this doesn't happen in non feminist countries (ie usually 3rd world).
the truth is that men tend to be highly valued in the 3rd world. by comparison in the west they tend to kill themselves as they get older: http://www.prb.org/Articles/2006/ElderlyWhiteMenAfflictedbyH...
are you aware we've blocked right wing research out of academia, so these issues never get researched properly?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=0
and that margaret mead was basically a fraud? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Freeman
(margaret mead is an early feminist)
It's unfortunate that politics can have such an influence on science and psychology and sociology are far from the only fields it happens in. But, again, that doesn't somehow prove feminism wrong or your original point correct.
Did you even read that link you provided about Margaret Mead? Freeman was accusing her mostly of incompetence (taking jokes/lies as fact is the main example) and Freeman's attacks on Mead's work have themselves been heavily criticised.
And even if they hadn't... so what? You're going to condemn the entirety of feminism (and the field of sociology, I suppose) because one person early in its history may have lied?
Unfortunately that isn't true. Genetics shapes culture. One of the interesting things from Mead's "research" was that Samoan women were having a lot of premarital sex in the 1920's. Yet somehow none got pregnant but that was overlooked.
When you force people too far out of their natural roles, bad things happen. There's a whole lot more to this and its fascinating to see how people don't realise it.
I respect that feminism is the moral case. Genetics is the scientific one, which currently is not respected. There's a balance between the two
Since none of those things are true, I'm left to ask again - what the hell does any of this have to do with men getting weird looks in parks?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/science/10anthropology.htm...
this ties into funny looks for men in parks because men as a gender have been devalued into being potentially dangerous, rather than as a source of strength and value for communities.
challenging feminism is a little like investigations into wall street executives after the financial crisis, it just hasn't happened.
things are starting to turn - we have the internet now so we're much better informed...
either that or the USA economy continues its downward slide.. i really don't care either way.
the truth is that as the left becomes too strong, whether it is socialism, feminism or whatever, the economy gets destroyed. this is likely why rome collapsed, too.
the moral case is very important. so too is the economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transphobia#Transphobia_in_femi...
> Radical feminist Janice Raymond's 1979 book, The Transsexual Empire, was and still is controversial due to its unequivocal condemnation of transsexual surgeries. In the book Raymond says, "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgenderis...
> In 1999, the book the whole woman, Germaine Greer published a sequel to The Female Eunuch. One chapter was titled "Pantomime Dames", wherein she states her opposition to accepting transsexuals who were assigned male at birth as women:[3]"Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex. No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males."
and:
> Gloria Steinem has questioned transsexualism. In 1977, she expressed disapproval that the heavily publicized sex-role change of tennis player Renée Richards had been characterized as "a frightening instance of what feminism could lead to" or as "living proof that feminism isn't necessary." Steinem wrote, "At a minimum, it was a diversion from the widespread problems of sexual inequality."
It goes on. And on. And on. And on. And now watch this issue get ignored again, as it usually is, and me be accused of 'derailing' for bringing it up in this context.
Because it's BS? I know people in politically correct societies wont even consider it (if anything, to avoid being labelled), but mutilating yourself is not exactly, well, alright.
A society has to draw a line at what it considers normal/desired behaviour and what not. Regardless if said behaviour is any harm to others or not.
For example, showing you genitals in a mall doesn't harm anyone, but we still don't consider it kosher. And we wouldn't think twice to say people should not use meth (despite them being able to afford it).
In this sense, this "transphobia" thing is a little too much to take. What's next? Respect for self-amputees-for-fashion?
If folks want to change their gender, then let them. Much like someone being black or gay, it's quite litetally none of my, or nyone elses, business. If people want to chop off their leg for fashion, who cares?
Anyone who says anything else is a bigot.
Fortunately it wasn't the only argument.
And I'd say, slippery slope is not a terrible argument by itself, just because there are "fallacy" list saying so. It is quite appropriate as an argument in an awful lot of situations. Matter of fact, the "broken window theory" is an example of the slippery slope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory "Overton Window" is another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
>If folks want to change their gender, then let them.
I did not say "don't let them".
I said labelling those that are not Ok with this "phobics" is taking it too far. Are those not OK with people doing meth, meth-thobics? Are those not OK with women content to be in an abusive relationship abuse-phobics?
>Much like someone being black or gay, it's quite litetally none of my, or anyone elses, business.
Waiving our genitals in public is, by all means and with the same reasoning, none of yours or anyone else's business. And yet, we do (and perhaps you too) frown upon it.
Thing is, we don't base a society only on "whatever rock's one's boat", but also on general principles. That's why it's a society, and not a jungle.
>If people want to chop off their leg for fashion, who cares?
I care. And "who cares" is not an attitude to base a society on. An egotistical dystopia, maybe.
Did you even read your own linked articles?
Generally, Freeman's critique has not been accepted in the anthropological community. Several Samoan scholars who had been discontent with Mead's depiction of them as happy and sexually liberated thought that Freeman erred in the opposite direction [1]
Much like Mead's work, Freeman's account has been challenged as being ideologically driven to support his own theoretical viewpoint [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Freeman [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa
I don't claim that Margaret Mead was necessarily right. I'm not an anthropologist. But your own sources contradict what you're saying.
that derek freeman was successful in what he did (and he was, mead was dropped from anthropology) was a minor miracle. if you want to learn more, watch this movie:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=0
"He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.
“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals."
I've also seen, for example, feminist mums argue that their kids' stay-at-home-dad is unfairly dumping work on them because they have to organise playdates and other social events, when that's almost certainly the result of sexist bias against dads - apparently mums are uncomfortable letting dads get involved in this, it's a common complaint of single dads. They don't even think about whether there may be gender-based reasons why their partner doesn't have access to the social circles they do.
Go figure.
If you're talking about the rest of China, the absence of modern women leaders has been a concern.[1] I don't see any way you could call China "very matriarchal".
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo
[1]: http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/03/07/6206108-ch...
Your point?
For example, Western societies in the past, and, to a lesser extent now, were like china in this regard, and are almost universally considered more patriarchal as we go further into the past. If you consider china matriarchal, you mean it in a different sense than almost anyone talking about gender politics ever.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about! Most (95%) women work here, there are no such things as stay at home moms (maybe stay at home grandparents...). Women make up around 60% of the small business owners here, possibly more, they are highly represented in most every field with a few hold outs (e.g. security guards and taxi drivers).
Obviously it is different in politics, but I have no experience there at any rate, just in the home lives that you seem to know more about than me for some reason. The concept of feminism is foreign here not because the men are macho, but because the women hold much of the family and economic power already.
I really don't know how you can defend china as an egalitarian society, much less a matriarchal one, considering their problems with sex selective abortion and infanticide among female babies, to say nothing of the labor issues I just presented. I guess you must have just chosen a position and you are going to ignore or twist whatever inconvenient facts contradict it.
I told my wife what you said, she had a good laugh about it.
All things being equal, I think it may just be our media. I noticed other parents were playing peek-a-boo with my 2 year old, whereas in the US, I face the same kind of treatment at parks as the author of the article and people in general aren't quite as friendly to kids they don't know(possibly due to similar sentiments).