9 ms·

The problem in this case is that in the same way women are most often the recipients of sexual discrimination, men are most often the recipient of being decried

The problem in this case is that in the same way women are most often the recipients of sexual discrimination, men are most often the recipient of being decried as sexual discriminators. It's so easy to look down on someone identifying as male as being discriminant but when the opposite is true, the male point of view is often ignored. Simply put, we are expected to man up, whereas women are expected to stand up.

wpietri 14y ago
I don't think it's quite as dramatic as you say. But personally I'm ok with it. Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. Higher education. Being allowed to practice a profession. Being favored by marriage laws. Being favored by social biases. Like Peter Parker and Voltaire say, "With great power comes great responsibility." Having received a substantial boost just for being born with a dick, I'm ok with manning up. To me, that's part of using my power to redress the imbalance.
- coldtea 14y ago
  >Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. Higher education. Being allowed to practice a profession. Being favored by marriage laws. Being favored by social biases. Yes, so let's reverse it, and get a female-biased revenge ...on people that weren't even alive back at those times. Why not also sell white people as slaves?
  - wpietri 14y ago
    You're doing it wrong. If you want to Godwin a thread, you actually have to mention Hitler or the Holocaust. Just making ridiculously over-the-top historical analogies isn't enough.
    - coldtea 14y ago
      I'm the one doing it wrong? The parent mentioned that discrimination is OK because of "historical analogies" drawn from past centuries. I merely extended it to another domain for sarcasm's sake. Second, you DO know that "Godwin's law" is not an actual law that govern's discussions, and it's not even something that people agree on its validity, right? It's merely a BS internet meme, a funny quote used as a joke. Invoking it is like invoking made up statistics as an argument.
      - wpietri 14y ago
        Hi! I do know about Godwin's Law. I even know Mike Godwin a little. And I'm invoking it as a reminder to avoid hysteria and outrageous hyperbole, which was the original point of his comment. By the way, I didn't say that discrimination was ok, and I wasn't making a historical analogy. I was pointing out that our existing society is just emerging from that long history of sexism.
        Evbn 14y ago
        Of I invoke Godwin properly, can we end this inane thread? You know who else wanted to end threads? Hitler. Done.
- shanelja 14y ago
  We must have grown up in drastically different times then - I'm barely 20 and for the majority of my life I have been taught that boys are smelly and girls are sweet, boys do the dirty jobs and that men are dangerous and shouldn't be left alone with women. Sure, men have had the upper hand for centuries but we live in an age where the scales have tipped - we need to be careful that instead of having a substantial boost for having a dick, or a vagina, that instead every has the same substantial advantage.
  - ritchiea 14y ago
    Barely 20 is pretty young, I suspect as you get older you will notice more and more ways men still have societal advantages. Around 20 most of your life you've spent in school, where if you're in a relatively progressive environment your teachers and administrators have made a point to put students of both genders on equal footing.
    - BSousa 14y ago
      The problem (at least here) is that they don't. Boys are usually given harsher sentences for same misbehavior as girls. Also, there is more boys dropping out than girls. Girls tend to grade higher than boys as well. Unemployment of young folk (<30) is more prevalent in men than women. I don't want to take anything from the women's struggle, but more and more, they are getting the upper hand. (Heck, my boy is 11 months old, and even now, he gets more 'insults' about behavior then his female cousin about same age)
  - jk215 14y ago
    Men have had the upper hand since the dawn of existence and still have the upper hand in basically every society in the world.
    - nawitus 14y ago
      Nope, men have the upper hand and lower hand, and if you take the average out of that then women are men are equal at least in all Western nations. Even though 60-80% of politicians may be male, that's contrasted with 80% of homeless people being male, 80% of suicides made by men. If we look at young people, then women clearly have the uppder hand. In addition to having the upper hand in dating, they out-earn young men and have greater success in education. Interestingly, if women are better than men at something, then the explanation is never discrimination, but if men are better than women, then the reason is discrimination.
- aegiso 14y ago
  The shortest path to peace and justice is definitely swiveling the artillery. I sincerely hope you're joking.
- duck 14y ago
  Don't forget going to battle and lots and lots of dying.
- nawitus 14y ago
  >Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Not really. Men have had more freedom but less security. Just because you personally like your gender role (as it seems), that doesn't mean other men agree (or agreed in the past). Sure, men were allowed to be employees and women cared for the children at home (though reality was actually a lot more complex than that, but we can accept this caricature for now), but men had to work or they wouldn't find a women to marry. Women didn't have to work, as they could be supported by their husband. Work was pretty gruesome in the past, even if homework was also harder in the past. Of course, there's little proper scientific research on this subject, as "women's studies" start from their assumption that women had and have everything worse without really proving it. The problem with saying that the men's gender role of more freedom but more responsibility doesn't take into consideration that some people prefer to have less freedom and less responsibility, while some women prefer to have more freedom and more responsibility and some less freedom and less responsibility (or at least prefered in the past). >Having received a substantial boost just for being born with a dick, I'm ok with manning up. Even if we assume that men had better starting position in the past, that doesn't apply anymore. Young women are outearning and have more success in education. True equality can only be reached through the abolition of gender roles for both men and women, not assuming that men need to "man up" and therefore saying that gender inequality is somehow positive and should exist. You also made the claim about "imbalance". There's no imbalance in favor of women in Western countries. Men have just as much gender equality problems as women, but even speculating this is politically incorrect. Here's a study o the subject: http://granum.uta.fi/granum/kirjanTiedot.php?tuote_id=18450 http://granum.uta.fi/granum/kirjanTiedot.php?tuote_id=18450
  - wpietri 14y ago
    You've made a lot of soup out of a small amount of meat. Some quick replies to clear up misunderstandings: I agree that patriarchy is bad for men too. I disagree that it was equally bad for both genders. I disagree that we have reached balance. By "manning up", I don't mean reinforcing gender roles or maintaining gender inequality. I mean that men should, as the relatively privileged parties, not be whiny at either the shift toward balance or the small anti-male inequities that crop up temporarily along the road to equity.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  So? I didn't exist back then. Why should I suffer because someone else that happened to be the same gender as me was privileged?
  - wpietri 14y ago
    When, exactly, is the date that you believe that male privilege ended?
- lovehashbrowns 14y ago
  That is the worst way to go about this because it DOESN'T ACTUALLY FIX THE PROBLEM. It just makes it worse. Particularly because you are punishing people, men, who have never participated in the subjugation of women. This whole counter racism, counter sexism thing is just making things worst. It is basically just shifting the balance. What does that do for actually fixing the problem? Not a damn thing. Your attitude is vile and it is the same attitude that led to women being treated the way they were in history.
  - king_jester 14y ago
    > Particularly because you are punishing people, men, who have never participated in the subjugation of women. This is impossible, all men have and do participate in the subjugation of women so as systemic sexism exists.
    - lovehashbrowns 14y ago
      But according to your logic, all women have participated in the subjugation of women through systemic sexism.
      - erikpukinskis 14y ago
        This is true. Sexism is not men vs women, it's all of us vs ourselves. But that doesn't mean men and women occupy the same space in the conflict.
- obviouslygreen 14y ago
  Men as a sex have had advantageous circumstances and treatment for a long time, yes. That has absolutely nothing to do with men who are alive today. Perhaps you're a male who's OK with being the subject of discriminatory treatment over centuries of gain you didn't get to live through. I'm not, and I don't think anyone should be. Unless two wrongs make a right, discriminating against people who have not been a party to the kind of discrimination you're talking about helps no one, it just alienates those who see our position clearly.
  - Steuard 14y ago
    "Men as a sex have had advantageous circumstances and treatment for a long time, yes. That has absolutely nothing to do with men who are alive today." Let's talk about the gender ratio today in Congress, or among Fortune 500 CEOs. Let's talk about the recent study showing that given identical (fake) resumes for a lab manager position, scientists on average offer lower salary and less mentoring to female candidates. http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/sexists-in-white-coats-men-favored-for-laboratory-jobs-47182/ http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/sexists-in-white-coats-... That's just a few examples; there are countless others. I completely agree that it's unfair to blame men today for the long history of inequality in our society. But 1) that history is not remotely over, and 2) the responsibility that we do have as men alive today is to find whatever ways we can to make progress in improving these issues for everyone. I honestly don't know the best ways to do that; none of them seem entirely good or entirely effective. But if we know that there is a vast invisible finger of society tipping the scales against women in a given context, it does not strike me as necessarily immoral to put explicit structures in place designed to tip things a little bit back the other way. (I'm sure it could be implemented poorly.) We have to break the self-reinforcing cycle somehow, and maybe an admittedly clumsy counter-push against those social pressures can help.
    - papsosouid 14y ago
      >Let's talk about the gender ratio today in Congress, or among Fortune 500 CEOs Sure. But lets also talk about the gender ratio of prisoners, the homeless, suicides, workplace deaths, etc. It is fallacious to look only at the top 0.0001% of men and declare that men as a group have things better as a result. Men have a much greater variance in virtually every measurable aspect. Look at the entire spectrum. http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
- visarga 14y ago
  >Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. You are referring to rich men, that elusive 1%. Average men have traditionally gotten the worst/riskiest jobs such as soldier and physical labourer. While the top 1% do get these advantages, the bottom 99% are maybe worse off than women. Also, the "men had it good for centuries, it's women's turn now" doesn't hold. I am not those men. I was not present then and I resent having to pay for it. Should a child have to pay for the sins of 10 generations ago? What counts for us is here and now. What passed, passed. It was not our doing.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    I never said people should pay for past sins, and agree that would be wrong. My point in bringing up the history is that the effects of the history aren't past. I have done unfairly well because I'm a guy. That should end.
- john_b 14y ago
  > Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. Higher education. Being allowed to practice a profession. Being favored by marriage laws. Being favored by social biases. Are you saying that men should be expected to "pay" for the priveleges of previous generations of men? If not, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, because all the advantages you list are now equally enjoyed by women (in some cases moreso, e.g. favored by marriage laws).

wpietri 14y ago

I don't think it's quite as dramatic as you say. But personally I'm ok with it. Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. Higher education. Being allowed to practice a profession. Being favored by marriage laws. Being favored by social biases. Like Peter Parker and Voltaire say, "With great power comes great responsibility." Having received a substantial boost just for being born with a dick, I'm ok with manning up. To me, that's part of using my power to redress the imbalance.

coldtea 14y ago
>Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. Higher education. Being allowed to practice a profession. Being favored by marriage laws. Being favored by social biases. Yes, so let's reverse it, and get a female-biased revenge ...on people that weren't even alive back at those times. Why not also sell white people as slaves?
- wpietri 14y ago
  You're doing it wrong. If you want to Godwin a thread, you actually have to mention Hitler or the Holocaust. Just making ridiculously over-the-top historical analogies isn't enough.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    I'm the one doing it wrong? The parent mentioned that discrimination is OK because of "historical analogies" drawn from past centuries. I merely extended it to another domain for sarcasm's sake. Second, you DO know that "Godwin's law" is not an actual law that govern's discussions, and it's not even something that people agree on its validity, right? It's merely a BS internet meme, a funny quote used as a joke. Invoking it is like invoking made up statistics as an argument.
    - wpietri 14y ago
      Hi! I do know about Godwin's Law. I even know Mike Godwin a little. And I'm invoking it as a reminder to avoid hysteria and outrageous hyperbole, which was the original point of his comment. By the way, I didn't say that discrimination was ok, and I wasn't making a historical analogy. I was pointing out that our existing society is just emerging from that long history of sexism.
      - Evbn 14y ago
        Of I invoke Godwin properly, can we end this inane thread? You know who else wanted to end threads? Hitler. Done.
shanelja 14y ago
We must have grown up in drastically different times then - I'm barely 20 and for the majority of my life I have been taught that boys are smelly and girls are sweet, boys do the dirty jobs and that men are dangerous and shouldn't be left alone with women. Sure, men have had the upper hand for centuries but we live in an age where the scales have tipped - we need to be careful that instead of having a substantial boost for having a dick, or a vagina, that instead every has the same substantial advantage.
- ritchiea 14y ago
  Barely 20 is pretty young, I suspect as you get older you will notice more and more ways men still have societal advantages. Around 20 most of your life you've spent in school, where if you're in a relatively progressive environment your teachers and administrators have made a point to put students of both genders on equal footing.
  - BSousa 14y ago
    The problem (at least here) is that they don't. Boys are usually given harsher sentences for same misbehavior as girls. Also, there is more boys dropping out than girls. Girls tend to grade higher than boys as well. Unemployment of young folk (<30) is more prevalent in men than women. I don't want to take anything from the women's struggle, but more and more, they are getting the upper hand. (Heck, my boy is 11 months old, and even now, he gets more 'insults' about behavior then his female cousin about same age)
- jk215 14y ago
  Men have had the upper hand since the dawn of existence and still have the upper hand in basically every society in the world.
  - nawitus 14y ago
    Nope, men have the upper hand and lower hand, and if you take the average out of that then women are men are equal at least in all Western nations. Even though 60-80% of politicians may be male, that's contrasted with 80% of homeless people being male, 80% of suicides made by men. If we look at young people, then women clearly have the uppder hand. In addition to having the upper hand in dating, they out-earn young men and have greater success in education. Interestingly, if women are better than men at something, then the explanation is never discrimination, but if men are better than women, then the reason is discrimination.
aegiso 14y ago
The shortest path to peace and justice is definitely swiveling the artillery. I sincerely hope you're joking.
duck 14y ago
Don't forget going to battle and lots and lots of dying.
nawitus 14y ago
>Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Not really. Men have had more freedom but less security. Just because you personally like your gender role (as it seems), that doesn't mean other men agree (or agreed in the past). Sure, men were allowed to be employees and women cared for the children at home (though reality was actually a lot more complex than that, but we can accept this caricature for now), but men had to work or they wouldn't find a women to marry. Women didn't have to work, as they could be supported by their husband. Work was pretty gruesome in the past, even if homework was also harder in the past. Of course, there's little proper scientific research on this subject, as "women's studies" start from their assumption that women had and have everything worse without really proving it. The problem with saying that the men's gender role of more freedom but more responsibility doesn't take into consideration that some people prefer to have less freedom and less responsibility, while some women prefer to have more freedom and more responsibility and some less freedom and less responsibility (or at least prefered in the past). >Having received a substantial boost just for being born with a dick, I'm ok with manning up. Even if we assume that men had better starting position in the past, that doesn't apply anymore. Young women are outearning and have more success in education. True equality can only be reached through the abolition of gender roles for both men and women, not assuming that men need to "man up" and therefore saying that gender inequality is somehow positive and should exist. You also made the claim about "imbalance". There's no imbalance in favor of women in Western countries. Men have just as much gender equality problems as women, but even speculating this is politically incorrect. Here's a study o the subject: http://granum.uta.fi/granum/kirjanTiedot.php?tuote_id=18450 http://granum.uta.fi/granum/kirjanTiedot.php?tuote_id=18450
- wpietri 14y ago
  You've made a lot of soup out of a small amount of meat. Some quick replies to clear up misunderstandings: I agree that patriarchy is bad for men too. I disagree that it was equally bad for both genders. I disagree that we have reached balance. By "manning up", I don't mean reinforcing gender roles or maintaining gender inequality. I mean that men should, as the relatively privileged parties, not be whiny at either the shift toward balance or the small anti-male inequities that crop up temporarily along the road to equity.
lucian1900 14y ago
So? I didn't exist back then. Why should I suffer because someone else that happened to be the same gender as me was privileged?
- wpietri 14y ago
  When, exactly, is the date that you believe that male privilege ended?
lovehashbrowns 14y ago
That is the worst way to go about this because it DOESN'T ACTUALLY FIX THE PROBLEM. It just makes it worse. Particularly because you are punishing people, men, who have never participated in the subjugation of women. This whole counter racism, counter sexism thing is just making things worst. It is basically just shifting the balance. What does that do for actually fixing the problem? Not a damn thing. Your attitude is vile and it is the same attitude that led to women being treated the way they were in history.
- king_jester 14y ago
  > Particularly because you are punishing people, men, who have never participated in the subjugation of women. This is impossible, all men have and do participate in the subjugation of women so as systemic sexism exists.
  - lovehashbrowns 14y ago
    But according to your logic, all women have participated in the subjugation of women through systemic sexism.
    - erikpukinskis 14y ago
      This is true. Sexism is not men vs women, it's all of us vs ourselves. But that doesn't mean men and women occupy the same space in the conflict.
obviouslygreen 14y ago
Men as a sex have had advantageous circumstances and treatment for a long time, yes. That has absolutely nothing to do with men who are alive today. Perhaps you're a male who's OK with being the subject of discriminatory treatment over centuries of gain you didn't get to live through. I'm not, and I don't think anyone should be. Unless two wrongs make a right, discriminating against people who have not been a party to the kind of discrimination you're talking about helps no one, it just alienates those who see our position clearly.
- Steuard 14y ago
  "Men as a sex have had advantageous circumstances and treatment for a long time, yes. That has absolutely nothing to do with men who are alive today." Let's talk about the gender ratio today in Congress, or among Fortune 500 CEOs. Let's talk about the recent study showing that given identical (fake) resumes for a lab manager position, scientists on average offer lower salary and less mentoring to female candidates. http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/sexists-in-white-coats-men-favored-for-laboratory-jobs-47182/ http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/sexists-in-white-coats-... That's just a few examples; there are countless others. I completely agree that it's unfair to blame men today for the long history of inequality in our society. But 1) that history is not remotely over, and 2) the responsibility that we do have as men alive today is to find whatever ways we can to make progress in improving these issues for everyone. I honestly don't know the best ways to do that; none of them seem entirely good or entirely effective. But if we know that there is a vast invisible finger of society tipping the scales against women in a given context, it does not strike me as necessarily immoral to put explicit structures in place designed to tip things a little bit back the other way. (I'm sure it could be implemented poorly.) We have to break the self-reinforcing cycle somehow, and maybe an admittedly clumsy counter-push against those social pressures can help.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    >Let's talk about the gender ratio today in Congress, or among Fortune 500 CEOs Sure. But lets also talk about the gender ratio of prisoners, the homeless, suicides, workplace deaths, etc. It is fallacious to look only at the top 0.0001% of men and declare that men as a group have things better as a result. Men have a much greater variance in virtually every measurable aspect. Look at the entire spectrum. http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
visarga 14y ago
>Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. You are referring to rich men, that elusive 1%. Average men have traditionally gotten the worst/riskiest jobs such as soldier and physical labourer. While the top 1% do get these advantages, the bottom 99% are maybe worse off than women. Also, the "men had it good for centuries, it's women's turn now" doesn't hold. I am not those men. I was not present then and I resent having to pay for it. Should a child have to pay for the sins of 10 generations ago? What counts for us is here and now. What passed, passed. It was not our doing.
- wpietri 14y ago
  I never said people should pay for past sins, and agree that would be wrong. My point in bringing up the history is that the effects of the history aren't past. I have done unfairly well because I'm a guy. That should end.
john_b 14y ago
> Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. Higher education. Being allowed to practice a profession. Being favored by marriage laws. Being favored by social biases. Are you saying that men should be expected to "pay" for the priveleges of previous generations of men? If not, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, because all the advantages you list are now equally enjoyed by women (in some cases moreso, e.g. favored by marriage laws).