Thread: Feminism

I didn't call YOU closed minded, I called your views closed minded. I've been an active participant in AI for nearly seven years -- I know the boundaries of civil discourse, and they haven't been crossed.

What I see in front of my eyes is enormous diversity of emotions, views, personalities, mentalities, psychologies, personal hygiene, eating habits, hobbies, body types and skills in the women I know. They are not all the same. They are not even all alike, except in that they all have vaginas. Most of them:

-have long hair
-smell nice
-are sexually interested in males
-like tea
-like reading

...And that's about the whole list of things that most of them share. And that's not most women, that's most of the women I know.

Physically, the only surefire difference is that men have penises and women have vaginas. There are statistical differences (most men are bigger and stronger than most women), but that's no more relevant than statistical differences between races or ethnicities, and if you go around saying "the differences between white and black people are awesome and black people should strive to be something whites can respect", you will be rightfully ridiculed. "Emotionally and psychologically", the statistical differences between men and women can almost always be easily shown to be SOCIETAL: in other words, men and women are often emotionally different because society treats them differently, and the people in charge (men) expect and demand certain things of both genders (especially women).

What I'm saying is, show me a difference between men and women. You still haven't, you just keep repeating that there ARE differences.

I know a lot of different men: men you'd consider "pansy", gym-obsessed men who show girls at clubs their biceps to get laid, men who prefer tea to coffee, extravagantly flamboyant gay (and straight) men, men who go out to bars and get hammered and start fights, angsty artistic men who write poetry, and men who like a little bit of everything.

I also know a lot of different women: women who like casual sex often, women who are more conservative in their sexual habits, big bulldyke women, women who have fought in wars in the military, women who dress up like 1920s pinup girls, women who paint pretty pictures, women who work in construction alongside men, women who wear heels to everything and don't want to break their nails, radical feminists who decry the hijab as religious oppression, religious Muslim men who feel that the hijab actually liberates them, women who have the emotional intelligence of a moon rock, and women who are expert problem-solvers and diplomats. And those are all women I KNOW PERSONALLY. Some of whom are lucky enough, or perhaps strong enough, to break the bonds of what society expects of them.

There are many more different kinds out there, too. And none is better or more of a woman than any other, just like you're no more a man than me. Who are you to say men and women are fundamentally different? If you'd read any science or actual study on the subject, you might have seen that "the nature you can see in front of your eyes" is not necessarily how the world actually is.

Originally Posted by gwahir

Physically, the only surefire difference is that men have penises and women have vaginas.

Well actually there have been studies that have shown or suggested different neurological differences between men and women. For example males tend to outperform women in spatial ability tests (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2651884/) while the section of the brain that is responsible for language is larger in women (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9041858) which could suggest that generally women are superior to men in language-based subjects.

However these finding shouldn't be used to exclude one gender or the other from performing certain tasks. There will always be some women who are better than some men at spatial reasoning just as there will always be some men who are better than some women at language-based subjects. People should be judged individually of their skills and assets but it's still important to realize (and celebrate) that women and men aren't exactly like each other neurologically.

This is addressed to Atomic:

Originally Posted by sycld

Whenever a person develops a talent in one area or another, they affect their brain structure. It may, in fact, be the case that the difference in average brain development are caused by greater participation in gender-stereotyped activities by men and women, as opposed to reflecting some intrinsic, built-in difference between the two genders.

For instance, a study of London cab drivers found that they had larger areas of the brain associated with spatial reasoning abilities compared to a control group. Furthermore, there was a correlation between years spent being a cab driver and the size of this area of the brain. This strongly suggested that using these spatial reasoning skills actually encouraged restructuring of the brain.

Other studies have found similar results that suggest using certain skills repeatedly actually changes the structure of the brain, even in adults.

The relevance of this information, in terms of feminism, is this: differences you have perceived between men and women, no matter how intrinsic or in-built you think they are, are heavily influenced by society. Many women act "like women", and therefore have those women-specific traits/personalities/qualities you speak of, only because they are expected to.

One of my most deeply held philosophies is that people must be free, in a just society, to choose their own path. That means being free from coercion as well as having the same possibilities and options open to you as others. We are a long way from this -- and not just in feminist terms but also in racial equality, and other disadvantaged minorities. Women are not free to choose their own paths yet, not completely. Feminism is about moving towards that.