[Split] Sexism

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-02-21, 18:26

IpseDixit wrote:
loqu wrote:
Car wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:For a moment I thought Pope Francis was a new user.

Good to read I wasn't the only one.

:lol: would be fun for sure.


Who knows what languages he'd learn.

Maybe I'd finally have a study buddy! :shock:

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2015-02-22, 3:33

And in homonormative societies, people seem to identify as homosexual for the same reason
Wait, what would be an example of a homonormative society?

I think sexuality is more flexible than most believe. On the other hand, I believe it has a biological basis (like most things we do) and tends not to change. This could be my Western bias, though. At least if true, it would mean we could hopefully put a rest to bisexual erasure (it's just a phase for women and for men they're just gay and afraid to come out).
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-02-22, 4:27

mōdgethanc wrote:
And in homonormative societies, people seem to identify as homosexual for the same reason
Wait, what would be an example of a homonormative society?

Certain societies in Papua New Guinea that we talked about a while back :P But also, pre-Christian Celtic civilizations, where various Ancient Greek/Roman commentators claimed the men preferred to sleep with each other instead of with women (and one went so far as to claim that if one man invited another to sleep with him, and the other refused, it would be taken as an insult), and IIRC there's plenty of written evidence from Old Irish literature that both male and female homosexuality were considered normal in Ireland as well. You should be able to find other examples here if you're interested. :)

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2015-02-22, 5:03

vijayjohn wrote:Certain societies in Papua New Guinea that we talked about a while back :P
Are they, though? Fellatio is a rite of passage but I don't know if there is or ever has been a whole society where gay intercourse was the norm and hetero was an exception. Maybe Sparta.
But also, pre-Christian Celtic civilizations, where various Ancient Greek/Roman commentators claimed the men preferred to sleep with each other instead of with women (and one went so far as to claim that if one man invited another to sleep with him, and the other refused, it would be taken as an insult), and IIRC there's plenty of written evidence from Old Irish literature that both male and female homosexuality were considered normal in Ireland as well.
How times change!
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-02-22, 5:13

mōdgethanc wrote:Are they, though?

They certainly were.
Fellatio is a rite of passage but I don't know if there is or ever has been a whole society where gay intercourse was the norm and hetero was an exception. Maybe Sparta.

Aha, so you are interested! ;) Time for you to take a look at that link in my last post. :twisted: :lol:
How times change!

How much Christians (and Muslims, and probably some other people, although for whatever reason I can't think of any others off the top of my head) have changed entire societies' norms!

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2015-02-23, 3:51

vijayjohn wrote:They certainly were.
I'm skeptical because that dick-sucking ritual doesn't alone imply the whole culture was homonormative. However, I've found at least one tribe that supposedly was, and only had hetero sex for reproduction. So much for cultural universals!

This reminds me of my cultural anthropology class (which I hated) because it also spent a long time - way too much time, really - on a single tribe from Papua New Guinea who had similar practices. They didn't have a preference either way though, and were more like a pansexual society where everyone slept with everyone else, married or not.
Aha, so you are interested! ;) Time for you to take a look at that link in my last post. :twisted: :lol:
I know how to use Wikipedia. Frankly, I felt like you posting that was a rather passive-aggressive gesture. Maybe that's not what you intended, but
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby md0 » 2015-02-24, 10:46

Change to throw in a different topic. Gender is not only constructed, but also heavily policed.
There's an ongoing case of disappearance in Greece.
Vangelis is a 20 year old student of Dairy Technology, in a college in northern Greece. He comes from Crete, the southern-most island of Greece.
He went missing 20 days ago, without taking any personal items with him, and was last seen by the kiosk operator he bought an one-way bus ticket from. What probably happened is clear to everyone, but it's a taboo word in Greece. The area around the college is known for its many big lakes.

During this time, witnesses finally came forward, and we learn that Vangelis was bullied ever since he enrolled in this college, and 10 months ago was beaten up, and received the 'human jukebox' treatment (a hazing method common in the Greek Army), an incident he reported. He managed to change dorm rooms after that, but people who interacted with him, including his professors, say they noticed a sharp decline in his mood after the incident. Some in the school community suspect Vangelis didn't report some of the most humiliating acts he endured in the hands of his bullies.

A gang of other students from Crete came forward to say that,yes they indeed 'joked with and hazed Vangelis' all those months, because 'he's a Cretan man, he's supposed to be manly and not afraid of anything and anyone' but 'he's still our kin and we are worried about him'. The president of the college said that the school had their suspicions about that gang, but it didn't look serious enough to investigate, before the disappearance.

And this story is so familiar. Bullying and hazing is common in male sub-societies, from primary school till corporate clubs. And I've noticed that the excuse of the bullies is that they are trying to help the men who bully, to make them finally manly. It is essentially policing gender expression, enforcing a specific kind masculinity. And in this case, they also tie it with local patriotism, "you are not only a man, but a Cretan man". You disgrace us Cretans when you are not manly.

In my time in the army, there was a lot of that, despite my attempts to 'own' my identity so that I take their power away to bully me. I didn't get the jukebox treatment, but I was locked in a refrigerator room (which of course opens from the inside, but you have to wait for them to stop pushing the door first).
During the army service, when a bully created a very difficult situation for me, which few days later would lead to my first suicide attempt, he approached me to say that he's trying to help, of course. That he had to grow 'thicker skin' himself, because he was mistaken for gay in middle school, and thus bullied. (And he's not the only non-masculine straight man that I knew was bullied, lets not think it only affects us 'gnosticly' nonconforming people).
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-02-27, 16:40

So let's talk again about how little effort supposedly goes into enforcing traditional gender roles in childhood education: http://shannonhale.tumblr.com/post/112152808785/no-boys-allowed-school-visits-as-a-woman-writer.

(One of my teachers once reduced me to tears by mocking me in front of the whole class for wanting to read Burnett's The secret garden, a children's book with a female protagonist. Wonder if she would've done the same with Hunger games if that had been around back then.)
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby Varislintu » 2015-02-27, 17:55

This narrowly defined and brutally enforced masculinity stuff going on in our culture(s) is so enfuriating to watch from the sidelines.

I often think about it from the angle of what if I had a son. I feel like a parent can't do much to counteract the messages and the policing, because the pressure to conform comes from so many directions.

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-02-27, 18:04

Varislintu wrote:I often think about it from the angle of what if I had a son. I feel like a parent can't do much to counteract the messages and the policing, because the pressure to conform comes from so many directions.
The saddest thing for me is seeing enlightened people give into it so easily. Yesterday evening my mother was paging through a yarn catalog and saying, "If you're looking for neon-coloured yarn, looks like they've got it all. I could make socks for all the boys." A moment later she said absently, "Pink, won't be using that." And I was like, "Why not? Pink is some of them's favourite colour." I mean, fuck me, you're making multicolour neon socks and you can't put any pink in them because some of their classmates might be troglodytes? This is why things change so goddamn slowly.
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby Varislintu » 2015-02-27, 18:15

linguoboy wrote:The saddest thing for me is seeing enlightened people give into it so easily. Yesterday evening my mother was paging through a yarn catalog and saying, "If you're looking for neon-coloured yarn, looks like they've got it all. I could make socks for all the boys." A moment later she said absently, "Pink, won't be using that." And I was like, "Why not? Pink is some of them's favourite colour." I mean, fuck me, you're making multicolour neon socks and you can't put any pink in them because some of their classmates might be troglodytes? This is why things change so goddamn slowly.


Yeah. One of my little kid relatives, a sort of boyish boy, his favourite colour as a toddler was pink. Then some girl in his daycare informed him that pink is a girl colour. That was the end of pink in his life. :(

Little kids are so desperately trying to soak up clues of what they are supposed to do/be from their environment. Because they don't know, and they know they don't know. Most of them are afraid they'll mess up and do it wrong. So any little condemnation or embarrassment is going to influence many of them a lot. Disproportionately much, from an adult's perspective.

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby linguoboy » 2015-02-27, 18:36

Varislintu wrote:Yeah. One of my little kid relatives, a sort of boyish boy, his favourite colour as a toddler was pink. Then some girl in his daycare informed him that pink is a girl colour. That was the end of pink in his life.
I think I've already told the story here of how the same thing happened to my oldest nephew (now a teenager). His father's reaction was so great: "Maybe I should start wearing a pink shirt." So that's what I bought him for Christmas and he got a good laugh out of it. I have no doubts that he actually went on to wear it, but it was too little to overcome the barrage of heteronormativity at school.
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby md0 » 2015-02-27, 19:16

I cannot stop thinking that gender is violence.
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby Varislintu » 2015-02-27, 21:25

meidei wrote:I cannot stop thinking that gender is violence.


In a way, but then I have to think that it's wider than that: that people being socialised into being people in interaction to each other is an often violent process. We are forced into many moulds, not just gender. I guess it's about how the individual needs the collective, but is also limited and shaped by that collective. And forced and policed and shamed.

But still, needs that collective.

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby md0 » 2015-02-28, 0:35

Yeah. I cannot disagree.
Civilisation itself was instituted by violence. I am not sure if I can take a maximalist position because I am not a primitivist, but we definitely need to reduce that violence as much as possible.
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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-03-06, 17:03

Just a few days ago, India's Daughter, a BBC documentary on the 2012 Delhi gang rape case was released. It was planned to be broadcast in India on International Women's day (this Sunday) and was also uploaded on YouTube, but the Indian government blocked it and got YouTube to block it in India as well. The victim's parents and various Bollywood celebrities are protesting the government's decision.

From Wikipedia:
One of the convicted rapists serving life imprisonment, Mukesh Singh, was interviewed for the documentary. He said in the interview "When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they’d have dropped her off after ‘doing her’, and only hit the boy." He later added, "A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy … A decent girl won’t roam around at nine o’clock at night … Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes."

A. P. Singh, a defence lawyer in the case, was shown saying, “If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.” Asked later if he stood by those comments, he insisted that he did.

A little while ago, I saw that a famous Malayalee actress named Manju Warrier wrote this on her Facebook (EDIT: I've added a link to the Wikipedia article on the Nirbhaya Fund):
With intense pain and a heavy heart comes this post from me.I am someone who never comments on any controversial issues as a rule and policy but here the woman in me keeps her head high and wishes all my fellow female counter parts a very strong Woman's day.May you have the courage to live in this world.

Posting my views on the India's daughter documentary...

Nobody absolutely nobody can disrespect India's daughter. There has been a lot of discussions on how the convict could make statements and whether it is glorification of the convicts. For me it is not the convict's comments that is surprising or shocking. The group of men... No animals were of disgusting mindset is beyond doubt. But what is the justification for the lawyers who have made some shocking remarks. These are supposed to be professional individuals who are an important part of the society. Did the camera get them excited ... No they spoke their mind... The sick mind that seems to be a dominant phenomenon in our society, wanting to run the women down and blame her for everything that could possibly be wrong. We don't need a documentary to tell us what minds exists in this country. Ask a woman and she experiences it, everyday. Some fight back, like the valiant Nirbhaya did and others just silently bear it! Happy women's day

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby Varislintu » 2015-03-06, 18:17

vijayjohn wrote:Just a few days ago, India's Daughter, a BBC documentary on the 2012 Delhi gang rape case was released. It was planned to be broadcast in India on International Women's day (this Sunday) and was also uploaded on YouTube, but the Indian government blocked it and got YouTube to block it in India as well.


This surprises me, because I don't follow the current atmosphere in India very much. Is the government truly in denial over women's issues to this degree?

I encountered the gang rapist's rationalisations in my feeds. It was remarkable how text book horrible they were. Like, so perfectly representative of the classical types of misogyny that feminism has tried to oppose, and the ideas of women that it has tried to break down in the West. He almost sounds like an internet troll, because it's hard to believe anyone's opinions would form such a text book example.

But it would be best not to call these men "animals". It makes it seem as if only non-humans can think like this, when that is simply not so. Such othering might make it hard for people whom it conserns to recognise in themselves the same lines of thought, and challenge it and discard that kind of thinking.

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-03-06, 18:44

Varislintu wrote:This surprises me, because I don't follow the current atmosphere in India very much. Is the government truly in denial over women's issues to this degree?

As far as I can tell, the Indian government has always been in denial over almost everything, not even just women's rights, and is willing to go to incredible lengths to cover up anything that's embarrassing on an international level. But I'm no expert.
I encountered the gang rapist's rationalisations in my feeds. It was remarkable how text book horrible they were. Like, so perfectly representative of the classical types of misogyny that feminism has tried to oppose, and the ideas of women that it has tried to break down in the West. He almost sounds like an internet troll, because it's hard to believe anyone's opinions would form such a text book example.

In that case, you'd be shocked to see how Indian men (or perhaps I should go further and say South Asian men) talk about women, just in general. Considering some of the things that women and girls are forced to endure in India, I'm honestly not sure that the situation of women in India is better than that of women in Afghanistan.

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby Varislintu » 2015-03-06, 20:53

vijayjohn wrote:In that case, you'd be shocked to see how Indian men (or perhaps I should go further and say South Asian men) talk about women, just in general. Considering some of the things that women and girls are forced to endure in India, I'm honestly not sure that the situation of women in India is better than that of women in Afghanistan.


Great... I guess I have an inkling, though. I've read about some Indian women killing their girl infants just to spare them the life as a woman (I mean, they themselves state that as a reason for killing them). Of course that's the ultimate extreme, but... I just can't even imagine the life those women must have led and vitnessed all around them. Just think about the amount of women that must be living with PTSD, depression and other mental issues born out of maltreatment and sexual violence. And then those women raise the next generation. I wish the Indian government would realise that these aren't just the personal tragedies of half the population, but that it affects and holds back men as well. It's a problem of the entire society, because the ripples travel far, and therefore important to fight.

I do get, of course, that India is huge with many different cultures in it, and varying degrees of progressive attitudes. The extreme is the extreme, but it makes me so sad nonetheless.

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Re: [Split] Sexism

Postby Johanna » 2015-03-06, 21:19

vijayjohn wrote:In that case, you'd be shocked to see how Indian men (or perhaps I should go further and say South Asian men) talk about women, just in general. Considering some of the things that women and girls are forced to endure in India, I'm honestly not sure that the situation of women in India is better than that of women in Afghanistan.

In a way I think that women in Afghanistan might be more protected from that particular kind of violence even. For one, the man accompanying a woman is likely to be family or someone the family approves of, and everyone knows it, so if something like that happens the family might go after the perpetrators since they've caused said family a lot of shame, and it might even end in a blood feud.
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