To be honest, feminism is not something I care a lot about one way or the other, but it's fun to argeu about something other than communism for a little while.: :
: : So men are responsible for all the wars in the world Kevin? BS. This is so funny i can't help laughing. I'm sure you're aware that some of the most reactionary, descipcable leaders of modern times have been women. Maggie Thatcher? Indira Gandhi? Golda Meir? Corazon Aquino, who held more political prisoners than MArcos? And my personal favorite, the notorious liar, aristocrat and charlatan, Lady Chamorro?
: : if I was a sexist, I could make some nasty connections about whatever happens when women come to power. But I'm not and I won't. Obviously they aren't representative of all women. But they do demonstrate that women are no better than men when it coems to progressive leadership.
: : I will, say however, that any analogy between racism and sexism is without foundation. there is no meaningful difference, biological or otherwise, between different 'races'. oin fact, races do not even exist scientifically; they're a human construction. A black man is literally interchangeable for a white, or a Chinese, or an Indian. To argue that there are no significant differences bewteen men and women, hwoever, is facially absurd. All of biology and evolution states otherwise. A man and a woman are different, while a black man and a white man are not.
: Those women you mentioned are outnumbered thousands to one... tens of thousands to one throughout recorded history.
So are the men who abuse women, they're also outnumbered.
: Is it not possible that they have learned to play men's game well enough to make the history books.
This is a dangerous, slippery slope. It's on a par with those Leninists who deny that workers can truly be religious, because religion is a tool of oppression wielded by the allies of the bourgeois. (sic). If workers are religious, I think we should assume that's because they want to be , and if women are violent, that's also because they want to be.
:After all, it takes a war to make it into the history books, whereas male and female leaders who have struggled for peace are less (in)famous.
Sometimes there is a time for necessary violence- that's the whole idea of a just war. It was a woman, by the way, a woman who i greatly admire, who said "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" hardly a quiet, peaceful, inoffensive statement. The speaker was Dolores Ibarruri, Spanish Communist and freedom fighter. She could kick any modern Western leqder's ass any day of teh week, that goes for both men and women.
: Taking one of these examples, wasn't Margaret Thatcher de-womanized by the media and her fellow politicians? Didn't she "have balls"? If I cared enough about her I'm sure I could find thousands of references to her masculinity.
It's a manner of speaking, Kevin. It's a term of respect.
: Why is this? She certainly did not maintain her "feminine" attributes in the eyes of society.
You're inconsistent. First you argue (ridiculously, to my view) that there are no intrinsic differences between men and women. Then you argue that tehre are feminine and masculine traits, and that agghression is among the latter. What sort of inconsistency is this?
: As for comparisons between racism and gender-based discrimination, I'd like to clarify something. I have been attempting here to draw a comparison between racism and discrimination based on perceived gender, not on what's in the pants. Gender is a social construct just as race is.
NOT! DO you deny that men are more aggressive, more sexually driven, etcetera. Biology states otherwise. DDN is right on here.
:Men are not naturally more gifted with automobiles, nor are they less :gifted with diapers.
Men, on average, have greater spatial ability.
:These are socially constructed differences, which people learn. Often they do not exist at all, but are perceived because people feel they SHOULD exist.
No, tehy exist largely based on inherent differences. Now, clearly, polygyny and polyandry are cultural artifacts, and teh fact that they are both practiced in different societies speaks to the power of cultural mores in conditioning behavior. But the prevalence of polygyny indicates, does it not, that polygyny is mroe 'natural' than polyandry. Note, this not to say that one form is morally superiori- as far as I'm concerned, monogamy / polygyny / polyandry are all morally neutral and equivalent.
:For example, the notion that women cannot be doctors or that they are not adept at math, or that men are not good teachers for young children. These are gender-based constructs that have no truth to them except insofar as they have been self-fulilling prophecies.
No, they're gross generalizations sometimes based on slight statistical truth.
: One frightening example of the construction of gender (which also serves to show that sex is not so black and white as most people think) is the case of intersexed infants. Many children are born each year who exhibit physical signs of both sexes. They are not left as such to mature as they would normally. They are operated on. Prior to this, their parents and their doctors consult and decide which sex they are more likely to live successfully as. In most cases the baby is made into a girl, because the enlarged clitoris is simply "too small" to pass as a decent sized penis. The underlying reason seems to be that men need to have certain sized members to be "members" of the male club. Otherwise, they are of inferior quality, and therefore worthy only of female-ness.
How many intersexual kids or whatever the term is are there? They are not all that common are they? How can you base a general statement about male and female genders on what is clearly a rare aberration
: BTW, let me just reiterate I don't think all wmoen are sweet and innocent any more than I think all men are always evil in nature. In this case I am speaking of gender-based persecution, which is systematically carried out against women by men. My comments about wars were intended only to emphasize that violent behaviour is something primarily carried out by men, against both men and women.
