i want to be a man

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just for a while.
no i dont have penis envy, it would simply be interesting to spend say, a month, being someone of the opposite sex.
movies have been made, but i want the real thing so i can find out what its like, really.
anyone wanna swap?

donna (donna), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, i'll swap. i want to see just how much irrationality and emotional blackmail i can fit into one month.

;-0

fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:45 (twenty-two years ago)

It took Chris Knox's song "The Woman Inside Of Me" to convince me that being a woman for a day would be a very great thing.

donut bitch (donut), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:47 (twenty-two years ago)

HAHAHA well i can guarantee irrationality. and you even get a bonus of bizarre-mood-changing-for-no-apparent-reason.

donna (donna), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:48 (twenty-two years ago)

oh and fits of:

"i don't feel pretty"
"i don't feel attractive"
"i'm ugly"
"i'm fat"

i can't WAIT!

fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:51 (twenty-two years ago)

how about " i am NOT being difficult!!!"

donna (donna), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:55 (twenty-two years ago)

or ...

"i'm allowed to have lots of male friends but you can't have any female friends unless you're prepared for me to play subtle mindgames with you or slowly sabotage your friendships"

fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Being a woman is strange and wonderful. Is being a man strange and wonderful in a different way, or is it more sure and steady?

teeny (teeny), Thursday, 17 October 2002 18:59 (twenty-two years ago)

it's pretty much the same, except with more farting.

fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Thursday, 17 October 2002 19:03 (twenty-two years ago)

"i'm allowed to have lots of male friends but you can't have any female friends unless you're prepared for me to play subtle mindgames with you or slowly sabotage your friendships"

Gee, but you're not bitter.

Jody Beth Rosen, Thursday, 17 October 2002 19:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I want to be a woman solely to sell my eggs. You can get $10,000 for those little fuckers!

Yancey (ystrickler), Thursday, 17 October 2002 19:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, after undergoing months of hormone therapy that makes you crazy then undergoing surgery to fish 'em out.

(still, I came close to doing it. And it's more like seven grand.)

teeny (teeny), Thursday, 17 October 2002 19:13 (twenty-two years ago)

It seems as if every woman I know has seriously looked into it. I would lose a testicle for $10,000. $7,000, even.

Yancey (ystrickler), Thursday, 17 October 2002 19:29 (twenty-two years ago)

felicity to thread

Josh (Josh), Thursday, 17 October 2002 23:04 (twenty-two years ago)

It would suck to be a guy. As a female I'm already considered twee and wussy, so I can only imagine the kind of beat down I would get from macho types as a dude.

Nicole (Nicole), Friday, 18 October 2002 00:24 (twenty-two years ago)

hey donna

all you have to do is program your dreams the way i did - i had that unbelievable series of recurring ones where i was a bloke with a really big dick, and i had lots and lots of sex with all kinds of different women - i tell you something - MY GOD IT'S SOOOOOO EASY TO GET YOUR ROCKS OFF WHEN YOU'RE A MAN - instant satisfaction compared to what we go through as women!!!!!

jayne (jayne), Friday, 18 October 2002 00:29 (twenty-two years ago)

it's pretty much the same, except with more farting.

fear my anus!

i hate gender. i wish it would fuck off. (not saying this thread is an unworthy topic, just expressing my own frustrartion with being judged by my gender and me feeling compelled to judge people by their gender).

di smith (lucylurex), Friday, 18 October 2002 04:04 (twenty-two years ago)

HAHAHA, josh!

bring it ON

felicity (felicity), Friday, 18 October 2002 04:46 (twenty-two years ago)

jayne is a total mentalist!

boxcubed (boxcubed), Friday, 18 October 2002 04:50 (twenty-two years ago)

We girls are bombarded with imagery throughout our lives, showing us how we should look and how we should behave. The societal pressure is overwhelming at times.

We are supposed to be waif-thin and beautiful, feminine yet strong; we are supposed to act like tigers in the bedroom, and domestic godesses who can cook and clean and organise everything to run like clockwork in the rest of the house. We are supposed to hold down high-powered jobs, be successful in our work lives and be financially independent. Yet at the same time we are supposed to fulfil the nurturing and caring role - being supportive to our partners and perfect mothers to our children. It's multi-tasking gone mad.

I would really like to know what society expects from you men. Do you feel bombarded with stereotypical imagery about how you should behave, in the same way that the girls are? I really want to understand the pressures that you feel you are under, why you act - and react - the way you do.

Recently, on another MB, I mentioned a website which had some useful information about how to deal with depression; I received more than 30 emailed requests for the URL. All those requests were from men, and that surprised me. No, shocked me actually.

So if I spent a week inside a man's skin, what could I expect to find?

C J (C J), Friday, 18 October 2002 05:26 (twenty-two years ago)

depends which man

boxcubed (boxcubed), Friday, 18 October 2002 05:31 (twenty-two years ago)

funny you say that about depression cj, as when i think about it, almost all my male friends suffer from depression in varying degrees.
now, i may just have a sensitive bunch of friends, but even men outside my usual circle ( ie; workmates etc ) would say they were depressed, and i dont mean the casual-in-passing "o no im just a bit depressed"...
IS this as common as it seems?

donna (donna), Friday, 18 October 2002 06:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I think it is frighteningly common, Donna. That's why I wonder whether men are being subjected to the same sort of pressures that women are, but perhaps their coping mechanisms are different. I always get the impression that men internalise everything, and are more likely to go and have a beer rather than talk about stuff which concerns them ....... or am I making sweeping generalisations again?

I really am interested to know what makes men tick. Society seems to expect men to be strong, to be the provider, and often frowns on wussy sensitive behaviour - which I think is wrong. I'd be interested to hear from the men what THEY feel is required of them, and whether they are comfortable with society's perceptions and expectations of them. Greater understanding of the other sex is a good thing, surely?

C J (C J), Friday, 18 October 2002 06:35 (twenty-two years ago)

yes i agree greater understanding is a good thing, though we never seem to get very far.
and i know what you mean about men internalising things rather than speaking out about major emotional issues. my friends and i always share problems, not so much for answers or solutions ( though that helps ) but just the act of talking things out eases the pressure and makes us feel less alone / drowning etc.
the men i know all hold most things inside until they reach breaking point.
i would also be interested in hearing the viewpoints of the ilx men.

donna (donna), Friday, 18 October 2002 06:44 (twenty-two years ago)

of course men are subject to the same pressures....be a provider,be macho yet sensitive, make the first move, muscle bound, an animal in bed but still able to "just hold you" ,have a career, be ambitous, , would make a good Father, boys dont cry, Calvin Klein adds, Abs of steel,a leader, sporty, blah blah etc etc etc - or perhaps be a hugely talented heroin chic tragic passionate romantic mastermind billionaire guitar hero? I think pressures are put on men to "achieve" something, be someone important/famous/powerful.

and yes, I think men internalise the pressure more because they are supposed to be tough (whatever that is) and just have a beer and watch the game etc.

but personally its never really bothered me what other peoples idea of a man is. Ive never really cared to try to conform to the stereotype and be macho or whatever the media and advertising agencys mans man is supposed to be.....whats the point in being something other than yourself? Hence I am not depressed, and enjoy being a man - however I would love to be woman for a month or too - just to see of course! ahemn.....err......so what about those Yankee's?

gazza, Friday, 18 October 2002 07:25 (twenty-two years ago)

hmmm yeah the suicide figures for men are not good at all.

Whether its from greater pressures and expectations or poor coping mechanisims or both Im unsure. Certainly we are still not expected to show much weakness, whether thats the alpha male competitive instinct, or just fear of looking like a faggot (thanks Momus) Ive got no idea.

Im not helping much.Um I thing societies expectations of men as the decisive fearless chivalrous protector and provider is still there. The percieved responsibilty for men is still stronger thus the fall is greater???

Im thinking about choices and relationships, I think a house-husband is sadly still seen as a failure wheras a housewife much less so. I dont think women who choose not to work to look after family are viewed the same way as men. Again the fall for men who fail in "high powered jobs" to become the main child raiser is greater than women.


I guess Id like to hear what ILXOR mens views are on masculilinty and what it means to them. Anything?

Beards, body hair, gold and Brute?

Kiwi, Friday, 18 October 2002 07:46 (twenty-two years ago)

i have an intense and perhaps irrational aversion towards standard notions of masculinity. without becoming an indie-boy or a worm, it was tempting and sort of reactionary to want to try riding upon effeminate qualities, if only because there is little else out there to shape one's identity (sexual and otherwise) with. of course i try not to be so self-conscious over what mannerisms I may be emitting. maybe i am just a "victim" of the whole ancient American feminization-of-Asian-man race cliche but I'm certainly not about to make a fuss on it.

Honda, Friday, 18 October 2002 08:34 (twenty-two years ago)

i have an intense and perhaps irrational aversion towards standard notions of masculinity.

I wouldn't call it irrational myself.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 October 2002 13:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I have an intense and perhaps irrational envy of standard notions of masculinity, but I'm too damn lazy to go to a gym.

Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 18 October 2002 14:05 (twenty-two years ago)

my girlfriend constantly brings trashy girl magazines over (you know the kind). i was flipping through jane one day and shaking my head quite vociferously (if that can be done) and she said "what"?

i said (not verbatim) "i can't believe you read this crap! every single page is devoted to finding some way to tell women how they are supposed to look, act and fuck. it's so blatant it's not even funny. 'ten things that will turn him on in bed' or 'why you're a whore if you don't buy a new handbag this season' aren't positive articles to read". i also should have mentioned that these trashy (and unbelievably popular mags)take aim squarely at a girl's self-esteem, something i've found pretty much everyone (especially women who are not totally vain and awful) deficient in.

she said "what about the wire? what is that telling you as a guy?" (she always brings up the wire)

i said "the wire is about music. the wire's propaganda is limited to articles like 'you are white trash if you don't think this lame avant-garde improv group is cool'. the wire doesn't tell me what shirt i should wear or how to kiss girls or the way my stomach should look or what my life should consist of".

she seemed satisfied that i had made some sort of concession re: the snootiness of the wire.

what did i take out of that brief interchange? i guess i do support that women *are* subject to more expectations than men, especially in the media, but i have little sympathy when someone can say to themself 'i'm not pretty' and then expect an article called 'how to get guys to think you're hot' to provide the answer.

i forget what the point is ...

fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Friday, 18 October 2002 14:39 (twenty-two years ago)

haha i wish i'd thought of "how to kiss girls" as one of the fabled wire themed issues

one of the things i realised when i was back looking after my maw and paw earlier this week, is how much i've adopted-learnt versions of her coping-and-internalisation strategies

mark s (mark s), Friday, 18 October 2002 15:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't feel any pressure to conform to the male stereotype, just like I don't feel any pressure to listen to pop music. I often do just enjoy going for a jog, punching a friend, moshpiting, eating meat off the bone and wiping my hands on my shirt. As a man I think I have inner urges to do these things sometimes, but it's not a direct thought like I have to do these things to be more of a man.

As for holding in emotions, I definately do not do that, but I think emotions are not all that important. They are unstable and I tend to act and think more in a logical way, and not an emotional way. Embracing emotions can be fun and healthy sometimes, but they often don't take over.

A Nairn (moretap), Friday, 18 October 2002 16:46 (twenty-two years ago)

please take my emotionally-scattered mind and hormonally-controlled body and THROW THEM SOMEWHERE FAR AWAY..!
just for a month.
pleeeeeeese.

donna (donna), Friday, 18 October 2002 20:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I suffer very seriously from depression - I'm talking clinical, major league, sometimes can't even get out of bed, dumb luck that the last suicide attempt didn't quite succeed, don't know for sure that I'll be alive next week depression. This has nothing detectable to do with being male - I'm told that it's due to chemical imbalance, not any life events, which fits with the lack of a detectable cause. However, I am sure that had I been brought up as female, I would be dealing with it differently. I might find it easier to openly admit how lousy I feel a lot of the time, to show the extreme weakness, to ask for help or sympathy or whatever.

But moaning about pressure on men, without acknowledging the far worse ones on women, is unutterably dud. These fools (thankfully none here, so far!) who moan about not knowing whether to hold a door or that we aren't even allowed to grope a woman's arse any more are all scum. Nonetheless, there are some downsides to sexism and stereotyping for men too. For instance, I make wide use of web dating sites. Pretty much every woman I've got to know through this says that they agree that there is no reason why it should always be down to the men to do the asking - but they all admit that they sit back and wait, and I have only had a few women contact me first. It's a burden, but it's hardly massive. Generally, in these more liberal times, women can act and dress in a wider range of ways than men, but that is only including certain sections of society - my mother would be very disapproving of many women who ILXers wouldn't dream of criticising.

I'd love to swap for a month, certainly. Or maybe 23 days, then I can give the body back...

Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 18 October 2002 20:58 (twenty-two years ago)

no martin you have to have it for the whole month or it doesnt count. sorry, no escaping the dreaded menstruation time, otherwise how will you know how much FUN it can be.!
:~/

donna (donna), Friday, 18 October 2002 21:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think I needed to know what the "I'm menstuating" emoticon looked like.

Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 18 October 2002 21:03 (twenty-two years ago)

actually thats the 'pre' one.

donna (donna), Friday, 18 October 2002 21:09 (twenty-two years ago)

But moaning about pressure on men, without acknowledging the far worse ones on women, is unutterably dud.

What about someone who acknowledges the tremendous pressure on women, but who thinks that the comparison you make there is invidious?

On top of that, it's not a zero-sum game, and nothing can be gained by comparing women's lot and men's lot and figuring out (by science) who has it worse -- first of all because the lot of a person in Alabama is potentially wildly different from the lot of a person in Manhattan, let alone someone in Stockholm or Harare or rural China, and second of all because the evils suffered by one gender can never render those suffered by the other irrelevant: two wrongs don't make a right, last time I checked.

Your arse-groping character, while to some extent real, is also a straw man. A far more substantial counter-figure is, perhaps, the man who finds that his friends look down at him, and his parents treat him with vague contempt, for being a househusband. Or the man who is haunted for the rest of his life by feelings of worthlessness because when, at a young age, he was confronted by a gang of bullies ready to beat the crap out of him, he cried and begged for his life instead of fighting to the death -- and nearly everything he's ever read, seen and heard tells him that someone who does that is a piece of shit. And so on.

Phil (phil), Friday, 18 October 2002 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Your arse-groping character, while to some extent real, is also a straw man

No, a straw man is one that isn't real, knocked up for the purposes of argument. The people I was knocking actually exist, as you half acknowledge.

Anyway, I did go on to complain about certain things and agree that there are unreasonable pressures on men, and your last example is a very good one. But I still think that complaining because the tiny proportion of men who become househusbands get disrespected WITHOUT noticing that millions of women have also been getting bugger all respect for doing this for centuries is pretty damn dud.

I'm by no means saying that there is nothing wrong with men's lot in this world, I'm saying that we need to have a sense of proportion.

Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 18 October 2002 22:22 (twenty-two years ago)

The people I was knocking actually exist, as you half acknowledge.

True. My point, though, was that to use them as emblematic of people who complain of "men's troubled lot" is a little disingenuous. And I think it's a bit over the top, by the way, to call men who are confused about whether to open doors for women "scum": last I knew, there was a widely varying range of opinions among women as to whether such an act was the height of chivalry, chauvinism, courtesy, stupidity, or whatever else.

But I still think that complaining because the tiny proportion of men who become househusbands get disrespected WITHOUT noticing that millions of women have also been getting bugger all respect for doing this for centuries is pretty damn dud.

Well, sure. But my point isn't about the "tiny proportion of...househusbands", it's about the nature of the expectations upon men: that they make money, have successful careers, and gain enough power to be sure of being able to protect their families and interests. It's not "househusbands don't get no respect", it's "the vast majority of people (men and women both) consciously or subconsciously hold that a man's worth as a human being is intimately connected to the amount of power he wields". I can understand why you raise the question you do, but it's not really the corollary of the point I was driving at.

I'm all for a "sense of proportion", but what exactly does that mean? What is to be gained by comparing, say, a teenage boy who blows his brains out because he gets beaten up every day at school for being effeminate or bookish, and a woman who starves herself to death because she's terrified of being fat? What political point needs to be made, exactly?

Phil (phil), Saturday, 19 October 2002 02:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I think a house-husband is sadly still seen as a failure wheras a housewife much less so.

i wanted to pick out this statement cos housewives are seen as and often feel like failures. but in our society it doesn't matter cos women aren't expected to be as successful in their careers as men are. (this isn't to say that women aren't pressured to be successful - as housewives or paid-careerists - just that the pressure is less.) but there are definitely different pressures, appearance, decorum etc

di smith (lucylurex), Saturday, 19 October 2002 05:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Phil, surely the teenage boy who gets beaten up for being effeminate is suffering from exactly the same ideology as a woman torturing her body to become thin. Sexism or sexisms are ideologies which we all imbibe, all perpetuate and to varying extent all suffer through or benefit from. The balance of how we suffer and how we benefit just varies.

Amarga, Saturday, 19 October 2002 09:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, using 'scum' in relation to people unsure about opening doors is a loss of proportion, and I apologise. Except I wasn't talking about people who wonder if that is the right behaviour, but very badly failing to refer to those people who complain as if not being sure is a huge burden placed on men by unreasonable women. I was failing to point at the male backlash types who seem to believe, ludicrously, that feminism has gone too far and that men are the oppressed group now.

I seem to have to keep repeating that I agree that men suffer ill effects from sexism too - I made this clear in my first post here. However, as Amarga points out, these are not entirely separable from the ill effects on women, and women still get much the worst of it.

Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 19 October 2002 11:03 (twenty-two years ago)

To go back to the original premise - whether I'd like to be a man to see what it was like - I think the problem is that inhabiting a male body for a day or so might be fun but that it wouldn't make me a man. I've spent a lifetime learning to become a woman. I hardly think that my consciousness could be altered to accommodate a 'regular' male identity within the rest of my life unless I could be mysteriously reprogrammed to lose all memories conscious and unconscious of my former life as a woman.

Amarga, Saturday, 19 October 2002 11:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I've always wondered what it would be like to be of the opposite sex, but one day/month/year will hardly serve to give anything but the slightest glimpse of what it would feel like I'd imagine- best wait for reincarnation.

Pretty much every woman I've got to know through this says that they agree that there is no reason why it should always be down to the men to do the asking - but they all admit that they sit back and wait, and I have only had a few women contact me first. It's a burden, but it's hardly massive.

What I don't get is why those trashy girlie mags mentioned elswhere on this thread don't give out the very simple advice "approach him first", because every girl who has done this to me has been met with sincere and undying adoration- it's an instant "you're cool" badge, at least in my book.

Or the man who is haunted for the rest of his life by feelings of worthlessness because when, at a young age, he was confronted by a gang of bullies ready to beat the crap out of him, he cried and begged for his life instead of fighting to the death -- and nearly everything he's ever read, seen and heard tells him that someone who does that is a piece of shit.

I never fought back (even when I knew that, if I trained a bit, I could possibly beat those guys up.) Never regretted it either, because in all the comics I've seen where the person does they end up getting beat up real bad and the moral of it is that it was somehow worth it. Wuh?

And I think it's a bit over the top, by the way, to call men who are confused about whether to open doors for women "scum": last I knew, there was a widely varying range of opinions among women as to whether such an act was the height of chivalry, chauvinism, courtesy, stupidity, or whatever else.

I was perplexed the first time a girl complained to me about that, because I'd always figured it meant "you are an Earth Godess/Mother Of Life/insert vaguely New Age-y term here and widely superior to myself, thus my role is to honour and serve you" not "you're weak and fragile, thus I have to open this door for you because you probably couldn't do it by yourself". Then again, mentality #1 is as offensive in its own way as #2, I guess...

I was failing to point at the male backlash types who seem to believe, ludicrously, that feminism has gone too far and that men are the oppressed group now.

Cf: "I hate Destiny's Child all they do in their songs is bash men whine whine moan moan now where's my Jay-Z record?"

Oddly enough tho, I've also met women who share (some) of these ideas and proudly call themselves "anti feminists". Which baffles me very much.

Daniel_Rf, Saturday, 19 October 2002 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

My reason for opening doors for people (male or female) is because it's a nice thing to do. There's no power involved.

Andrew (enneff), Saturday, 19 October 2002 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

[unless it's a v.stiff door]

N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 19 October 2002 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I agree that men suffer ill effects from sexism too - I made this clear in my first post here. However, as Amarga points out, these are not entirely separable from the ill effects on women

I totally agree (though I find the word "sexism" a little limiting to describe this whole complex of issues, but that's minor). They're quite intimately bound up with each other in a way that's seldom true of these kinds of conflicts (with the possible exception of class conflict).

and women still get much the worst of it.

The key issue for me is this: I'm not sure how this statement is useful. I'm setting aside the question of whether I agree with it -- in fact, I essentially do, though it's a bit too monolithic for my taste in that it reduces an extremely complex issue to a single equation (which of course never ever happens on IL* ;-).

[For instance: I feel that the welfare of women in Saudi Arabia is specifically and obviously a pressing issue (and a human rights disaster) in a way that the welfare of men in that country is not. If I were in charge of allocating funds for human rights advocacy in Saudi Arabia, I would probably decide to give substantially more money to efforts that would potentially and specifically improve the lot of the country's women. But I feel the opposite about the American prison system -- unless the sources I've consulted are totally off-the-mark, the rate of rape and sexual torture in men's prisons is absolutely insane, and far exceeds the rate in women's prisons. Some horrible things are happening in women's prisons, but if I were allocating funds for an inquiry, I'd probably spend more money-per-prisoner investigating the men's prisons.]

But I'm not sure what good can come of framing things in this way: if, as Amarga said, we're all victims of the same toxic ideology, then pursuing the question of who gets the worst of it seems to me to be a potentially destructive blind alley, in part (I think) because it pulls us toward locating blame in each other, as groups and individuals, rather than in the ideology. So I'm interested in knowing: Do you believe it's important that it be adopted as axiomatic that women get the worst of it? If so, why?

(btw Martin, I'm not trying to attack you, and hope it doesn't seem that way [and am sorry if it has]. It's a bit like Mark S. and I -- we go at it hammer-and-tongs because, half the time, we're actually pretty close to agreement.)

Phil (phil), Saturday, 19 October 2002 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

(There are, of course, specific issues where it is a zero-sum game and can be more or less quantified. One obvious example: wage/salary inequities.)

Phil (phil), Saturday, 19 October 2002 16:35 (twenty-two years ago)

i think it is a bit of a road to nowhere to try and compare the issues men and women face, and see who 'has it worse' since we all react to things according to our experiences / upbringing / personality as well as gender.
it is more relevent ( to me ) to learn what different men think about their own issues,ask what are these issues, and then go on to how men in general seem to behave to these in comparison to how women deal with Their issues.

donna (donna), Saturday, 19 October 2002 18:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Your men's prison example, Phil, is something I haven't thought about much. I know little about sexual violence therein, and less about the equivalent in women's prisons. You might very well be right that it's worse in men's prisons, but I do wonder how we might compare. Nonetheless, even with the number of its citizens America locks up, this is a tiny minority case.

I don't feel as if I'm under attack from you - but it does seem as if any mention of women having it worse does get you angry. And accusing me of bringing in gender comparisons where none are called for is just silly - this whole thread started as a way of comparing men's and women's lot, and women were asking about the comparative pressures that a sexist society creates. I gave my opinion, and bar the odd incautious word that I've already withdrawn, I stand by it.

Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 19 October 2002 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

It's not that it gets me angry, Martin: it's that it's important to me to have a discourse in with the experiences and concerns of both genders can be validated. And my feeling is that (even if it's in some sense accurate to do so) comparing the two in a quantitative, X > Y way undermines and oversimplifies that discourse -- whereas there are other ways of talking about it that don't invite invidious comparisons, many of which have been exhibited in this thread. (In a nutshell, "What different problems do men and women face?" is a very different comparison from "Who has it harder, men or women?") My question about whether you believe "it's important that it be adopted as axiomatic that women get the worst of it" was a sincere one, in part because I think it's a type of question that lays the template for a lot of how we feel social injustices ought to be addressed.

Phil (phil), Saturday, 19 October 2002 19:50 (twenty-two years ago)

My saying something, even if I say it more than once, and wanting it "adopted as axiomatic" are so clearly not the same thing that it didn't seem worth addressing.

An axiom is a starting point, not a conclusion. I have explained before, more than once, here and in private email, why I think women have it worse. To sum up a few of the reasons: number of countries worldwide where women earn as much as men: zero. Number of women among company directors being paid a million or more p.a. in the UK: zero. Average number of women killed by partners per week in the UK: almost two - when a man is killed by his female partner, it is sensational headline news. I don't know the figures on rapes (and it's clearly hugely underreported whatever the sex of the victim) but the disparity is of similar kind. This isn't adopting anything as an axiom, it is dealing with the huge imbalance in the real world.

I'd also point out that I brought up the whole issue of women having it worse immediately after I moaned about the effects that gender-based aspects of my upbringing had on me when trying to deal with my depression, not as some polemical point out of nowhere or political sloganeering unconnected to the point of the thread. That is, I was talking about what difference it made to me to be a man, but acknowledging that the bad impact of societal norms on me was not as burdensome as is typically the case for women - it is you who have stuck with abstract argument.

Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 19 October 2002 20:26 (twenty-two years ago)

My saying something...and wanting it "adopted as axiomatic" are so clearly not the same thing

Of course they're not the same thing! That's my whole question, and what I'm trying to figure out. You said that men who fail to acknowledge the "far worse pressures on women" are duds. The question is: do you think that people in general, and/or our social policies, need to acknowledge them in specifically comparative terms in order for positive change to be enacted? I'm not trying to interrogate you or accuse you of polemics or sloganeering, I'm trying to get your thoughts on what I think is a very important question. This is why I (very briefly) brought up class conflict, because it's an example of an issue in which I think there's a strong case to be made that quantitative comparison is in fact crucial to finding just ways of dealing with the problem. But maybe that's because I don't feel that there are significant social injustices being visited on the rich qua rich, and so I'm not as concerned that the discourse should take a form that validates their experiences.

(I suspect we're going in circles -- perhaps we should take this to private email, or stop?)

Phil (phil), Saturday, 19 October 2002 21:24 (twenty-two years ago)

The question is: do you think that people in general, and/or our social policies, need to acknowledge them in specifically comparative terms in order for positive change to be enacted?

No. The comparison was because of the context of the thread, and my point (clumsily made, but I hope I've explained this well enough in subsequent posts) was about men who claim that they have the worst of it. I'm not some kind of nutter who protests against improving conditions in men's prisons because women don't have equal pay.

I think the 'stop' option is best. No one else is posting!

Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 19 October 2002 21:53 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry, we would have posted but we all were having a huge squabble off-thread abt which of us gets to say "oi you two, cut to the chase and have sex already"

mark s (mark s), Saturday, 19 October 2002 22:08 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.beavis-butthead.ru/pictures2/shock.jpg

Phil (phil), Sunday, 20 October 2002 01:58 (twenty-two years ago)


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