Actually, what I am saying is that nature is not always nice or civilized. When you get a bunch of drunk males into a room, their super ego goes down and they will begin to behave (almost literally) like animals. Is it right or wrong? I don't know, but it is not sexism. Is it to be expected? Yes. How do I know it is to be expected? Because you can easily replicate the situation. Go to Cancun if you want to see males in their most animal-state. Is it condonable? I do not know, but it is the way nature made us. Nature designed us to want reproduce - without our rules, morals, and what-have-you, we would be doing much worse things than asking to see private parts. Unfortunately, nature also gave us language, which means a lot of times males will utter really stupid things because their sex-drive takes over and their brain reaches a state of near-retardation (hence the popular phrase "show us your tits").
In shorter words - if you are a female in a bar that is overwhelmingly packed with males -- yes, you should very much expect to get harassed. Yes, it is not "right", but its the way nature made us so there is not a lot of sense in complaining about it. You could just as well complain about people being obese, because nature designed us to enjoy food. Am I saying women deserve to be harassed when they dress sexually? No, of course not. But what I am saying is that some males have less super ego than others, and it varies with the situation, so there are certain situations (like this one) in which a female could certainly expect to be harassed.
What utter bullshit. I've been in plenty of bars, while drunk, and never felt the need to sexually harass anyone.
You're just excusing sexist, asshole behaviour.
If I tell you that serial killers kill people because it is the nature of sociopaths, I am NOT EXCUSING it, I am EXPLAINING it.
But fair enough point about your reply being a counter-example, I stand corrected. I interpreted your reply as more akin to "your observation about general human behavior has absolutely no merit because not every human follows the same pattern, just look at me", rather than a formal logical counter-argument to an informal assertion made outside of a proof that not only personifies nature without the usual caveats but also to which a more charitable interpretation of being a comment in a discussion (not an attempt at a proof) would not apply the universal quantifier reserved for formal arguments. I guess I should have interpreted your reply more charitably as well, but in the other direction with respect to being an attempt at a proof.
That was my reply exactly, except I would've used fewer big words ;) I guess conversation and arguments like this still follow the same rules as formal logic - they're just applied in a fuzzier way.
I generally tend to avoid the less wrong set. While there is some good stuff on there, the bulk of it to me seems to be overwhelmingly arrogant and self-absorbed, which doesn't seem to strike me as likely to pick up any new biases, just regurgitate old ones.
Let's give you the benefit (a huge one) of the doubt here, I'll consider fully and without prejudice everything you're saying:
The statement you make is essentially that all behavior has an explanation behind it, no matter how distasteful or uncivilized. Fine, agreed. First, what is the value in pointing out this obvious conclusion? The only logical counter position would be to claim people have random and inexplicable behavior, a position which practically nobody holds in full sincerity.
You then continue to say that because behavior has an explanation, that behavior cannot be sexism. Literally, if some behavior can be explained by a surface comparison to animal behavior, or by similarities to vague concepts in evolutionary psychology, then it can't be sexism. Let's even accept your very unscientific and highly dubious observations about Cancun and male behaviors, and conclude from this that all males have irresistible animal instincts which compel them to act offensively and crudely.
We have two things here: first, only behaviors which cannot be explained in any other way can be considered sexism. That means that the only behavior which is sexist is the behavior which occurs when a person, in their mind, has the thought "I will now enact a sexist agenda" or something like that. If, for example, a person thinks "it would be okay to go and lick her tattoo" that is not sexist, because it can be explained as a result of poor socialization combined with repressed animal sex urges.
Second, we cannot complain about "natural" behaviors, because after all, they are natural. You might as well complain that it's not a full moon every night, or that the Sun is too bright in the Summer months. Tough, that's nature.
1. Only behavior which is motivated by an explicit intent to be sexist is sexist.
2. Behaviors which can be explained by appealing to "nature" or "instinct" (natural behaviors) do not merit complaint, and efforts to change or curb them are misplaced.
First, nothing is sexist! All behavior can be explained by appealing to base and instinctual motives. Sexual harassment in the workplace is unavoidable: what do you expect when you put a man next to or above a woman he finds attractive, for eight hours a day? Sexual discrimination in the workplace is also not sexist: it's not a discrimination against women, it's just a natural and active desire to engage with other males. And the situation described by the OP is also not sexist: those men aren't being inappropriately aggressive towards her because she's a woman and they don't respect her boundaries, it's just because they're sex-starved losers!
Second, and even more stupid: bigotry doesn't exist! If the standard for sexist behavior is very specific and limited intent to be sexist, then by analogy you can show that the standard for e.g., racism, is the same. And per the first conclusion, there then is no racism. Or homophobia. These are, after all, very natural expressions of revulsion and disgust for people not like ourselves, and we cannot be faulted for our instincts. Why, these very instincts are what brought us out of the jungle!
A third, less obvious conclusion, is that nothing can be done, or needs to be done about any of this. Women, don't like being manhandled? Don't go to bars where there are males, they can't help themselves. Non-whites, don't like receiving dirty looks or beatings? Stay away from white people, they have a natural revulsion for people not like them.
And whatever you do, don't complain! It's natural and to be expected!
So then, if you can't complain about it, if the behavior is completely natural, then the obvious conclusion is that if you are subjected to offensive-but-natural behavior, you share responsibility for that because you could have prevented it. After all, you have a brain woman, you could have predicted getting manhandled by a bunch of nerds! And everything else I "put in your mouth" is just a little bit more absurd than this. (But only a little, because this is a pretty stupid position to begin with.)
What you're employing here is a logical fallacy called appeal to nature, which in general is an appeal to something that is irrelevant. You haven't demonstrated that it's relevant at all to consider what is natural, even if we allow for your wildly exaggerated notion of nature. You are also being lazy and offensive.
No more value than the author of the article provides by pointing out she got hit on / harassed in a crowded bar full of males.
"You then continue to say that because behavior has an explanation, that behavior cannot be sexism."
I do not believe I ever said that, point it out to me if I am wrong. What I did say is that sexism is a different thing from say, sexual harassment, misogyny, sexuality, sex-drives, or anything else with the word sex in it. Like I pointed out before, my original gripe is that "sexism" is used incorrectly here. Call it sexual harassment, then we are good.
On the topic of complaining about sexual harassment - yes go forth and complain, or don't. I really don't care, but either way the words will be lost in the wind. The only thing you could do to prevent this behavior is make stricter laws about sexual harassment, and do we really want that? Should we start arresting people when they hit on others, unwarranted, in a bar, where single people go to find mates?
As for everything else, I'm not going to waste a bunch of time typing out answers because you seem to have derived many conclusions, some of which are true, but most have nothing to do with my actual arguments (they are related to the topic of sexism, so bonus points there). I say this with all due respect, and no sarcasm: this will help you construct better arguments and avoid fallacies:
I don't mind telling you either, that a key part of your argument is actually bullshit. You're relying entirely on categorical statements about an entire class of people, substantiated with nothing more than intuition and a trip to Cancun!
It's amazing that, with an argument like this, you could be so smug as to suggest a reading of a list of fallacies. You should go into sales.
One example of PC going wrong is the word "retarded" - the PC crowd thought "mentally challenged" would be a better term, even though retarded just means you are a bit slow, mentally-challenged makes it seem like thinking is an arduous task.
Suppose anytime someone was a jerk in public, took up an extreme and unsubstantiated view, and held closely to it despite multiple appeals to show him the obvious errors in his reasoning -- suppose we call that "Doing a Gavan" or "Woolerying" (although the latter would be unfair to your parents and family.)
Now, if this became really popular, then people who you would never in your life meet would start using it. You'd turn on the TV and people would be like "Oy! Check this Gavan out," and "Looks like he's pulling a Gavan wink". That would be quite annoying, to say the least. And this is in a case where you arguably did something to deserve it!
Now consider that you were born a certain way, and people use that word which describes you and your condition, as a pejorative. How would you feel living in a world where, by the mere fact of your birth, you and people like you are the object of jokes and insults.
I would not consider it going overboard to say that we as a society should make an effort to prevent this from happening.
(Also, it's strange that you don't oppose PC language on the basis that it attempts to alter a natural behavior. Natural behaviors are natural and nothing can be done about them, right?)
The fact that retarded was a clinical term is irrelevant, similarly I think "nigger" derived from some matter-of-fact observation. This is really just another manifestation of your idea that root causes matter. They don't -- not as much as impacts do, both legally and for many people morally as well. Also, again, reciprocity is not a requisite here -- there is no fair use policy for offensive words or behavior.
Whenever someone says "if they can use it so can I", I have to wonder "why would you want to?" Why would you ever want to refer to gay people as "fags" or black people as "niggers", even if they do call each other in such a way.
The latin niger means black
When you say "not supposed to" I'm curious by whose authority are you claiming that? For sake of argument, let's say there are some people out there who view homosexuality as an undesirable or defective or merely an "icky" thing. For example, they may not feel a gay man is evil or making a lifestyle choice, necessarily, but they may find it disasteful or uncomfortable, and they may not think it's psychologically healthy for two gay men to raise a child. Yet the "gay is 100% OK" crowd tends to demonize a person if they don't think exactly the same as they do. But if they do feel it's a negative thing, or something they feel is gross, why can't they use it as an insult? Just as they would use the insult of fat, stupid, ignorant, etc. By whose authority are certain insults not "allowed"? Is there some holy document which declares precisely and completely objectively which words you can and cannot say, or which thoughts you can and cannot express? And not I'm not talking about legal documents, those are clearly made up by humans, and vary by culture, time, fashion, etc.
It's this kind of nuance which is at the heart of why so many people don't agree with so-called Political Correctness. It's seen as an almost facist or Big Brother kind of thing where one group of people make these pronouncements about what some other group of people are and are not allowed to say, or think. There are shades of grey involved, clearly, where some cases are "black", and some "white-ish" but a whole lot of gray. But people on the P.C. bandwagon -- which also seem to correlate highly to US college students, professors and academics, especially non-STEM -- get on this moral high horse about what sounds like a very narrow and very strict definition about what's Right and what's Wrong to say or think. Which itself, to me, seems ludicrous at best, and unethical and oppressive at worse. A kind of close-minded authoritarianism about supposedly being open-minded and free. (BOGGLE)
When someone tells you he likes My Little Pony and you respond with “Man, you are so gay!” then that’s a problem. You are using “gay” as in insult, as if being gay were a bad thing. That’s the reasoning behind why many people think using “gay” in that manner is a bad idea. That works analogously for “retarded”.
That’s not to say you can’t express, say, disgust at someone liking My Little Pony. “Man, your taste fucking sucks!” is a perfectly alright response no one will have a problem with (beyond disagreeing whether My Little Pony is good or bad).
Again, I don’t want to ban people from using “gay” or “retarded” as insults. But when they do I will call them out and explain my reasoning.
Maybe some people do think it's a bad thing. Who are you to be the arbiter of objective truth, ethics and correctness on that point, to which all other person's thoughts must conform? And note that "bad" does not have to mean evil, it can just mean undesirable, disgusting, weak, defective, or non-ideal. For example, there's a good argument to be made that homosexuality is a flaw from a biological and evolutionary standpoint. It's certainly not a condition which leads to reproductive accomplishment given that M+M and F+F cannot literally produce a baby. And note that nothing about that argument says that homosexuality is morally wrong. A lot of people think shit smells bad, for example, though they don't find it evil or a "lifestyle choice", since it's a biological process.
Not true. In the automotive world "retarded" is used quite often in regards to your distributor, vacuum and timing. By adjusting things, your timing can be advanced or retarded. It is not a negative thing. It is simply how engines are tuned.
http://georgiajag.com/Documents/Vacuum%20Advance%20versus%20...
So, yes, sometimes “retarded“ can be a neutral term.
It truly is a shame that a very legitimate word (retard) with a very legitimate meaning (to delay or slow progress) that had been used in legitimate ways for years was co-opted to insult people with diminished metal capacity. (While technically true, it is mean. Much like calling me whitey is technically true as I am white... it is generally an insult.) If not for that, the use of phrases like "well that was retarded" would still be legit uses since it is in spirit of the original meaning and not too far from saying "well, that was stupid". One could even argue that in a slightly less PC world we could still be using it to describe things and actions... just not people. But that is wishful thinking. The damage has been done.
Side note: It is some what also the case with the word "gay" which used to just mean "happy". Although, when people say "well, that was gay" they are generally not meaning "happy" so we've pretty much departed from that. I don't know the whole history of the N-word, but I don't believe there was ever a non-hateful use of the word (even taking into consideration its origin).
This gets hurled as an insult often enough that using it is a bad idea. If you use it, you class yourself alongside the hateful morons who use it as an insult.
> retarded just means you are a bit slow
Ideally, perhaps; that is not the case in reality.
Even if you don't agree that this sort of prejudice and stereotyping amounts to discrimination, the discussion still makes sense. Why? Because most discrimination -- whether racist or sexist -- really happens at the level of social institutions rather than at an individual level. (Like, if you think that you are not a racist because you personally don't see anything wrong with black people, then you probably don't understand racism as it exists today.) The original post is actually trying to cut at the heart of the problem of sexism, which exists prior to (and matures into) the phenonena that gavanwoolery considers "properly" sexist. It's a seed for the problem which matures into institutional sexism.
Sex-drive is not really as much of a problem with regards to sexism. Sex-drive causes sexual harassment, which is not sexism. If a male were to sexually harass a female, it would not be sexism because he is not giving males special preference over females). If a male were to make a female employee engage is sexual activity for a raise, it would be sexual exploitation, not sexism.
My main gripe here is basically that "sexism" has become an umbrella term to describe many things it does not apply to, and thus, a misnomer.
Well, seeing how he's not sexually harassing the males I'd say there's a noted difference in "special preference".
Anyway, I'd argue that sexism is almost inherent to any sexual harassment, as the male put himself in a position of power/dominance based on little more than gender difference and the perceived inequality/role expectations that go along with that.
If the OP of the article had all those same things done to her (ass grabbing, pillow fight invitations, etc) by gay women, would that still be considered "sexism" or just sexual harassment? People sometimes forget that sexual harassment is not always a "Man on Woman" action. There is a 2x2 matrix of how that can go down.
If this had been done by gay women, the problem would still be that those gay women somehow felt entitled to make such a request of women. The problem is that a woman was, purely due to her sex, "lowered beneath" a baseline of human decency, if you wish. There might be a legitimate question of "what if we lowered the baseline?" but there is no legitimate question of "what if the person who lowered her was a woman?"
If anything, the sexism is in favor of females, as no one would call it sexist if a female groped a man, invited them to a pillow fight party, etc.
Nonetheless, what you are saying is deeply misguided and shows that you don't know what sexism became in the 20th century and looks like today. You are struggling too hard to make some sort of point. In doing this you are failing to come to a common ground and to understand the Other. I know this well; I have been there. I implore you to make one last effort.
Let us start from some common ground: women are granted a great deal of courtesy because they are in some sense 'overvalued'. The question you should ask is, how are they being overvalued, exactly? And the answer I think is, "they are being overvalued as romantic objects." It's a common thread with roots in that Shakespearean sort of ideal, the Quiet, Pure Woman who Knows Her Place and is Walled Away and must be Wooed by her Romeo. It plays forth in all of the behaviours you have insisted upon: that we would pay for dinner, buy them drinks, arrange the wedding, extend them romantic courtesies, forgive them their outbursts, et cetera. It is also the reason that they are discouraged from the club scene and thus can be whisked past the line.
This is our common ground. Now what you must understand is that this position is not merely a position of privilege, but is also deeply dehumanizing. Look at those words again: romantic "object". The same attitude which makes her precious also makes her little more than ornamental. And this is a story played out through most of our history, until several extremely noteworthy women in the Victorian Era decided "hey, screw that--we can be writers and mathematicians and factory workers as well." Of course, this soon after intersected with the Suffragettes, the World Wars and the Sexual Revolution. It was only very recently that women got the right to vote and the right to attend school -- much less the right to wear 'immodest' dress or the right to be a witch. For a long time they simply were not treated as human but rather as subhuman.
Sexism is simply that: it names these social institutions which treat women as a whole as subhuman. There are still many such institutions. Many of them come from this same Romantic Object Past that you are complaining about -- this is presumably why some man drunkenly licked her tattoo; he may well have thought that this might show that he was pursuing her and wooing her, in his drunken state -- in doing so he revealed that he doesn't really think of her as some independent person to be talked to, but rather some skin to be licked. They may also be inverted by the modern pornographic culture, as with the man who burst into a conversation asking for her to come to a pillow-fight essentially did the same, essentially saying "your conversation could not possibly be as important as our idolizing you as a sex object; come on, let's do this."
The bottom line is that the sexism isn't "in favor of" anybody, it's a deeply immature mistake that we've been carrying around from the Dark Ages to the present. It wouldn't be sexist if a female groped a man or invited him to have a pillow-fight because our institutions happen to not be geared to objectify men in this way. They objectify men in other ways though; especially in corporate culture where there is a tendency to emphasize those who neglect their families to work harder, to be cogs in a machine, to follow the orders of management. This may not be sexism -- that is, there is little reason to expect that women who join the corporate circuit are treated much differently -- but it certainly is objectification happening to men today. The pornography industry also objectifies men; in the industry men become little more than muscles, penises, and a bundle of perversions, with their stamina, girth, and virility being the most important qualities.
TL;DR = "rudeness" is not sexism, sexism is again the climate which generates, and is generated by, such rude acts. Key to the climate being "sexist" is that the climate lowers women beneath a baseline of what it is to be human. The examples you've given do not lower men beneath such a baseline, but there are cultural features which do and we should be wary towards those too, even though they tend to not be sexist per se.
However, if you are thinking that it is only sexism if the requester is a male, then I think we'll have to agree to disagree completely because I am not going to buy into such gender based biases.
It is a sexist request in the sense that it was constructed by, and constructs, sexism. It does not directly oppress anyone, that is true -- but that is irrelevant, because that isn't the only mechanism of sexism (and isn't even the dominant mechanism).
If this is true, it is not a proximal cause and amounts to armchair psychology. Like I said, sexism today is generally institutional rather than individual. Since you may or may not be familiar with what that means, I will clarify: social institutions are the things in society which you as a member take for granted as aspects of social order, of norms of behaviour, of the sorts of social relationships which you may form with other people. (I like to think of them as: memes which organize societies.)
So for example, you are maybe technically correct that sexual harassment is not one and the same as sexism: however, a workplace that allows sexual harassment is a sexist institution, and to complain about widespread sexual harassment is to complain about sexism as a whole.
Like I said in the post you are replying to, you are trying to view sexism as an individual's act. But if you look at the way that sexual prejudice and sexual discrimination actually emerge you'll see that it happens because women and men have different role models, different social organizations, different education models, different standards of behaviour, and different norms about what sort of conduct is excusable or inexcusable towards us.
Let us return back to the case at hand: a woman has to fend off many requests for sexual favors and many absurd abuses (like licking her tattoo -- do you really think that this person also licks men's tattoos?) simply by virtue of being a lady at this conference. You may object that the individual requests are not sexism per se, they do not promise any special treatment to a woman if she accepts or any inconvenience to a woman if she declines. What you're missing is that taken as a whole the atmosphere generated by these requests does amount to a special treatment and an inconvenience, and therefore as a whole this is sexism.
In this respect you have been missing the forest for the trees.
This needs to be called out. What is the basis for this statement? All over this thread you have been constructing arguments based on assertions, all which are substantiated entirely by your sheer ability to proclaim things. How do you know what the foremost cause of sexism is, and where are you getting this knowledge? Is it more of your opinion?
Any argument can be forwarded when you have access to a set of private and convenient facts.
Advances, in and of themselves, are fine. All people are subject to them, and simple rejection should suffice to show a lack of openness. The line is crossed when those advances are disrespectful and/or inappropriate.
If you put 950 men and 50 women together, those women will get hit on, and there's nothing wrong with that. The wrongness comes from treating the women as objects or somehow not as deserving of respect as their male counterparts. We wouldn't be hearing about this if the advances were restricted to, "would you like to grab a drink later?".
Stereotyping, as in a belief... about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things, but that belief may or may not accurately reflect reality. Again, I submit that the entire story is about OP having to contend with the notion that any and all women are available and open to sexual advances, and that the prejudice against respectful behavior toward them makes it easier/permissible to make those advances.
The fact that you simply cannot conceive of a plausible reverse scenario does not mean that something is not sexism. There doesn't have to be a reverse scenario, nor do mitigating life circumstances matter; everyone has a back story.
Your last line is one small step away from saying that women who wear short skirts are asking to be groped. It's tantamount to saying women don't deserve to be treated respectfully or feel safe, if enough of the males surrounding them are losers.
You might as well be saying, "don't have boobs, some men haven't seen those."