Putin: "Masculine culture is hateful, violent, and generally gross."

Putin: "Fuck men and their perpetual need to be violent."

Wow.

Putin: "Anybody can find a token that is willing to throw their own under the bus."

I guess you're right. It is quite easy to find someone that is willing to throw their own under the bus.

I was +1ing the shit out of Putin until that last part.

Let's all be realistic here: there's no such thing as 'masculine culture' without resorting to the most base of stereotypes of beer, football and computer science.

Newsflash: none of these things are masculine.

Up until 1984, the amount of women in computer science was similar to those in other exact sciences (lagging, but comparable). This got skewed in the mid-80s. Why? Because computers came to be advertised 'for boys'.

Why is it always a problem if some particular field of science has more men but never when some other field has more women? If you average it over all fields men are doing far worse than women in the educational system nowadays and so most fields have more women already or will have them soon.

Computer science has more men than women because men are more interested in computers than women. Free choice. Nonetheless, no woman that is interested in computers is held back in any way. They can enroll and get a degree in computer science if they want to.

Now even if the reason women are less interested in computers would be advertisement of computers as a for boys, which I very much doubt, as long as women can choose the field that interests them most, i.e. that makes them happy, what crime is being committed here?

"Why is it always a problem if some particular field of science has more men but never when some other field has more women?"

Those fields are generally lower paying childcare oriented jobs. Women predominate in the fields that they had access to. This is akin to asking why have there been so many Jewish bankers. I work in an almost exclusively female sector. I don't get any prestige from that fact. Male dominated fields are prestigious and lucrative.

Why you can't see the difference is beyond me.

"Computer science has more men than women because men are more interested in computers than women. "

What is this based on? Your gut feeling?

"Nonetheless, no woman that is interested in computers is held back in any way"

Bullshit. My wife worked in computer repair and customers routinely asked for a male employee because they didn't trust what she said. Ditto her engineer of a mother.

@MoW

Men as a group behave differently than women as a group. This is a result of both societal as well as biological differences between men and women. Now of course beer and sports are a caricature, but it is certainly true that you can distinguish between masculine and feminine culture based off these differences.

You're from the Netherlands? Here I thought that country was progressive on identity issues. I was clearly wrong. Nope, we're back to retrograde cave man scrawlings about "immutable" gender differences. I could have read this in the National Review.

Are you arguing that there are no immutable differences between men and women? That's just silly.

Sure, a lot of the differences are socialized. But a lot of them are biological as well. Most differences are likely due to both socialization as well as biological factors.

Well, the biological factors would be the immutable ones. The most obvious example would be that men have higher levels of testosterone which psychologically plays a well known role in risk-taking.

But even with the socialized differences, while there are certainly some that are advantageous to men, others are instead advantageous to women. For instance, we get all worked up about violence against women even though in reality the victims of actual violence are mostly men. Also, women tend to get significantly lower sentences than men for the same crimes.

Of course, a feminist extremist like yourself wouldn't be willing to see all these differences as an overall balance of burdens and benefits for both sexes. Instead you focus exclusively on the burdens of women and the benefits of men such that you can keep to your a priori conclusions about the oppression of women by men.

@Putin: you clearly haven't read up properly on our annual blackface festival which is finally getting a change:

http://www.wort.lu/en/panorama/the-beginning-of-change-dutch-black-pete-gets-facelift-543f5bdeb9b39887080793a3

@oscar: the notion of gender identity is almost entirely a social construct. There is tons of research on this, google it. What is defined as 'male' and 'female' subculture is not a given, and certainly doesnt have biological roots. Pink for example, was a masculine colour for a long time. There is nothing feminine about pink other than that you think there is.

Worse, the truthiness about what is male and female has serious consequences in how men and women perceive themselves and others. This woman silently walking on the street is an example. The moment when women stopped coding is another.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

But it goes further: FGM, domestic abuse. And economic value for the same jobs, life expectancy, political representation. The list goes on. For a comprehensive look on the effects of this social construct, see this report by the liberal World Economic Forum. Oh I mean neo-liberal:
http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014/

Just saying that there is 'Free Choice' for women is a very limited perspective on the issue.

Yeah, again, the subjects themselves are never biased towards men or women. Society is, and will ever so slightly, or blatantly, ostracize people who go in for the "wrong" subject. Yes, some people deal with it.

The immutable differences mostly consist in the obvious difference, and minor differences in hormonal balance. As a whole, the differences exist, but won't influence what someone likes. Instead, it is society that influences this.

So this was an interesting debate and I'm sorry I missed it. So it seems like Putin reduced the debate to a yes or no on some form of abortion and then discarded all those that disagreed with him as misogynist and those who agreed with him as feminists (=good people)? Or is that not a good summary. Lemme know. x

I wouldn't see that as accurate. There was a discussion of feminism, a whole lot of generalization about feminism as a movement, then abortion was mentioned as a major feminist topic, some people disagreed, there was a short war, and then we got to talking about gender, and societal pressure.

thanks phil
from which page should I start reading to finally decide on who wins this thread? ;)

I dunno, each part is interesting in a different way, and it's pretty long. I don't really even remember which stuff is on which page. Page 3 seems sort of like a waste though.

Okay I'm not getting warm for this debate but let me politely answer Nigee's two OP questions.

Yes.
No.

Bye and thanks to Phil. Page 4 was great.

"You're from the Netherlands? Here I thought that country was progressive on identity issues. I was clearly wrong."

I don't think one persons opinion can be accurately used to represent an entire region.

I am in agreement with the posts that allude to equal rights - as by definition this is what feminism strives for. If that is true then mutual respect is where I believe this starts.

@ Octavious:

First point, I like it that you complained about "aggressive male debaters" on the forum, and then as soon as Putin said something you didn't like, you shouted and screamed at him using every potty-mouthed expletive you could summon. Classy.

"Consider a man and a small child trapped in a cave by the sea in which the tide is rising. The man could save the child by picking him up above the height of the water, but choses no to because it is his right to do what he likes with his body."

This is a facile "analogy" and is not in any way comparable. Picking up the child in no way causes your imaginary man any suffering. Being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is likely to cause a woman all kinds of suffering, both physically and emotionally.


"You, and many like you, try and impose a vast range of your own beliefs (which really have little to do with feminism) on modern women, and often treat them with contempt if they don't accept them."

You're mistaken. My position, that patriarchy exists and is harmful both to women and to society as a whole, has everything to do with feminism and is largely driven by my conversations with women. The vast majority of my friends are women, though not all of them identify as feminists.

I want to be an ally to women, and to help end the oppression of women by our partiarchal society. If you don't support that objective - and you very clearly don't - then you'd better get out of the way and let us get on with it - otherwise you're choosing to be the enemy, and you'll get what you're asking for.


@ Lando: "an ongoing theme in here seems to be the implication that all women (or at least all feminist's) should share the same opinion on every issue. "

That's certainly not something I would imply. Women, including feminist women, have a wide variety of opinions one all kinds of issues, and that's to be respected. However, the *particular* issue people are shouting about is the issue of a woman's right to decide what happens to her body. That's not just any issue, that's a *fundamental* point within feminism. If you believe it's ok to tell a woman that she doesn't have the right to choose whether to have an abortion or not, then you aren't a feminist. That's just not a position that is consistent with any branch of feminism. End of story.


@KingCyrus: "So, after arguing about what can be "feminism" or not, wouldn't it be advisable to get a definition? From Google..."

A one-line dictionary definition from Google is hardly sufficient to summarise decades of thought, discussion, and action, against patriarchy. If you're not prepared to do more research than that, go away.

Feminism is not primarily about equality. Feminism is about ending patriarchy. Once patriarchy is ended, we can talk about equality. While patriarchy dominates society, any discussion of male/female "equality" within the context of that society is utterly meaningless.


@redhouse: Read the whole thread yourself. If you're too lazy to do that, go away.

Feminism today is about woman domination. Women in the middle East and Africa are discriminated against and have something to complain about , not Western woman.

You just said it yourself, feminism is not about equality. It accomplished great things in the past, but now you have feminazis running the show, and who can takr them seriously

@livingghost - If you really believe Western woman have nothing to complain you are either too dumb or too blind that I will not waste my time trying to discuss with you.

Just want to make some points about women on CS. I work with CS, I teach CS on an University and my wife also works on the CS field. And what I can say it that there is a lot of discrimination and bigotry against women. And the worst is that on the academic environment it´s a lot worst then on the companies. That´s why I see less and less women every year on my classes.

Oh okay, there are people who are worse off, therefore no-one can complain. So there's one person on earth with the right to complain. Women are not discriminated against, no. See, as long as everyone is (almost) equal before the law, everyone is equal. Discrimination ends as soon as we pass laws that don't discriminate.

Sorry, that sounds completely stupid.

"Feminism today is about woman domination. Women in the middle East and Africa are discriminated against and have something to complain about , not Western woman."

Fuckhead

The fact that at least 3 idiots gave livingghost a "+1" shows why feminism is still needed.

I'm more concerned about the space in front of and following the comma. Do u no speak angleesh

Patriarchy, which Jamie seems to have bought into, is the very dubious hypothesis that men hold the power and use it to oppress women. The hypothesis doesn't even hold up against the slightest empirical testing yet it is a fundamental premise of feminist theory.

The funny thing about the patriarchy hypothesis is that not even those crazy feminists truly belief in it. They frequently go around trying to shame their opposition into silence by calling them misogynist or rape apologists. Well, if their truly was a patriarchy it would be perfectly acceptable to be a misogynist and a rape apologetic and you wouldn't expect such shaming tactics to work. The rebuttal would simply be: so what? From the fact that those feminist use such shaming tactics it follows that they in fact believe that misogyny and rape are not at all widely accepted, on the contrary.

^ phil_a_s
+many

So, how exactly does this empirical testing work? Is it through sending identical resumes? Because the way I observe it, women are sidelined in society, and usually by men. So, patriarchy. But don't take my word for it. Ask any woman that tries to do something exceptional. Like, amazing mental, physical or moral prowess. The "hard science" domains are largely closed to women, the physical domain is partly closed, and morally, they are likely to be ignored.

oscar.... what? Just.. what?

You appear to be claiming that because some women complain about misogyny, that means patriarchy doesn't exist?

Seriously, is that your claim?

Do you also believe that in early 19th century America, the fact that some people complained about the treatment of black slaves is evidence that racism didn't exist?

Hi oscarjd74,

I'm from the webDiplomacy PR department. Your claim that the idea of an existing patriarchy "doesn't even hold up against the slightest empirical testing" is concerning to us. As you know, our site is intended to be an open and diverse atmosphere, but the ratio of men to women is slightly skewed, and our office believes that the actual ratio of openly identifying males on the webDiplomacy forum to openly identifying females is approximately 10,000:1. This isn't the end of the world, but our most basic "empirical" test shows that there is, in fact, a patriarchy within the sphere of webDiplomacy and that ignorant fucks such as yourself continue to exacerbate it. We would appreciate it if you could work together with us for the betterment of webDiplomacy and to create a more welcoming atmosphere for people that aren't white males by not being an idiot.

Thank you for your cooperation. I look forward to speaking with you at our monthly review in a few weeks where we will discuss whether or not the sky is blue and whether or not the sun is actually going to rise above the horizon tomorrow.

bo_sox48
The WebDiplomacy PR Guy

Who made bo a PR guy?