Bing-fucking-O.

continue with his point to derail. like the first OP on this subject.

talking for all women, and no educate.... no, educate.

it really is a no win and fuck you, and staying true to self cause all the outside forces will make you crazy.

i know when a person is open, and when they are not. it is not hard to hear the difference. i told my boys years ago, do not try to manipulate cause we are all clever and can hear and see.

wimper.

over DU3 but, to watch it happen here makes me sad ... and ... tired. Very Tired.

You know, suddenly I realized something: my vintage makes it obvious to me that we are far from a "post-sexist" reality, because I was actually sapient at the time of Roe v Wade. But what about those who haven't the advantage of my longer viewpoint? The propaganda to which they have been exposed, the whole "matrix of expectations" (as I like to call it) is different from mine. If history is anything that happened before you were born, it's actually conceivable that a person of good will who has not had the experience of Past Times could conclude that the battle is obsolete. Labor rights suffer under the same burden.

-- Mal

... which ties in, oddly, to the point of the OP, why the "failure to educate" is seen as a failing on the part of the feminist.

It's depressing, though. Drawing on the Labor history point, when I was growing up, unions were understood to be valuable and important organizations (but there was considerable grumbling that they were starting to go too far). Yet we chose to piss away 100+ years of labor advancements because we let the vested interests control the discourse. (What we might have done about it is another question, of course) I can see the same thing happening to other civil rights. Since Reagan, and especially in this century, we have been tossing our principles into the trash for the sake of what... some kind of perceived minor security? Somehow, as an idealistic young fool in the early 70's, I didn't think in 2014 an American citizen could be stopped and frisked on her way to Planned Parenthood where mobs would spit in her face and throw things at her. The really sad thing is, I thought most of my contemporaries would agree with that -- and yet, they are the ones in the vanguard of the reaction. Dammit, there is no excuse for that.

-- Mal

Many don't. They have their egos fully stroked by appeals to greed (with respect to labor) or PRI ileged self-interest (with respect to feminism) and they are intently disinterested in open discussion.

It's like expecting to 'educate' people who don't believe that global warming is happening.

Yes, there are some people who are actually interested in social justice, but this piece isn't about those people.

This is about the people who want to debate whether women should have bodily integrity. Who want to debate the meaning of sexual objectification is really a bad thing, if not whether it even exists.

Education is indoctrination. How much current mores are due to decisions made by those with the control of the agenda, and how much they are due to individual factors, is a question I haven't resolved to my own satisfaction. The great sea-change, as I see it, has been from a belief that rights are due to all, to a twisted idea that you exercising your rights somehow violates mine. Viewed objectively, it was a neat trick how "they" pulled that off.

But as a clarification, I wasn't intending to suggest that criticizing feminists for "failure to educate" was the correct position, just that I could see why someone might think so without being mendacious.

-- Mal

inherently known that women were inferior, the man smarter, more capable. i was not allowed to consider being the doctor, but relegated to teacher or nurse.

i mean. i remember the age when it actually dawned on me, that i really thought i was inferior. it was a *gasp* moment.

... the most difficult thing I have had to learn is the need for affirmation that is inherent to feminism. This applies not just to feminism, of course, but to the need for affirmation of all oppressed groups. Since I already stipulate the applicability of rights to all, to me the question was always a done deal, so why were we wasting time on it? It took awhile to assimilate the reality that for the "other" the deal wasn't "done" at all, but one that even the most enlightened fighter often still had to struggle with. I think that this may be one of the reasons there are so many problems with MRAs and their ilk -- the basic inability to comprehend that talking about injustice is not whining or special pleading, but a means of affirming to the oppressed individual that yes, you are not imagining things, you are really being fucked with. It is not a failing of intellect or will, but rather a failing of experience. For as many times as my old man told me to shut the fuck up, I never questioned (as that child of white-boy privilege) that I had a right to be heard. It is really hard to grasp that others might have a whole different reality.

-- Mal

Is it wilfull ignorance, though, or just innocent ignorance? That's the crux of the question. One should be able to assume that a reasonably-alert individual of college age should have had enough opportunity to educate himself to some of the basic facts of life as to make any request for "enlightenment" suspect. But, given the counter-reality of privilege (not to mention indoctrination), it is still conceivable that the poor lad (or lass, as may be, women are not necessarily more enlightened than men) might be innocent of mendacity.

But if so, so what? That's his problem, isn't it? And if he can't figure that one out, then what he needs is an ass-kicking, not an ass-kissing.

-- Mal

and reading.

There is so much out there already. Anyone pretending that if one individual doesn't answer someone's query that they'll forever be left in the dark and the goals of feminism will have failed is just playing games.

... but in view of the other thread, which this one caused me to review, that would be a truly asinine statement.

Hell, the very fact that "some people" have such a low opinion of you as to believe you'll swallow their crap, tells you all you need to know about them.

-- Mal

I've never had the advantage of your longer viewpoint. Yet I am stull aware (for the most part, I have a lot to learn) of sexism and discrimination. In place of your longer viewpoint, I was lucky enough to grow up around many strong women. Almost all of the most important adults I knew in childhood were women who understood these issues as well.

That said, I have quite a few friendsmy age who didn't have that upbringing, who dealt with situations almost opposite of mine (and to clarify, I am referring to mostly straight white males here), and yet they have an awareness of these issues too. Anybody who truly cares, who wants to learn, can. It's up to the individual. To us, it's astounding that more people don't have that awareness, because as you look around at the tea party rhetoric, the supreme court's recent decisions, media coverage, treatment of female politicians, etc., the sexism in our everday life is painfully obvious. As far as I'm concerned, anybody who doesn't see it at this point is one of two things: incredibly sheltered and improbably clueless, or purposefully ignorant.

and you hit the institutionalized ones.... sc, politicians. look at the porn, tv shows, ads, hooter restaurants for fuckin families. lets all go look at tits. and on and on.

rapes not prosecuted, videod, distributed for entertainment and enjoyment.

As in, perfectly aware of it, and perfectly happy about it.

-- Mal

... I suppose one could just post a link to a good summary book for the poor, uninformed and eager questioner, but that would be a waste of time, too.

I find that people who are interested in discussing something with a relatively open mind are usually willing to stipulate, per arguendo, the assumptions underlying the point of departure. What interests them is where you're going with it, not having you prove it. Arguably, one who demands proof is already setting up an adversarial position, and not a learning situation. And who has time for that shit?

-- Mal

prove the error in, rather than what are you saying??? is a difference.

This is the crux of it.

"it's not cool to examine any woman appearance without respect"

Seems simple enough. But we're fighting years of conditioning by peers, family members, the media... by society... that sexual objectification is not only not a problem but actually natural and something we should just accept - if it's understood or even acknowledged as a thing!

to a man, "Explain to me exactly why it is that I need to treat you like an equal." When we imagine a man saying it to another man, it is easy to imagine that the next action would be that the man who is required to justify his equality would slug the one demanding the explanation.

The epic rudeness of the act of requiring someone to justify their equality somehow never made it through my socialization brain fog before. Neither did the abasement that we put ourselves through just by the act of answering the demands for that justification.

Men (probably I should qualify that by saying "white men&quot are never asked to justify their relative worth. The requirement of that justification from women is a statement in itself. And it is a statement in which the following is tacitly understood: "You need to explain and justify this to me, because there is nothing I have ever run across before that convinces me of it."

I never once required a man to explain to me why I should not be treating them as a second class. And yet somehow I learned not to treat them that way. I never once demanded that a single one of them justify to me why I should not treat them with a fundamental disrespect based on their gender. And yet somehow I know how not to do that. Because I am a decent person.

If you need to have this explained to you over and over and over, you are either really very dim or you are not a decent person.

But simple courtesy is pretty dead these days. That is possbily part of the problem, but it raises the question of whether you would rather live in a kind fake or a brutal reality. That's a question predicated, of course, in a belief that the problem is irreducible.

The other thing I find intriguing is the amazing ability to compartmentalize. That an otherwise-reasonable person can consider a "right" something that is not fundamentally universal, but something somehow granted or withheld at the whim of some ruling agency -- well, that tells me that that individual has no real understanding of what constitutes a right.

-- Mal

Which might be an explanation of how someone on the requiring end of that conversation might not have though it through either.

The good ones don't just explain yourself to yourself, they also explain other people to you. Which can often be a huge relief, so long as you don't get down on yourself for being so stupid!

-- Mal

their true colors allowing the racism and homophobia and sexism to rare its head, it becomes a norm. it teaches others it is a norm. just our life. suck it up and deal. at least if it si hidden thru social pressure, the young and malleable are not being conditioned it is a norm. and they will not find the like mind that will teach them it is acceptable.

du is the micro of the macro. we saw du did not allow. it was also more people on our side. once it became allowable, we have more and more adopting this thinking.

... there were more of them concerning women (when was the last time a man took off his hat because you were in the elevator?), and I wonder sometimes if dumping these has increased the tendency to objectify and abuse women. But then I've seen the argument that such forms of courtesy reinforce the patriarchal world-view and are thus to be derided as yet another form of sexism. This always leads me to ruminating about throwing babies out with bathwater.

-- Mal

Are handled here on DU.

existence and are often verbally abused, and we are told that we should accept that so others can learn, shows that there is a medieval ignorance at work within the powers that be.

And speaks to me in my heart. Thanks for this find.

I considered not doing so cause this piece is more hostile. But it seems to have helped so yay!

I find the discussion on this OP very helpful. I hope others who like myself who had issues with the earlier post on this issue read not just the OP but the kind and thoughtful discussion of it.