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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

'It's OK to be single.' I think that's probably the most important message feminism has to offer.

88 replies

solidgoldbrass · 28/08/2011 01:27

That's just It's OK To Be SIngle. It's not 'You can't be a feminist if you have a male partner', nor is it 'Feminism means hating men and never having sex with one again.'
But if you accept and understand that It's OK To Be Single you put up with less crap from men who think the worst thing they can threaten you with is leaving and rendering you single.

OP posts:
startAfire · 31/08/2011 16:52

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HereBeBolloX · 31/08/2011 18:57

It is also a marking of territory.

Women aren't really human, they're the property of the vanquished enemy. Shit on their property, you're symbolically shitting on them.

garlicnutter · 31/08/2011 20:17

when the opportunity is there to rape without getting into trouble it's taken must be an over-generalisation, SAF! That's not true in everyday life, neither does every man in a gang-bang situation take their turn. It's often one of them who blows the whistle.

Also, women soldiers were implicated in the military prisoner abuse atrocities. Being led by men, certainly, but the problem is more complicated ... of course, it is men who rape. I just wanted to show that's not the same as "all men would rape".

startAfire · 31/08/2011 21:13

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startAfire · 31/08/2011 21:14

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BertieBotts · 31/08/2011 21:37

I disagree that a heterosexual relationship can never be truly equal because the man always has privilege due to his gender. I'm perfectly aware that my partner has privilege I don't, but since we can't change that overnight, I'm not going to let it get in the way of something which makes me feel happy.

I can see that it affects relationships in a day to day sense if one partner has more options than the other, WRT things such as whether one partner works and the other stays home with children, for example, but on a personal level it just doesn't and I think that it's possible to be aware of these things when making decisions which are going to be affected by outside factors while staying equal in how you see each other.

Do you think that a mixed race relationship would be unequal in a similar way?

HereBeBolloX · 31/08/2011 21:51

Yes I disagree as well. It's like a friendship - if someone is from a BME group and you are white, if you're working class and your best friend is middle class, if you're gay and your mate is heterosexual - as long as the other person "gets it, I think you can have an equal, happy relationship.

garlicnutter · 31/08/2011 22:01

I've had several mixed-race relationships (am a white female) and the relative privilege issue does interfere quite a lot. Going by what my non-white female friends have said, it tends to balance out in the long-term because of the relative privileges afforded to men. But it's a constant presence, both in terms of past histories and everyday events.

I know there are plenty of men with awareness of their gender privileges - I know some myself - so bear it in mind as I bore my "whiteness" in mind back then. I suspect it takes a special kind of awareness, though. As we know, most people prefer the easier option of not thinking too much; can't say I blame them, but the sum total of all those blind eyes is what perpetuates the patriarchy problem.

Such musings could lead on to a revisitation of chivalry, I guess. Leaving aside the knightly origins of the word, isn't the principle supposed to be about men smoothing the passage for the less-privileged female on his arm? I was told the coat in the puddle story was a symbol for that.

Am definitely overthinking now Blush

HereBeBolloX · 31/08/2011 22:34

Yes the fact of it may be a constant presence, but is that necessarily totally negative?

It's just something there. You can't get round it. So long as it's acknowledged, I think you can live with it. But you have to want to work with it, I think if you try and pretend it's not an issue, that's when it becomes a problem.

garlicnutter · 31/08/2011 22:43

Yes, HB! I was waffling around the thought that not too many men do recognise the disparity - at least, not consciously enough to deliberately mitigate - and that, while I don't blame them really, the non-thinking option keeps patriarchal patterns in place.

I'm still waffling, aren't I ...

sakura · 01/09/2011 01:52

Hardgoing, the day women go out and mass rape men, will be the day your argument makes any sense. Men rape and kill women. Men rape and kill men. And most of the time they do it en masse , I mean in many wars it's actually not just soldiers doing the raping because civillian men are drafted into the army en masse and they end up raping as welll.
WTF is wrong with men?
Can somebody please tell me the answer to this question.

sakura · 01/09/2011 01:56

Female oppression is the original prototype, the original model for all other oppressions. Women were the first slaves.

When you are able to dehumanize half of society, it's then very easy to go on to dehumanize other groups: Black people, Jews, Gypsies, Ethnic minorities, which do then include men.

So I strongly believe that male supremacy, i.e patriarchy, is the root cause of every other oppression, including class oppression and racism.

I'm white, my husband is Asian. We live in a white-supremist world, but white women's racial superiority is derivative i.e it derives from white men's status. White women are still bitches, like any other women. Just look at porn, if you don't believe me, and the way women of ALL races are hurt and abused on there, by men of ALL races.

sakura · 01/09/2011 02:12

In fact, I'd go further and say that the daily threat of rape and violence that women face, encouraged by the media, benefits ALL men in tangible ways.
Women don't even realise how vigilant they have to be to survive in a patriarchy; they forget that they're moderating all their behaviour in order to not invoke men's violence, whether on the street or in their own home.
Women are experts at diffusing situations so they don't get out of hand, they're highly adept at gauging situations, whether they should walk down a particular street or not, and they don't even notice because they're so used to it.

It's interesting to hear transsexuals talk about this.
Female to male transsexuals, who take hormones and have had surgery, say they never realised what a burden it was to look female until it was gone. Now they feel much safer and freer. What does that tell us about the way women are so used to being in state of constant vigilance that they don't even realise it.

And a very honest transsexual male to female said that he hadn't a clue how to avoid danger. he'd noticed that real women have to use everything about them to survive: their instinct, intuition, general knowledge and every piece of intelligence they had. He said something like "I'm going to get killed one night walking home through New York"
And he's probably right. Because walking around looking like a woman makes you a target for predatory men, and not being raised as a girl, he couldn't catch the cues and he didn't realise where the danger spots were.

Race crimes are male crimes. White women don't go around popping off black men, or black women for that matter. But black, white and ASian men kill and rape women of all races, all the time.

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