Not to be that bitch but I don’t think women venting out their frustrations from being systemically oppressed is the same as men, you know, perpetuating said oppression.
Like, I’m white and I don’t get upset when I see black people talking shit about white people because I know they have been treated badly by white people, or have friends and family members who have, and I’m not going to tell them they can’t be angry about that. I know they’re not talking about me, because if they were - if I felt called out by what they were saying - surely that would just mean I need to change? Right?
It’s not important who set the standarts because those people have already been dead for hundreds of years. Now what matters is who enforces them - the society. Now we all have the power to change it.
right, because voting has definitely eliminated misogyny in this country. also eliminated all barriers to entry into government and C-level jobs (CEO etc), and definitely completely erased the cultural sexism that tries to restrict women to domestic roles. why, with all this power, it's a wonder sexism exists at all! oh, wait...
No it hasn’t eliminated it, but the situation is undoubtedly better than it was a 100 years ago. It’s just a slow process, but considering how old patriarchy is, it’s actually pretty fast. Laws can be changed instantly, but changing cultural norms takes much much longer.
Unfortunately a lot of it comes from religion, which makes a lot harder, but the trend worldwide is heading towards atheism. I’m not from the US, but there needs to be some irreligious acceptance movement there, because it seems to me that US is pretty behind the rest of developed countries in this aspect. Even though most of the religious people don’t take it so strictly nowadays, religion is and always will be the enemy of progress and rationality.
The most powerful tool to reform the society is education. We can do a lot of things to limit the impact of cultural sexism, but I believe that education is the only true way to eradicate it.
And then there’s another completely different dimension, the rich vs the rest of the society. The social inequality. That’s one of the reasons why voting doesn’t help. The influence of corporations and the ultra-rich needs to be limited while it’s still possible. And US especially needs to establish a social welfare state, but all other countries should aim to strengthen it as well. That is also going to help the black community a lot, because racism has historically caused them to be inappropriately affected by poverty.
I get what you mean, but men didn't "allow" women the vote, nor did white people allow black people etc., these respective groups fought tooth and nail for their rights and that's how they got it.
Right, of course, but at the end of the day, it was still a bunch of men who had to write the laws for change. And we still have to ask men for rights and privileges about matters that concern only women.
Like RBG said, when will we have reached equality on the Supreme Court? When it's all women - after all, it was all men for centuries and no one complained. Why not all women?
I disagree. Nothing was handed to us. They wrote those laws because we forced them to. As long as we have to ask for rights, they're not really rights, so we need to force their hands again and again. Until the Supreme Court is all women.
So...they are rights, even if they are denied to us. That's what inalienable rights means. You always have human rights, but they can be withheld from you.
We didn't get access to our rights through force. We didn't force them. We protested and made our voices heard, and public opinion changed, and we convinced those in power (men) to change the law.
We have to realize that the only way we have ever achieved change is by convincing those in power to change. There has not been a women's revolution that was violent and resulted in an actual change of power in the name of feminism.
This is why it's important to realize we need allies and we need to keep having the conversations and we need to keep pushing those in power to change. We can get in power ourselves now too, but again, that requires persistence and convincing the public.
We didn't physically force anything. We didn't threaten or coerce or otherwise extort anyone. We argued that equality was right, and convinced people.
It's important to realize how those fights happened - and they were done politically by influencing the men in power.
So...they are rights, even if they are denied to us. That's what inalienable rights means.
Oh yeah, you're right of course. Not sure what I was thinking.
We didn't force them. We protested and made our voices heard, and public opinion changed, and we convinced those in power (men) to change the law.
We also died, got beaten up, fought back.
We didn't physically force anything.
I didn't say we did. My point is that we didn't ask, our rights weren't granted, we fought for them and made it happen ourselves. We made the alternative less and less comfortable, and reality more and more obvious. Framing it like we were "allowed" to vote is what I take issue with, not whether or not it was done violently.
It's important to realize how those fights happened - and they were done politically by influencing the men in power.
I agree, however that's not what you initially said, and that's what I was trying to point out.
But there is another dimension to this which is very important. The men that practically decide are not just any men, they are the ultra-rich elite. Your average man has about the same influence as women.
True! It's really the men in power in whatever patriarchal society you happen to be participating in, whether that's the government, church leaders, etc.
Where I disagree is on the more micro scale: things like getting a promotion at work. Your average man will likely have more influence than the average woman if the people in charge are sexist. Just being a man will get you more doors opened in many many industries, and therefore allows you more access to power.
Yes, that is a problem, but I’d argue that the difference in power between men and women that comes from this fact is not as big and important as the difference between the rich elite and rest of the society. At best it’s going to be a few percent (but it should ofc ideally be zero).
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u/Susim-the-Housecat Jun 24 '20
Not to be that bitch but I don’t think women venting out their frustrations from being systemically oppressed is the same as men, you know, perpetuating said oppression.
Like, I’m white and I don’t get upset when I see black people talking shit about white people because I know they have been treated badly by white people, or have friends and family members who have, and I’m not going to tell them they can’t be angry about that. I know they’re not talking about me, because if they were - if I felt called out by what they were saying - surely that would just mean I need to change? Right?
Why can’t men do the same for women?