Examples of How Feminism Helps Men.
i get what you are saying, and i am sorry you went through it. my parents chose to stay together, and in the midst of the abuse and dysfunction i used to pray for them to divorce. people sometimes suck, and the actual composition of the family doesn't seem to have much of an impact on that. i'd like to see people putting their children first when making decisions. often divorce is the best option on that front.
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It sounds like we had very different experiences! Every day I wish my parent's divorce never happened, since so much was lost when it did.
When I meet the woman I wish to spend my life with, I hope to be cautious and perceptive enough to be ready for the sacrifices that will come. After what my siblings and I went through, I would never want my kids to deal with not having a feeling of unity in their lives.
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"Sex, streams, friends accessing private members... Either I am just discovering unintentional innuendo or Stroustrup is a pervert."
Don't communists call Communist countries "state capitalist" or somesuch? Sounds like a nice, easy get-out clause.
Communism is an ideology that is very vulnerable to "The end justifies the means" types of thinking, therefore attempts at creating what Marx called "Pure communism" have a tendency to be anything but the Utopia communism is supposed to be. However, adherents to the communist religion tend to view anything short of "pure communism" as envisioned by Marx as not being communism.
It's a bit like saying "Only 98% of the inhabitants in our country are in the military, so we aren't really militaristic"
Communism is a good idea in theory but really hard to put into practice.
QFT
When you have real choices, you usually make better one's.
Wow. Thanks. That made my parents' divorce much easier to process. My parents were nothing more but fake choices because they were doomed to fail! Never mind victims of circumstance, the only "real" choices are soulmates!
That's a bit of a false dichotomy, Sage. My parents divorced when I was 14, and it was better for all of us. People can be 'not good' at living together, but still be good people.
I was speaking in the context of when the nuclear family was considered the atomic unit of civilization. I did not say I felt it should be the standard today.
However, I do feel a family is important, regardless of its structure. I will be offering a son's perspective on this, but I must admit it is more emotional and rhetorical than rational. I do not want to get too personal, so I'll avoid sharing too much of my background. All I'll say is that my parents care so much about their post-divorce disputes with each other that they often do not see how it makes me feel.
Please understand I really wish I had a close-knit family. I have weak emotional connections in my family that are dwarfed by bonds with my friends. This bothers me because it makes me feel as if being related to someone directly by blood does not mean they won't feel like strangers. Even if society's idea of the family changes, I feel it is vitally important that a solid one exists for kids. The alternative is emotionally taxing, but it is likely to happen when parents focus more on their own independence than the relationships they've developed.
After your mother changes her last name to not share yours or your father's, mediating hundreds of phone calls between parents that refuse to talk to one another (even when it comes to issues that concern you), and listening to your father threaten to physically hurt your mother to your face, you start to secretly wish they did not have the choice to break up. You wish that they could not simply toss aside their responsibilities as parents. You wish that they could understand that in their pursuit for liberty, they destroy any emotional safety net for their kids that they once agreed to maintain.
I want emotional connections to my own blood. I can't really explain why, but I really do.
That's harsh, I feel for you. My brother and I were lucky that our parents kept the fight mostly to themselves, and we were able to see both parents on a weekly basis.
When you have real choices, you usually make better one's.
Wow. Thanks. That made my parents' divorce much easier to process. My parents were nothing more but fake choices because they were doomed to fail! Never mind victims of circumstance, the only "real" choices are soulmates!
That's a bit of a false dichotomy, Sage. My parents divorced when I was 14, and it was better for all of us. People can be 'not good' at living together, but still be good people.
Maybe so, but divorce was not the best option for my family. As someone who did not have a good experience with a divorce, I got the impression from DW's comment that my parents did not make "real" choices. It felt personal for me, so forgive my reactive sarcasm.
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"Sex, streams, friends accessing private members... Either I am just discovering unintentional innuendo or Stroustrup is a pervert."
When you have real choices, you usually make better one's.
Wow. Thanks. That made my parents' divorce much easier to process. My parents were nothing more but fake choices because they were doomed to fail! Never mind victims of circumstance, the only "real" choices are soulmates!
That's a bit of a false dichotomy, Sage. My parents divorced when I was 14, and it was better for all of us. People can be 'not good' at living together, but still be good people.
Maybe so, but divorce was not the best option for my family. As someone who did not have a good experience with a divorce, I got the impression from DW's comment that my parents did not make "real" choices. It felt personal for me, so forgive my reactive sarcasm.
I think what she was trying to say is that divorce *allows* real choices, that in places where divorce is illegal, people can't make those choices.
Hope things work out for you.
I gave an example that happened to be old, in order to demonstrate that men engaging in those activities were nothing new. The airline steward/stewardess example was considerably more recent. Male nurses, by that time more frequently called orderlies, were common well up into the 1960's as they were valued for their lifting ability. Body mechanics helped to remedy the need for brute force, as did hydraulic lifts. My point was that feminism had not 'given' this to men.
Beyond that, why do people automatically attribute things like professions to sexual discrimination in the first place? Cultures change, shift, and often reshape to resemble the past. Clothing trends sometimes repeat. Why does anyone assume that a social or cultural trend is sexual discrimination?
Lets for sake of argument restrict it to the last 100 years. While we are at it, lets please not be so hasty as to accredit something to some or other philosophy unless there is a direct indictable link. "Men can wear pantyhose because of feminism" probably is not a good example. "A petition by feminists demanding more federal funding for breast & prostate cancer research" would be ideal. "And as a result of women getting custody of the child in divorce cases over 80% of the time, 80% of divorced fathers can now work longer hours without the regret of neglecting to spend time with their children, because feminism helps everyone!" and its casual and circumstantial ilk I will continue to ignore. Thank you.
Change and benefit are entirely different things though. I am not asking how feminism changes things for men, but rather how it supposedly benefits men.
Change and benefit are entirely different things though. I am not asking how feminism changes things for men, but rather how it supposedly benefits men.
I think this is an impossible question to answer, because "benefit" is a subjective term.
Change and benefit are entirely different things though. I am not asking how feminism changes things for men, but rather how it supposedly benefits men.
I think this is an impossible question to answer, because "benefit" is a subjective term.
If I give you $1000, it is beneficial. You may need $2000,but $1000 is still of benefit. If I give you a receipt for where I withdrew $1000 and told you how I had helped you by spending that money which would help stimulate the economy, thereby making everyones lives better, I have insulted you, not benefited you. Beneficial is not always subjective.
advancing human rights is a good thing. if we imagine for a moment that feminism does NOT benefit men (obviously not true, but for the sake of argument), why would it matter? just like the american civil rights movement helped black people, which was a good thing. it would not really matter if white people received any benefit would it? i think you might be missing the point. it's easily demonstrated that feminism has both directly and indirectly helped men, but why is that important?
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That is a great question, hyperlexian, thanks.
I agree that advances in human rights is a good thing. Women's rights, for instance may or may not have been beneficial for men, but it was much needed and a good thing. But what is to prevent a drive from seeking benefit to their cause while repressing the rights of others? Is it still a good thing so long as it advances their cause?
Aside from that, I did ask what feminism had to offer me. I am by no means a perfect humanitarian. I am though enough of a humanitarian to not put my energy behind a cause that may be detrimental to another population.
so far it hasn't been detrimental to men as far as i can tell, so that doesn't seem to be a problem.
are you planning to join a feminist cause if it can be shown that it promotes men's rights or offers a benefit to men as well?
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One of my first jump off points after coming here and getting into the discussion was the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) website. One of their biggest current issues is the Violence Against Women Act (V.A.M.A.) which seems to have been put on a congressional back burner pending renewal. I had never heard of it until visiting their site, but the very first thing that struck me about it was that the name could help perpetuate the negative stereotype that only women are abused. What about children and men? Googling VAMA led me to other websites where other people had long ago came to the very same conclusion that I recently arrived at. Jumping back to N.O.W. and looking through their articles, I found that N.O.W. has been supporting V.A.M.A. from the beginning, At no point have N.O.W. suggested that the name be changed in order to prevent this negative stereotype. In researching that, I ran into several more groups that I would call anti-feminists whose arguments seemed based on religious dogma and outright nonsense. I found myself unable to agree with pretty much anything they said except for their take on V.A,M.A, setting the stage for stereotyping. The anti-feminists seem to me as narrow minded, self centered, and power grasping as do all of the feminist sites I visited. I found both camps to be equally loathesome, with the only positive thing I can say for the anti-feminist sites is that, unlike the feminist sites, they do not claim to be about equality while promoting a self serving agenda.
This is one example. I am looking into another one right now, but with it alone I became an instant disbeliever in N.O.W.
If I find one that strives toward equality for everyone, yes, absolutely.