"Women are stupid"

[sakura184]

There was a recent scandal in Japan where it was discovered that the top medical university there had been faking test scores. Basically women had been outperforming men in the tests for years but the university had been altering women's scores so that men received university places instead of women.

Anyway, I was just reading up about another case where 5 Japanese students attacked a female student and the justification of one of the attackers was that "women are stupid"

One of the accused said in court that he had looked down on women because they are “stupid.”

www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/02/national/social-issues/japans-gender-problem-human-disaster-says-award-winning-scholar-chizuko-ueno/#.XSZ-bCUo_Dt

I've had a lot of experience of being treated like I was stupid, by both men and women, but mainly by men. It's like I go through life being seen as "a stupid person". But I loved university, because I loved not feeling stupid when I got essay or test results back.
Anyway this idea that women are stupid has definitely affected me.
Only after i discovered feminism did I learn how amazingly unstupid women actually are and how deep of a lie it is to say women are stupid

It's literally infuriating when you say two women a week die at the hands of men and someone pipes up with "what about the men"

But that's not all that you said.

In another current thread we have posters discussing "why the fuck do we not seriously consider curtailing the freedom of all men?" so obviously these types of discussions can lead to some pretty distasteful conclusions without a reasoned perspective.

Haha yes be more reasonable please. Those poor men.

If anything, I feel it's often feminists who appear to pursue the 'conventional' model of success set by patriarchal society and they seem much more likely to condemn SAHM/homemakers than men do.

Ah, this is the "conventional career" masculine model vs the supposed feminine "SAHM" model. In truth, the role of the SAHM is just as much a function of patriarchal culture and society as the former. It is the mode of being "outside" the masculine model, and, by virtue of that, is thus defined by it.

It is these very models that we need to break down and rethink as part of the feminist project. For example, why couldn't we explore models whereby women both stayed at home and earnt income at the same time ? How could that be possible?

Well, if we encouraged young women to focus on work that gave them residual income, say, intellectual property, rather than go the conventional route of working and earning for their labour on a month by month basis, that might be a start. How could we scale that?

I don't know. But nobody asks these questions in the first place.

Feminists, for decades, have recognised that the models available to women don't really work for the reality of women's lives: neither the masculine work model nor the feminine carer model. The question is to figure out what will.

Yes, packingsoapandwater, this is so true! And where are the discussions about this? I feel so frustrated because I turn to radical feminism, which is supposed to be dismantling the patriarchy, and it's still banging on about bathrooms. We're being played, I think.

Packing.

I agree that the SAHM role is outside of the patriarchal male model, possibly something that evolved due to the physical difference between the sexes - men being more suited to physical work/hunting than a woman recovering from childbirth (or possibly always pregnant due to lack of contraception and the requirement to have more children due to many dying).

I do wonder whether most women actually want to work through their maternity leave though. Most of my former team were female and about half were on maternity leave at some point whilst I was there. The majority had higher-earning husbands and didn't seem too fussed about bringing in extra money. My brother in law now earns over £100k and my sister has pretty much given up on her career (she was the only woman in her team in a very technical military field - missile guidance etc). She says motherhood is much less stressful than her job was and she has four kids!

Okay, so giving birth and caring for kids is actually work? It's quite hard work. It's just largely uncompensated. Women can work hard all their lives and end up poor. That is because the capitalist system privileges male work.

And no, the economic system did not "evolve due to physical differences". Our bodies evolved. Not every society has even had a market system.

But when the economist did a study on this they found that women who didn't have children and continued to prioritise their career were promoted more aggressively thsnntheir male counterparts. Prior to the approximate age of motherhood, women outearn men and have for the last decade, so I think it's highly likely that the motherhood penalty is the cause and not solely discrimination/misogyny.

Of course it still needs to.be looked at. Even If the majority of women are happy with the way things are, it can't hurt to increase options.

Yeah but why should motherhood be a penalty? Given that most women become mothers, that reproduction is necessary for survival, that raising children is hard work and useful. Why should society's resources be channelled away from mothers?

Who says they're being channelled away?

You're less likely to be promoted if you're not there and you also miss out on job experience. It's unfair but it's nature.

Whether we need to compensate for that is the question I suppose. I can see both sides. I remember a senior exec posting on here a while back saying that in her experience you can't 'have it all' and that you must necessarily compromise either your career or your parenting due to finite hours in a day. She said she was stressed trying to balance it all.

But that's just one opinion (albeit from somebody who had walked the walk) and I don't pretend to know the answer. I suppose one option is to forego children.

We're already massively overpopulated.

And I don't believe most people truly have children for altruistic reasons.

*PackingSoapAndWater
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For example, why couldn't we explore models whereby women both stayed at home and earnt income at the same time ? How could that be possible?

Well this is why I talk a lot about the pre witchcraze era as outlined in Caliban and the Witch. There wouldn't have been a public/private sphere divide before the industrial revolution. It's why I argue things have gone backward for women

*lManiak
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Not every society has even had a market system

Totally. But those systems are completely under threat by white supermodel global patriarchal capitalism. The last remaining cultures where women can work and live sustainably with their children in tow are being routes out and vacuumed under "the system"

White "supremist" not white supermodel, stupid auto correct

I agree that the SAHM role is outside of the patriarchal male model, possibly something that evolved due to the physical difference between the sexes.

Um, not too sure that is supported by history. What we have at the moment is pretty much an industrial patriarchal model. Things are very different if you go back beyond that.

In many pre-industrial agricultural areas, everyone worked and gave value. I think about my great grandmother who spent her mornings milking cows, making cheese to sell and teaching at the local school, while my great grandfather dealt with the animal husbandry. Everyone's effort went into earning the household income.

Pre-industrial revolution in my area, children carded, women span and men weaved: the money making process for the family (cloth making) was a family exercise.

We have to be careful not to fall foul of false notions about history (Peter Hitchens is terrible for this). Just because a situation was apparent in the 1950s does not mean it dates back to the 1850s, iyswim.

So what? People mostly don't become marketing consultants for altruistic reasons either and they still get paid.

The assumptions you need to make to think it's right that a marketing consultant gets six figures while a sahm gets nothing are quite profound.

@Meniak it is the social norm in Western societies for mothers to be the main carers of children particularly small ones. This means they have limited time to do anything else including in providing labour particularly free labour to employers.

While most women have children there is something like 20% of those born after 1970 who are never going to have children. These women are the ones employers will promote if they can.

Incidentally my DP has been struck by the motherhood penalty even though he is male as he was the main carer of his older daughter.

@sakura, yes, I meant past societies. Just against the argument that the current arrangement was somehow the product of evolution and therefore inevitable. It is not. Other arrangements are possible for sure.

Pfft. When my uncle was helping us renovated our house he kept using the phrase 'don't show a woman or an idiot an unfinished job' and was indignant when I pointed out that meant women were idiots

*Maniak
*
The assumptions you need to make to think it's right that a marketing consultant gets six figures while a sahm gets nothing are quite profound.

You'd like Marilyn Frye's Counting for Nothing. She's an economist who details how our economies depend on women's unpaid and low paid labour. The marketing consultant wouldn't survive without women's labour. Women, on the other hand, would be totally fine and would even thrive in a system that didn't exploit their labour

Other arrangements are possible for sure

They are.
. The reason I'm certain we used to be less reliant on men's system is that I've studied women in developing countries who still have power over land, food and water. Western women lost our power over those things centuries ago

That's an interesting point.

To be fair, my views are probably fairly atypical as somebody who has no desire to have children.

Due to an undiagnosed (but easily treatable) medical issue I didn't really enjoy my teens and 20s. Now, in my 30s, I'm finally enjoying life and am not prepared to sacrifice it for the responsibility of children - my partner has never wanted kids either.

However, should we both change our mind, I'm prepared to accept that there will be sacrifice and I'd happily take paternity leave if that was the best option for us as a family.

But I still don't think you can be a CEO and full time parent at the same time in the large majority of cases. I also don't understand the fight to stay in the ratrace - I couldn't get out soon enough! Perhaps the solution is marriage so that the SAHP gets an equal share if things go tits up....?