"Feminism isn't needed"?  Feminism is needed more than ever! Ever heard of trafficking? Why do people tend to forget the most eminent and serious problems... There are millions of women who are practically sex slaves. Isn't patriarchal society partly to blame for this (economical structure is the main cause, but that's an entirely different issue)? And don't get me started on the abortions issue, cause we'd probably have a fight.

I think the reason most people view feminism in a bad light is that many of its proponents view men as a sort of enemy. That's an extreme and, IMO, downright stupid point of view. But feminism isn't about battling the opposite sex, it's about equal chances to happiness for both sexes. Really, everyone should be a feminist.

I wouldn't blame a woman who wants to stay home and look after her children, but I would certainly advise against it. Making your own living earns you confidence and respect.Ah, but is it possible for a couple to raise their children while both parents work at the same time? Modern society makes it hard (whoops, I used the word "society" there ) by demanding long working hours and not supporting the couple's efforts to raise their children. So one of them has to stay home. Guess who.

So feminism should try to change that by pressing the state to take measures that help couples cope.

Of course it is their right. Nobody denies that. But that doesn't mean that what they do is a good thing, or that I can't criticise it. Seeing other people as sex objects really isn't healthy, and we shouldn't promote that.

I have to disagree with that. You should look into cases of "self-fulfilling prophecy". That's when people become what they are expected to be.

I just hate the selfish attitude I see.

"It's all about ME!  It's about what I WANT!  What I deserve."

This has bred a generation of women who are so concered about themselves, they end up neurotic messes who can't raise their own fucking children properly and thusly cause the next generation to inherit not only emotional instability, but a lack of general responsibility.


Bt

Actually, men have had that same attitude for centuries, and nobody picks on them. That doesn't make much sense if you think about it. I'm not one to generalize, but if you want to call one sex selfish, would it be women? After all, it's men who usually think it "normal" to care first and foremost about their career and less about their family.

There are many cases of bad mothers and fathers alike. Is the struggle for equal opporunities to blame for this?

Both tendencies suck ass...

Just live life as you see fit, stop asking people to follow your ways.. dont judge others.. if you dont want to be judged the same way.

You do this for people you care about, naturally. You don't go around telling off women who want to stay home and raise children. People who would act in such a way are self-righteous and rarely accomplish anything. This tactic is another one of those things that give feminism a bad name...

Well, about the other countries... I've heard (I could totally be wrong, though) that a lot of it has to do with religion-- I don't want to get into religion as it gets really, really messy (same with abortion).

Here, though, I think that there are more important things to worry about than those idiots who make all women look bad. Like... half the women in my women's studies class. MAN those women are creepy!

Anyway, I want to be able to stay home and raise my kids, and make their lives as good as I can while they live under my roof. Er, when I have kids that is... and if anyone says that I'm not 'standing up for my rights', then I will exert my rights to hit them with my soccer-mom mini-van, WOO!

Only kidding, I'll never be a stereotypical soccermom. *shudders* ... ..... I might not hit people with cars, either.

Hmm...well, I stay home with  my children, at least at this point in their lives, and I actually have plenty of confidence and self respect. This is my "job" for now and I feel I am doing the best I can to raise two future men. Unlike you, whom I can assume is not a stay-at-home mom <g>, I definitely would not advise against it. In fact if any of my friends are considering whether to stay home or stay working, and were to ask my opinion, I would definitely advise they at least stay home part time. I have _many_ reasons for this viewpoint. I'm sure they aren't very interesting though so perhaps this isn't the right audience <g>.

I'm not saying it's an easy job. Mainly it can be worrying if you have a college degree as I do and would like to make sure you aren't "wasting" it. but there's plenty of time for me to get back into it one day--they aren't in preschool forever lol. Frankly most of my working male and female friends are not always that confident or even content in their jobs/careers. I don't expect to feel that differently myself. Everyone gets what they can out of their jobs and choices in what to do with themselves. I knew if I ever had kids I'd want to be there rather than do daycare--so I take the negative with the positive and make it work for me. Frankly, it's not such a bad deal for me or the kids.
Stetch

Woo HOO!! a debate is active again!

Okay, this is just ignorant.  I don't mean "you're a stupid head".  I mean, that is a case of relating things that are in now way related.  Human trafficking is slavery.  It has absolutely nothing to do with feminism.  The people to blame are the slavers.  Yes, a huge majority of human trafficking is for sex slaves.  They are not "practically sex slaves", they are.  There is also human trafficking for Mexican slaves, and yes I said slaves.  And actually, trafficking people from south of the border to slave on farms is probably more common than sex slaves in the US.

Again, I will say that no one can force a person to stay home, that is a bunch or crap.  Unfortunately our society is based on money, not family.  People are their own reason for long hours.  It is very possible, and many people do, live life without working long hours and making a lot of money.  The simple fact is that people always want new gadgets, pretty clothes, and a big home.  If you are content to live a simpler life there is no reason a family cannot work fewer hours and spend more time collectively.  So, you see, society doesn't force people to need the best toys or make a lot of money, people (or their egos) do that.

Sex is natural.  Yes, some people are perverts or sex addicts, taking away the women they look at legally would only lead to more crimes.  Trying to deny this is the problem.  If these things were legal as they are in Las Vegas, it would be much healthier, safer, and less harmful to people's mental health.

If you're telling me that the only women can breast feed and men can't is because society says so, well....  That of course is an extreme example.  Yes, there are other ways to feed children and useful items like breast pumps, that does not change the fact that it is a very obvious example of how we ARE different.  There is a reason that most sports separate sex also.  People ARE willing to make exceptions and allow women to compete with men (see the very publicized events of the woman golfer in a men's league).  I mean, look at Olympic records for gods sake.  If women and men competed side by side, women would be prevented from participate in many events because their times were not on par with men's.  It's not sexist, it's right there in the numbers.

Would I like to see events that have both sexes competing?  Hell yes, I went to a school that had 2 girls on the football team and I loved watching one of them kick the crap out of a shit talker on the other team.  I also love gymnastics (yeah I'll say it, I don't care) because it is an awesome display of what people can do and how they can physically represent art in ways that are normally thought to be reserved to, well, art.  I would love to watch teams of men and women and not see them separate, but there is a reason that certain events are specific to only one sex, they are more physically suited.

And last on this point, look at the human form itself.  I will use art here because it's what I know so I won't sound foolish.  There are ways that you can easily distinguish between men and women because they ARE physically different.  Men usually have wider shoulders, women wider hips.  There are other things, but I'll just list those since they are the easiest to distinguish.

On the whole selfish thing you aren't looking at the whole picture.  You say it is selfish to put career before family, but it is just as selfish to put family before career.  The jobs in which this is more obvious are simply being ignored however.  Is it selfish when a doctor takes time off from work to spend with family?  How about a police officer?  Jobs are ultimately there to serve some need or want by a community.  You could say that being a member of a family is another job meant to serve the human race by continuing it's existence.  The key here is that you can look at things in many ways.

Modern non 3rd-world feminists tend to have rigid views because, in it's current state, feminism is an extremist idea that makes it hard to "look both ways" just like other extremist groups.  The idea of extremism may be offensive to people, but extremism is defined as "One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics."  The problem is that by trying to define just what feminism is or entails, it becomes more and more limited, and eventually is incapable of returning to it's roots.  Why do feminists not just say humanist or simple a person who believes in equality.  The very term has that problem Ouch mentioned of "self-fulfilling prophecy".  Simply by making such suggestions of blatant sexism, you give it seed.  And the problem with seeds, of course, is that they can grow even in the tiniest of cracks and as a result can make the crack bigger.

The best to get rid of something is to make sure people don't notice when it disappears.  When it is apparent that something is missing, people will not only look for where it has disappeared to, but believe that they have seen it even when they have not.  If you want proof of that last bit, look at Elvis.  The Beatles were just as big as Elvis, but people don't claim to see the dead ones all the time.  They passed away relatively quietly which left a lot less people looking for where they had gone.  I am sure I have rambled on for far too long already, so I'll leave it at that.

Geez Blue, you sure have opinions on a lot of things. lol 

Alot of women love to look at men as "money objects" or "success objects", but no one ever complains about that. I suppose men are sex objects as well. Otherwise, a women wouldn't really care how hot that sexy hollywood actor looks with his shirt off.



I want to see women playing sports with men. It would give the feminists a chance to prove once and for all just how different or alike men and women really are.

Well, seeing as I'm unable to do any extended amounts of phyical activity (though I may finally be getting better!) I have way too much time to think about random crap.  I literally have something like 5 or 6 notebooks full of random crap from poems to random math scribbles to new alphabets to game mechanic ideas.  It's kind of scary now that I think about it......

Very nice... well said.. nice LBS.

but i am extremly disturbed by one of your statements.. im sorry.


 

If you really believe that, then you probably misunderstand the concept of feminism. Really, how many male sex slaves are there? So this phenomenon is interwined with male sexism.

That's only half the truth. What about the customers? Aren't they essentially rapists? What kind of society makes men into such monsters? That's where feminism comes in. If there are no customers, there will be no prostitution.

You are right there, the whole slavery issue has to do with economical structures more than anything else. But in the case of prostitution, sexism is also a factor.

There we disagree, but that's a wholly different discussion.

Uh, no. Getting turned on by other people is natural, seeing them as sex objects isn't. It isn't healthy to assume that the opposite sex exists only for your pleasure. Women are expected to look not just aestetically pleasant, but sexy - they are expected to be that way. Men are subconsciously "trained" by the media to think like this, and then many of them try to treat women like that in their everyday lives. This breaks down communication between the sexes.

Yes, but that's only when it comes to sports, because we're anatomically different. In almost all other aspects, there's nothing that prevents men and women from being equally capable.

I'm sorry, I'm not really following you there.

You say feminism is extremist, but that isn't by definition something bad.

That's not really degrading behaviour, quite the contrary.

Men CAN be presented as sex objects (which is bad), but that rarely happens. We must distinguish between getting turned on by someone and using them as a sex object.

Stetchnik, I don't think of parenthood as a job. In any case, men don't usually take up such a task, and there's a reason for that: It's generally less respected than working and making money. That's what I meant by "respect", not self-respect. If you can give me another reason, I'd be happy to hear it.

So a man being rejected by some women because he's not oozing wealth is considered non-degrading? It's just as bad as some guys rejecting a girl because she's not very sexy.


So men are rarely presented as sex objects? Then dammit why are there so many muscular, thin, perfect looking guys in TV and movies?

Okay, by saying that human trafficking is a feminism thing is a bit offensive actually, you are putting women before men, not along side them.  That is why it is an issue of slavery.  Feminism is about the rights and treatment of women.  Yes that fits into issue of slavery, but that is like saying murder is an issue with the misuse of sharp objects and not the actual killing of people.  Again, I exaggerate but it is just easier to get a point across that way.

The reason I pointed out slavers at fault specifically and not the "customer" was to make a point that it is not a matter of a "patriarchal" government.  In countries where queens are tops that never stopped.  Bad people will do bad things regardless of government or societal conditions.

How can you say that it is not people themselves that demand extravagant lives that require long hours?  There are communities all over the world, many that are quite proud of living "off the grid", leading simpler, less demanding lives.

Everyone seems to like throwing around this "sex object" idea, but I think you are over looking an important thing.  Beautiful people are not looked at or enjoyed for the sole reason of being a "sex object".  If that were true then many of the most loved works of art would not be proudly displayed around the world.  You are assuming that the only people that go to a strip club or anything similar are there simply to get a hard on.  I think that is a very bad train of thought and religion is to blame so I won't go into a lot about it, but (and again as an artist) I can say that I think the body is an extraordinary thing.  I grant that a majority of people will view nudes to get off, but I blame that on it being unacceptable to enjoy a nude body otherwise.  Do you think people join nudist colonies just to gawk?  No.  I'll leave that before I go on too long.

As far as good looking people in media, well, people distort that too.  Most "good looking" people are not necessarily beautiful, they are simply healthy.  It would be hard to watch a bunch of unfit overweight people in many roles because their state of health would put up red flags whenever a lot of action is happening.  We know that the people don't take part in a lot of action because of their health, or how they look.  Again, I will grant that there are many roles that could be filled by other people, but it is starting to go away.  Even a long time ago Rosanne (sp?) was a big hit in the US and I don't know anyone that thinks the title character was good looking or attractive.  But the show didn't try to lie about how a person in that state would live.

I bring up that show specifically because there was some debate surrounding it.  A lot of people complained that it was a degrading show because it made overweight people look like slobs or uncivilized people.  It was an amazing thing really.  The show in fact showed that the house was always kept clean, meals were served and they ate as a family (not in front of the tv), the overweight woman was a major part of a successful business (it was a restaurant, so that was a bit bad), and the family was always able to work out their differences and support each other.  It was a great portrayal of family life, but because the woman was overweight a lot of people made things dirty or unhealthy in their minds.  If a so called unattractive woman was the star of her own television show during the height of medium, I think that shows a very strong support for equal rights as well as not demanding "sex objects" for everything.

I didn't say extremism was a bad thing, I was trying to cover my ass in case people thought I was saying feminism was extremism to be harsh.  The point of that was to show that because it is, viewpoints are already shifted off balance.  Feminism is not a "fair and balanced" look at how women are treated anymore, it is now a extreme view on how things could possibly be viewed as unfair.

I am amazed that you don't find viewing men as any kind of object degrading.  It doesn't matter what you put in front of the word object, the problem with viewing any as a "sex object", "money object", etc is the object part.  You are taking away the humanity, which is exactly the problem.  "Sex i s not the problem, sex is natural as I said, "object" is the problem.

And finally, this bit - "We must distinguish between getting turned on by someone and using them as a sex object."  I am curious about this because you seem to contridict yourself.  You say getting turned on by someone is not bad, viewing them as a "sex object" is and that is why you have a problem with strippers and show girls.  Those that go to view them though do not expect sex, they are only there to be turned on.  (Not including or course people that are there for the beauty).  How exactly do you distinguish between seeing someone as being only a turn on and not a sex object?  And for that matter, how can there be a difference?  Being turned on is a sexual act.