. What I'm about to say is not meant to provide a justification for discriminatory behavior, it's just an armchair-anthropologist's attempt at explaining this discrepancy. We might have a very deep bias against old people; if a group of animals has to decide who gets a split of food, and some of them have a dramtically shorter life expectancy, I could imagine there being a biological tendency to care about the young over the old. A similar calculation might be made about the disabled, since a wounded companion is less helpful than an able-bodied one. Weight, I have a number of ideas about. There's a disease correlation, of course. We also might ostracize overweight people because overweight people were more likely to be hoarding food in our deep past, and sharing with those who don't share back is a bad strategy. Even if the specifics of my armchair-anthropology are utter horseshit, I could see factors similar to these out-weighing the familiarity bias without discounting it.
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  "No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy." --- Henry Kissinger
  • icebraining 7y ago
    (Not actually by Henry Kissinger)
    • BurningFrog 7y ago
      The great quotes rarely are said by the right person :)
• DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I have heard that fathers with daughters make for a very tough jury in rape cases. Generally speaking, if you want to nail a rapist to the wall, you should fill it with middle aged men, whether they have children or not, and actively avoid women. Middle aged men remember what Randy jerks they were capable of being. Even if they have no daughters, they have mothers, sisters, wives or girlfriends and they want their women protected. Women will say to themselves "I wouldn't have worn that outfit/gone to that bar/been in that part of town after dark." Women will try to convince themselves it was somehow the victim's fault so they can feel safe and in control of their lives. Or so I've read.
  • mirimir 7y ago
    That's very insightful. And yet those men are still sexist, but in a protective way.
    • DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I recovered from being sexually abused as a child in part because I actively sought out protective male friends. I've long believed the antidote to "bad men" is "good men." In contrast, a lot of rape victims simply conclude all men are evil and it becomes a barrier to recovery. I think they don't know another way to feel safe. It seems like the safe bet to them: just don't trust any men. That wasn't my reaction.
      • mirimir 7y ago
        A family friend raped one of my nieces. She was 15 at the time, and got pregnant. This was a religious community, and the rapist was married. But another family friend, who was single, married the young woman, and they had a long and apparently happy marriage, with two more children. So I guess that it all sort of worked out. They did forgive the rapist father, and he contributed to my niece's family.
        • DoreenMichele 7y ago
          It took me twenty years to conclude that the individual who raped me honestly thought there was consent on my part. And then I was able to make my peace with it and move on. I think we desperately need to work on the societal problems that foster situations like that. Far too often, there is a crucible of social baggage involved. My takeaway: Have private relationships and don't let the world butt into them. It's hard enough for two people to agree what's okay. It gets vastly harder when other parties get involved. I read one article where two college students hooked up, everything was initially fine, then the girl's mother basically talked her into charging the guy with rape. If you weren't there, I don't want your opinion of what happened to me. You can apply your personal baggage to your own sex life/experiences. Keep it out of mine.
• avar 7y ago
  The notion that fathers who have daughters can't be sexist towards women is taking a really narrow view of sexism. You can think that women aren't responsible enough to vote, or to hold certain jobs while still loving your daughter. You can kick it back with your black friend on the weekend while still not wanting black people in your neighborhood, your friends is just "one of the good ones". Most of human society throughout history has been profoundly sexist by modern standards, and we still have entire countries that are structurally sexist by the standards of the west. None of that was destabilized because everyone had a mother, and most fathers had daughters.
  • jamesrcole 7y ago
    >> Women and men both have members of the opposite sex that they genuinely love. I have heard that fathers with daughters make for a very tough jury in rape cases. > The notion that fathers who have daughters can't be sexist towards women You're misrepresenting what the person said.
    • avar 7y ago
      Am I? The GP seems me to to be proposing the idea that jurors will be more fair to members of the opposite sex if they have members of that sex as part of their immediate family, something that isn't as likely to be the case with different racial groups. I don't see how that has anything at all to do with the issue. The durability of sex-based discrimination in throughout the history of human societies demonstrably has nothing to do with that.
      • manfredo 7y ago
        Yes, you are misrepresenting what was written. You are correct that, "the GP seems me to to be proposing the idea that jurors will be more fair to members of the opposite sex if they have members of that sex as part of their immediate family". It is a massive exaggeration, if not an outright fabrication, to expand this to "the notion that fathers who have daughters can't be sexist towards women" - what you wrote your original comment in this chain. The grandparent comment stated that fathers with daughters give deference towards women in a very specific situation. No reasonable reading of this comment can be interpreted as denying the ability of fathers with daughters to be sexist towards women.
• jeffdavis 7y ago
  True in the sense that it creates a "floor" for the depths to which people might sink. But this process can still sink pretty low. Consider how women couldn't vote in the US until 1919 -- a half century after blacks. And a more modern example that was on display for all to see: the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. There were not a lot of facts available -- no date, no place, no witness that could remember. Yet millions were ready to brand him a rapist to the whole nation and pressure him out of political office.
  • roenxi 7y ago
    > Consider how women couldn't vote in the US until 1919 -- a half century after blacks. Not letting women vote is arguably not necessarily a marker of sexism. It is more a marker of the relationship between a country's military leadership and institutions. Originally originally (~400BC) voting was basically for the army to decide when and where it would fight; hence male-only because men are the physically big ones who can fight. I don't know exactly how it changed over time, but the linkages are probably quite sticky. This modern concept of a government heavily invested in daily life wouldn't have been practical before modern communication and transportation, so needs and viewpoints on what the government is would have been radically different.
    • intarga 7y ago
      1 - I'm doubtful of your claim there was nothing to vote on except where/whether the army fights. 2 - That's irrelevant anyway unless you're suggesting that it was still the case up to 1919. 3 - Even if it was, why does women not fighting imply they can't have opinions and thoughts on when and where the army fights? For sure it still affects them.
      • roenxi 7y ago
        And yet 1919 is the closing year of WWI, which as I recall was the first major war where women's labour could be deployed directly as a proactive and systematic part of the war effort on foreign soil. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no military historian. There is a massive link between being involved in the military and having political power, even without suffrage. There are 2,500 years of history and women got the vote around the time that the repeatable firearm was perfected.
• harimau777 7y ago
  I think that may be because, at least in America, ethnic minorities are over represented in crime and the "under class" in a way that isn't true of gay people. I'm not saying its right to draw the conclusion "black people are overrepresented in crime therefore black people/culture must be bad", but I think it is human nature to do so. Going further, if an individual has had a negative experience with a person of another race (e.g. being mugged, living next to an addict, etc.) then there is also likely to be an emotional component that is difficult to overcome. Again, I want to emphasize that I'm not saying that this is right, just that it's human nature.
• rolltiide 7y ago
  > She asked if it mattered to them that she believed the acquitted to be innocent. The answer she received made it clear that the guilt or innocence of the accused was a matter of indifference. What mattered was that she had sided with the enemy. I see this in a lot of forums, such as r/twoxchromosomes on reddit The outspoken members there are women who assume their negative life experience is all women's experience. That they are speaking for the injustice of all women. Disagreeing with that version of reality is the worst sin of all. Offering a different perspective is at best tacit consent for the status quo or at worst advocating for the victimhood of women, intentionally(?) ignoring any other possibility. Offering a different perspective if you do not have two X chromosomes is mansplaining, no matter what the content is. This is called an echo chamber. People don't realize they don't have as much consensus on reality as they believe. I think one way to short circuit this is to reveal that the lack of consensus perpetuates the oppression of women. There are men willing to be allies and help create a gradient of collaboration, but given the censorship it is equally as entertaining watching a fragmented cause get nowhere due to its own balkanization that the echo chambers doesn’t even even seem to notice. And this is all exacerbated because people aren't treating each other as individuals, and instead trying to speak for entire groups. The irony is that you can't even address this conundrum without grouping the people who do this together.