I am not Feminist

[Muslim786]

I would like to mention several facts about feminists. Agree or not, at least try to ponder about it:

1. Feminists are rude

1. They tend to be rich or upper middle class

1. They over-analyze everything which men do. So now a man cannot even open his mouth to pass a little comment or say something ordinary without thinking twice or thrice how his feminist-influenced wife will scream "misogynist" and create an argument out of nothing.

1. Feminists want political power

Now before you swarm me with negative comments (I hope I'm wrong in anticipating that) I would like to say that the feminists of old days were much better. They were concerned with human dignity and good treatment of women. They deserve to be saluted. Why modern feminists are not willing to negotiate or compromise?

Please I am asking this question very sincerely and do not want to create any kind of social disturbance.

Annie - as shaska pointed out upthread, the troll is just as likely to have chosen his username in an attempt to call up racist preconceptions of muslims as misogynist nutcases. Of course you're right, patriarchal views are shared by a number of religions (#notallreligiouspeopleobviously).

Lurcio - yes, that is exactly what I was imagining! Or just the head mounted on the wall...

I think his head is on the windowsill with the wasp

Ha ha - just caught up on the threat.

Thanks OP for giving me the best laugh today.

I do think that any religion / culture / whatever that says women should dress modestly to avoid inflaming men should have a look at itself and then do something about all these blokes who it believes to be uncontrollable sex maniacs.

I know, it's so insulting to normal men, isn't it.

I call trying to have some debate and challenging your tidy little views

To have a debate, OP you'd actually need to have a logical argument, supported by evidence, to start with.

"Feminists want political power"
I think that women should have 50% of the political power and influence. I class a feminist as simply anyone - including men - who believes that women should have equal rights and opportunities so I want 100% of political power and influence in the hands of feminists.

"Feminist politics are becoming mainstream" Huzzah! I don't believe that feminists are divisive at all - after all, any type of politics that aims at equality is by its nature inclusive.

Compromise...well - there's no such thing as a little bit equal is there??

But there is room for discussion, compromise and fresh choices about how women should be encouraged to dress, how to make compromises between husband and wife relationship and giving priority to raising kids rather than pursuing a career.

LOL

I am a liberal feminist not a radical feminist. On some aspects I will agree with the majority on here who express opinions but on others I am of a whole different opinion.

Interesting one on politics is I believe we are not princesses who need someone's help so I am against quotas that mean can then use to say we cannot be their equal unless we have help. Quotas, to me, enhance the damsel in distress storyline.

I disagree sausageandeggs. Quotas, though not ideal, normalise the idea of women working in certain jobs. Once it stops being unusual, and therefore worthy of comment, whenever you see a woman in a job normally reserved for men, quotas can be abandoned.

Quotas are wrong. The best person should get the job, not the one who fulfils the criteria and enables an organisation to say it's met the quota. Quotas lead to resentment and do us a great disservice. Absolutely wrong in every protected category.

But does the best person always get the job, prepper? Or is it sometimes the best connected person, the person less likely to take maternity leave, the person who can be easily persuaded to work long hours, the person who "fits in best" with the current "workplace culture"?

I'm with sausage and prepper on these points.

On work place culture there are occasions when long hours need to be met to meet deadlines.

The "best person" will be the person who is prepared to be flexible and work to accommodate clients' needs.

I agree the best person should get the job. But I think it's naive to think that the best person will always be chosen no matter what gender they are and what their situation is.

A single mum vs a childless man, all other things being equal? Surely we all know how that's likely to turn out.

It's years and years of valuing qualities that men tend to have, due to the way society has been run. For example we value the ability to work all hours, very highly. Men have traditionally been able to do that, because there was a woman looking after the kids. It's not that I think individual employers are always sexist, it's that I think the culture is. A woman often has to be either be better at her job, or have more of a traditional 'masculine' way of operating to do as well as men who are her equals in other areas.

I do not agree with quotas at work, i think they devalue the hard work of the applicants and reduces them to a demographic. I have seen cases where the ppl in charge just wanted to be able to tick boxes as if that was equivalent to increase diversity.

May we ask what op thinks? Surely he must think that a quota of 100% men is just fine.

Lass - it's workplace culture that needs to change, before anything else can. If you allow "clients' needs" to override your own choices and those of your employees, if you allow the market to dictate how you lead your life and how your workers lead theirs - then nothing will ever change. Might as well paper over that glass ceiling now...

I didn't believe in quotas but in merit.

But then again, I didn't actually believe that I was sexist and applied this unconsciously to my hiring decisions until I sat down and examined it.

Like hires like - that's pretty well established at boardroom/senior manager level. It's not intentional but unless positive action is taken it will simply continue. And so what if a marginally less qualified candidate is employed ? The benefits that result from diversity and having depth of varied experience are shown to cancel this out.

Women can only compete when the playing field is level. At the moment, they're playing on an uphill slope. So every man effectively benefits from a quota at the moment - we just don't call it that.

Bllistory the problem is if we unbalance the playing field in our favour men will make claims that we are second best and can only get on with support. As the old adage goes I have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. But having seen the mocking of Rachel Reeves from being parachuted into a safe seat on an all woman short list no matter how good she is people (men) will consider her a joke.

So we can't change anything in case some men don't approve? Well, that's knocked pretty much all feminist activism into a tin hat, hasn't it?

Well, those men would be wrong, wouldn't they ? Men moaning isn't sufficient reason for me to favour them over women which is what currently happens world wide.

No-one's talking about giving woman an advantage, just about taking away the disadvantage.

There's a picture that explains with people standing on boxes better than I can explain with words but I can't find it just now.

www.supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-140312.pdf

This is a speech by Lord Neuberger who is the current President of the Supreme Court in the UK. He probably makes the point more clearly than me.

Especially the bit where he points out that if you're only selecting from a small group (ie white middle class men ), chances are you've already excluded the best person from the job unwittingly.

Compromise is not at all a terrible idea. Flexibility is the key to success.

Compromising on justice is a terrible idea, and I think the problem for many women is they are always the ones expected to be flexible.

when single mom comes home exhausted and spent I am a single mum who for many years, over a decade, same home "exhausted and spent"; maybe you should be asking yourself why this was a better and happier choice for me and my children than living with a man? Why my children come home from friends houses saying thank goodness we don't have a father in the house, why if you offered my £10 000 000 if I got married i would still say no.

It isn't my family that is "sad"

ugly there are many, many reasons why a certain transaction has to settle on a certain date. The forces drving that may be arbitrarily set by clients or frequently by external forces relating to fiscal regimes. Telling them I can't meet a deadline because the person allocated can't or won't work after 5 o'clock is not an option.

The market and government and fiscal policies dictate my clients' needs.

I don't have a problem with a market led economy - the alternatives are hardly appealing.

Lass - I don't know what it is you do, but as I supply neither food, shelter, clean water nor medical services, my clients don't have needs, they have wants. Fortunately, as I'm self-employed, I can choose whether to accomodate these wants for a higher fee, or let my clients take their poor time management issues elsewhere. So I end up doing insane amounts of overtime maybe three or four times a year. But even if I were an employer, I certainly wouldn't inflict that decision on my employees, nor would I base my staffing decisions around it. I don't find a market led economy (or capitalism, as we call it round here) appealing in the slightest, much less a market led society - I'll take my chances with the alternatives. But we appear to be at oppposing ends of the political spectrum here so I'll drop this now so as not to detract from Blistory and Karbon's excellent posts.