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Cool, barely into page 2 and already the most pressing feminist issue is male feelings. Since icantfindname, who is on my ignore list for being a huge bigot, incidentally, has had his answer maybe he can go off and chew on it by himself and not make this thread about him any longer? Men on the internet have a habit of seeing feminism threads as female attention dispensers, and it would be cool if people didn't let that happen here. I am an activist in real life and one of the things I talk a lot about with people out there is concrete, achievable goals. With something as huge as patriarchy that can be hard, since it permeates everything and its causes and effects can be very hard to follow out. There's a kind of butterfly effect with societal biases - something as big as "why don't more women succeed in male-dominated fields?" is a river fed by tributaries so tiny people refuse to believe it could possibly matter, and get angry at the suggestion it does. Which is why I'd like to talk about the battlefront of my grandmother's generation of feminists, which has largely been forgotten by my own: Housework. Ask any man who lives with a wife or girlfriend how much housework he does, and he'll usually say "about half," but taking stocks of all the domestic tasks that get done, that's almost never the case. Frequently a man is barely contributing to the work of keeping the home running at all, yet may feel his share of the chores is incredibly burdensome and he's selfless for putting up with it. Feminist men can be some of the worst offenders of this, because they know men should pull their weight, but the hidden sexism of their upbringing and their subconscious keeps them from really seeing how much work is actually done and who does it. If you ask a man about a household chore he doesn't do, he invariably says it doesn't "need" to be done - his wife or girlfriend only does it because she's so "picky," the silly woman. Men tend to came the infrequent, showy tasks as their chores - cleaning the gutters might only need to be done once a year, and most importantly it's a concrete task with a satisfying finality when it's done. Not like laundry, dishes, wiping the countertops, vacuuming - a ceaseless grinding cycle of tasks that are never finished in the "don't have to do that again!" sense. I have two articles I hope any cohabitating man will read. There's going to be some inevitable defensiveness, hysteria at being criticized, challenged, asked to think something new. Please don't post that here, it's not unique or informative, it's just growing pains you have to power through before a new idea can take roots in your brain. Please also don't post to brag that you do, in fact, you'll have us know, contribute equally to the housework. Perhaps you even do more than the little lady! You're the one who needs to read this stuff most, because you're the one who doesn't even know all the work that needs to be done or who does it. Here's a classic feminist piece, the best response I've ever seen to the reflexive "but you're just better at it, sweetie!" response men have about the chores they don't feel like doing. The Politics of Housework Here's a blog post by a man who figured out the ingrained sexism he'd had regarding housework on his own. I haven't read the rest of his site, so if there's something impolitic in there I don't care. I like this post because he voices what I think is a pretty typical thought process men have about women "nagging" them about chores. The underlying assumption that poisons relationships and makes it impossible for men to see they're being sexist about chores is that women are always wrong and the things they want are stupid. You'll find this one lurking under a lot of sexism, really. It is nearly impossible to root out, because it's self-reinforcing. Men aren't being sexist when they assume women's thoughts are stupid and silly, they're just being level-headed and unbiased! Look how emotional this chick is getting when I tell her so, see, she was stupid and silly after all. Anyway. She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By the Sink I post these partly because men reading this thread in good faith might still have the impulse to whine "but what can I do?" You see us criticizing the structures of power, and you see yourself as powerless, and it's true. Odds are you're not a CEO cackling on the golf course about how no woman is ever going to make VP in your company, gat-dammit. But are you a man living with a woman who works just as hard as you, trying to succeed in a job just like you, who always has to put your dishes in the dishwasher for you because "who cares"? That's a drop of energy she has to burn and you don't, and those add up.
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Dec 27, 2016 22:33
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Talmonis posted:Where but a discussion of feminism (Not this specific thread mind you, just spitballing here) would discussions of male insecurities and other issues arising from toxic masculinity go? The Usual Spaces for men are notably bad about it, likely by design. Make a good one, I really think you specifically would be good at that. Like, I think about this a lot when I think about the long history of patriarchal bullshit - it was never all men building these structures, it was a few assholes and everyone else letting them get away with it. Make a good place for men to talk about the poo poo toxic masculinity calls them "fags" for feeling. I think it would be incredibly worthwhile and appreciated.
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Dec 27, 2016 22:35
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icantfindaname posted:I feel like comparing men who ask about terminology or their welcomeness in the movement, seemingly perfectly legitimate questions, to white supremacists, is probably a bad way to win public support in a purely utilitarian sense, and bespeaks a fundamental hostility and lack of good faith in dealing with the general public Get out. You're on my ignore list for your seething racism, so you're not actually fooling me that you came in here in good faith. You make yourself extraneous to every conversation by being the dense rear end in a top hat that you are.
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Dec 27, 2016 22:51
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silence_kit posted:This is a 'tone argument.' Now that we have given this argument a label which has a bad connotation, we don't actually have to address it. Incidentally this one's worthless too and should be on everyone's ignore list for doing exactly this kind of poo poo. Hysterical misogynist meltdown ahoy, don't say I didn't warn you. BarbarianElephant posted:Do you feel this makes you a good "feminist ally", to use your preferred terminology? It seems like you are getting a bit upset that feminists use different terminology than you first assumed. Wouldn't it be easier to just say "In that case, I'm proud to call myself a male feminist"? Stop it, you aren't going to logic him out of his personality disorder. Stop giving him attention.
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Dec 27, 2016 22:52
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Sharkie posted:The comment about how men overestimate how much housework they do reminded of the studies that show in discussion groups of men and women, men perceive women as talking much more than they actually do, so that when women speak something like 30% of the time, men will say they dominated the conversation (I can't find this particular study right now, so if someone could link it that would be awesome). Now like TB said, this is something even feminist men do; even if they know better we're all conditioned to have certain expectations about gender roles, and even the slightest hint that someone may be beginning to violate them can make men lose all sense of proportion, particularly when privileges are seemingly threatened. Yeah! A related thing is in business meetings, no matter how many men are, if there are more than two women they feel "outnumbered." A token is fine, they'll brag about it even, but by god that token better not have anybody in their corner. (From the sexist's perspective - of course in reality women are capable of disagreeing with each other, but sexists see the world as boys vs. girls and assume everyone else does too) Regarding "educate yourself" - It's really easy. All you have to do is, when you have a question, ask it and then say "here's what I've looked up so far." Asking "Can men be feminists or only allies?" would be perfectly fine if the person asking it had realized that might be a common question and looked up what people have had to say about it already. "I read this feminist essay, help me figure it out" is always great, seriously A+ on-topic positing. "Why do You Girls Always-" isn't, and just to head this off at the pass, neither is "Please tell me how not-sexist I am."
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Dec 27, 2016 23:12
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A big thing well-meaning men will do is brag that they do "anything their SO asks." Which sounds nice, but it's already an unequal division of labor because now only one person is looking at the house and taking stock of what needs to be done. Managing people is labor itself, and with household chores this can too easily slide into feeling like parenting the other person. A task isn't off someone's to-do list when they've assigned someone else to do it, it's off the list when it's done. In truly equal partnerships both people do chores when they need doing, so the other person doesn't even have to think about them. If you come home and there are dishes in the sink, that task can be yours, or hers and then yours (she asks you to do it), or wholly hers (you ignore them until she does them). Only one of those options is truly helpful.
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Dec 27, 2016 23:22
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FactsAreUseless posted:As a guy, I legitimately think most men - including myself - have no idea how to do this. It's just not something that we were taught how to do growing up, and without that knowledge a lot of men don't even realize it's not something they're doing. How would they? It's never been an issue, and if men also don't have the same standards for how a house should be cleaned you get the "it doesn't seem dirty to me" issue. Boys don't grow up constantly being told that it's work they need to know how to do like girls are, and they don't grow up seeing other men take care of it. It takes a lot of time to learn, there's a definite curve. Also, having had guy roommates, it's not like things get more evenly divided with men. poo poo just doesn't get taken care of as well. It's one of those places where we're straight up not preparing men for the real world by what we tell boys - or don't tell them, or don't even know we're telling them. That's very true, and I think that this, like a lot of feminist issues, is going to have to be solved in a generational way. Hypotheticals get too clunky, so here's how I really see things in my own family. My husband has older parents in a marriage that is very egalitarian for their generation, but noticeably different that my much younger, political activist parents. My dad read "The Politics of Housework" before I was born, and he and my mom have had serious discussions and occasional fights about ingrained sexism in housework. Thus my dad makes a very conscious effort to contribute, and was the primary cook when I was growing up, and in turn my brother is subconsciously much more aware of what needs doing and much more participatory than most men his age, to the point where he can't stand a typical fratty male roommate situation, because as you said frequently dudes just plain don't clean things. My husband, in contrast, grew up seeing his dad go straight into the den after getting home from work, and straight into the living room after dinner. Both parents worked, which to my father-in-law makes them a radically feminist couple, but there was never any suggestion that dad might do more around the house than take care of the lawn and cars, and determine when it was time to call a repairman (his wife would be the one placing the calls and taking time off work to let them in). My husband never saw his father helping around the house, and while his mom is aware that the concept of "women's work" is bullshit and made him do the same chores as his sister, he hit adulthood with that learned helplessness thing so many men do, where they just shrug and dawdle and say "you're better at it" until the women in their lives give up and do it themselves in exasperation. I don't play that poo poo, so our first year living together had more than a few fights. It is true that learning things from the outside in will never be as effective as truly internalizing it. Right now his participation in the household work is entirely dependent on his memory. He has to actively remind himself to scan the house and check the status of the things he's memorized need doing, and when he does that it's great, but I hope if we have a son watching this example will help it be more instinctive for him, and we can keep making that progress so maybe next century this issue's finally settled.
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Dec 28, 2016 00:22
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Deified Data posted:Are you so insecure that you have to refer to yourself as an ally to put women at ease that you're one of the Good Ones? What is the meaning of this? Do you not trust yourself to reign in your natural male pushiness? This is a lovely worthless post and you should leave.
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Dec 28, 2016 00:25
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Deified Data posted:Not a throwaway snipe, I legitimately want to know why that guy contributes if he doesn't trust himself to do it in good faith. I'd ask the same of you, but this is not the "give reactionary pricks attention" thread, this is the feminism thread, and you are not a feminist and clearly have no desire to become one, so leave.
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Dec 28, 2016 00:42
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Mister Adequate posted:Trying to unpick things so deeply rooted gets pretty tricky, and it's a very good example of how subtly pernicious issues within misogyny, racism, etc., can be. Like that Must Be This Tall To Ride article says, it can seem incredibly small and superficial and even petty, when actually it can be very important as well very consequential, if men and women have been conditioned to approach things in different ways. Jolie Kerr writes "How to Clean Things" articles aimed at men as much as women, and she's a great place to start to try and understand the mindset. She hasn't written a "how to keep house" book yet, but when she does I'll buy it, because she's funny and has the reasonable and realistic attitude that cleaning things is just another kind of maintenance, not some showcase of femininity or quasi-religious virtue. Clean your stuff because you like your stuff and want your stuff to be nice. Unfuck Your Habitat is another gender-neutral source of housekeeping advice, and since it's aimed at people who are starting from absolute zero, particularly those climbing out of depression-related squalor, it's fantastic both for lists of what to clean and how, and for breaking the process down into manageable baby steps. Someone trying to train themselves to have an eye for what is clean and what is not could do a lot worse than trying out UFYH's "shine your sink'"or Jolie Kerr's "make your bed" daily mindfulness projects. You may not know how to analyze the whole house for cleanliness status, but you can see if the kitchen sink has crud in it or not every day and proceed accordingly. A clean sink makes dirt on the countertop more noticable, and it grows from there.
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Dec 28, 2016 00:51
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Frijolero posted:This is an impossible question, but what is the current status of the Feminism and the Feminist movement? You're the No War But Class War guy who crashed the Misogynoir thread to whine about feminists liking Beyonce too much. I just want everyone to know that while they decide whether to respond to you. I'll repeat what I said in Misogynoir: If you're complaining that something is shallow and you've only made a shallow study of it yourself, shut up. The OP of this thread has a giant reading list in it and no one has mentioned pop culture once yet. You don't have a leg to stand on here, you're just So drat Mad that women choose for themselves what to care about instead of taking orders from you, and since you're lazy and maybe not too smart, you haven't been able to go any deeper into feminism than the pop culture stuff yourself. You can take your Marxoteen "impossible questions" to your local library. Don't come back and tell us The Problem With Feminism until you've read a loving book, junior. Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 01:09
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Deified Data posted:me me me me me pay attention to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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Dec 28, 2016 01:19
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Vindicator posted:Ah, yes. The "what's in it for me" element of gender equality. Out of interest, why do you think abolitionists became abolitionists? Please don't give the white-dred-having white supremacist any attention. gently caress's sake people, there is actually stuff worth talking about regarding feminism besides how mad goons get about it.
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Dec 28, 2016 01:27
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FactsAreUseless posted:I actually think it's a question that needs to be addressed: why should men give up a situation that benefits them? It's important to make men understand that they do not benefit from it in the ways they believe. Sure but we're three pages into a feminism thread and all we've loving talked about is men. And BBG is a psychotically lovely person who should be run out of every thread he pops his dreded head into. But I guess it's not SA if we don't welcome trolls and then act shocked, shocked! when they turn a conversation to poo poo.
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Dec 28, 2016 01:33
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Frijolero posted:I understand I'm asking wide, narrow questions, but I'm honestly trying to get more informed. Get out you loving idiot marxoteen, nobody is ever going to take your bait no matter how many times you ask it or how many threads you try to hijack to do it. Can you only reach arousal if you've scolded a woman for owning a Beyonce album or what?
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Dec 28, 2016 01:34
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Literally every single post you've made has been telling the people to get out. It's telling that you are exactly the wrong kind of person to discuss feminist issues with and yet you made this thread. Holy poo poo you are terrible. I am a BLM activist and you absolutely may not invoke me and my struggle for your bullshit hysterical whining that a feminist conversation is happening. Go gently caress yourself and get the gently caress out you ignorant piece of poo poo.
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Dec 28, 2016 02:53
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^You're on ignore, cry and mash poo poo into your hair by your lonesome. Imagine this poo poo, but in real life, every day at your job, in your home, when you walk down the street, and you'll begin to understand why women decided to fight for change. I'm sure our edgelord friends here are just mumbly neckbeards in real life, but the world is still full of men who get violently angry that a woman might look them in the eye and disagree with them. Which is why it's important to speak up not only for yourself but for the people who can't speak up for themselves.
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Dec 28, 2016 03:04
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I think a big thing about Trump, any aspect of his success, is that he was just more than we were prepared for. You can build a ten-foot floodwall but if a twenty-foot wave comes you're hosed. The things he said and did were so outrageous that our usual process of tut-tutting in the press wasn't sufficient. We couldn't create a sense of scale to illustrate how much worse he was than a normal candidate, especially to conservative voters who are used to hearing everyone's Stalin-Osama-Hitler. Most people don't have a good grasp of consent. They only comprehend sex crimes as a man having sex with someone he wasn't supposed to - either adultery or a property crime. So they can't really understand why Trump's pussy-grabbing was different than Clinton's consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky, which was bandied about in the press as the most perverted evil thing ever done in human history. You heard it from everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike. "Both sides are bad" is the sophisticated political opinion to have, showing you're above petty partisanship. And since we've been mature enough to admit that both sides are bad, why are you libs yelling at me about my side's badness? Yeah Trump molested women but Clinton got a blow job so what's the big deal? One of the reasons sex-positivity is a big deal in feminism even though it makes the marxoteens screech with fury is that a world that can't imagine women ever desire sex is a world where women are not safe. There's no way to explain that a woman didn't want sex if your worldview tells you women never want sex. That reduces rape to a question of whether the woman "belonged" to the man or not. Recognizing and learning to articulate your desire helps you articulate the lack of it too.
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Dec 28, 2016 03:56
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Frijolero posted:Cool. I'll take a hypothetical number in the online open discussion thread. Jesus christ again with your loving feelings. You are not a feminist so it should not be this goddamn shocking to you that your demands are not a high priority in a feminist conversation. Do you go into hockey threads and throw fits about not liking hockey? And intersectionality exists you loving pigheaded moron. You might get "booed" less if you read a loving book once in a while.
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Dec 28, 2016 03:58
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boner confessor posted:legit tho this thread's going to be terrible if it goes from the feminist thread to the tiny brontosaurs repeatedly insults any and everyone who disagrees with them thread. please relax Thanks for your hot tip, noted feminist Popular Thug Drink. I've made more substantial posts in this thread than most people, but never mind any actual content, you've got a chance to scold a woman! BrandorKP posted:What do some of you think about the gap between the second wave feminists and the third wave? I have started to really hate the whole "wave" thing. It makes feminism sound like a monolith when it isn't - as was mentioned earlier, white feminism doesn't have much to do with the feminist activism of women of color, and the history of white feminism is not the history of feminism. Some women focus on breaking glass ceilings, which is good, some women focus on sexual politics, which is good, some women focus on domestic abuse, which is good, some women focus on representations of women in media, which is good. Saying "only focus on the thing I care about the most" is bad. Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 04:10
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boner confessor posted:i wonder how much of this can be separated from generational politics - my aunt was a super driven career woman who was always down on my cousin for her lack of ambition. i always saw it more as a boomer/gen-x thing expressed through feminist discussion rather than something wholly within feminist ideology I am going to drive trolls out of this thread, yes I am. I've been around here for a good while now and do you know that I can't recall ever seeing you make a substantive post about a civil rights issue even once? The only thing I've ever seen you say, be it about BLM, feminism, LBGTQ rights, anything, is that the people working on those issues are doing it wrong. What you see as my "individual, personal anger" is actually actual thoughts I have that I put into words that you've never bothered to read once, because to you the world is divided into the obedient and the disobedient and you get to decide who's who. I think you hate civil rights talk so much because your ears always start burning.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:20
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Colin Mockery posted:Make TB IK for the scope of this thread only, but disallow her to name-call in it. Less vitriol, but shitposters still get forcibly shut up. Sorry, as Slashie I'm much too busy killing all men and... I think she ate a baby once?
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Dec 28, 2016 06:35
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Guy Goodbody posted:The men's feminism thread had a clearer focus from the beginning, as opposed to this thread, where stone cold had to repeatedly update the OP to narrow the scope of the thread. This is a textbook example of the assumed incompetence problem people were talking about earlier. You hate a woman talking, so a women talking must have done it incorrectly. If Stonecold hadn't updated her OP magically that would be proof of her incompetence. Thanks for providing the visual aid. I'm sure you'll provide many more.
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Dec 28, 2016 22:33
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Our culture raises men to assume they should be leaders, which leaves them with no toolset for participating in a conversation about an issue they don't understand. The reason men keep butting in and going "actually..." or "you're doing feminism wrong" is because there's an instinctive assumption that they should be in charge. They literally don't know how to shut up and listen, or to ask constructive questions. Toxic masculinity classifies curiosity and openmindedness as weakness. Patriarchy divides human interactions into dominant and submissive, and women are supposed to be submissive so they should hush up and let the men decide what the conversation's about. This is also why so many people keep coming in here and wringing their hands about "circlejerks." They can't imagine a conversation that's not a conflict, because if there's no winner and no loser how do you know who's the real man? It makes me sad that so many people can't imagine the benefit of a conversation between people who agree with each other about the fundamentals of what they're discussing. That's when the real fascinating stuff happens, when you can get into depth because no one's panicking and hitting the brakes because they can't keep up. Can really none of you imagine talking to someone who knows as much about something as you do and enjoying it? Sports, video games, nothing? Is a conversation really only for reassuring yourself that you know the most, or attacking someone you fear knows more than you? Everyone needs to stop acting like women were just invented, at the very least. "Why should I care about women" is an unacceptable question. We are people.
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Dec 28, 2016 22:57
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falcon2424 posted:The details invite empathy. But the question core question is still, "Why should I care?" Oh hey look it's a case study in everything I was talking about. "Why should I care about women p.s. I know more than feminists do about how they should be feminists."
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Dec 28, 2016 23:00
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falcon2424 posted:I didn't take OwlFancier's post as anti-feminist at all. It's a conversation between people who agree with each other about the fundamentals of what we're discussing. Sexism is real. It should be fought. Our core disagreement is totally within that. I'm talking to you, genius. You are asking why you should care about women, you are trying to backseat-drive feminism, and you have been told to stop doing this for at least as long as I've been around in D&D so you have no excuse, especially since you clearly define your self-worth by how "smart" you are. Smart people are capable of learning things in under a couple-dozen attempts, case study.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:14
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blowfish posted:I don't care about whether it is unfair. It's something you have to do if you're trying to convince a majority of people who don't really care. This thread is a conversation about feminism. If you are not interested in contributing constructively to a conversation about feminism you should leave. This is not a thread about your feelings, or your ignorance.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:39
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Mister Adequate posted:To take people in good faith who probably shouldn't be for a moment, I think at least some of the tension comes from the general expectations of a forum like this. Does a thread about [x] mean for any and all aspects of [x]? Or is it about a specific part? Is it for people who are advanced and familiar with the topic or anyone? By way of a bad comparison, a goon who just got Witcher 3 for Christmas and wanders into the Witcher megathread in games to ask "Hey how do I witch?" might get a couple of people jeering at them for not reading the OP but they're also going to get pointers and probably links to more thorough stuff. I'm not saying this in an effort to defend shitposters or people making bad-faith arguments, but I can see where at least some people assume the thread will be open to all and proceed thence to ask something that topic regulars have already answered 153,000 times. Well Stonecold has repeatedly said this isn't a 101 thread, and there's an unusually long OP spelling out exactly what this topic is about, but when women talk men mysteriously go deaf, don't they.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:49
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blowfish posted:Ok. Nobody cares what you think either. This is clearly a very productive form of discussion. You are not talking about feminism. This is a thread for talking about feminism. If you do not want to talk about feminism you should leave. Go find some other thread to throw a fit about.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:56
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Again the only thing certain men can think to do when the see women doing something is to scream at them that they're doing it wrong. This thread was created for people who want to talk about feminism, not people who don't want to talk about feminism. People who don't want to talk about feminism might enjoy reading and posting in a thread that is not about feminism, of which this site has thousands.
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Dec 28, 2016 23:59
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Hexmage-SA posted:This is what I'm personally most interested in, but I get the feeling that finding viable ways to spread Feminist influence is ironically not welcome in the Feminism thread. Sorry our strawman delivery already came today. Perhaps you meant to stop by the ghetto thread? Black people haven't been told they're animals trying to destroy white america in a while.
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Dec 29, 2016 00:21
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Phyzzle posted:The OP's of earlier feminist threads in D&D were always men.
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Dec 29, 2016 07:40
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Good Canadian Boy posted:This thread is interesting but the amount of sexism TB throws around in her posting is really hypocritical. Lol what the gently caress are you talking about. Amazing how threads get a "hostile nature" when they're trolled to poo poo by the same idiots who burst into flames every time they see a woman or minority talking.
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Dec 29, 2016 09:12
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Kelp Me! posted:I hope this doesn't fall under "do my homework for me," but is there a good direction to go in if I'm interested in the next level of this idea? That is, if I'm trying to apply the idea of "little tiny-seeming things are directly connected to gender-biased roots that crop up and cause major problems" to the world around me and not just between my wife and I? Great question! For your office example, the simplest thing you could do is be the one to get the coffee and pens yourself. This may make the other men you work with subconsciously think of you as subordinate, and I don't know how to fix that, sorry, but it would give the women a break from filling that role. I think you'd be a great candidate for employing amplification, which became well-known as the strategy Obama's female staffers used to make their voices heard in meetings. Obama's another good guy who would never be overtly sexist, but who let subconscious sexism permeate the way he ran meetings, so it seemed natural that men should talk over women and steal their ideas. The women in the room started combatting this by repeating a point their female coworker just made and most importantly, naming and thanking her. "I think Karen makes a great point there..." "Just to build off of what Jennifer said..." It works so well. A teacher reading the black feminism thread tried it and saw her female students open up and get more engaged in class almost overnight. You're not in ideal circumstances for this strategy since you say you tend to only have one woman on the team. This may lead men to think you're speaking up for her because you're attracted to her ("white knighting," as will I'm sure be posted in this thread a thousand times), so you might spread the field a bit by referring to conversations you had with women who aren't in the meeting, or amplifying any other coworkers you notice get talked over or ignored (minorities are a good bet). And I don't know what your corporate culture is like, but be mindful for office trends designed popularized by Silicon Valley dorks, because they often have no awareness that what they think is cool might be more burdensome on women. A stand-up meeting goes from casual and relaxed to physically painful if you're expected to wear heels to work, for example. Edit: Writing that up just made me remember a time I was doing the women's work of meeting prep, sorting and stapling a huge pile of documents, and a man wandered in and asked me if he could help with anything. I was under a big time crunch so I said "Great! Help me staple these" and explained the sorting system, and he visibly blanched and backed out of the room mumbling about how "you're better at that than me." Poor little man hands can't operate a stapler 
Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 16:43
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BarbarianElephant posted:If you are the woman prepping the documents, you can make sure your ideas are set off to best advantage. Ha I've never worked anywhere where a woman's idea was valued enough to make it into the document in the first place. 
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Dec 29, 2016 16:58
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Kelp Me! posted:That actually leads me to another question: She's got tons of lovely stories like that from work, but one of my most recent realizations is how often I have a tendency to mansplain to her what she should do in such situations. It's super-frustrating to me sometimes, but I think just listening and commiserating is probably more helpful than "well you should have stood up for yourself, tell him you're busy as poo poo and don't have time to be his personal photographer" and the like. But is that really the best thing for me to do? I don't want to fall into the "I'm hearing but not really listening" trap; but it pains me to hear about that poo poo and have to choose between "yeah that sucks babe, gently caress that guy" and "let me tell you how you should respond" - they both seem kind of shallow/unhelpful. The male gender issues thread is going around around with this mental block right now. I think there are two roots - our culture's sense of morality is very just-world, so if someone has a problem it's because they let it happen. Then people in privileged positions, like men, simply don't run into intractable, structural problems so much. They have a lot more freedom of choice - if your job is bad just get another job, etc. It makes it hard to see that venting about a problem is dealing with it, if you've reasonably determined that problem is not actually in your power to solve. In women's lives more often than men's lives sometimes things just suck and all you can do is manage your unhappiness about the sucking. Also frustrating is men tend to really not get that a man and the woman doing the same action will get different results. A man is "assertive" when a woman is "bitchy." "Just tell them what's wrong" doesn't work if you know you get interrupted every time you open your mouth at work. Standing up for yourself when you're anything other than a straight white male is a very risky gamble. We all do it sometimes, we have to, but it's something you have to weigh the consequences of very carefully.
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Dec 29, 2016 17:17
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Kelp Me! posted:I think I get what you're saying. I do wish there was a non-mansplainy way to instill more confidence in her, at least in her workplace setting. At this point she's literally indispensable to the company - so many people are relying on her at this point to keep things running smoothly despite the overall incompetence level that if she up and quit they'd be hosed. I honestly believe that she has enough sway to be able to set an ultimatum along the lines of "these things need to change or I'm out"," though like you said a good chunk of that belief is colored by my male perspective on things (hell even the idea that I want to help her be more confident has tinges of sexism) Oh this one's actually easy! See when you're telling her "you should have done x" you may think of that as instilling confidence, because to you you're saying "I know you're capable of doing x" but to her you're just reminding her of yet another shortcoming. Switch to saying the reasons why you know she's capable of doing x. Tell her she's smart, tell her she's competent, tell her she's strong. botany posted:Just to reinforce TB's point ( Yes Botany's suggestion is great. (  ) I can remember very vividly every time someone said "I think TB wasn't finished yet" in real life, because it's so rare and because it cheered me up so much every time. You can actually transfer your confidence to another person just by doing something as simple as that. It's a superpower..
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Dec 29, 2016 17:39
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Office-wifeing is another great example of the tiny things that hold women back that no man will believe could possibly matter. Imagine if a woman said in an exit interview that she was leaving because her boss asked her to make tea or bring cookies to the potluck. It's something even one man can't really convince another man of. You can only lead by example - men by not making office wife demands and quietly redirecting men who do, and women by refusing whenever they can.
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Dec 29, 2016 18:08
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Gloryhold It! posted:And please for the love of gently caress, if you're talking about women who aren't trans, it's cis women. Not just women. This kind of thing is really important (black people, not "blacks" please). It's the furniture of our minds.
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Dec 29, 2016 18:08
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Eimi posted:As a transwoman the period of my life when I had to act male was one of abject misery. In a way I agree with what you're saying to some extent, but I really want to stress that sure I was raised male but every moment was spent seeing that as wrong and not right for me. I don't know if this really addresses you, but the best analogy I have is that I was like one of those little aliens in the first Men in Black, piloting a human robot. My body was very much NOT mine. I don't want to draw too strong a correlation because as someone said earlier it's really not an appropriate comparison, but I've had some interesting conversations with gay men talking about how they carry permanent scars from the stress of being closeted, and younger gay men seem alien to them for not having grown up with that. Obviously this is far from everywhere but there are some places where it's becoming common for kids to come out in adolescence or even younger, so they grow up having lived a completely different kind of life than the gay men who came before them. We can't undo the suffering that has already happened, but we can try to help the next generation not have it so bad. Amplifying young trans voices, supporting ways young people challenge gender identity and roles (so biting our tongues at things that might seem too naive or snowflakey or tumblr-y, like when an actor's kid airily says they "don't believe in labels"), lobbying the government and the medical community to make transitioning easier, educating parents and teachers to help trans kids live openly as early as possible, and putting our existing activist political frameworks to the task. Feminism already critiques gender roles. We're set up to help, and it's our moral obligation to do so.
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Dec 29, 2016 18:30
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