This male-worship is not uncommon among women. My MIL is the same way. Every time when I was pregnant, she would tell me how much she hoped for a grandson, and was clearly disappointed when we kept having girls. My own mother did the same thing, too.
[/quote]
Lots of grandmothers hope for granddaughters, too. But your misogyny-tinted glasses filter that out.
[/quote]
[quote=zk]I pointed out that lots of grandmothers hope for granddaughters. Again, that’s not dependent on your M.T.G., it’s evidence of them. Do you really think that significantly more than 50% of grandmothers hope for grandsons rather than granddaughters?[/quote]
Yes, more parents hope for boys than girls (don’t know about grandchildren). In some countries and cultures, this desire for a son is even greater than in the U.S. And I’m sure you know that many girls are often killed in utero or shortly after birth. Other girls are sold into slavery or abandoned.
……….
“The preference for boys, the authors find, seems to be largely driven by fathers. At least since 1941, men have told pollsters by more than a two-to-one margin that they would rather have a boy. Women have only a slight preference for daughters. Taking all of this evidence together, the authors conclude that parents in the United States do have a preference for boys over girls.”
“PRINCETON, NJ — If Americans could have only one child, they would prefer that it be a boy rather than a girl, by a 40% to 28% margin, with the rest having no preference or no opinion on the matter. These attitudes are remarkably similar to what Gallup measured in 1941, when Americans preferred a boy to a girl by a 38% to 24% margin.”
[quote=zk]Ok, that’s just on the first half of the first page of our debate. Need I go on?
[quote=CA renter]
I can’t remember a single point that you’ve made that doesn’t rely on this underlying assumption. Your statements that I’ve “made things up,” or that I’m “imagining things” don’t count as logical arguments.
[/quote]
Well, there’s a few for you, just from the first half page.
[quote=CA renter]
To the contrary, you have not witnessed a single situation that I’ve talked about…so YOU are the one “making things up,” based on your faulty assumption that I am incapable of identifying sexism or misogyny because I experienced it at an early age — as do most people
[/quote]
There you go misrepresenting my position again. Do you not realize that everything we’ve written is right there for anyone to read? Do you not realize how desperate you appear when you misrepresent your debate opponent’s position?
I never said you are incapable of identifying sexism or misogyny. I said you might sometimes see it where it doesn’t exist. [/quote]
No, you stated that I was “making things up” or “imagining” things that didn’t exist. You weren’t suggesting, or even referring to it being simply your opinion. You were stating it as a fact.
Needless to say, that implies that you think you know more about what I see and experience than I do. It implies that you know more about sexism and misogyny if you feel that you are qualified to determine when I should or should not see it. This is what I called delusional thinking in my earlier post…because it is.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
, BTW; but you wouldn’t necessarily notice it because you think it’s “normal” behavior. For your information, guiding your daughter to pink toys is sexist; dragging her to malls and nail parlors, without guiding her to “boys” events and activities, with similar frequency and enthusiasm, is sexist; suggesting to your children that there are “boys activities” and “girls activities” is sexist.
[/quote]
While I’ve never done any of the above, I don’t think that guiding a boy to boys’ activities more than girls’ activities if he’s shown a predisposition to like boys’ activities, and your time and resources are limited, is sexist.[/quote]
Well, you might not like to hear this, but that is sexism. You are stereotyping based on gender. And when you suggest that it’s okay to encourage or allow boys to exclude girls because “that’s what they want,” then you are being sexist.
I didn’t ignore your question about the parents’ intentions.
[/quote]
[quote=zk]You didn’t ignore them? Did you discuss them with somebody else? Because there certainly wasn’t anything on this forum about them.[/quote]
I addressed this issue multiple times. The parents are well-known to me, these issues have been discussed at length. They want their “boys to be boys,” and don’t want girls around because they apparently believe that including girls would somehow prevent boys from “being boys,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
Just the fact that you insist that there are “girls activities” and “boys activities” is sexist in itself (read the literature, you don’t have to take my word for it).
[/quote]
There’s literature all over the map on this subject.
No, there’s not. This is sexism, plain and simple.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
The fact that you think that the spectrum of gender-based behavior looks more like a barbell with huge curves at each end and very little mixing in the middle shows that you have sexist beliefs. So much of what you see and believe is socialized, it is not innate, as you seem to think it is.
[/quote]
If the curve really does look like that, is it sexist to believe that it looks like that? [/quote]
Except that it doesn’t look like that. Why are you pretending to know about something about which you’re so clearly uninformed?
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
As to your inability to see all this sexism and misogyny in your own life, if you believe that it’s “natural” for boys to do “boy things” and girls to do “girl things,” then it’s unlikely that you would question the parents about their behaviors…that’s probably why you “haven’t seen these behaviors” in 15 years of parenting.
[/quote]
How would believing that it’s natural for most boys to want to do boy things and most girls to want to do girl things would prevent me from noticing the following behaviors:
An adult rip pink paper from a boy’s hand or otherwise discourage him from liking pink
And women who have both sons and daughters will often go on and on about their sons, while largely skipping over the importance of their daughters, or just mention the girls as a side story or talk about how they like to go shopping together — but rarely talk about their girls’ achievements in the same way they do their sons’ achievements, even when the daughters are more accomplished.
women tell me, point blank, that they don’t really like their daughters, but they love their sons because of this supposed “mother and son” relationship.
If a parent has a new baby, and it’s a boy, all you hear is “my son…my son…my son…my boy…my boy.” When people have a daughter, they tend not to mention the gender as often, usually just referring to gender when it would seem unnatural to do otherwise.
Etcetera. Even if I thought those behaviors were normal (I don’t), I would notice them. When people walk by me at work to get where they’re going it’s normal. But I still notice it.[/quote]
Clearly, you wouldn’t necessarily notice them. You didn’t even notice the blatant sexism right here on this thread.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
Do you frequently associate with families who have sons? Do they bring their boys along to play/hang out with your daughter, or do they drop their sons off at other “boys’ activities” or another boy’s house before they come to visit with your family (I’m not talking about the infrequent guest, I’m talking about patterns of regular, consistent behavior)? If you notice it, do you question it, or do you just chalk it up to “normal” behavior? If you don’t challenge it, you’re unlikely to hear their reasons for doing it.
[/quote]
We do frequently associate with families who have sons. On occasion, they’ll come over. Especially if the whole families are getting together. But, generally, they’ve got other activities lined up. That goes for the brothers and the sisters of my daughter’s friends. Kids are busy nowadays.[/quote]
You’re excusing it away. I’m sure that if these people’s sons were girls instead, they would manage to make it to your get-togethers. We’ve seen this more times than we can count, but we don’t excuse it; we ask them why their sons are not able to make it, listen to the lame excuse about how he had to go to a male friend’s house, and watch them squirm.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
Yes, my mother literally shoved me out of the way to get to my husband on multiple occasions — literally push me aside physically as she bee-lined for him with arms outstretched calling out something along the lines of, “Oh, it’s so good to see you, son.” Yes, shove. Again, I’m not making this up, and am not imagining things under any circumstances.
[/quote]
Well, that’s a shame. And it probably does contribute to your perceptions of misogyny. For better or worse.
[quote=CA renter]
How do I know that you can’t identify sexism or misogyny? Because you have claimed that overtly sexist behaviors and beliefs aren’t sexist or misogynistic. The segregation of boys and girls is sexist.
[/quote]
I never advocated or supported the segregation of boys and girls. [/quote]
When you encourage, accept, or try to justify the fact that people will want to segregate their children based on sex, then you are advocating and supporting the segregation of boys and girls.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
Exaggerating the differences between genders, and claiming that environmental influences aren’t responsible for most of what you describe, is sexist.
[/quote]
Or realistic. [/quote]
You can call it by any term you’d like, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is sexist.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
Claiming that there are “boys activities” and “girls activities” and having a very binary view of the differences between genders is sexist.
[/quote]
Claiming that there are “boys activities” and “girls activities is realistic. Claiming that there aren’t is wishful thinking (for those who would wish for such a thing).[/quote]
Let me ask you this, CA Renter: If I think the sexes are different, how is that sexist? I’m not saying one is better than the other. Just that they’re different.
What if they are different, and you’re hindering their development by believing they’re not?[/quote]
There ARE differences, but they are not nearly as great as you seem to think they are. Again, there is more grey than black and white in this world.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
Claiming that a woman who describes sexist or misogynistic experiences is “imagining things” is sexist.
[/quote]
[quote=zk]Not if they’re imagining things, it’s not.[/quote]
The fact that you believe yourself to be the arbiter of what is “real” or “imagined” in someone else’s life when you have absolutely no knowledge or experience regarding these things shows that you are delusional. As I’ve said, nothing that I’ve written has been made up or imagined. Your suggestion that I don’t know what I’m talking about just because it doesn’t comport with your extremely narrow view of how the world works speaks volumes about you.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
As for the “expert” comment, when I suggested that you don’t know as much about sexism as I do because you’re not a woman, you came back with a comment about a female with an IQ of 70 not knowing as much as a male “expert” on sexism. I understand that you might not have meant that as a direct comment about the status of you and me, but it certainly comes across in a peculiar way…
[/quote]
You said, “ You are not an expert regarding sexism and misogyny, and you certainly don’t know more than I do about it because of the simple fact that you are not a woman.”
By that logic, any woman knows more about misogyny than every man. I was pointing out the ridiculousness of that claim by pointing to an unintelligent, uneducated, imperceptive, unobservant, lazy woman vs. a man highly educated in the field. Do you think that moronic woman who never gets out knows more about misogyny than the Harvard PhD? The question isn’t who knows what being a victim of misogyny feels like. The question is who knows more about misogyny.
If you think that’s peculiar, I think you’re too sensitive. I thought it was pretty obvious what I was saying. [/quote]
It was clear that I was speaking about you and me. Only a woman would know more about sexism and misogyny than I do. I’m not a woman with an IQ of 70, and you’re not an expert.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
Finally, I sincerely doubt that you would tell a black man that you know more about racism, or tell a gay man that you know more about homophobia.
[/quote]
Sometimes I think you don’t even read my posts. I said I would tell a close friend or a stranger on a web forum if I thought they saw hate where there was none. And then I said, “But just because I think he occasionally sees racism where there isn’t any doesn’t necessarily mean that I think I have superior race-spotting skills in general.”[/quote]
Actually, yes, your statement would certainly indicate that you think you are better qualified to spot “real” or “imagined” racism than a black man, in just the same way that your insistence that I’m “imagining things” implies that you are better able to distinguish between “real” and “imagined” sexism/misogyny than I am. That is beyond laughable.
[quote=zk][quote=CA renter]
I sincerely doubt that if they had related some of their experiences with prejudice to you that you would tell them that they “have issues” or that they are “imagining things” or “making things up.” We may never know, because it’s unlikely that we’ll get to experience this in a common setting like Piggington, but I really and truly doubt that you would have talked to them in the same manner that you’ve done with me. Just something to think about…[/quote]
No, unless they were close friends, I wouldn’t talk to them like I’ve done with you. Of course not. That’s not how society works. If they were close friends, of course I would tell them those things. Why wouldn’t I?
Here’s another question for you: You said I probably had no idea what it was like to be catcalled by strangers. I mentioned that that had actually happened to me on a couple occasions, and that I really liked it. I was watching “The Seventies” a couple weeks ago on CNN. Great show. They had footage from the ‘70s of feminists having an “ogle day,” where women would ogle men. There was a feminist trying to “harass” a man on the street, in front of TV cameras. She was saying what nice legs he had and how his pants brought out the best in him. She didn’t seem to notice the look on the guy’s face, which was some surprise, but mostly pleasure. The guy was loving it. She went on to say, into some microphone, how they were trying to show what it felt like to be catcalled by strangers. I remember thinking that those women didn’t understand men at all. I think most men would really like getting catcalled by women they didn’t know. And the main reason these women didn’t understand men is that, like so many feminists in the ’70s, they believed gender identity/behavior was a social construct. They thought that men and women were mostly the same, prior to social conditioning. So they thought that, since women don’t like being catcalled, neither would men.
Do you think that if all children were raised in a gender-neutral fashion, that boys would hate being catcalled by strangers, or that girls would enjoy it? Do you think if a girl, one individual girl, was raised in a gender-neutral fashion, that she would enjoy being catcalled, as most men would?[/quote]
Um, yeah… This really shows how little you know about sexism and misogyny. Re-read my post to scaredy about why women want men to protect them — the one about how many females are sexually assaulted before the age of 18 (which is an understated statistic). See, many/most women perceive sexually aggressive men to be threatening, so they don’t take catcalling as a compliment, they consider it a threat.
After all, female groupies and male stalkers are similar in almost every way, other than their sex. So why are stalkers considered threatening, while groupies are considered to be fun, or maybe a nuisance?
