@Minus
The problem with the “people should never speak of these problems because there are worse problems” fallacy is that people speaking about problems other than the worst problem in the world is itself less of a problem than most of the ones that people complain about
@Minus
Women in the middle east are being treated like women. They have societal roles to fill, just like the men do. Being treated differently because of your gender does not necessarily mean that you are being treated badly, or unfairly.
@Minus
I’m highly disturbed by the thought of anyone trying to use public education to strip parents of their position as the primary teachers of their children. It’s a highly socialistic idea, and even the unfortunate fact of some poor parenting is preferable if it means not leaving the whole shebang to the government.
Can we all agree that out in the east, women are without a doubt being treated unequally? Saudi Arabia, India, those kinds of places. I’m not saying women can’t complain about unfairness here, but the only thing left for us in the west is just the time to mature a bit more. Equality is here, it’s just a case of making sure everyone realises this. We need to erase any sexism that parents try to pass onto their kids via good schooling. Then we’ll be sorted!
So, sorry Feminism, but we have no need for you here anymore. It’s time for you to take a holiday to a crappy country and get them on the right path. REAL feminism I mean, Tumblr Feminism only causes more problems and that needs to stay tucked away in the darkest depths of the internet.
@Narlepoax III
Alright, I think we can conclude with me agreeing on your stance on modern feminism, but not on the history of women’s rights. Does that sound fair to you?
@Olpert
Well, I was arguing about feminist theory, and why it’s demonstrably wrong. I started my case with historical examples of how patriarchy is a myth, and finished with modern examples showing how it always has been.
@Narlepoax III
Oh, modern feminism I’m not even arguing about. At least in first-world countries of today, I feel like equal opportunity has been established, and all inequalities in pay and CEOs can be attributed to the wishes and mindset of women. Is it really so suprising that the sex that sometimes has to be taken out of the workforce for 9 months earns less on average? If the possibility for men to bear children existed, that might change, but until then, there will always be inequalities.
Honestly, I kinda lost track concerning what we’re arguing about at this point.
@Olpert
Ah, but we can know what career choices women made before now, because the exact same thing is still happening today.
You don’t really hear about female construction workers or septic truck drivers or plumbers, because women don’t want to do those jobs. They’re hard, dirty and smelly. Even though they pay well, most people don’t want to do them, and women especially not.
And that’s another reason why feminism is wrong. They’re always preaching about how women aren’t usually found in certain glamorous jobs. It seems to be a crime to them that most government jobs, CEOs, and other high ranking desk jobs are mostly held by men. How often do you see a feminist complaining that there aren’t enough women in low-paying, hard-labor, high-risk jobs?
As for your argument, I do not know how common it was for women to choose such a career even if it was allowed, quite simply because of widely distributed and assumed gender roles. I would assume this went beyond just choosing men over women due to strength, as I have not heard many things about female carpenters or shoemakers.
I believe this is where our arguments are coming to a halt: We simply cannot know how exactly the situation concerning hiring and training females in male-dominated fields was, because we weren’t there, and historical reports can’t tell us everything.
I think what we can safely say, though, is that life for both sexes in the lower societal ranks was shit. I would just say it was more shit for women as far as choices and opportunities go. It may very well be(and it probably was the case) that men had a shittier life, considering the menial labor that was expected of them.
I guess it depends on how highly you value personal freedom over hardship.
@Olpert
I’m not condescending to you, and I apologize that I came off that way.
For the rest of your reply, though, I’m afraid that’s not true. Oppression was by social class. If a man was rich enough to be allowed to choose his wife, a woman of the same class would equally be allowed to choose her husband. In both cases, you were shunned and often disowned, if you refused to be married.
In poor industrial classes, where a job was chosen, women were allowed the same choices in career as men. Just because the foreman of a coal mine was unlikely to hire a petite woman over a large burly man didn’t mean that the woman wasn’t allowed to pursue a career in coal mining.
I’m not trying to deny that women were oppressed. I’m just trying to point out that men were oppressed equally as much, and often more severely.
@Narlepoax III
I do appreciate our conversation here, and I feel like you make quite valid points. I could do without the condesending, however.
I’m well aware that for the majority of humanity’s history, life was either going through a series of narrow tubes or dying outside of one. I’m saying, however, that for women this was one continuous tube, and for men there were a few branches along the way.
I’m talking from a standpoint of german history, so I don’t know how accurate this is to your country, but during the dark ages, artisans were trained by a “Meister” of the field they wanted to go into. The trainee, or “Lehrling”, during his period of learning, had little income and less rights, but once his training had been finished, he was allowed to legally wear the “Meister” title himself and do whatever he was trained in, independently.
So, while I’m sure that many people did what you said and just followed their fathers(or were forced to), there was a significant number of men that had a choice to select their field of work and become independent.
@Olpert
You’re arguing from the first world. I understand. Most people with access to computers have never even considered the possibility that their life is the outlier of humanity.
For most of history, humans have had to play their assigned roles. A man born to farmers was destined to be a farmer. A man born to a blacksmith was destined to be a blacksmith. A man born to a slave was destined to be a slave. It was invariable.
Most people bring up the point that girls were owned by their parents, but they ignore the fact that boys were treated the exact same way. If that child wanted to grow up to be anything besides what they were born to be, all they would accomplish was harming their family, and ending up homeless.
A farmer could not become an artisan. An artisan could not become a farmer.
It was never oppression of women; only ever oppression of the people.
@Narlepoax III
I agree with your rich and poor point, but you’ve just taken one example and made it the norm. I do know about the villeins system(in german known as Grundherrschaft), but that is only one system that was in place back then, and it mostly applied to farmers.
Artisans, for example, operated under a different system, and had quite a bit of freedom as well as personal wealth. The same went for the merchant class. Both of these classes were strictly filled out by men.
I’m not arguing that life for poor people wasn’t terrible, or that all men, even poor ones, had it awesome. I’m arguing that women had little to no chance to get into positions were they weren’t poor.
@Olpert
You’re funny. No, I’m afraid that legal and social expectations for both men and women have historically been strict. If a woman was forced to be a wife, a man was forced to be a father.
I’ll give the villeins of the dark ages as an example. These were people who were basically slaves who worked the land they lived on, owned by whoever owned the land. They were expected to marry each other and produce more children to be villeins. If they didn’t get married, or were widowed for too long, the owner of the land was expected to arrange a marriage between two villeins. This happened to both women and men. They are not the only example of such a system.
Feminism has been misleading people into believing that life has always been terrible for women and awesome for men. The fact of the matter is that life has always been terrible for the poor and awesome for the rich. It’s the case now, and it always has been. All you need is a fraction of historical knowledge to debunk feminist theory outright.
@Narlepoax III
That might be the case, and I’m not arguing that the system in place back then was all-upside for the husband. However, a woman was pretty much forced into the role of wife due to the lack of opportunity for education. While there were some countries that provided this(for example Poland’s “Flying University”), most women could not hope to be trained for jobs. The only opportunity for a woman to have a well-paying job was in the textile market, as that was the only field where they were broadly accepted in.
So, if a woman wanted to escape the role of wifedom, she had very little options to earn her own money, whereas a man could easily exist out of a marriage and have whatever job he desired. I think that fits “an unjust social system that is oppressive to women in favor of men” pretty well.
@Background Pony #DC98
Yes, legally, absolutely. But if a wife did that, she would then, as mentioned above, be set into the world on her own, with no steady income and no learned job skills. So, financially, it was pretty much suicide.
