Feminism

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Saim
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Re: Feminism

Postby Saim » 2016-04-24, 16:26

Massimiliano B wrote:@Linguoboy, it's not your point. Your point is that you have no way of reading a man's mind to discern his intentions, and that's why staring or looking at women is a bad habit. This conclusion is a logical fallacy, called the slippery slope.


It's not a slippery slope because it's already happening. I don't have a female friend who doesn't have a story (or stories, rather) of men not only in clubs but in random public places not taking no for an answer. Then when these things do happen lots of people justify these acts by saying that the victims did something wrong ("attracting attention" being one of them).

Even women rape men (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_males), so the standards have to be the same.


What do you think the proportion of male-on-female vs. female-on-male rape is?

I do agree that male victims of rape aren't taken seriously by society, and in fact the rape of men in prison is often played of as a joke, but I'm not sure what any of that has to do with how polite it is to stare at people.

I wrote that usually, but not always, women like to attract attention. My evidence for this is especially the way women look or stare at me, even though I wasn't previously looking or staring at them. A lot of times it happens (and has happened) to me.


Firstly, why does staring at someone necessarily mean you want their attention? It's even possible to stare at someone by accident if you're spaced out enough, I've even done it before on public transport -- the difference here is that I'm not particularly proud of it and look at those clear mistakes I've made in the same way I'd see anything else embarrassing I've done. I've also minimised this behaviour because I don't think it's a good thing to do to people.

Secondly, if having stared at least once at someone means that you generally "want attention", does the fact that you stare at women mean you also want this sort of attention from whoever? Do you want to be stared at by any and all people (including, say, homosexual men)?

I've had also sexual harrassments from girls and women (both verbal and physical), but this is not the place to discuss it.


If you're not willing to discuss it then don't bring it up as an argument.

---

As an aside, let's not forget that this is where this discussion evolved from:

IpseDixit wrote:Image


Johanna wrote:

Which is why when I go out I prefer a gay club or bar, I've never ever been treated badly by anyone of any gender who's approached me in one, and neither have my male friends of any orientation, but when I go to a regular one, chances are that I will have to deal with at least one drunk straight guy who can't take a no.


Are you particularly bothered by IpseDixit's reposting of an image that observes pretty clear hypocritical attitudes expressed by men or Johanna's personal experience of being harrassed? If so what is it about this that bothers you?

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Re: Feminism

Postby Massimiliano B » 2016-04-24, 18:18

Saim wrote:
Massimiliano B wrote:@Linguoboy, it's not your point. Your point is that you have no way of reading a man's mind to discern his intentions, and that's why staring or looking at women is a bad habit. This conclusion is a logical fallacy, called the slippery slope.


It's not a slippery slope because it's already happening.



It's a slippery slope if one assumes that I will likely or surely go from staring at beautiful woman to sexually assaulting her, and on that basis condemn me if I'm staring at a beautiful half-naked girl dancing in a disco (for example, I look at her legs and body).

My discussion began because of a message of Linguoboy:


linguoboy wrote:
Johanna wrote:To me it's just normal

Which is the saddest part of all.

I've gone dancing with female friends in both gay clubs and straight clubs. One of the most striking things about the latter for me is the number of straight men who simply stand on the edge of the dance floor and stare intently at the women dancing. It creeped me out so much, I couldn't imagine what it took for my friends to simply ignore it.
Last edited by Massimiliano B on 2016-04-24, 18:23, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Feminism

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-04-24, 18:22

Massimiliano B wrote:It's a slippery slope if one assumes that I will likely or surely go from staring at beautiful women to sexually assaulting them, and on that basis condemn me because I stare at a beautiful half-naked girl dancing in a disco (for example, I look at her legs).

No one is assuming that, but when you keep staring at someone, especially someone who doesn't even know you, how are they supposed to know what your intentions are? They can't read your mind.

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Re: Feminism

Postby Massimiliano B » 2016-04-24, 18:23

vijayjohn wrote:
Massimiliano B wrote:It's a slippery slope if one assumes that I will likely or surely go from staring at beautiful women to sexually assaulting them, and on that basis condemn me because I stare at a beautiful half-naked girl dancing in a disco (for example, I look at her legs).

No one is assuming that, but when you keep staring at someone, especially someone who doesn't even know you, how are they supposed to know what your intentions are? They can't read your mind.


So, they can't comdemn the behaviour of such a person.

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Re: Feminism

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-04-24, 18:25

Massimiliano B wrote:So, they can't comdemn the behabiour of such a person.

Just because you're not guilty of outright sexual assault doesn't mean that you aren't still doing something that would make another person uncomfortable. :?

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Re: Feminism

Postby Bijlee » 2016-04-24, 18:29

Why is this even a discussion? Isn't it always considered rude to stare at people- despite their gender or whatever else? If you want to stare at people dancing so bad just pull up a YouTube video at home so you don't creep everyone out. :P

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Re: Feminism

Postby Saim » 2016-04-24, 18:35

Massimiliano B wrote:It's a slippery slope if one assumes that I will likely or surely go from staring at beautiful woman to sexually assaulting her, and on that basis condemn me if I'm staring at a beautiful half-naked girl dancing in a disco (for example, I look at her legs and body).


I'm not sure that anyone's saying that you're personally likely to go from staring at women to assaulting them, although I can only speak for myself. What I'm saying is that staring is part of a culture of disrespect for women's bodily autonomy which enables sexual assault.

Massimiliano B wrote:So, they can't comdemn the behaviour of such a person.


But if they intentionally ignore your staring, or even seem slightly distressed or disgusted by it, do you then stop?

Furthermore, why can't they condemn it? You yourself seemed pretty moralising with your description of their "half-naked" dress. If you can stare at whoever you want why don't other people have the right to condemn whatever they want? I thought your justification was contingent on women allegedly "wanting" to be stared at; doesn't this condemnation that you're bothered by suggest that a good deal of them may not, indeed, want to be stared at?

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Re: Feminism

Postby Varislintu » 2016-04-24, 18:54

Bijlee wrote:Why is this even a discussion? Isn't it always considered rude to stare at people- despite their gender or whatever else?


I don't know why, either. I feel like the discussion is going in the weird direction that many sexual assault discussions take for some reason:

A: God, I hate it when someone is raped!
B: I have consensual sex with women all the time. Why are you calling me a rapist?
A: Uh, but in your case it's consensual...? Or what do you mean..?
B: Why are you trying to ban me from having sex ever again!?
A: Uh, I'm not talking about that at all...?
B: You male oppressing feminists! Women rape, too!

(Here I assume Massimiliano is accurate when he says he is actually just looking, not rudely staring.)

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Re: Feminism

Postby Saim » 2016-04-24, 19:28

Varislintu wrote:(Here I assume Massimiliano is accurate when he says he is actually just looking, not rudely staring.)


My understanding from these posts is that he's saying he actually does stare.

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Re: Feminism

Postby Varislintu » 2016-04-24, 21:12

Saim wrote:
Varislintu wrote:(Here I assume Massimiliano is accurate when he says he is actually just looking, not rudely staring.)


My understanding from these posts is that he's saying he actually does stare.


It's possible -- I'm having a bit of difficulty perceiving which stance he's taking. He does seem to think the "staring creepily" description hits a target, so to say -- I mean that's why he's protesting here about this, I presume. So I don't know.

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Re: Feminism

Postby Massimiliano B » 2016-04-24, 22:25

Saim wrote:
Varislintu wrote:(Here I assume Massimiliano is accurate when he says he is actually just looking, not rudely staring.)


My understanding from these posts is that he's saying he actually does stare.



You, Saim, speak Italian. I translate the words "look" and "stare" into the Italian "guardare" (look) and "osservare/fissare" (stare). This doesn't imply to look insistently at someone in his/her eyes. One can just look/stare at a half-dressed girl's legs in a disco (just for a while or even for few minutes), and at other parts of her body, without looking at her eyes. Usually this is interrrupted by some moments in which one looks at someone or something else... One can also look at her eyes, but this obviously would be creepy if it lasts more than one second. Moreover, to stare at a girl (or a man, with parts inverted) doesn't imply that the one who stares is seen by the one who is stared. Usually this is how the "staring at a girl" happens.
I think it's creepy to stare at someone's eyes for more than a moment, while being noticed (unless he or she is a friend). This is a universal law of behaviour. But to look/stare at a half-naked body dancing in a disco is not creepy.

Linguoboy wrote in his post:


linguoboy wrote:
I've gone dancing with female friends in both gay clubs and straight clubs. One of the most striking things about the latter for me is the number of straight men who simply stand on the edge of the dance floor and stare intently at the women dancing. It creeped me out so much.



This is nothing wrong. Do they stare in a creepy way at those girls? They just stared, perhaps at their legs, or breats, or at their body, maybe without being seen by those girls. What's wrong with that? This happens in a disco, where almost everybody goes just for having fun, watching beautiful people (male and female)...that's normal.
Last edited by Massimiliano B on 2016-04-24, 23:53, edited 6 times in total.

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Re: Feminism

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-04-24, 22:39

No one is talking about staring into someone's eyes.

As a thought experiment, suppose you ran the risk of being harassed sexually literally every time you left your house (and possibly inside your house, too). Would you still be okay with complete strangers staring at your legs or private parts? Would you consider that "normal"?

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Re: Feminism

Postby Massimiliano B » 2016-04-24, 22:47

vijayjohn wrote:No one is talking about staring into someone's eyes.

As a thought experiment, suppose you ran the risk of being harassed sexually literally every time you left your house (and possibly inside your house, too). Would you still be okay with complete strangers staring at your legs or private parts? Would you consider that "normal"?


If I do look at a girl dancing in a disco with half body undressed, it's normal. I don't speak about looking at women when they get out of their homes for going to work, or to the supermarket, or with their husband and children to the park.

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Re: Feminism

Postby linguoboy » 2016-04-25, 1:45

Massimiliano B wrote:If I do look at a girl dancing in a disco with half body undressed, it's normal. I don't speak about looking at women when they get out of their homes for going to work, or to the supermarket, or with their husband and children to the park.

Why not? If you consider yourself entitled to stare at a woman's body when she's only come out to dance, why should you feel differently when she's come out to shop or go to work? And what difference does the presence of a husband and children make?

If staring is rude, staring is rude. It doesn't matter where you are, what the person is wearing, and whether they notice you staring or not.
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Re: Feminism

Postby Saim » 2016-04-25, 8:42

Massimiliano B wrote:You, Saim, speak Italian. I translate the words "look" and "stare" into the Italian "guardare" (look) and "osservare/fissare" (stare).


I'm not ruling out that there's perhaps some sort of language difference at work here, we'll have to hear what IpseDixit or another Italian has to say about it. In English, staring has almost completely negative connotations. If someone were to make some sort of word tree off of the verb to stare, creepy would certainly be the first adjective to come to almost anyone's mind.

This doesn't imply to look insistently at someone in his/her eyes. One can just look/stare at a half-dressed girl's leg


Mate, stop saying half-dressed and half-naked when you mean nothing close to it. Do a Google Images search of half-dressed and half-naked and then come back and tell is that's how women are dressed in clubs.

This is nothing wrong. Do they stare in a creepy way at those girls?


According to Linguoboy's description, yes. In English, when you say "he stared intently" and you're talking about a person looking at another person the image that comes to mind is creepy.

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Re: Feminism

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-04-25, 10:56

Saim wrote:I'm not ruling out that there's perhaps some sort of language difference at work here, we'll have to hear what IpseDixit or another Italian has to say about it. In English, staring has almost completely negative connotations. If someone were to make some sort of word tree off of the verb to stare, creepy would certainly be the first adjective to come to almost anyone's mind.


For me Italian "fissare" (and "osservare" as well in this context) also has almost completely negative connotations, and is definitely considered something creepy.

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Re: Feminism

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-06-01, 6:41

There's something I've been worrying about on and off all day, and I'm not really sure how to phrase it without getting both long-winded and possibly awkward about it, so I'll try to just ask the following questions because maybe that will help me make sense of my own thoughts:

How can someone tell that they are a feminist? What does it mean to be one? Is it enough to just genuinely care about discrimination (including, but not limited to, discrimination against women) in order to count as one? Or does it also require a relatively deep awareness of the kinds of discrimination people are subjected to?

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Re: Feminism

Postby Varislintu » 2016-06-01, 9:42

vijayjohn wrote:There's something I've been worrying about on and off all day, and I'm not really sure how to phrase it without getting both long-winded and possibly awkward about it, so I'll try to just ask the following questions because maybe that will help me make sense of my own thoughts:

How can someone tell that they are a feminist? What does it mean to be one? Is it enough to just genuinely care about discrimination (including, but not limited to, discrimination against women) in order to count as one? Or does it also require a relatively deep awareness of the kinds of discrimination people are subjected to?


Not sure I have a good reply, but I'd say feminism is a rather wide umbrella term that stretches out around a rather simple core. Some ascribe only to the core (for example "the radical notion that women are people, too" [some might shrink that core even further by adding "in front of the law"]), others make feminism a much wider and inclusive concept that traverses figurative ideological borders.

Because it's this complicated I think we have to 1) let people self-identify as feminist or not feminist, and 2) allow/accept/embrace also criticism/challenging of that self-identification from others.

I subscrie to a printed Finnish feminist magazine, and what I find good about it is that even if all the writers obviously identify as feminists, they also often publish the criticism they got for their stories in the previous number. The criticism is often something like "was this really a feminist angle to this subject?". So the concept of feminism is allowed to develop through discussion. I wouldn't want to be told from above what proper feminism is, I want it to have a connection to lived reality and looked at from many view-points. That's what develops my thinking as well.

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Re: Feminism

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-06-01, 14:00

Varislintu wrote:Because it's this complicated I think we have to 1) let people self-identify as feminist or not feminist, and 2) allow/accept/embrace also criticism/challenging of that self-identification from others.

Can we also let people be unsure about which they self-identify as?

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Re: Feminism

Postby Aurinĭa » 2016-06-01, 15:43

Varislintu wrote:"the radical notion that women are people, too"

And then you're not even going into the various ways "women" can be defined... Like TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) who don't accept trans women as women. But this is perhaps not the right place for venturing into the quagmire that gender and gender identity are.

There are feminists who want full equality between women and men, feminists who want "separate, but equal", and feminists who think women should wield all the power. There are feminists who deny that men can be victims of sexism, and there are feminists who are convinced that full equality between men and women will benefit everyone.

vijayjohn wrote:Or does it also require a relatively deep awareness of the kinds of discrimination people are subjected to?

How would you know when your awareness is "deep" enough? There will always be kinds of discrimination you have little to no awareness of. There will always be more to learn. Perhaps you could say that a willingness to learn, a willingness to be open to learning about other viewpoints (and maybe accepting/rejecting/adapting them later) is more important?

vijayjohn wrote:
Varislintu wrote:Because it's this complicated I think we have to 1) let people self-identify as feminist or not feminist, and 2) allow/accept/embrace also criticism/challenging of that self-identification from others.

Can we also let people be unsure about which they self-identify as?

Sure. It's not what someone self-identifies as that matters, it's what they say and do—regardless of any labels they might or might not subscribe to. And with a label that can mean so many different things, like feminism, it's entirely possible for two people to have comparable points of view, but one identifies as feminist and the other doesn't. Just like it's possible for two feminists or two non-feminists to have completely different opinions.


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