Fuck Sexism

[Vehek]

For a college English class, I had to read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Have you heard of it?

[ZeaLitY]

And quit trying to demonize other people for trying to live their lives in a way that doesn't fall into your ideology of what you think they should do.

I'm not demonizing that choice. I'm attacking, rightfully, the idea that "nothing can be done" or "it's impossible to change humanity" or "removing sexism won't improve the world" and that defeatist attitude. A lot of people on this earth don't even think there's a problem, and the people who actually care enough to do something about it are the rarest of all, because they have to commit to something they probably won't see fulfilled until long after they're dead, get ostracized by the status quo and demonized as extremists, and limit themselves as to all the things they can enjoy in this world because of their own constraining ethics. It is a brave choice to step into the arena, and it's sad to see someone promoting defeatist nonsense that works in opposition to everything.

Z, quit taking things so goddamn personally. You are the ONLY one who always does that in these discussions and it really is counter productive. You want more people to take your rhetoric more seriously? I would cut out all the insults because it only makes you look like a little kid trying to participate in big boy discussions.

Implying that what I've said is "empty rhetoric" is far more offensive and insulting than "fuck you", not to mention completely intellectually dishonest. If you're of the opinion that nothing can or should be done about the situation, fine—but don't writhe around when someone asks you to back that opinion up with a real argument, and then write them off as a hopeless idealist. It's obvious that you're content to leave this as an opinion, so leave it out of the "big-boy discussion".

[Thought]

Zaichik, you don't have to be a vegetarian if you're an environmentalist.

One doesn't have to be, but it is an understandably extreme position to take. The numbers that get thrown about is that it takes roughly 10 times more land to produce 1 lb of animal protein than 1 lb of plant protein. A vegetarian diet will usually impact the environment less than an omnivore's diet. But that being said, environmentalism doesn't have to be about reducing one's impact on the world completely, but rather finding a balance. It would hardly hurt Americans to eat less meat and more plants, but that doesn't mean that we have to forgo meat entirely.

To expand this: Global warming is bad, but it conceptually doesn't have to be. Terraforming is still primarily in the realm of science fiction, but if it ever becomes a reality, then intentionally modifying the atmosphere to best suit life. The same gasses that we need to stop producing now could be the gasses that, on another world in another millennium, are the ones that we'll want to intentionally produce.

It's like making a FPS for black people where the opposing teams are fried chicken and watermelons that bleed kool-aid.

That sounds like a hilarious mod for Castle Wolfenstein.

Yeah, I don't think that would be too much of an option to me, unfortunately. I could try to find a local farm, but most of the local farms around here produce dairy and not meat. Is it even possible to buy farm-fresh meat online? Maybe it is, but I think that's kind of outside my budget : (.

Yes, on both accounts, probably. However, do you have a Whole Foods or similar store near you? While still a massive chain, Whole Foods markets to the eco-friend in all of us. Their eggs are free-range, for example. Still more expensive than at Walmart, for example, but then I've never gotten green meat at Whole Foods but it happened twice at Walmart.

But if you do want meat online, Omaha Steaks has been fairly good to me in the past. Flat Irons are my friend.

For a college English class, I had to read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Have you heard of it?

It's actually on my reading-wish list. I have heard good things about it.

Implying that what I've said is "empty rhetoric" is far more offensive and insulting than "fuck you", not to mention completely intellectually dishonest.

rhet-o-ric [ret-er-ik],  –noun

1. (in writing or speech) the undue use of exaggeration or display; bombast.
2. the art or science of all specialized literary uses of language in prose or verse, including the figures of speech.
3. the study of the effective use of language.
4. the ability to use language effectively.
5. the art of prose in general as opposed to verse.
6. the art of making persuasive speeches; oratory.
7. (in classical oratory) the art of influencing the thought and conduct of an audience.
8. (in older use) a work on rhetoric.

Please, do identify which aspect of "rhetoric" you take umbrage with.

[FaustWolf]

Returning to sexism -- good God! Have you guys seen the blog entries of that misogynistic a$$hole who shot up the Pittsburg exercise class the other day? I think his blog's down due to traffic influx, but the major news stations are treating it as real from what I can tell.

This is one huge reason why we need to break down sexism -- it's just as psychologically harmful to men as it is women. This dude was literally defining himself, and whether he was successful in life, by his relationship status. Whether he realized it or not, his sense of entitlement was inextricably linked to misogyny because he was implicitly denying that women should have control over the course of their own lives.

The problem is, sexism-ridden pop culture encourages men to think this way. "Oh, you're in the friend zone, that's bad, man." "You don't have a girlfriend. Are you gay? That's bad, man." The superhero always gets the chick by the end of the movie. "Losing your virginity makes you a man." Sexist culture teaches men to define their masculinity in a binary way: either you're in a relationship and you're a man or you're not, and you're still a boy. Women probably feel similar pressures: perhaps it's something like, "Sarah Palin is a real woman (because she's had six kids)."

Screw all that. Staying single is just as viable an adult lifestyle as being in a relationship. Where singles and couples differ is that the latter have found someone they want to commit to and share their lives with. Sure, those feelings are sometimes one-sided, but that's the way the cookie crumbles in a society where both men and women have control over their lives. Or that's the way it probably should be; being in a relationship just to prove your masculinity or femininity is a bad reason to be in a relationship. Compounding the problem in this guy's case is the sexist taboo on men discussing their feelings openly. He should have been dumping this stuff onto a psychologist or family member and not an obscure blog.

Maybe this guy just had a flipped switch and he would have latched onto something else as a rationale to go shoot people, but if sexist pop culture did contribute to breaking him down mentally over the years, imagine what a productive life he could have lived if his immediate environment were shaped more by feminism.

[ZaichikArky]

Hm, that's an interesting thought. I didn't know guys felt pressured to get into relationships. Has anyone here personally experienced that? I have only been pressured by my family, not my friends. I don't take my family's pressure very seriously, it's all on my dad's side of the family because they don't like my guy...

I think that society's dating pressure has become more and more lax in the last couple decades. This is why in America, a lot of people don't end up settling down and starting a family till they're like, 40. In my culture, people often make babies when they're in their early 20s after they have sex. If they like the guy, they have the baby and get married. If the guy is an alcoholic, then the women have an abortion. That's lovely, considering the USSR and its former territories have the highest divorce rates in the world. Americans 50%, phhhh... in some parts of Eastern Europe, it's 65 %. Partly it's due to alcoholism, partly its due to the cultural notion that young people there just often don't want to try to fix their relationship problems, they would rather just get a divorce. How the hell my parents marriage lasts, I have no idea. But mom always says it's cause dad's a Jew and I should go find a Jew because I could only have a lasting relationship if my guy was a Jew XD; Ah culture clash....

[Shee]

Hm...I heard about this but can't get into it right now, I guess to due to traffic.

Faust:  The "friend zone" is very real and very shitty, when you don't want to be single!!!  No problems with guys being "just friends" with a girl, but don't forget there are times when both sexes want more than a platonic friendship!  So if I a guy is head over heels infatuated or in love or whatever...there is an interest there...but it's one sided.  She does not feel the same way.  This often leads to a "friend zone" type deal.  I would say that IS bad...should he give up his pursual just because she wants to be a friend?  Obviously this is all within reason, I'm not saying that anyone should be stalking anyone here.  But if does not want to befriend her because of "feelings etc etc etc" then fine, he doesn't have to and iin fact SHOULDN'T because that would be detrimental to him, because we ALL know what would really be going on under the surface.

[Thought]

Ironically, "platonic" originally referred to sex-sans-emotion.

Though regarding relationships, at least from the male-culture I've been exposed to, it takes on more of a question of if one is having sex. Regardless of a guy's relationship status, there seems to be the perception that if he's "sexually active" then he's a "man." A "relationship" seems to thus serve as a vehicle for carnal pleasure. Indeed, there does seem to be a basic perception that relationships should work like vending machines: you put into a relationship so that the relationship will "put out."

There is an additional layer, however, that is more culture-wide: if you aren't in a relationship (be ye male or female), then you're inherently worth less. "Singlehood" is not seen as a respected or respectable status.

And... damn, I just broke the quotation key on my keyboard.

[FaustWolf]

Ah, crap, I hit Ctrl+V instead of Ctrl+C. Stupid butterfingers.

Anyway, yes, I was sort of afraid to even be that honest, but the pressure often focuses on sex specifically in the case of men. I don't necessarily see it as an explicit command, but rather the kind of pressure women feel to be skinny in Western society: just the ubiquitousness of it in pop culture, and in what friends are doing, or claim to be doing for the sake of their masculinity. I'm not sure if women still feel psychologically pressured to have children or else they're undeserving of the title "woman," but it would be sort of on that order.

As for the friend zone, I don't mean to suggest that there aren't times when forcing oneself to stay in it would be psychologically harmful, depending on the specific circumstances. Sometimes, maybe distance is best. But I discovered in college that the friend zone can also be an incredibly wonderful thing -- a space where you can regularly carry on conversations, or even share dinner with, a physically and psychologically attractive person of the opposite sex (or whatever the sexual preference is) but not have to worry about all the baggage that goes along with sex and/or relationship building. The descriptions we see attributed to this "friend zone" in pop culture suggest, to our shared detriment, that platonic relationships are somehow useless. That's so far from the truth.

[ZaichikArky]

It's funny because I really notice that it's almost always girl wants to be in friends zone, guy doesn't. I hate that because I always want to be in friends zone, and guys are usually ok with that for a while, then suddenly they're not and want something more from me that I'm unwilling to give. My dad disapproves of all my guy friends. He says they all want to have sex with me and it's not a good type of friendship. Eh, my dad is very old fashioned for being such a young dad >_>. What can I say, he's a Jew XD;. I know it's kinda racist, but I'm a Jew too, and my dad keeps trying to instill these traditional Jewish beliefs on me and it gets old. Though he is a little open to me dating CERTAIN types of other men. He says that Japanese/Japanese Americans are ok, but not Chinese and CERTAINLY not blacks >_>;. If I ever wanted a female relationship, I'd be disowned. Good thing I'm not so  attracted to women....

In my experience, I do not feel pressured to be in a relationship or have babies. I guess it's because I'm not older yet. I think I will feel the pressure in another 6 years to have a baby and get married. Not yet, though... It will more be the pressure I put on myself. My mom and her mom had kids when they were 24 years old, and I cannot carry on the family tradition. They do not expect me to have a kid any time soon, but they do want me to be married soon(especially my dad's mom who is VERY elderly and her dying wish is for her to be at my wedding...)  I want to, but I can't. I'm not ready and I don't even want to marry the guy I'm with now. My biggest obstacle in life right now is deciding if/when I want to break up with him and move on.

[Lord J Esq]

Why is eating meat bad for the environment? AFAIK eating plants, especially grains, is much worse, since they require a much larger parcel of land to be grown than cattle, and thus make deforestation worse.

You have it exactly the wrong way around: Raising an animal for human consumption requires vastly larger amounts of land than does raising produce (fruits and vegetables). The statistics are almost comically lopsided: Something like four-fifths of all agricultural land in the country is used for meat production, and it takes something on the order of twenty times as much land to produce a calorically equivalent amount of meat as it does to produce that much energy in produce. This is because the animals which we eat themselves have to eat plants in order to grow and live. It adds an extra link in the food chain, and, given the low efficiencies of energy transfer in the food chain, every extra link requires that the food chain base be expanded horizontally by orders of magnitude.

In environmental terms, eating meat is very expensive on planetary ecological sustainability. I'm a meat-eater myself, so I am somewhat hypocritical to be making this point, which is partly why you don't see me saying more often that people should be vegetarian, or should at least eat less meat. In fact I'm all about eating more meat, which is entirely the wrong message, and I'm sure that the planet is eagerly awaiting the day when people with barbaric attitudes like mine will have all died out. Better to leave the campaigning to vegetarians, food activists or purist environmentalists.

And... damn, I just broke the quotation key on my keyboard.

Only you...

As for you, ZaichiArky, and the current turn of the sexism discussion, I think you're misreading ZeaLitY. He suffers from having a very good message that sometimes gets lost in his own emotional bombast. In his defense, it's a very good message, and an important one, one which too many people ignore. His exasperation is not directed at you personally; only your ideas.

As for those ideas...

You don't seem to be arguing that sexism exists, and you don't even seem to be arguing that sexism isn't a problem. You just seem not to care about the topic. ZeaLitY, FaustWolf, Thought, Zephira, and even Truthordeal (!) have made some good points already, so it's not as though you haven't had the chance to understand our position. If you don't care, you don't care. I wish you felt otherwise, though, because the reality of sexism in this world and even in this country is both more serious and more urgent than you realize.

I didn't know you had such a multicultural background, and, looking at that aspect of you with more attention, I would surmise that your attitude is the product of a different cultural mindset. I suspect that, in the years to come, you will figure out for yourself many of the things we've been telling you here. America has always been good at opening the eyes of those whose minds are already open.

Therefore, I suppose I have nothing more to add.

[ZaichikArky]

^ I think you have a very accurate impression of me. It's just that one can only have so many passions, right? I know Z would disagree, but I don't feel like bombarding myself getting pissed off about all the social issues. I am an anthro major and though I really do care about certain social issues, I just feel like most social issues will just keep getting better and better as society progresses. I really do feel that way, despite ALSO feeling that if certain social issues were eliminated, the world really wouldn't be a much better place because then people would just ignore the fact that one social issue is almost resolved and then start focusing on other social issues that still need to be resolved. I do feel like western society is slowly but surely making progress towards a more feminist society in general. Would be be having this discussion 20 years ago or more? How would the discussion be different? Just see all the progress we've made : ).

I don't want to go further off topic about the environment thing, but I've made that my passion in the past, but I *personally* agree with environmentalists when they say I have no right to call myself an environmentalist if I am a meat-eater in general, so for now I will just keep on going to war protests if there is some new war that my country involves itself in that I strongly oppose. I'm not opposed to sending new troops to Afghanistan yet, so for now, there are no war protests that I can attend. It's important to participate IRL in social change : ). I try to do that when I can.

As for you, ZaichiArky, and the current turn of the sexism discussion, I think you're misreading ZeaLitY. He suffers from having a very good message that sometimes gets lost in his own emotional bombast. In his defense, it's a very good message, and an important one, one which too many people ignore. His exasperation is not directed at you personally; only your ideas.

I don't really understand his message, and I think he really misunderstands mine.

At least it is generally easier to fix misunderstandings on forums when you have more of an opportunity to explain yourself. Though I do notice that some people don't really want to listen to explanations are are too absorbed in their own opinions to listen to others.  And no, I'm not accusing Z of doing that. I am just saying it seems that way with some discussions sometimes.

[Lord J Esq]

Though I do notice that some people don't really want to listen to explanations are are too absorbed in their own opinions to listen to others.  And no, I'm not accusing Z of doing that. I am just saying it seems that way with some discussions sometimes.

I didn't read this last part of your post because I was too busy admiring the new wall-sized portrait of myself that I recently commissioned. What were you saying?

[ZeaLitY]

Please, do identify which aspect of "rhetoric" you take umbrage with.

the undue usage

[Uboa]

Maybe this guy just had a flipped switch and he would have latched onto something else as a rationale to go shoot people, but if sexist pop culture did contribute to breaking him down mentally over the years, imagine what a productive life he could have lived if his immediate environment were shaped more by feminism.

This is the kind of thing that makes my gears start to turn.  While it's hard for me to perceive, personally, rampant effects of discrimination against women in the states (admittedly I am in a sheltered environment), I find it far too easy to identify ridiculous situations that result from self-destructive ideals of gender identity and gendered existence.  We are somewhat swamped with the kinds of graven images of gender ideal that this guy seemed to latch onto, and it's, sadly, very easy for certain people to be hypnotized by things like this.  With regard to these kinds of graven gender ideals, I don't see men as being any more favorably or progressively represented than women.

[Truthordeal]

With regard to these kinds of graven gender ideals, I don't see men as being any more favorably or progressively represented than women.

That depends on the medium. Look at how John Wayne was pictured next to Miss Kitty in the old cowboy movies.

Or of course, there's my favorite old comparison: On Spike TV, you have women scantily clad if at all. On Lifetime, you have men portrayed as monsters(mostly the good looking ones).