A little wordy but I can sense your passion for the summary of your wall of text.
Egalitarianism is good. I want feminism to be egalitarian. Feminists who are not egalitarian should be kicked out.
I think you’re almost there. Egalitarianism is good. I think feminism should and for the most part still is egalitarian, despite what certain people who are against feminism and a couple of nutters who self identify as “feminists” would like you to believe. Any “feminist” that is not egalitarian or that is transphobic is by definition not a feminist, and the proportionately low numbers of both makes any argument that they have come to define feminism invalid. Although misandry and some of the other darker aspects of “feminism” are bad, those arguing against feminism are almost universally worse, and if given between siding with feminism and siding with its detractors, I will almost always pick feminism.
In response to some of your points:
We created washing machines in the 19th century to help make women's lives easier before we developed technology to keep male miners from dying of black lung. Women's comfort and ease was valued over men's lives.
I don’t think you can possibly try to paint men as being the ‘victim’ gender if you are basing things on the past - just have a cursory look at the proportion or female leaders or rights or even just ask anyone with any basic historical knowledge if you want to find that out. Even the example you give doesn’t take into account that the washing machine was to make the washing process more efficient and thus make the woman more advantageous to the household instead of just being “to make their lives easier (plus you can’t account for the order in which different discoveries of preventing black lung or manufacturing washing machines take place). I could possibly understand if you were advocating for disregarding past instances of sexism against woman as there could be an argument for saying such things might have been reversed, but if you are arguing for taking into account historical instances of sexism then I’m afraid we have you well and truly “beaten” and to suggest otherwise is utterly ridiculous.
-Men face substantially longer prison sentences than women do who commit the same crime. Women are substantially less likely to be convicted.
I think you could have a point in this particular area, although as far as I’m aware, while it might not necessarily explain the prison sentences, I do believe men have the higher rate for committing crimes and this and the associated views that could arise from such does seem like it could have an impact on this. The difference in crime rate in itself could probably also be associated with sexism, but I’d imagine that it would be going both ways in that particular instance - definitely present, but equally bad for both sides.
-Men are eligible for the draft in the United States and conscription elsewhere.
Your presentation of that as being supportive to your point is reliant on the idea that conscription and drafting is bad, and while I would agree with you there, if that is the argument you are making you should probably be arguing against conscription in its entirety rather than advocating that “women should be picked for it too”. If something is problematic, get rid of it, don’t go round trying to make it equally bad for everyone else, and if you are saying conscription is bad, then your problem should be with conscription, not sexism in that regard. The argument for this not being sexist against women also doesn’t work though even if you are saying conscription and joining the army is good. If such things are good, why prevent women from joining in on them if you aren’t being sexist! No matter whether you think conscription is good or bad, your argument is framed around the idea that conscription, or at least having an army is necessary, so in that case there is literally no reason to keep women from joining outside of sexism! It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if women are being kept from conscription and drafting, chances are the process for joining typically will also be more difficult and they will be more dissuaded from it, again with no logical reason other than sexism. And you can’t make the argument that it is the women that are trying to cause this either; they may well be trying to even things out a bit now, but I think we can safely say that almost the entirety of those high up enough in the military to be involved in the decision making processes that lead to this are male.
-Women and men professional tennis players have the same prize money but men have to play more matches for the same money.
This is another point you are making that is utterly ridiculous. Women may well do better than men in tennis in terms of pay and coverage, but when it comes to almost every other commercial sport, they almost universally do worse in terms of pay and whether they are being idolised and given appropriate coverage and fanfare. You can argue that this is because female sporting events attract fewer viewers, and you would probably be right, but even that is down to sexism. People will give all the excuses about how it “isn’t as good” and that women “aren’t as skilled at the sport” or whatever, but in 2018, 5.2 million people tuned in to watch a game of golf, much higher numbers than other games like basketball. Now I don’t have anything against golf, but you’d be lying if you said it involved levels of physical skill comparable to basketball. Physical prowess, the one thing men can justifiably be seen to be better at that women, clearly is not the priority for people watching sport. I’m afraid that, like the historical argument, bringing up sport in an attempt to justify how men have it worse than women will almost entirely result in evidence to the contrary.
-Mothers have a higher rate of child abuse than fathers yet mothers get preferential custody. This becomes even more skewed when you add in the statistics for mom's boyfriend. It's not just abuse, fatherless homes are more likely to lead to suicide, drug abuse, dropping out of high school, getting a felony conviction, almost everything bad. The only cases I know where the father wins custody is when the father is a law abiding citizen and the mother is a dangerous addict or felon or when the mother doesn't contest custody. I have heard a lot of cases where criminal or addict mothers get the custody anyway. There is no reason for the institutional bias against fathers besides institutional sexism.
This is another case that I think you are right to argue that women have better off than men, but if you read my other posts, you will find that I
repeatedly list this fact as an example of the
exceptions to the rule, alongside mental health and a couple of other things. Nobody here is denying that this is one arena that it would seem women do have better, but to act like this somehow proves that men have it worse off everywhere is nonsense. As for mothers having a higher rate of child abuse, I think that partially stems from that fact they are more likely to receive custody, but primarily I think it’s to do with the fact that our society means it is far more likely in general that women will be in possession of a child than men. Part of this is undoubtedly biological - the fact it is women that make the child means it is inevitably easier for the father to clear off and leave them than vice versa, but I also think a good proportion of this stems from ingrained societal sexism - there is far more of an expectation for the mother to look after her children than the father, a fact that is undoubtedly more beneficial to the father (and therefore to men) than it is the mother. And if you assume that equal numbers of men and women abuse children (a completely reasonable assumption to make), it is only natural that figures skew towards women because they are far more likely to have a child in the first place.
95%+ of slapstick comedy involves men getting hurt. Women getting hurt is unacceptable. Men getting hurt is funny. Across all media, the death of women is considered a greater tragedy than the death of men.
There may well be some truth to this. However, in making this argument and some of the others, I think you are possibly partaking in some of the same hypocrisy you accuse feminists of doing. As you yourself point out...
I would also argue that modern feminist tactics switch between "Women are strong and independent" and "Women are helpless and oppressed and need protection."
Whichever basic credo is more useful for each situation and time is what is endorsed.
There are two main ways your point about slapstick could be interpreted. One is that women are considered to be “too strong to have slapstick and death applied to them. First of all, this is really counterintuitive - surely if they were to be considered strong then it would be considered more okay for bad things to happen to them in media, not less. However, if you were to make that argument, it would also contradict the one you made earlier about conscription - if women truly were considered stronger, they wouldn’t be being passed up for conscription and drafting. The other interpretation of this is that women are “too weak” and so they cannot possibly have anything bad happen to them. If this is the case though, there is no way in which this is not sexist - to say that women are weaker than men in that regard is to say that they are inferior, the very definition of misogyny. But also, once again if you were to make that argument, it would be contradictory to your point about custody. There is no way women would be receiving higher shares in custody if that was how they were viewed; the “weaker” women would surely not be able to sufficiently fight her case if that were the case, and there is no way the courts would consistently favour the “inferior gender”. We are all guilty of adopting different perspectives on the same things depending on which supports our arguments better - there is no doubt as to whether feminists do it, and both some of the arguments you just made and likely several of my counter-arguments have also partaken in this. However, if you are going to criticise the feminists for doing it, that’s fine but I’d be careful not to throw too many stones in glass houses...
Going back to the broader point of what you were saying here, I think there is probably a good argument to say that explicit, outright sexism against women in media is now less acceptable than its equivalent in men. This is likely a conscious effort to attempt to right obvious wrongs in the media’s prior depictions in women (I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the media tends to be the quickest and certainly the most scrutinised when it comes to dealing with this sort of thing), and while I think that’s more justified than it would be if it was for men, it is hardly an egalitarian situation. However, just because that sexism against women is now unacceptable when it is explicitly occurring and being pointed out, doesn’t mean it isn’t still going on just beneath the surface and in far larger amounts than it’s make equivalent. And although sexism against men is possibly still considered acceptable on the surface, even when explicit, I would hazard that that surface level, mild sexism is the only real sexism (with a few other exceptions that I have already listed several times already so will not do so again) is the only sexism men actually face. It’s a bit like racism. It is now (quite rightly) completely unacceptable to be explicitly, or in many places implicitly racist against black people in the media, whereas it is probably still fairly acceptable to be mildly but explicitly racist against white people. However, that isn’t to say racism against black peoples doesn’t exist - it very clearly does so in very large numbers. Likewise, while mild explicit racism is still considered to be okay against white people, it is probably the only form of racism that occurs against them at all and certainly isn’t being acted upon - despite being “okay”, it”s not white people that are being hounded by the police and shot for the colour of their skin. The sexism against women is still very much greater than that of men even though is less explicitly acceptable in the media, and the presentation that it isn’t okay for women but is for men only serves to obscure that reality. That isn’t to say sexism against men should be okay, but the “mild but acceptable” form it takes is (with a few exceptions) the only form it takes and largely only really influences other media depictions of men, whilst the female equivalent, lurking beneath the surface but still very much easy to see if you bother to look, is far more problematic and far reaching. That isn’t to say that they both shouldn’t be dealt with and aren’t bad, but to try to equate the two or worse present the male one as worse is nonsense and shows a tremendous amount of shortsightedness.
Above all else, men die considerably sooner than women.
I’m sorry, but I completely fail to see how trying to equate this fact with the idea that society doesn’t treat men as well as women is anything other than complete and utter nonsense. You trying to make this argument is like a feminist trying to say that the fact that physically men are naturally stronger and have an natural advantage is somehow sexist against women and proof of a patriarchy - both are completely ridiculous. It’s a question of biology, not attitudes! And the only way in which there would be any way to “correct” this would be to advocate women committing suicide or otherwise being killed at the ages at which men would generally die to make things “fair” - something that would achieve nothing and I think we can all agree, is utterly horrific. I’m sorry but the fact you are even conceiving the idea of making this argument is absurd.
I have largely been responding to your points rather than necessarily providing my own, but if you would like to look, and check back on some of my other posts, I have listed plenty more reasons that show that our society really isn’t as gender equal as it seems and should be. However, if you want a couple more to looks into, I would point you towards the fact that one in five women in the US has been raped or has had been the victim of an attempt, compared to only 4.8% of men. I would also encourage you to look into the continuing gradual criminalisation of abortion, with many women having the right to control over their own body removed - you cannot deny that that is a problem women face due to their gender and one men do not have to deal with at all.
As for your interpretation of my quote:
It's highly possible that I am misreading this passage. Another way to phrase this is, women's problems are due to unfair gender dynamics in society and men's problems are their own fault.
That seems like internalized misandry. It also infantilizes women by denying them agency.
That’s not at all how to phrase it in the slightest. Both men and women face all sorts of problems, stemming from all sorts from family issues to societal problems to unfair employment and issues in government, and yes, for both of those groups some (arguably equal numbers) of those problems will be of their own creation. However, while they both face all of these problems, women also face the additional garnishing of plenty of other problems that arise simply due to the being a women that just doesn’t exist on the same scale for men. That isn’t to say that all women have it worse than all men - there are plenty of men that have it far, far worse off than an awful lot of women. Likewise, that isn’t to say that any problem faced by a man is instantly his fault by virtue of not being about gender, in the same way that the existence of gender based problems for women doesn’t automatically make any problem she faces a result of gender and doesn’t absolve her of the plenty of problems that will inevitably be her fault. All I’m saying is that in the context of problems stemming from one’s gender instead of anything else (the entire context of this discussion), women face far more issues based on what gender they are than men do. That is all. Please don’t be offended by this - this isn’t supposed to be an attack on you or anything and I accept that my initial explanation of it may have been lacking in ways I was unaware of, but if I’m brutally honest, I have to say I’m genuinely confused as to how from what I’ve said you could possibly reach the conclusion of “all women’s problems are due to gender and men’s problems are their fault” without deliberately completely misinterpreting the entirety of what I’m saying and applying a policy of extreme victimhood and offence at any prospect of men not having it worse than women - in other words, becoming the very extreme of the “snowflake” that those critical of feminism like to pick on and refer to negatively.
I’m sorry if I’ve been overly harsh in the way I have responded to your points. This in no way is supposed to be an attack on you or anything, nor is it meant to imply that I am somehow superior to you or that you are an idiot or something. You are a greatly valued member of our forum and an incredibly strong and fair debater, and nothing I’ve said was meant to imply anything else so I’m sorry if it comes across that way. If you do find any of my points a little strongly worded (which I recognise is entirely possible) then please do not take offence, and if there are any gaps in my arguments or reasons why your points are valid when I say they aren’t, please also do not hesitate to point them out! This has been a very reasoned and considerate debate so far and I have no desire to change that, so I hope you do not feel that my response to this has done as such, and that we can continue to have such thoughtful and eloquent discussions in the future.
