(Part 2) Best products from r/FeMRADebates

> As I never seen any feminist say anything good about masculinity

Do you think you might be overgeneralizing here just a little bit? <cough, rules of the sub, cough>

Perhaps there is some truth to this in that feminists generally would argue that anybody can have any trait, and thus calling certain traits masculine isn't helpful. But toxic masculinity definitely refers to an extreme expression of masculinity that is, well, toxic. One of my favorite authors, Junot Diaz, won a Pullitzer for describing this type of machismo, in fact, describing it so convincingly a lot of readers believe he's celebrating it rather than condemning it (I'd disagree).

You don't think feminists like, say, Ned Stark? He was a pretty archetypal manly, manly good man's man.

I don't have a link to an electronic copy, I'm afraid. There's a table in the textbook he authored, entitled Apes of the World. I've got a copy buried somewhere in a closet at home gathering dust. Don't know if you're the same way with old textbooks.

And your bringing up pongidae would probably explain it. There's an older classification system of hominids that put all of gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans in the same clade, which was called Pongidae, or "Pongid apes" or "great apes." It was differentiated from gibbons, which were "lesser apes." I'm not quite sure when it fell out of favor, but if was between the 70s/early 80s and when I was an undergrad (87-91) that would explain the different takes. I think at the times bonobos might not have even been seen as a distinct species.

These days, so far as I know, the preferred taxonomy has chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas all in one genus with different species (Pan troglodytes, Pan paniscus, and Pan gorilla respectively) and orangutans...which live on a completely different continent and evolutionarily diverged at a much different time...in a completely different genus (Pongo pygmaeus). You still see the terms "great apes" and "lesser apes" thrown around, though - now with bonobos treated as great apes, though.

Anyhoo....details, details. Whether humans are the least sexually dimorphic primates or just less dimorphic than many...the point is valid. We can probably conclude some things about human sexual preference and the tendency of some men to beat their chests (see what I did there? Nyuk-nyuk) from sexual dimorphism.

The ideal of affirmative action is supposed to be to give equal opportunity to people who're presently disadvantaged by circumstance, such as not having access to as good quality of education or extracurricular resources. Sometimes it works out- this book makes for a useful case study. But while race makes a much better proxy for those kinds of issues than a prior of ignorance, on top of being easy and cheap to track, it's a far from perfect proxy, and has pronounced capacity for polarization.

This reminds me of all the medicines that say they should not be taken during pregnancy purely because it has not been tested.

However, who is going to submit all this testing to be done? Which mother and which child?

Men are seen as more disposable and this is one of the few advantages....things to prevent early disposing are designed for those who are most disposable.

The complaints about generic designs being in favor of male hands and body types are simply targeting their main audience.

So when do we get more egalitarian designs for Thunder from Down Under, Twilight, Rom Coms and such that are designed for women?

Maybe this is a new business opportunity! Start marketing those designs! Oh wait...these already exist!

You can quickly see proactive thing like this: https://www.murseworld.com/

They have nursing uniforms and design for men only. Seems like a more niche but good market........

...which is the same for many things discussed in the article! Like this: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Neck-21001-Essentials-Fiberglass/dp/B003VPAF10/?tag=toolguyd-20

There are ergonomically designed tools for women out there.

It seems like this article was poorly researched and was simply created to try and get outrage clicks. I find this to be fairly common from The Guardian.

>On the plus side, I didn't realize Alberti was a woman. I like her work.

Ahhh, me too! Taxi to the Dark Side is one of my favourite movies and I didn't know the cinematographer was a woman. There's a book called "A Question of Torture" which is a good accompaniment to the movie if you're into that kind of stuff. The article also mentioned Fruitvale Station and Tracks which were great as well, and I know Tracks has been cited for having great cinematography.

Here's a wonderful novel about white people, with the help of Disney, engineering their DNA into pure Disney cute wholesomeness. Bubbles, the Disney clone gets lost in the non manipulated DNA forbidden zone, where the black people live. A fantastic piece of Black American literature.
https://www.amazon.com/Negrophobia-Urban-Parable-Darius-James/dp/0312093500
The word for the OP's post is eugenics, and was THE cornerstone of the formation of the UN.
Just google United Nations Eugenics and see.
All of this science is geared towards serving the upper class, and none of it will ever be for the benefit of the normal people like us.

INTJ generally when taking such tests, but I can't say that I consider them all that worthwhile.

I take the Stuart J Ritchie approach to IQ (he's the author of Intelligence: All That Matters) ... that it's valuable to be aware of the concept but not particular worthwhile finding out your own.

> BR: Is there any reason why a person would want to know their IQ?

> SR: I don't think it's particularly useful.

> I don't know what my IQ is. One of the guys in the psychology department here knows, because he tested me. And there's always a slight awkwardness when we're talking about IQ. He knows what my IQ is. But I have not, and I have no interest in knowing.

> If every law on the books were perfectly enforced, almost everyone would be in jail.

Agreed, but this is, in my view, a problem with the law, not responsibility. We have far too many stupid laws in existence, and not enough mechanisms to eliminate them. Harvey Silverglate has an excellent book on this topic from a business standpoint, and Matt Taibbi has another fantastic one demonstrating it from a criminal vs. white collar crime perspective. I'm personally a huge critic of American copyright law, which makes most normal internet behavior illegal in some way.

>I would love it if everyone played by the rules and the rules were relaxed a bit from what they currently are and we held people responsible.

I wasn't just talking about responsibility when it comes to the law, I was talking about responsibility in a general sense. Changing your oil is a responsibility, but there's no law requiring it nor forbidding it (yet, I guess...sigh). Women should be held to the same legal standards as men, but they should also be held to the same general responsibility as men. Even if the behavior isn't illegal, if a man and women are drunk and have sex, it's usually assumed that the man was responsible for the behavior.

>Ultimately I agree with you, everyone should be responsible. Do you think that is possible with the current laws on the books? Practical?

No, but that's because we aren't holding politicians accountable. The U.S. Congress has been absolutely negligent in their duties for the past hundred years, ceding almost all of their power to the executive and judicial branch. Many of the laws you are talking about were never passed by an elected representative; they are policies of appointed bureaucrats in agencies Congress created so they wouldn't have to bother doing their job.

I'm not really arguing that people should be responsible, I'm arguing they are responsible, whether they admit it or not. Neglecting to take action is a failure of responsibility. So while I'd love to cut about 90% of federal laws and virtually all executive departments, I don't think it's an issue that's going to be addressed until people start thinking of responsibility as something they have rather than something other people will take care of for them.

It's certainly tempting to think this, but I'm not sure I agree - and I plan to make a case using several different but converging "lines" of evidence.

I just read a book by a dating coach the premise of which is that guys usually torpedo themselves in interacting with women by not being wholly present/vulnerable and "in the moment" - humans have very finely tuned detectors for insincerity, manipulation and dishonesty - so a lot of interaction is going to be based on truly embodying comfortable vulnerability, or being able to fake it convincingly. But notice here it is men who are being pretty much universally evaluated on social performance.

Here is a fascinating glimpse into this. The money quote:

> When I sense a guy's nervous we just can't fuck.... He's gonna come home rocking in the corner because either he either came in two seconds or he couldn't get hard. I don't wanna do that to a dude.... I can sense it so I don't let it happen I'm always protective of the male ego

(Emphasis mine)

Now, this is hugely interesting - here is a woman who has no shame (earlier in the same interview she talks about being the subject of a crude joke and finds it hilarilous) and is very aware of the sexual power she has over men - and she see rejection as protecting men. She seems like a very nice person and I don't doubt her conscious intent, but you could probably have a long-ish discussion about whether this is subconsciously a rationalization or not.

Now, as a benchmark, PUAs who are honest enough to report stats (KrauserPUA and Roosh are two examples), have around 40:1 (40 girls approached to one "close") - so the "AGL" gap, even for guys who are highly socially practised and have the time to approach lots of women - have a very low "return on investment." This is at a time when women are slut shamed less then at any other time in history (at least in the West). How much can we expect that gap to close?

I believe all this provides weight to a thesis that is almost universal across all XY sex selected species - Bateman's principle - men provide variance, women select the best mate they can get. Even in seahorses, males compete (even though they also gestate).

It's not something women generally or especially like to admit in my experience - which I why I think Lisa Ann may have been rationalizing above.

Anyway, here is a prediction: if we manage to get slut-shaming down to 0%, women will still only be promiscuous with the best men they can. Sexual inequality is a permanent feature of our species because it's an engine of evolution.

> There's the notion that younger people have been moving from the notion of becoming powerful to doing something they can be proud of. This has been a much larger movement for men...

I linked to this in my other comment here, but would like to point your attention to this article appropriately titled "A new masculinity". It argues that in lieu of traditional routes of initiation into manhood, a personalised search for self-actualisation is needed. It's an interesting read and I recommend it.

Following that, if anyone knows or is interested, what rights of passage are there for women? The article quotes Camille Paglia as saying: “A woman simply is, but a man must become...” Are women missing out on something by being assumed to be ready for adulthood? Research into ancient religions, the Hellenistic mysteries and medieval occultism show that culturally, rights of passage are seen as doors to higher levels of being, both socially and spiritually/emotionally. What's missing for women?

Pickety's is the long book that educated people like to have on their bookshelves. I've read a review or two so have a general idea about it and it seems plausible but gather some other economists complain about the methods or something. Somehow it reminds me of reactions to Guns, Germs and Steel.

I may not have explained myself very well but I don't think the rank idea is contradicted by demographic changes. You can have the same people lined up in the same order but with different income distributions.

The hypothesis is that there are a lot of interventions that seem to do something but don't actually change the ranking, which is a lot of what people actually care about.

It's laid out much better in Luxury Fever in the context of explaining why we would all be better off if we discouraged conspicuous consumption by e.g. taxing it.

It has been argued that private colleges have become a form of conspicuous consumption, with lots of easy student loan money and luxurious campuses built to attract it.

> If you're more knowledgeable about this issue, why not nudge the project in the right direction?

I question how many members of this sub recognize the gaps in their knowledge and are sincerely interested in addressing those gaps. For those who ARE interested in learning more, there are better sources of information than me. And maybe most importantly, I'm just not that interested in spending time here.

For those interested in learning more about the basic distinctions between schools of feminist thought, this encyclopedia entry is a decent if brief starting point. For those who want to learn more about the material and socialist feminist philosophies that have informed my particular perspective, the wikipedia entry on socialist feminism isn't the worst place to start. Friedrich Engel's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is a foundational piece for the movement; Angela Davis' Women, Race, and Class is a classic; Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives and The Socialist Feminist Project are interesting compilations; and for post-humanists in the crowd, Donna Haraway has some dense but thought-provoking stuff.