I'm very tired of that shit too!

I think we all need to be sensitive to objectifying people , especially given the fact that genetics plays a large part in how a person looks. That doesn't mean a person can't appreciate a beautiful woman or a handsome man.

I like people. Is that too much?

More often than it should, actually.

Only recognizing glossy photoshopped magazine images rather than living, breathing three dimensional women.

I don't think DU is infested with misogynists who can't see past women as sex objects.

are you saying that there are absolutely NO misogynists on this site?

People here are not more evolved than the rest of humanity. You obviously haven't been reading many of these threads. No one who believes in human equality justifies sexism through appeals to pseudoscience.

I can only speak of my own experience. There is worse sexism here than I have ever encountered offline.

Unbelievable.

Literally.

Just like on DU only white people get to decide what racism is. What we actually experience of course doesn't matter.

Thinking you've divined a poster's gender from a two word response - simply because said poster questioned your bizarre statement - is pretty textbook.

I want to know more about me. Does my butt look pre-pubescent in these jeans?

Regardless, it is supremely arrogant to dismiss another's personal experience simply because you find it inconvenient. The internet is well known as hostile to women, as many have written about in numerous publications. Of course your comment above tells me you have no concept of what sexism actually is, which is doubtless a willful decision to refuse to understand.

I would be very surprised if I were wrong. You also assume this is the first post by you I've ever read, which is not the case.

"There is worse sexism here than I have ever encountered offline." It's reasonable to infer that "here" is DU, unless your writing is simply clumsy. Not my fault. Nonetheless, if "here" is the internet, then I'll defer to your experience.

You're the one who presumed to know my gender based upon two words or now, instead, other posts of mine. I encourage you to cite one.

In the meantime, what kind of vehicle do I drive? A pink Geo or a black F150?

Thought so. Yes, by here I meant DU. DU is on the internet, in case you hadn't noticed.

They make fun of men in order to sell products that was manufactured by men?
Is this corporate feminism?

Given how many people showed up in the ape thread to chime in with "But we ARE apes!" That was very disappointing. Apparently no problem with the sexism and degrading then.

Could you please give me the cliff notes version of what happened?

Thank you in advance.

Lots of responses of But we are apes, flame war ensues between explanations of why it isn't cool to compare anyone to apes because it's degrading and accusations of ant-science flung at those making the objection by those who just couldn't see the objectification going on.

But humans are more evolved than apes. They can perform tasks that apes cant'.

No life form is "more evolved" than any other. Chimps and gorillas can perform many tasks that you or I can't, because they're adapted a different set of environmental challenges. And the incorrect idea that humans are "more evolved" than every other species is part of what people are seeking to challenge when they say humans are - in terms of kinship - apes. (Maybe to the point of being a little dogmatic about what is really an issue of semantics.)

Can they, for example build machines like computers and connect them to a world wide web?

Of course, neither can I, but with proper training I could understand some of it.

Can apes (I mean, of course, NON-human apes) get together and design a machine and create a network of roads to travel across a continent?

Can they build jet airplanes, spaceships to take people to the moon or robots to Mars? Can they even understand what Mars is?

Can they make electric guitars and write songs that other apes will sing along to?

I would say that objectively, the human species pretty much qualitatively kicks any other species a$$. But probably I am just undervaluing the skill it takes for an ape to be out there cracking walnuts with a couple of rocks.

I expect you'd find the ability to digest cellulose quite a bit more useful than the ability to design an electric guitar.

Humans are pretty amazing creatures, but it's true that we're no more evolved than anything else. Just differently evolved.

Of course the humans are going to win. There's nothing "objective" about your assessment; all you are doing is listing achievements that inspire you with a subjective feeling of awe - and unsurprisingly, it turns out you're impressed precisely by the kinds of activities humans excel at. If I judged how "evolved" humans were by how capable they were of emulating the lifestyles of gorillas in their natural habitats, the gorillas would win, easily. Either way, it's an absurd exercise, not worth taking seriously.

In fact, what seem to you like signs of our evolutionary superiority could actually be just the opposite. Gorillas and chimpanzees have demonstrated the ability to thrive long-term without overwhelming the habitats on which they depend. Meanwhile, our amazing technical and intellectual abilities have brought us to the brink of destroying ourselves and much of the rest of life on earth. If long-term survival is the goal, homo sapiens may well turn out to be a massive evolutionary failure (although that too, by the way, would be a subjective judgment.)

If you want to beat your chest about how much more awesome humans are than other species, that's your right. But it's wrong to dress up your subjective judgments up in pseudoscientific terminology like "more evolved", when all you really mean is "we're better" - in your opinion.

is the claim that using rocks to smash palm nuts is just as good as inventing the piano and writing music for it.

Also, I didn't say anything about "evolutionary". All I said was "superior" and "objectively superior".

It's true that if we do not agree on a measurement, then nothing can be measured. I certainly do not like the measurements of the "forward stampede" which would measure everything by per capita GDP. But there should be a standard that most reasonable people can agree on.

A standard that would say that microcomputers and piano concertos are superior to banging rocks to crack palm nuts.

Last edited Mon Feb 17, 2014, 03:50 PM - Edit history (13)

It's based on what you care about and what you think is important. That makes it inherently relative to your goals. If you and I agree on the goals, yes, we can hopefully come to a shared standard for making value distinctions in some non-arbitrary way - but that still won't be an "objective" standard in the sense of being universally true no matter what specific values we hold.

Aliens from a spacefaring civilization might not find our capabilities any more impressive than those of a chimp pounding a rock, because their perspective would be so removed from ours. You think your judgments about this issue are indisputable and obvious and that any other point of view is crazy only because you take your (human) perspective for granted.

I happen to enjoy music, and science, and other activities that humans excel at. This is inevitable - I'm a human being and I like the kind of things that members of my species tend to like. But I don't need to believe that these are objectively superior to the activities of chimpanzees in order to appreciate them. That's like saying human intelligence is "superior" to photosynthesis in plants, or that oxygen is "superior" to carbon; what is even the point of applying those kinds of judgments to the natural world? I'm not saying human intelligence isn't valuable; it's just that it's valuable only to us. (When you say "reasonable people" should be able to agree on a standard for making such judgments, note the key word there: people.)

Finally, I just want to note that my original comment was on the phrase "more evolved." You will never hear a contemporary biologist saying one kind of organism is "more evolved" than another, because that particular distinction is meaningless in light of evolutionary science; it belongs to an earlier era when people thought (wrongly) of evolution as some sort of ladder leading upward, from microorganisms to humans at the very top. So anyone who is using the word "evolved" in this way is using it incorrectly. I said nothing about superior or inferior. You are the one who dragged these concepts into the conversation.

Fish, cheetahs, and cats can. Evolution isn't a ladder, it's a tree. Different species evolve as a result of environmental pressures, and success is only measured in their ability to survive in their natural environment.

and mate.

Of course I can do all three. Humans have invented a self contained underwater breathing apparatus, and that's not a SNAFU.

Even with a simple automobile I can go far faster than a mere 50 mph. To say nothing of a jet airplane or a rocket.

And I can see in the dark with my infrared night vision goggles.

Survival is not much of a measurement. For one thing, because nothing really does survive, except maybe atoms or neutrons.

For another thing, any animal with the ability to do so, wants more than just survival and procreation. They want a GOOD life.

You're assigning values very arbitrarily.

Bears, for example, wouldn't think your electric guitar or your songs very useful, but they can form a nice fecal-plug that prevents them from fouling their dens during a months-long hibernation.

Can you do that?

Evolution means developing a skill-set that ensures survival for a species and couldn't give a rat's-ass about distorting a string to cause a specific audio vibration.

Intelligence is over-rated as a survival system. True, we have out-survived many species (since we've caused their extinction) but it's very likely our "intelligence" is ensuring our own extinction as well.

Crocodiles have survived for millions of years, we've been around for a mere twitch of the evolutionary clock and may not hang on for much longer.-


Can I get a "Kumbaya" on that?

Last edited Tue Feb 18, 2014, 11:25 AM - Edit history (1)

"Bears, for example, wouldn't think your electric guitar or your songs very useful, but they can form a nice fecal plug that prevents them from fouling their dens during a months-long hibernation. "


Humans have created one too. It's called a butt plug. You can purchase one from a Doc Johnson catalog.


SARCASM

Got me, you did.

They do have their own Group here though and wander out from time to time to spread their MRA talking points.

I suppose you are referring to the Men's Group (of which I am not a member or poster). Maybe you could have a word with Skinner about the existence of a misogynist group on a progressive web site. Or maybe your definition of misogynist is not the standard one.

And while I'm here, I gotta tell you I never heard of this "MRA" except on these gender wars thread here. I can't speak for other posters, but this whole "MRA talking points" thing seems like a canard. I'm sure such groups exist, but I don't spend my spare time scouring the dark corners of the interwebs looking for them. And the whole "talking points" thing is a bit of a diversion, isn't it? You can just say "talking points" and then you don't have to actually address whatever was said.

Just the other day I pointed out how we should not make excuses for a middle aged state trooper who raped a teenage girl by trying to turn it into something 'consensual'. Would you believe there are those who defend it? I know... It's shocking.

You mean the post where I wondered why he hadn't been charged with statutory rape?

And drew a distinction between forcible rape and consensual--albeit, illegal--sex.

But I don't remember that part about "defending it." Maybe you could elaborate, or maybe you could quit pulling stuff out of your nether regions.

I really don't understand the problem with acknowledging that there is a difference between sex you consent to even if it's illegal because of your age (statutory rape) and sex you are forced into (rape).

That said, the use of that distinction by right-wing zealots in their effort restrict abortion rights is reprehensible.

It was rape and there was nothing 'consensual' about it. You see... When people are generally considered 'under age' (and 15 certainly qualifies), they cannot give 'consent' for a good reason. That you choose to ignore that fact and somehow feel a 15 year old girl was instead capable of doing so with a middle aged state trooper.... Well, why is that?

This place feels like it's one step away from Reddit these days.

If SmearStir works for one broad-brush, it just has to work for another; it's just one keystroke away.

because there is absolutely misogyny here at DU.

It seems counter-intuitive to assume that they were all dead, non-respiratory, and flat.

Or might it be even remotely possible that a group of intelligent, adult women (and I hope you can wrap your head around the fact that there are more than a few adult, intelligent women models) decided to pursue their career; and when the SI cover, by any measure one of the top modeling gigs on the planet, offered them a slot, they decided to accept a bunch of money to make a living in the manner they selected?

The point is not about them as people. It is that men who are fixated on those magazines do so precisely because they aren't interested in intelligent, three dimensional women. One insisted the fact he is an ape compelled him to look at magazine images of women's behinds--because evidently he thinks biology has evolved human beings toward avoiding procreation by focusing on magazines and porn rather than actually reproducing the species.

The images on magazines are not of real women. They are not even real images of those models. They are altered to appear the way that men who have internalized capitalist commodity fetishism believe women should look.


Ultimately one of the main ringleaders made clear why they made sure that OP was posted. The purpose was to "retaliation," he insisted. It was a deliberately hostile action to offend women on this site, just as courts have ruled posting such images in workplaces is part of a hostile work environment intended to demean women and claim the workspace as male. That their intent was hostile was obvious, which is why I stayed out of their shit fest.

I would think that any individual who had been selected as a symbol of someone else's crusade would, at a bare minimum, prefer to be considered a person.

And do you have access to some super-secret SI photo lab information? ALL model shots are touched up. Some people might even consider calling them "photo shopped", with all of the connotations attached thereto, to be demeaning.

But that's OK, because it's all for a good cause, right?

of three males in that position, clustered together, butts out, smiling coyly over their shoulders?

This is supposed to be a progressive website, and equality of the sexes is a progressive value. So why the effort to make women look ridiculous?

And again, if you don't think they look ridiculous, then please imagine three men in that pose.

It's a reality.

If we were intelligent avians instead of apes, you'd be wailing because everyone was oggling the gaudy plumage of the males and ignoring the poor, dowdy girly-birds.

I'm not saying that woman don't deserve equal pay, equal rights, or the protection of society from the more depraved members of our species. We are capable of overcoming our biological evolution to that extent, and societal evolution has its own rewards.

But worrying about the fact that men like to look at tits is rejecting the infant along with the effluvia.

As to concerns that the current standard (one that has existed for a tiny slice of our cultural continuum) of beauty is a waifish, nubile female form, yes, it has caused damage to some adolescents trying to attain status within that cultural standard, but please realize that the most common beauty standard throughout civilization has been "Grecian", ie, over-fed women with an excess of avoirdupois.



You'll reject these arguments because you're fixated. It's an unfortunate fact that most of our decisions are governed by emotion rather than logic. We're flawed as a species in that regard.

Try to overcome your own prejudice and emotional need. You'll do your cause more good if you become more logical and less reactionary.

i say in all ogical and lacking in emotion.

what a fuckin hoot of insults. wow.

wow wow

hm.

k, well why dont you just ignore all of womens argument to align your discussion in your logically insulting manner. there is really no need to challenge a single bit. i would not even bother, in the mass of discussion filtered with insults.

cheers.

bad woman baines... quit being so... oh, woman like.

You are incoherent in a way that a remedial writing class can not address. Beyond ignorance to the point your babble is clearly psychological in nature.

Parse a goddamn sentence.

Ignore.

Jury let it stand. Seems you are well versed in who you can attack here.

Ignore.

Ignored.

New approach at ignoring people. Very interesting. Anyway, soon you won't have any other options but to read from afar. Don't think it will be your first time enjoying peperoni. Ignoring me yet?

Really? So what did poor mankind do before the advent of the double glossy and photoshop? Here I thought there was a biological imperative to reproduce, but evidently I'm wrong. Now you tell me biology compels men to look at mass market, digitally altered images rather than perpetuating the species by copulating with the opposite sex. Truly fascinating. And to think all those homosexual men are eschewing nature for what? Love?

It really is quite remarkable how you've avoided learning any history whatsoever, so much so that you assume that your current ethos and media preference for the prepubescent form are somehow natural. As though beauty standards haven't changed at all, as though men by biological imperative are destined to fixate on exactly what corporate capitalism tells them they should. Just think that equal opportunity law, as founded in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, flies in the face of biology. The idea that the chronically insecure cannot create a hostile environment designed to drive women from public spaces is what. . . .hopelessly doomed because men can't possibly be expected to avoid their biological imperative to litter the workplace with girly mags?

You have no concept what concerns me. Believe me, there is little I care about less than what you and guys like the man who compares himself to apes look at. You think far too highly of yourself to imagine I care even the slightest about your preferences or that you somehow speak for all men. Clearly you do not.

I reject your argument, not because of "prejudice," "emotional need" or "irrationality," but because I'm not a complete imbecile.

Republican men, on us because we're here to be scapegoated.

It's truly annoying as all fuck, too!

Not as much as on the right, of course, but it is there. And it's disappointing to see it. It's like when I hear another white person say something racist or when a family member says something homophobic, I have to stand up and say something, just like I would if I saw/heard something sexist. I just won't allow that b.s. into my life anymore. It's too hateful and negative and stupid to put up with.

Internet debate forums usually never end this pleasantly.

Well, DU opened it's doors in 2001 so...2001.

that's a HUGE problem, too

But from what I see of them they are pretty offensive too...

I just think that folks would be better off seeing past color, gender, and orientation and having the common sense to realize there are differences.

I could tell right away from your "live and let live" attitude toward the Michael Sam announcement. If you recall, I was the one saying, "Nope, guys, not gonna happen."

puleezee!

Inconsistent moderating around these matters...or, perhaps men simply don't report these to mods so they rage on whereas women do, and they get shut down.

Who knows????

Unfair custody results? Thank the dumb myth that women are better caretakers.

Unfairly treated like sexual predators? Blame the tying men's worth to their sexual conquests.

Women aren't oppressing men; men are just finding any excuse to claim oppression without noticing that the patriarchal gender roles pushed for millennia are far more to blame than a few feminists.

displaced too often on good men around here.

Women are not bashing men around here, but stupid behaviors of certain men.

Men as a group don't need defending. We're doing just fine.

I think you're discussing apples (big picture) and I'm discussing oranges (DU).

...crossover and defend men. On the other hand, many men support women all the time.

Defend white or straight people?

You just decided to say I'm demanding this of others.

FAIL

Why even mention seabeyond defending men? Do members of a persecuted minority have the obligation to defend the majority as well?

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* will start replying with doors so that I can crossover and help a man out when I read something that would normally call for a

BaZinga.

cos, yanno ... Doors.

*LIKED IT TOO*

What more of the gender warriors should realize is that most of us are on one side or the other of the same coin (some are in the middle). Condeming one type of sexism while giving a pass to other types, encouraging other types, or participating in other types is counterproductive to gender equality.

Thanks Major.

<3 to you

Calling misandry a "HUGE" problem in comparison to misogyny is like claiming that smoking a joint is equivalent to being a major heroin manufacturer.

so much suffering for men due to job and pay discrimination........

someone with "their" :whistling: lame one-size-fits-all mentality came to the discussion with "their" mind made up about what the OP is trying to convey.

THEY are responsible for most of the world's suffering, because along with their misogyny, they also tend to be conservative, biblical literalists, anti-environmentalist, pro-war, pro-death penalty, etc etc etc.

Men do face problems that women do not. Is it is bad as the problems women face? Highly doubtful.

I think the problem is context and forum. DU probably isn't the best place to discuss these issues, nor is the Internet.

Case in point: my wife, a lawyer, is currently taking a course about men and the various ways men get screwed over by the legal system in particular and society in general. They discuss issues such as stereotypical gender roles, unfair outcomes in legal proceedings, and the extraordinarily lopsided suicide rate among men and boys. The professor is a woman, as is half the class.

It's really fascinating stuff. More importantly, these are important issues that deserve to be talked about. But it only works for that class because of the context and forum.

no such thing as "reverse racism". There is only one kind of racism.

There's no "reverse racism" because it's not "reverse" anything. It's just racism, regardless of who's hating who.

It kinda reminds me of the South of the olden days when people used to (ever so wrongly!) think that "Naw, white folks can't do no rape. Whites is civilized peepul. Always dem goddam (fill in the blank) that do it.". Different circumstances, yes, but same general basic type of binary logic.

Men aren't oppressed in this society. Anybody who thinks they are is a goddamn moron.

It's as disingenuous as screaming about reverse discrimination or the latest I've heard- heterophobia.

And going forward we'll start calling it that for you two.

Yes, there are women who irrationally hate men.

Yes, there are members of minorities who hate whites.

Yes, there are probably members of the LGBT community who hate straight people.

But they're a minority of these minorities, and they're certainly not institutionalized like misogyny, homophobia, and racism. This false equivalence nonsense has to stop, whether it's misandry, "heterophobia", or reverse racism. It's the majority trying to make the minorities they've oppressed for centuries feel like they should take some blame as well.

I'd wager that at least 90% of DU understands this crucial fact.

With that said, however, this does not discount personal bigotries and prejudices in the least: Yes, People of Color occasionally can be racist against whites. Women can occasionally be sexist against men. And there are even a few LGBT people who may distrust heterosexual people as a whole. But just as this is true, the opposite is also true: Just because someone of any ethnicity can be racist towards another, or either gender sexist towards the other, etc., does not at all disprove the fact that systemic prejudice is still kicking and screaming even in 2014, and that some people are affected worse than others by prejudices in general(i.e. white people are not the targets of systemic racism, men are not the targets of systemic sexism, etc.).

And in fact, personal prejudices are one of the primary components that keep the remnants of systemic prejudice alive. The former, sadly, may never be fully eradicated, but the latter certainly *can be*. And it's up to all of us to fix it.

want to address the spirit of the OP.

WEAK!

where's the eyeroll emoticon

We are more likely to commit suicide, more likely to not have a college degree, more likely to be in some segment of the criminal justice system, more likely to be murdered, etc.

What you call impatience with stupidity I would say is actually more of an unwillingness to consider the notion that you could be wrong. That there are aspects of our society that favor one gender over another and it's not all one way no matter how much anybody wants to insist it is.

It is a fundamental misunderstanding of feminism fail to realize that we're trying to make things better for EVERYBODY.

Men suffer when their partners are underpaid. Men suffer when narrow gender roles paint them into a box.

Women are more likely to seek higher education to compensate for being chronically underpaid and frozen out of relatively well-paying unskilled labor.

Violent socialization means men are both the perpetrators and the victims of the lion's share of violent crime.

Gendered notions of parental responsibility hurt children.

Who's doing something about all of those problems?

FEMINISTS.

Who isn't doing jack shit?

"Men's rights" advocates

What DO they do (besides whine on the internet?) They fought against the Violence Against Women Act, and against the protection of trafficked women in particular. They harass women who express themselves in the media or on the internet. Increasingly they team up with conservative religious groups to advocate against women's rights or health care.

n/t

or my best friend who went through one for nine years because of his psycho ex-wife.

Men may not be "oppressed," but there is a legal double standard in many cases.

BTW, WTF is a neckbeard?