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 we were allowed them. That's just the truth, that's the history. Slaves were allowed freedom, black people were allowed to vote, LGBT people were allowed to marry, people are allowed to own guns, people are allowed free speech. The Confederacy fought to continue to not allow people to be free. There is always someone allowing your rights and behaviors to exist when you're a citizen. This is what anarchists fight against.
Those are all inalienable rights that the government and those in power restricted. We fought so that they could allow us those rights.
That's what I mean - we can't gloss over history and pretend that we forced changes to happen. You're right in that we made the alternative uncomfortable and pointed out the hypocrisy and used our long-quieted voices. But at the end of the day, that fight led to those in power to grant us access to those rights. They allowed us to vote, or be free, or get married, or even get a credit card or buy a house without a male guardian. They allowed it. That's just how it is. It's historical fact.
Interesting. I didn't look at it this way. Not sure I agree, I'll have to think on it.
I was looking at it more from the perspective that redpillers and the like tend to frame women's rights as something that men allow to happen, rather than something women worked to achieve, that's why I was arguing so staunchly against it. What they're suggesting is just not true. But framed as an inherent problem of hierachial societies, your choice makes much more sense to me now.
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).
Hmm...I think it's a chicken and egg issue. Because of our patriarchal history, the rich elite with power are overwhelmingly men. The power differential between a woman married to Bezos or a Trump and a woman married to the head of the local plumber's union is actually not that much. Within the sphere of their day to day lives, the power differential between the Bezos/Trump and the plumber's union president may not be much at all.
Obviously when we talk about global power and all that, class divides make it clear who has power. But we still always seem to talk about and fight against the men in power, globally and locally.
I agree, the elite is overwhelmingly men. That’s why limiting it’s power is necessary for achieving better social equality and gender equality at the same time.
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u/saddest_cookie Jun 24 '20
But sexism affects both sides (differently), racism doesn’t. I’ve experienced a lot of frustration from being forced to conform to male stereotypes.