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u/Mrs_Frisby · 5 pointsr/AskFeminists

>There is essentially no push to get women into lower-paying, more dangerous jobs.

You know, according to Aristotle the only way to prove a universal negative statement ( A is not B ) is to look at every example of A and establish that it is not B. You can't just look at one A. You have to look at all of them. So proving a universal statement is actually really really hard. To prove it false, however, is easy. I just have to show a single A that is B and I've done it. Since you hedged a little with the word "essentially' I'll show you more than one.

---

Women Building Futures is a general feminist outreach program for encouraging girls to look into construction trades as an option.

Habitat for Humanity - Women Build program started in 1991.

Sisters in the Brotherhood Outreach for women who want to be carpenters.

The head of the Electrician's Union talks about how he was forced to accept female apprentices by feminists in the 1970's but is now voluntarily cooperating with feminist groups to recruit more because women make great electricians.

The UK sees a huge uptick in women going to trade schools.

Texas Women in Trades explores social media to reach out to young women who may not be aware that there are opportunities for women in the tradeskills and also wants you to know that you Don't Mess With Texas.

Oregon Tradeswomen have a much better website though because Oregon is cooler than Texas and they actually get speaking spots in schools to Build Girls instead of trying to friend people on Facebook which I like better cause I'm old fashioned.

The Midwest School for Women Workers has been held annually in Chicago since 1976.

The Women Building The Nation conference has been held annually since 2010 focusing on ways to shatter the glass basement.

Washington Women In Trades does it Old School with Rosie the Riveter cameos at their 36th annual carrear fair.

Tradeswomen, Inc is actually a nonprofit in California founded in 1979 for outreach, recruitment, retention and leadership development for women in blue- collar skilled craft jobs.

Missouri Women In Trades is a late bloomer founded in 2006 but they have a clever gimmic of partnering with the Girl Scouts for Ms. Fix-It workshops and summer camps to introduce girls to construction trades.

Alaska Works! is partnering with the Women In Trades movement to recruit female apprentices.

Sisters In The Building Trades doesn't focus on recruitment but does provide a networking hub for women to advance their carrears and deal with obstacles/problems in the workplace from men who don't want them there as well as to facilitate mentoring relationships for women in trades.

Utah Women In trades is a baby just founded in 2010 - but then again this is Utah we are talking about. They are slow, we just have to bear with them.

National Women's Law Center cares enough about breaking the glass basement to do a big study on the progress made. June 11, 2014

ANEW (Apprenticeships and Non-traditional Employment For Women) was founded in 1980 to provide women of all ages, races, and backgrounds with quality training, support services and employment preparation, leading to viable and satisfying non-traditional career pathways which lead to family wage jobs.

Amazon is selling the book Alone in a Crowd: Women in the Trades Tell Their Stories which is a collection of stories from women in construction work about their experiences as the only women on a job site. People who bought it also bought We'll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction

Equal Rights Advocates are white collar feminist lawyers, but they stand in solidarity to promote Women in Trades on their website because they understand the concept of the glass basement and want to shatter it. They run a new article every Tuesday for Tradeswoman Tuesday interviewing a different woman who works in construction.

Heart Wrenchers Auto Club was founded in 2010 to each women car repair and also does outreach with the Girl Scouts to yet young girls know they can grow up to be mechanics.

Irma Elder founded the Elder Automative Group and her son continues her legacy seeking to train and hire female mechanics in their 9 dealerships.

Real Women In trucking want to create a network of support for women entering trucking.

The Truck Drivers Institute is very cooperative and partnering with Real Women In Trucking to reach out to women drivers.

The above two links partnership is working because There were 200,000 female truckers in the US in 2013, a number up 50% from 2005! WOOT! That number then almost doubled in 2014. Female truck drivers are 3x less likely to get in an accident and 5x more likely to follow all the safety regulations! Which is why truck driving companies are starting to actively recruit us.

Berkley College was so successful in recruiting women to its forestry program that the last two teams they've sent to logging competitions have been 10 women and one man. This sudden inversion of the gender ratio has been called Women In The Woods and has its own facebook and twitter page.

Axe Women or lumberjills, are showing up in logging competitions as well.

And not just ameture logging competitions. There are enough professional female lumberjacks now to hold a professional competitions. You can tell they are real lumberjacks cause they aren't all pretty like the Axewomen and have bigger biceps as well as tans/burns.

It took a lot of pressure, but the US Forestry Service will admit 20 women into its wildland firefighting boot camp for the first time in 2015!. Over 200 women applied but there were only 20 spots for female applicants available.

---

And on and on and on. So many pages of google hits that you could have found yourself if you weren't so certain they didn't exist.

Now, I presume after going through those links you will retract your assertion. And since a lot of your stance was based on a bad assumption that will require you to rethink that as well. But I want to point something out. The world didn't change because you skimmed those links. The underlying reality of feminism and the world and what we are doing is the same now as it was 10 minutes ago. All that changed is that you are now more informed about reality than you were before. You just got a glimpse of herstory instead of the usual history is all. Imagine that you are me, and that you've been working with other feminists to encourage girls to see these jobs as a valid option for over a decade, and you constantly have to deal with ignorant smartasses claiming that you don't exist because anything they haven't heard of must not exist.

If you would like, you can do penance for your insulting assumptions by contributing to this kickstarter trying to get funding for a documentary on feminism's efforts to shatter the glass basement. Just as you were ignorant on this score, so are many people like you who would benefit from the existence of this documentary.

u/major-major_major · 1 pointr/AskFeminists

Well, as I see it there are two types of claims being made, and we need to clarify. On the one hand, there is the claim being made that there exist biological differences between the sexes, that manifest themselves in both physiological and behavioral differences. I wouldn't consider these claims evopsych but rather descriptive biology. On the other hand, there are theories about the origin of said differences. The latter is probably true evolutionary psychology.


In the first case we're talking specifically about psychological and cognitive differences between the sexes. A compelling summary of the research can be found in the book Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities. From the forward of this book:

>"At the time I started writing this book it seemed clear to me that any between sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts, and mistakes in the research. After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high, and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles, I changed my mind. The literature on sex differences in cognitive abilities is filled with inconsistent findings, contradictory theories, and emotional claims that are unsupported by the research. Yet despite all the noise in the data, clear and consistent messages could be heard. There are real and in some cases sizable sex differences with respect to some cognitive abilities. Socialization practices are undoubtedly important, but there is also good evidence that biological sex differences play a role in establishing and maintaining cognitive sex differences, a conclusion I wasn't prepared to make when I began reviewing the relevant literature."

In other words, there is plenty of convincing evidence that biology is a factor in aggregate differences between the sexes (and of course, a hearty disclaimer on the implications of any such research etc etc). The book I mentioned is stuffed with said evidence and a careful description of the ways to interpret it.

Evolutionary psychology, on the other hand, is a framework that seeks to understand the origin of the biological differences with the premise that some of them may be adaptations. It's not so much concerned with explaining what the differences are, as it is with identifying them and fitting them into models that have as much explanatory power as possible. This process is fraught with difficulties and the potential for bias is clearly large, and lots of the criticisms you'll read in this thread hold true. However if you're interested in specific theories of EP in relation to feminism I'd strongly recommend reading this:

Edit: fixed link. Thanks /u/theta_abernathy
http://www.bradley.edu/dotAsset/196924.pdf

u/Arcisat · 18 pointsr/AskFeminists

>1) Feminists constantly put out the idea of a 'rape culture', yet they ignore male victims of rape.

Funny, seeing as a huge indicator of rape culture is how male rape victims are ignored and marginalized by society at large. This has been part of feminist discussion pertaining to rape culture for a while, but continues to be conveniently ignored by male opposition.

>And affirmative consent is a major recent 'success' for feminism despite the fact that it would be almost impossible to prove consent was given. Plus, I don't hear a lot of feminists arguing against withdrawing consent after the fact.

Frankly, I think affirmative consent can be a wise precaution when engaging in sexual activity with someone you don't know very well, and you aren't very in tune with their habits, disposition and predispositions, likes and dislikes and how they display this via body language, etc. And even if you do know them, checking in once in a while is always a respectful and can never hurt.

As for withdrawing consent after the fact...I just really don't think this is as huge of an issue as dudes on Reddit make it out to be. Consent is something that is given or retracted in the moment. It doesn't travel through time like that.

>2)Events that focus on men are constantly being shut-down for the fear of 'misogyny', and yet those actions that silence those who focus on men are not declared as being against what feminism stands for.

Plenty of events that focus on men are extensions of beliefs or spheres which perpetuate misogyny and misinformation. You haven't given any specific examples, but feel free.

>3) Pointlessly gendered items (razors, toys, pencils) are said to be sexist, yet 'mansplaining', 'manspreading', 'manterrupting', and other like words are perfectly acceptable and not at all simply a way to shut down conversation and vilify men for being men.

"Mansplaining" and "manterrupting" have a rich and sordid history in the US. Rebecca Solnit, a historian and an activist, wrote an entire book on the subject. The term is new, the thing it describes is not.

>4) Dissent always seems to eventually be met with famous buzzwords like 'rape apologist', 'victim blamer', 'misogynist', 'toxic masculinity', and, again, these words absolutely aren't used to silence anyone who disagrees.

Sometimes these accusations are perfectly apt.

>5) The 'negative' portrayal and under-representation of women in movies, politics, sports, and music are major feminist issues while there's never any acknowledgment to the negative way men can be portrayed. A handsome, tall, fit, not too muscular, charming, confident, funny, smart, open, sexually appealing leading man in every movie isn't a problem at all.

No, it isn't. It's the frequency, coupled with the blatant objectification and sexualization of women's bodies, which make it a pressing feminist issue. Just as a single example; there's no real equivalent of a "dad bod" craze in terms of women's body types.

>6) Society is blamed for personal issues such as 'body-shaming', 'slut-shaming', 'fat-shaming', not encouraging women enough, and not providing women with enough idols to look up to.

...That's because this happens all the time. Slut shaming is real, fat-shaming is real, and body shaming is real. Doesn't take too much effort to look into these issues.

>Also, the idea that a woman can only idolize other women is pretty sexist, yet never challenged.

No one believes that girls can only idolize women, the pushback comes from the fact that there are representation issues in just about every facet of our culture (speaking from a US perspective). If there are relatively few women role models in any given career path, for example, then girls can internalize the idea that women aren't wanted or just aren't good at X thing, which becomes discouraging very early on in development.

>if a woman's uncomfortable with a scantily clad, thin woman in a bikini on a billboard, that that issue might be her own and not society secretly 'shaming' her into feeling bad.

Okay, but how many billboards have very thin, scantily clad women on them, and how many billboards have average or above average weight women in bikinis on them? Ever wonder why that is? Ever wonder why a person who is overweight might be distressed by the constant bombardment of often attainably thin body types, considering the immediate cultural association of "not thin" with "bad" (and not only "bad", but morally corrupt, stupid, and lazy?

>7) Men are disproportionately put in prison, victims of violence, punished more harshly when it comes to sentencing, and homeless to name a few, and those things are easily explained away by feminism.

Yes, feminism does have explanations to all of these things. Generally speaking, it can be boiled down to a mixture of classism, racism, and the implications of sexism and misogyny. Sexism against women affects men as well.

>Yet the idea of a 'pay gap' can only be the result of sexism and nothing more.

I've provided you with links on this subject in your prior thread. The wage gap issue is complicated, but a large part of it comes down to gendered socialization and expectations.

>8) Women are treated like children by feminists by saying that without encouragement, a woman won't want to work in a STEM field.

This isn't treating women like children (this line of thinking reeks of concern trolling), it's treating people like what they are: the product of their surroundings and socialization, filtered through individual character traits and a genetic code. Everyone needs encouragement, but encouragement can look like a lot of things. Sometimes, the encouragement manifests as the prevailing unquestioning assumption that you're "built" for it, that you're brain is just "geared towards it naturally", sometimes this encouragement needs to be more literal.

>The possibility of hearing a sexist remark is enough to excuse a woman for not even trying to enter the field that she wants.

A sexist remark? Where there's one, there's many. Women have spoken out a lot about gendered opposition and sometimes blatant sexism in STEM fields.
The study "Professional Role Confidence and Gendered Persistence in Engineering" follows 288 randomly selected students who began their engineering degrees in 2003 at four universities, following their progress at 2007. The universities included: MIT, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and Smith College. The findings of this study are consistent with other empirical research, finding that men are more likely to persist in engineering than women.

However, women are twice as likely to switch to a different STEM major than men. Interestingly, amongst the small proportion of men who switch out of engineering, they're more likely to go into a non-STEM major. This suggests that women's interest and proficiency in STEM is not the reason why they leave engineering, while this may be true for the men who leave engineering courses.

From the study:

>Professional Socialisation
The study argues that becoming a successful professional requires more than just technical skills. It also depends on professional socialisation. That is, how we learn both the practical and unspoken (tacit) expectations of what's required of us in our fields. We also need to be able to identify with the values and norms of our profession. This includes adopting the types of mannerisms, demeanour, and self-presentation (including dress) that's expected. The researchers write:

>"If a profession’s norms of interaction are highly masculine or perhaps even antifeminine... it may be more difficult for women to gain this type of confidence....

>Present findings show that early professional role confidence predicts persistence measured three years later. If women develop less confidence about their abilities to be successful professionals and express more ambiguity about their fit or comfort within the discipline, then women will remain in engineering at lower rates than men."

>Engineering still relies on, and rewards, stereotypes of masculine behaviour. Women not only have to navigate this culture, but they have the additional burden of "proving to others that, despite gendered expectations, they are skilled engineers."

And here's some anecdotal icing on that cake, just for funsies.

EDIT: Gold? Well, shucks. Thanks, stranger!

u/thewaltzingbear · 1 pointr/AskFeminists

I am a white, feminist, woman artist/academic who does activist art in solidarity with social movements, including Black Lives Matter and immigration activists in my city. For me the key is solidarity. Solidarity is based on mutuality and accountability across difference, on disrupting the idea that you (as a white person) know best, challenging power dynamics that influence knowledge (and art) production and reception, and so on. As a primer, I'd recommend reading a little bit about how feminists of color think about solidarity. This body of writing has really important insights about the do's and don't's of white feminists when representing, or working with communities of color, and it'd likely be very relevant to your concerns about doing art that is meaningful and not appropriative (or worse, violent). One recommendation is Chandra Mohanty's writings on solidarity (e.g. her book "Feminism Beyond Borders"). \

Anyway, if I am doing art that is not speaking to political issues, or that isn't about racism/colonialism or that isn't borrowing stylistically from other cultural groups, I generally feel fairly free to do/make/sell what I want. However, if I am doing art that is about race, state violence, colonialism, etc, I feel there is a very different ethical imperative to avoid the harms you're concerned about. Here are a few key things I'd recommend thinking about when doing that work:

  1. If you are trying to do anti-racist art work that supports anti-racist social movements, you should be in direct conversation with those movements. Ask what type of work would be useful to them. Build relationships. Listen to their own articulations of what they need and think about ways to amplify and center their voices. If they say they don't want you to do art about their lives/activism, respect that and don't do it. Having these relationships will make your work better, more impactful, and will provide an avenue for people to hold you accountable when you make mistakes. This is the mutuality/accountability side of doing work in solidarity.

  2. Always ask yourself if your work will cause new pain to people you are trying to support. A good example of this is the recent debate about the painting of Emmitt Till's body, which was done by a white woman. As many feminists of color have written about, white people (including white feminists) ofter perpetuate the glorification and consumption of black death and pain. Doing art that depicts violence against black and brown bodies often reproduced trauma for people of color. Be very careful not to do this. Within my own art and scholarship, for example, I make an explicit choice not to write about graphic details of violence against black bodies, even though my work addresses state violence.

  3. Develop your own style and be careful not to simply adopt art forms that are unique to particular cultural groups. Yes, artists take inspiration from all over, but there is a long history of white people taking the unique cultural crafts and art forms of other people's cultures and profiting off of them--even as people of color may be derided for those exact same forms of expression. If you start turning a profit by weaving kente cloth or painting Mexican sugar skulls, you are treading into appropriation. Don't do it. There are plenty of ways to be creative--even to pay homage--without stealing art forms that are distinctive to an already marginalized group.

  4. If you are doing art that draws from the stories, experiences, or images of people of color, think critically and creatively about how you will do this without being purely extractive. Did you get permission to use someone's image or story? Did you talk to them about how the art will look and where it will be shared? Do you have any plans to redistribute profits you earn through the use of their image/experiences/ideas/etc? Who benefits, and how? I know that art is not a well-paying enterprise and the idea of sharing profits can be difficult for poor artists. Even so, these questions matter. If you turn a profit on art that depicts black experiences or pain, for example, you should be very, very thoughtful about how those profits are used. If sharing monetary proceeds from the sale of art is not possible, then at the very least think about other ways that you can give back--ideally though direct conversations with people impacted by the art work. Don't just assume that it's okay to take other people's stories/images because you want to "raise awareness", unless they have explicitly said this is what they want. For myself, in all the work that I do that addresses state violence, BLM, or immigration issues, a portion of the proceeds are donated to organizations/activists doing that work. Other techniques I use to address this include: giving free prints to the person who featured in the art work, offering time/skills to do art for protests or other events, and directly collaborating with people to create art that tells their stories (e.g. doing comic strips narrated by BLM activists).

  5. Don't be afraid to turn the gaze onto whiteness, white supremacy, and the sources of the forms of violence people of color are experiencing. As a white person, you are in a unique position to do this work. It is important that our art (or writing, scholarship, etc) doesn't only focus on the pain caused by racism/colonialism, but that it also turns the gaze onto the systems and people that perpetrate this. Whiteness shouldn't be invisible in conversations about racism. This "A Syllabus for Making Work About Race as a White Artist in America" offers an excellent list of art activities and exercises for white artists to do that encourage them to think about race in relation to white supremacy.

    I know that was a long answer. The point is, there are ways to do this, but do your homework, be thoughtful, be careful, and do the work in solidarity with communities of color whose stories are implicated in your work. Feel free to PM me if you want to know more about the specific way I've navigated this--it's something I've written about, but I don't want to share the full article here.
u/isron · 0 pointsr/AskFeminists

Concerning introductory books, I'm better versed in German literature, but here are two books that might suit you:

  • Laurie Penny: "Meat Market"; A quick and easy read, that gives a nice introduction to objectification and marketing of female bodies.
  • Mimi Marinucci: "Feminism is Queer"; A short introduction to queer feminism, the intersection between feminism and queer theory. A bit more scholarly but still an accessible read.

    And just in case you can read German, I would heavily encourage you to read:

  • Julia Korbik: "Stand Up"; A very comprehensive, accessible and furthermore damn pretty book about not only feminist thought, but also practical feminism.

    If you want a "real" scholarly book, there is incredibly much I could recommend. So if you have a specific area of interest, just ask.

    Personally I'd recommend most books by Judith/Jack Halberstam, I find them to be decently accessible, very relevant to both recent feminism as well as gender theory and with a heavy connection to pop culture, which makes them rather engaging.

    His/her most recent book, might be non-scholarly enough for you. In any case, I would heavily recommend it:

  • Judith/Jack Halberstam: "Gaga Feminism"; An engaging view on pop culture and its interaction with queer narratives, before the backdrop of mainstream society.

    I hope that gives you a decent starting point.
u/CheesyChips · 12 pointsr/AskFeminists

I guess we wait until other scientist come out in a few days and say the opposite. The issue with this topic is we really don't know the answer. There truly are two tribes; the biological side and the environmental side (and bits in between). Climate change is already well established and believed widely but no one is very sure at all which one is right; biology or society.

 

Scientists are not perfect and often many of them have agendas to push, political, personal or for business interests. Please be aware Quillette have a libertarian bias and would certainly be against gender policies and interventions. They have supported such alt-right talking heads like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson - people have pretty different opinions on them but the support of them by Quilette shows where their political allegiances lie and their agenda sits.

 

Scientist 1. I mean the first guy doesn't talk about the science at all, he just states his opinion on what happened and what Google have done. He clearly agrees with the author of the document and the agenda he had. Having a scientist agree with your opinion doesn't mean anything.
> not one at all based in bigotry or any other malicious motive.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with that already

 

Scientist 2. The second guy is clearly backing up his own work. Other scientists would argue against his work and findings and also what was written in his comment here.

 

So, so far neither of the scientist have really said... well anything really.

 

Scientist 3. I'm not sure there's much point in delving into this after I found this "self help book" for men wanting to pick up women. It seems like PUA Red Pill nonsense and I'm not interested in delving into that swamp. He even mentions the whole Matrix thing. He tweeting this once: "Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth" - I mean come on, his agenda is incredibly clear as crystal.

 

Scientist 4. She doesn't really say much except put in her opinion on whether the piece the Google employee wrote was a good call or not.

 

Take a look as some of the criticism of this type of science, evoluntionary biology to see what might be some of the standard types of critiques of this kind of scientific thought.

 

So to be honest... I find this article doesn't really say very much at all. It's certainly not the smack down pieve the alt-right make it out to be.

u/osestella · 5 pointsr/AskFeminists

Thats going to seem a bit weird but I will say: make your points before saying you are a feminist because anti-feminists are going to be more open about your ideas. That's how I usually discuss politics with my borderline fascist family. I've been smart enough to never express a clear position because I know it's counterproductive when someone is veeeery oppose to your position.
When they speak about politics I mostly try to make them question their positions and beliefs by asking questions of giving facts giving a impression of neutrality.
Don´t get me wrong I do proclame myself a feminist loud and proud but I know how and when its productive to do so.


This opinion might be a bit controversial here but This website gives a very interesting input on what I'm saying:
"People are irrational.  One of the ways I know this is true because there’s an entire book written about it.  An example of how we act irrationally is called diagnosis bias.

A particularly fascinating study showed that the smallest change in the way you describe someone can completely alter the way you perceive their behavior.  How about an example?

A university class (unknowing lab rats) had a substitute professor.  To introduce the professor, the class members were given short bios.  What they didn’t know was that half the bios had been very slightly altered (e.g., exchanging warm, positive adjectives for cold, callous ones).

After the lecture, the students were asked to review the professor.  The entire class saw the same man say the same things, yet the reviews were split 50/50 positive and negative.  Half the class said he was personable, considerate, and engaged, while the other half said he was ruthless, would do anything for success, and didn’t care about students or people."


​

There is another thread here that gives excellent advice on how man (in this case teenage boy) can help: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFeminists/comments/dajc0u/how_could_i_be_a_feminist_as_a_teenage_boy/

ps: My boyfriend had the same issue on his work - it sucks.

u/Ouruborealis · 19 pointsr/AskFeminists

You can never "get rid" of your privilege. It's something you have that you didn't ask for and the whole point of having it is that you aren't necessarily aware of it. So, in your example, there's lots of ways for white people to be allies, but it starts with educating yourself about the nature of whiteness and white supremacy, and ultimately ends in white people becoming active, vocal anti-racists who work towards anti-oppression by changing themselves, institutions, and by supporting people of color. Some people aspire to the term "race-traitor" in doing anti-white-supremacy work.

This model works pretty well for all types of privilege. The formula goes like this: you realize you have systemic privilege or benefit from the status quo (the way things currently are) in a way that is unfair/undeserved based on some arbitrary and uncontrollable characteristic that maybe before you took for granted (you are white, you were born to a wealth family, you're a citizen, you are able bodied, your gender is not considered inferior, your sexual orientation is not illegal). At this point, you should begin learning more both about the history of this injustice as well as more about what work is already being done to address it. Sometimes this is hard because it means learning to listen to people we have been explicitly taught are not competent or valuable. It means learning to take directions and leadership from people who we have been explicitly taught are not "leaders".

u/noodleworm · 1 pointr/AskFeminists

Dude, all I can say is read this book, because I don't have time to quote all the studies mentioned in it:

Delusions of Gender:The Real Science Behind Sex Differences
by Cordelia Fine


I will address what I have time to off the top of my head:

>Mens' brains are, on average 10% larger. Wikipedia, Web M.D., DailyMail, reporting on research done by the University of Cambridge

Sir, brain size as a link to intelligence was a thing in Victorian times. But there is still no strong correlation between brain size and intelligence. if it were true, Elephants would be the dominant species of the land. Are you going to cite phrenology next?

>Men are better suited to withstand pain.

childbirth
Also you would not believe how often gender being primed in a study affects the results. Were these people told we're seeing who can stand more pain. Were men feeling their masculinity was at stake and withheld longer? Also why does this come into equality. When it comes to choice I have seen a hell of a lot more women endure.

>The difference in laymans' terms, is that grey matter is associated with processing and depth of analysis, while white matter is associated with speed of response and speed of neural activity. I.e, men potentially process 6-7 times more heavily, while women process potentially 6-7 times less deeply, but at a rate that is potentially 10 times faster.

Well this is misleading as hell. You do dance around the fact at what it suggests, and what its assumed parts of the brain do, but negate to mention the overwhelming lack of evidence connecting these brains structures with measurable human behaviors. Humans have wildly varying brains, and on average which is they key word all over your argument, women and men can have different structure, but the structures being responsible for measurable differences? No, someone looked at it and said 'oh, must be why women are good at languages'. Also you speak as if all of these areas are mutually exclusive. That a person will be one way or another. But negate to include the numerous humans who are good at both languages and mathematics?

Interesting one researcher who is a big advocate of gender differences Simon Baron-Cohen, when discussing his tests for empathy quotients, and typing brains into a female and male type brain, was able to show (under his conditions of what a male brain is) that most men have a male brain. But even his research found that just under 50% of women have a female types brain. Research has consistently shown there is a great number of women who are much more similar to what we believe the average man is. So many in fact, that anyone who insists on segregating all people on the basis of gender is negating that their theories fall flat when faced with the people to whom 'on average' does not describe.

Generally your whole argument- (and its sad, because I can see how confident you are in this, you really do feel superior and justified in your neurosexism) - is flawed because nearly all of it is based and correlation and causation assumptions. (i.e - more men do maths, mens brains are different, therefore, mens brains make them good at maths) Well, Kids whose parents own coffee makers are proven to be are more intelligent, that doesn't mean proximity to coffee makers raises IQ.

You are not unbiased here. You had beliefs, and saw something to back them up, and took it, have you looked for flaws, have you actually tries to say 'now, is it possible this isn't so simple?) I'm guessing not, because you don't want to, you are comfortable with what you believe.

You don't want to think about poor controls, gender priming in exams, stereotype bias or anything that would require you to doubt yourself for a split second.

I'm proven to have a gender neutral brain. I don't fit female patterns, my psychiatrist suggested I have mild autism. What do you have to say about me and my right to equality?

Actually, I can't be assed to pull out my kindle and search for each of your points, seriously, just read the book.
It covers everything you've mentioned. With lots of cited research articles so you can double check it all. The point of the book is that we are astoundingly sure that science backs up sexism as a society, but under further investigation, most of the science can be debunked, and what little there is at best shows a slight margin. Socialization is overwhelmingly responsible for the result on which most assumptions are based.

Read that, then we'll talk.

I also recommend bad science by Ben Goldacre. Which covers the topis of people relying on studies way to easily and not realizing how shoddy the methodology is.



u/Mauve_Cubedweller · 6 pointsr/AskFeminists

Also: opening up space and providing methodological instruments to allow for the academic study of men and masculinities - something that wasn't even on the horizon until early 3rd wavers rolled onto the scene.

If you're a dude looking for what the 3rd wave has done for men, I'd say that's a pretty big check mark right there.

Here are some resources for you to look at, if you're interested:

  1. Masculinities, by R.W. Connell
  2. The Men and the Boys, by R.W. Connell
  3. Men's Lives, edited by Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner
  4. Men and Masculinities, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted entirely to the examination of men and men's lives.
  5. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, by Lisa Wade and Myra Marx Ferree. Features a whole lot of discussion about men and masculinities

    This is just the tip of the iceberg of academic research on men and men's lives, and the overwhelming majority of it is a direct result of the revolutions in feminist thought brought forth by what we now think of as 3rd wave feminists.

    Now bear in mind that this is all academic stuff, but think about what that means for a moment: each semester, tens of thousands of students from all over the world, are asked to think critically and sociologically (or anthropologically or psychologically, whatever your preferred brand happens to be) about men, men's lives, and the issues facing men and boys today. The textbook I'm currently working on has a whole chapter that focuses on the challenges young men and boys face in North American schools, and the textbook I'm using to teach a sociology of gender course this year devotes about half of its space to examinations of men of all shapes, sizes, orientations, and expressions. That's huge. That's really huge. It's huge because action - and activism - need to be grounded in knowledge, and that's what 3rd wave feminists have helped to provide; knowledge of the unique and often serious challenges facing men and boys today.

    So that's what 3rd wave feminism has done for men and boys in academia. I'm sure there are resources around online that can help expand on this.
u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/AskFeminists

> Is feminism a movement to heighten the rights of women so that both sexes interact societally as equals?

At its very basest definition, that IS what the political ideology of feminism is about. Here is the link to the Wikipedia page about feminism, where you can learn the basics.

> Or does it move that women are superior to men?

Please keep in mind that there are many different variants of feminism. Some feminists do believe that women are superior to men. However, they do not represent all or even most feminists.

The best thing to do to familiarize yourself with feminism is to pick up a Feminist Theory Reader and just dedicate time to approaching the different schools of thought yourself. This is valuable because learning about any type of political theory or philosophy will help you understand movements associated with those theories or philosophies better.

u/31November · 2 pointsr/AskFeminists

MtF here-- I'm not all trans views nor am I the only trans-feminist view.

First of all, it doesn't necessarily make you a TERF. TERFs generally hate trans folk, at least in my experience. Being uncomfortable and hating aren't the same.

​

Second, while I don't know about that book (and it sounds like they have a deep misunderstanding of gender identity,) I do believe that Yaviv is just a sick individual who is using the trans movement for his or her or whatever the pronoun is's own fetishes. Yaviv does not represent all trans people, just as Martin Shkreli doesn't represent all white people.

​

Third, regarding children transitioning, I want to ask you a favor. At your local library, browse through the online catalog and try to find the transgender section. There should be a variety of books on what being trans is, what the LGBTQ trends are, etc-- but I want you to specifically find the memoirs. I don't remember many names, but I remember this one: https://www.amazon.com/Redefining-Realness-Path-Womanhood-Identity/dp/1476709130

It discusses being transgender as a child the way she experienced it. I could tell you my experiences as a child-- and I didn't even know the word transgender until I was a sophomore in high school and my friend wanted to beat down a transgender freshmen and I learned about the concept of being trans. I acknowledge that transgender minors are a touchy topic, but I think that if you read about how many of us know from a young age that we are trans, then that'll help. Even so, you can support one part of the community without supporting another. It's like listening to a politician: You can totally support (Using this so I don't flare up tensions) Abraham Lincoln on his view of slaves without supporting his economic views and still overall support the Lincoln presidency.

u/Something_CleverHere · 10 pointsr/AskFeminists

> Feminism, at least on here, seems to completely ignore those factors and jump straight for 'social construct' with no evidence, no reasoning, and no discussion.

This is a false assertion on your part. There is a lot of very powerful evidence that gender is in fact the product of social forces and has very little to do with biology. This evidence emerges from decades of intensive research by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and even biologists - who will often point out that while humans are a sexually dimorphic species, the extent of that dimorphism is fairly small.

One of the reasons you might not be seeing this evidence in discussions of gender online is because, frankly, having to stop a discussion to provide links to this exhaustive mountain of evidence every time someone with little knowledge of the material demands to see it is frustrating and tiresome. There are hundreds - thousands - of introductory textbooks from sociology, anthropology, gender studies, and psychology that talk about the social construction of gender; if you want to see the evidence, then look there. Most feminists accept the academic consensus that gender is primarily the product of culture, and because that consensus is grounded in the best possible empirical research, you should accept it too.

Or don't. I'm not your boss. But if you don't accept it, then you should accept that in rejecting the social construction of gender, you're also rejecting the preponderance of evidence, which might not be the best place to plant your flag.

>I think saying it's 100% socially constructed is probably wrong too...

Good thing that's not what most people are saying. Bodies exist. They are the things onto which we inscribe our cultural values. But they are also incredibly malleable and so they are shaped and reshaped by the dictates of culture.

Why do children raised in poverty have poorer health outcomes than those raised in middle class or rich environments? Because poverty correlates with poorer diets, fewer calories consumed per day, and a lack of regular access to gyms or after-school fitness programs. Poor bodies are shaped in different ways than rich bodies because of culture. I mean, hell, the foundation of epidemiology is the recognition that cultural forces have enormous impact on bodies.

Why are men bigger and stronger than women? Biology? Perhaps, but we also cannot overlook the fact that in our society - and in many others - men are expected to consume an average of 300-400 additional calories per day than women. Is this because men are "naturally" bigger and stronger than women, or are men bigger and stronger than women because they've historically had access to higher calorie diets (which we know result in bigger, stronger people)? Do men have more muscle mass because testosterone, or do they have more muscle mass because they are incentivized to be more muscled than women - who are treated worse if their own muscle mass begins to impact their perceived femininity? Men are supposed to be big and strong; women are supposed to be petite and "trim" or "fit but not overly muscled". Men know this and women know this, and our recognition of these normative standards will pressure us to sculpt our bodies in different ways.

What I'm saying is that the cliches of "men are strong because biology, men like blue because culture" is reductionist to the point of being useless. The reality is far, far more complicated than this, but in the end, in light of decades of research into the question of nature v. nurture, the broad consensus is "a little bit of biology, and a whole boatload of culture".

u/glaneuse · 3 pointsr/AskFeminists

It should be noted that not every study about gender is accurate or trustworthy. According to this book on neurological studies, often the studies without any rigourous methodologies get a lot of press because they promote existing ideas about the gender binary, while studies that do not conform to our existing idea of gender will get no press whatsoever, no matter how well executed the study was. It's worth examining the methodologies behind a study before believing that it holds water! (I highly recommend the book, if studies on gender interest you! It is so engrossing and well written, good for laypeople and more scientific folks alike!)

u/Skydragon222 · 4 pointsr/AskFeminists

I once had the pleasure of hearing the feminist biologist, Marlene Zuk, speak. She was fantastic and I think you should check out her book [Sex on Six Legs] (https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Six-Legs-Lessons-Language/dp/015101373X)

Also, if you're not afraid of delving into psychology and neuroscience. I'd also recommend Cordelia Fine's [Delusions of Gender] (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494261794&sr=1-1&keywords=delusions+of+gender)

u/FeministBuzz · 0 pointsr/AskFeminists

Radical feminism is an actual movement that has a history and certain parameters for ideology (the Wikipedia entry is extremely vague and does not do it justice). I'm sorry for being rude in my previous comment, but it just ticks me off when people on the internet think "radical feminism" means being feminist and angry, or feminist and extreme. Radical feminists tend to be all of those things, but simply being angry or extreme doesn't make someone a radfem. Words have meanings.

I took a look at the thread you linked. Apart from the academic jargon that means nothing in the real world (there was a lot of this), they're basically saying that although gender is socially made up/imposed, it also has real world consequences. Well, yes, every radfem in the world would agree with that. That doesn't mean that sex-reassignment surgery is the best way to go.

If a born-female wants to be masculine, she can; if a born-male wants to be feminine, he can. Why take hormones and change one's body? If you think about it, it's actually reinforcing really negative, sexist stereotypes ("I have a wee-wee but I like dresses and pink; I must be a girl because only girls can like dresses and pink").

The trans "argument" usually relies on the de-bunked idea that people are born with "male" or "female" brains. Putting aside the obvious sexism of this argument, it's actually not scientifically valid (link to an awesome feminist book on neurology that shows how our brains adapt to our environments via something called neuroplasticity, and we are not born with inherently "masculine" or "feminine" brains): http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/

And finally, yes, radfems hate the word "cis". It's an insulting world that implies women are privileged for a) being born female and b) being socialized into femininity (gender role), which is just ritualized submission.

u/Residentgazella · -3 pointsr/AskFeminists

First of all I don't agree with that viewpoint. I just want to know how to logically and calmly refute it.

For the male side maybe they would say it could also be a time sink, yes. If you google 500 dates you'll see both men and women who have gone on hundreds of dates, this guy wrote a book
https://www.amazon.com/500-Dates-Dispatches-Online-Dating/dp/1629144665 and an example is men and women who went on hundreds of dates http://whisper.sh/stories/1f27435c-4e63-4c93-a2a6-aa703e1c8bc0/17-Dating-Experts-Whove-Gone-On-Hundreds-Of-Dates-Spill-Their-Secrets

I also found: Elizabeth Hoad decided to she was over getting hurt by men and after 221 dates.

I guess not everyone does, but some date a huge number of people. Even without a date, finding them can be a large sink of time, I guess the person would say.

How would you refute that?

u/oleka_myriam · 31 pointsr/AskFeminists

Actually the research is there and a lot of is very reputable stuff carried out by psychologists with controls and peer review and so on.

For example did you know that when a woman is taking a test in a male-dominated room of people also taking the test, her score (once you control for natural aptitude which the researchers are able to do statistically) is inversely proportional to the number of men in the room?

Stuff like this is all around us. Men don't know it and don't see it, and therefore don't think it exists. Women know it exists, but men don't listen to us.

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