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Nymeria on 29 May 2018
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Jaicee said:
VGPolyglot said:

Well, unfortunately though there are men who just cannot be swayed by the advantages that it gives to women, so if it comes to it we may have to inform them of the advantages, especially if you're trying to speak to a primarily male demographic. In getting rid of the stereotypes for women it will hopefully lead to the elimination of stereotypes for men too, and those that are considered "weak" or "feminine" in today's standards will be much more comfortable. Also, with women being able to reach their full potential, we'll hopefully also get many more ideas, inventions and improvements that we wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

 

Nymeria said:

I am grateful for the victories feminist won and I will never apologize for seeing it as progress.  I dealt with deeply patriarchal structures growing up, the kind with 19th century mentalities on women.

I never excused the end behavior, ultimately if a guy calls me a cunt or threatens to rape me or gropes me I don't much care about his background, he should be held accountability for his words and actions.  

I have spent a lot of time in my life helping women and been part of groups that support them. I know very well the challenges we still face as a society.

My point is how we achieve the next step of progress.  We don't compromise an inch on what we want as women, but we can work with men.  We're not conquering them, we're asking for equal treatment and opportunity.  I've found you win a lot more people over to the cause framing it this way and I never want to be like the men I knew growing up who told me over and over how my sex was a deficiency that limited my potential.  We can do better, we are not like the patriarchs.

I've dialogued with enough men on the topic of women's lib enough times over the years to know this much: we are kidding ourselves if we believe that most men are ever going to be feminists. At the end of the day, relative to women, men are a privileged social group and privileged groups don't give up their privileges voluntarily or happily. That's why the women's movement has be a women-centered movement. There's no ill will toward men implied in saying that. I've just come to believe that it's naive to think otherwise.

We cannot compete with what the men's movement can promise men. They can offer men all of our money, all of our property, and of course our bodies. We, in contrast, can offer men social permission to cry and cross-dress and become nurses and join the cheerleading squad; you know, just the sort of freedoms you hear most man clamoring for all the time. You see my point here? We can't out-offer the men's movement. We can't compete on their terms, so we'd better not count on attempts to working out. We have to be our own movement, not just an appendage of their's.

This is a bit of pet peeve of mine; an issue I have with modern, "third wave" feminism. It's too compromising and men-centered and it's not working out. By most measures, we are tangibly losing ground as a class.

I volunteered with a group that dealt with domestic violence, largely abuse and rape cases.  For a long time it was all women, volunteers and members.  It was supportive, offering all the aid it could to those affected.  One day a man came in and it made nearly everyone very nervous.  He was the victim of long running abuse and after telling his story others became more accepting.  It didn't diminish for one second the work I put in aiding women, or that the group was overwhelmingly helping women.  The point was we were a safe place for suffering people and didn't define people by their sex.  We didn't become male centric for being sympathetic, it was just the right thing to do.

I am a women. I am bisexual. I am an agnostic atheist. I was raised in a patriarchal cult that taught me my sex made me lesser, my sexual desires made me deviant, and my doubts made me weak.  I have no doubt the the attitudes the exist in parts of society.  When I left and lost everything I wanted so badly to hate them for all the pain and anguish they had put me through.  How they distort things and manipulate people, it would be so easy to hate them, hate those awful old men and their antiquated teachings. I had to make a hard decision, and I chose despite all the evidence in my life to work that people can be better as a whole than they were.  Call it naive, but 20 years ago 67% of people didn't accept gay marriage and it was illegal. Today it is legal and that number has fallen to 32% opposing it.  It was fought for and discussed with, in part, straight people as gatekeepers to that right. It never became about heterosexuals simply because they were part of the discussion.

I will never compromise or shy away from my principles of supporting women.  We don't belong to anyone and deserve to have agency in life.  As stated before, if a man cannot handle that and wants to just yell at me, he is not someone I engage with.  When I know men who are trying, yes, I try to help them.  I'm not going to lower myself simply because my opposition has the capacity to be repugnant on issues.