is there a new cognitive dissonance thread?

[kickassangel]

if so, please link, i can't find it.

if not, i'd like to add some things

using personal experience to prove a point is not a great argument. we have to start with the bigger picture, then see personal experiences as a case study which exemplifies, but does not prove a point.

i'm not even sure that i view myself as a feminist. i view myself as someone who believes in equality (not just on male/female issues). the generalisations about feminism being a religion i find offensive, as they both ignore the patriarchal society we live in (and this assertion can be backed up by endless statistics & experiences), and assume that one particular viewpoint is religious.

is marxism a religion? what about other schools of thought?

feminism is a broad range of thought, and there will be changes and shifts within the arguments, just as there are in other sociological concepts. and there will be women who abuse, just as there are men who do so.

however, look at the structure of society, and it is impossible to say that it isn't patriarchal. just look at the possession of wealth, the media representation of people, the male/female ration in positions of power.

if it was as simple as some women 'not bothering' to push themselves forward, there would still be enough women to fill 50% of all key positions in society, and to hold 50% of the wealth, but that isn't what happens. so, it sin't due to a lack of women exerting themselves, it is due to the inherent sexism within society.

Kickass,

"i also assumed the niece/god-daughter wasn't actually wearing the t-shirt at the time he removed it"

Any danger of an apology for that offensive suggestion or removing it from MN. Pretty close to libel, actually.

larry, i was joking. i am sorry if you took it the wrong way/it came out the wrong way.

i really don't get into trying to 'point score' v much (here or in rl) but i do tend to just make glib/throwaway comments, which is what that was.

and i had genuinely forgotten the 'i'm juicy' part of the t-shirt slogan - i wonder if the makers were aware that the more common useage of 'bite me' is just 'bugger off' (f off is, imo stronger as a 'translation)

i really haven't come up with an answer that i'm happy with about the question of how much sexuality is too much. i don't agree with the people who think women should be covered as much as poss. OR with guys who wander around with tops off in summer. in theory people should be able to show themselves off without shame, and we should be able to enjoy the sexual side of our natures, but there seems to be a thin line between that & overly flaunting oneself, almost inviting others to see oneself as sexual rather than the whole person.

fwiw, the kind of 'calendars' that a lot of media stars have to do i find quite distasteful. however much i like to see a fit young guy flexing his pecs, i don't like the fake 'come face' and hands down pants kind of shot. i find it equalling demeaning for men & women, and wonder how many of them regret it when they get older - it's generally the younger new comers who do them when they are trying to increase their media attention. however, someone wearing beach clothes & looking healthy & active i have no problem with, yet they're probably showing as much skin in both situations. i think it's how much they are made to look like they're JUST showing their sexy side, so that the viewer forgets to see them as a real person.

but it's a difficult area, and i can see arguments on both sides. unless someone is being controlling/dangerous in their behaviour, then i leave it up to the individual to decide (even if i then have a secret judgey pants moment).

Kickass,

Thanks for the gracious apology, which is accepted.

Are you sure "bite me" means "bugger off"? I had a look for any reference to it in slang dictionaries and could not find it. I found "bite" =con, cheat but nothing else derogatory.

I have no problem with young people enjoying their bodies. It fades with age after all! It is the mindless slogans that I don't like.

Larry, I think you have sufficient command of English not to confuse 'taking off' and 'taking from'. If 'taking from' was what you did, then that's what you should have said. Taking clothes 'off' someone means removing them from the body.

Objectification is a dynamic that involves only the active participation of one person, the beholder. As I said earlier, if a god-daughter wears a T-shirt in a forest, is she an object? People can choose for themselves what they are going to objectify. For a lot of men, school uniforms on teenage girls can drive them into a frenzy of x-rated thoughts.

I'm going way back to the Atwood (Handmaid's Tale) references earlier.
'Atwood... en passant, has denied it was a feminist book but merely about the abuse of power.
"You could tell The Handmaid's Tale from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting."'
Some interesting points raised here:
-- You seem to think there's no relationship between feminism and the abuse of power by men
-- You seem to have misinterpreted Atwood: yes she suggests power dynamic takes on a pyramid shape, presumably with the purveyors of the T-shirts/capitalists/power abusers already mentioned on the top, and underneath both other men, and women. Your frequent references to being of Jewish descent, to the Holocaust and to anti-semitism may indicate that you feel both men and women are equally victimised by anyone abusing power, and up to a point this is true. After all, the men at the bottom of the heap are not doing much better than women in the pyramid power structure arrangement. However, I don't think Atwood was saying that therefore, there is no such thing as oppression directed specifically against women as a group just because everyone below the tip of the pyramid is an underling. Maybe in the book, but not in wider society.

Regarding objectification, and harking back to the Holocaust again: were Jews objectifying themselves by wearing the yellow stars under the Third Reich?

larry - i live in the US, def that's what it means here. it's heard a lot on US teen sit coms, it's like the 'whatever' tone of rudeness. i'm guessing it has transferred over to the UK due to tv? i used to teach teens in the UK so would have known for sure what words they use, but after 2 years here i'm out of touch with the 'yoof' already.

(enough of language discussions, much as i love them)

Looking back to Larry's support of breastfeeding; why the heavy emphasis on the medical/scientific/mechanics of getting appropriate food into a baby part? The benefits of breastfeeding go far beyond nutrient/antibody delivery at the appropriate temperature.

I do it for the lurkers I think dittany. I do think sometimes it is useful to see nonfeminist views challenged and exposed. I see it as a sort of exercise in giving examples of exactly what we mean and why we mean it.

Considering that Larry doesn't appear to understand what patriarchy is, I doubt anything a feminist could say would persuade him of anything.

I guess I have a sort of idle curiosity at what brick he is going to drop next.

I don't really get why a poster who thinks patriarchy is redundant in the UK, and who thinks feminism is a religion, is wasting their time on feminist discussions. I understand that some male posters like to come here to tell us how wrong we are, but they surely can't think we are taken in by that sort of hooey can they? (Clue to them - feminists see though the bullshit. Once you've taken the patriarchy blinkers off there is no going back.)

BTW, I''m American and I didn't know "bite me" could mean anything but "fuck off"

I certainly didn't think it could have a sexual connotation.

Even the full phrase, "I'm juicy, bite me" doesn't sound sexual to me because here Juicy is a v popular brand and they manage to work the brand name into everyfuckingthing they make. So I would read it as a brand thing - "I'm Converse, fuck off."

TBH, it's a little disturbing to find out that someone would interpret it sexually because to me biting really doesn't default to a sexual activity. Perhaps that says something about my sex life

Then again, round these parts 'bite' is working its way into damn well everything thanks to the Anti-Feminist Manifesto (aka 'Twilight').

I know what you mean about the derailment. I think unless you have a limited access space or heavy moderation, that is going to happen to some degree.

I think the way some men express themselves on feminist spaces is quite revealing. I think they often make it clear that they haven't got a clue what they are talking about and reveal themselves as getting most cross when the ladies don't behave as ladies should.

Actually I would be quite interested in a discussion about the howlers that men make in feminist spaces, as I think a lot is revealed about entitlement and privilege in these sorts of discussions.

I keep on smiling at the thought of that old Japanese woman and her really funny joke.

Oh well since we're discussing Larry's support of breastfeeding and howlers men make in feminist spaces, let me quote him on this one:

"And, as to formula, the official advice is "Breast is Best" and, with my wife currently pregnant and us having a 15 month old, I can assure you that breast feeding is now pushed very hard indeed on the NHS, and rightly so."

Now at the time, there were so many things to argue about that I let this one pass. But my reaction when I saw it, was pure, gobsmacked shock. Because it indicates that he's never been on the breast/ bottle threads or if so, hasn't been listening. How fucking dare someone who hasn't been through the horrendous experience of not getting the right support to BF talk smugly like a fucking bog-standard health visitor, about how hard breastfeeding is pushed on the NHS. We fucking know how hard it's pushed Larry and we fucking know what the quality of support is like - it is fucking SHIT and the proof of that, is the breastfeeding figures. Breastfeeding counsellors in the main, aren't even employed by the NHS they are volunteers. That's how much the fucking NHS values breastfeeding and helps mothers. I could have a rant for days on this, but I've done so for the last 7 years on various threads on mumsnet and if you want to educate yourself about the reality of how the NHS approaches breastfeeding rather than the shiny leaflets and posters, go and look at some of them. But don't come into a mother's, feminist space and tell us that the NHS supports us to breastfeed, because most of us have experiences which contradict that and more "scientifically" for you, the figures contradict it. If the NHS properly supported women to BF, our rate would be at least 70% of mothers BF at 6 months old (that's the number who start doing so). It's nothing like that and the reason is, is that all the NHS support is lip service, not reality.

oh but isn't this the man who felt able to lecture us about what an NHS birth was like and then it turned out his dw had had a private mw (maybe even done the whole birth privately, I'm not sure).

Ah! That was a howler indeed. I got a bit cross at that point in the thread. We had some moments like these with Larry on the childbirth thread.

Which leads me to ask, why do some men think they can tell women about female only experiences?

Let's face it, logically a man can only talk about birth or breastfeeding from a male perspective. He may be able to get a handle on the female perspective, but that would only be by listening carefully and respectfully to women. And even then, he would only be repeating what women had told him.

Can we - I'm sort of fascinated by the whole thing. I think it is the obliviousness that I'm intrigued by.

Plus the fact that they don't see how obvious and lame the arguments are.

I'm sort of intrigued to know if they actually believe their own hype or just think it is worth a go at bullshitting everybody.

I think they believe their own hype; I have known some men in my time who have been very successful in everything they have done and hence hold important jobs and are important in their community and are deferred to all the time and occasionally they have had the most astonishing cognitive dissonance.

I have a very dear friend like this who thinks he is much better than he actually is at a particular creative activity because he's successful at everything else he is so takes it for granted he's good at that too.

but he's intelligent enough that when it comes to discussing woman-related stuff I have a couple of times said 'look, you don't know what you're talking about and I do' and he's applied his brain and realised I am right....

He's quite useful though isn't he?

Because he does show up where some of the men in RL are coming from.

I always think a few sexist twonks around the place are useful because you do get people who claim to have only ever met reasonable men - 'my dh would never say anything like that therefore we don't need feminism any more' etc etc - so it can be handy to have one nearby to point to to prove sexism does in fact exist.

sexism is bloody rife, IMO

oh gods in heaven I just read the whole thread. I've no idea why, I must be putting off marking bonkers, though.

Doesn't Larry understand that critiques of patriarchal structures are not attacks on men, either as individuals or as a group, but critiques and indeed attacks on the patriarchy. Sheesh, I've never seen so impressive a blindness to male privilege. He seems to be determined to deny that the patriarchy even exists!

I feel faintly queasy now. All credit to those of you womanfully powering through such nonsense to actually have an interesting discussion. I need a little lie-down, my limited ladybrain is going to explode with frustration at such pigheaded, willful indulgence in ignorance.

HerBeatitude - I've seen very good breastfeeding support from the NHS. I've also heard of very poor support. Maybe Larry has just been lucky.