A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[Mr Mystery]

Theres no point arguing erik, When people start justifying their own bigotry, justifying inequality against others and then go on and eventually justify their hatred of people based solely on those peoples skin colour and gender you know that they are full of **** and hypocrites.


Cant wait for the copy and pasted "Im allowed to hate you because I'm oppressed by other people not you"

Way to not actually read and digest anything said dude. Seriously. That must have taken effort.

Please, show me where I said 'white males shouldn't have any priv at all, because reasons'. I don't think you'll be able to, on account it's so far from my point it's not funny.

[Charon]

Way to not actually read and digest anything said dude. Seriously. That must have taken effort.

Please, show me where I said 'white males shouldn't have any priv at all, because reasons'. I don't think you'll be able to, on account it's so far from my point it's not funny.

I guess he is not talking about you. There are a lot of people who like to voice their opinions in a more agressive manner which in turn alienates a lot of people we try to reach. That is indeed damaging the "cause".
The whole thing looks like it has turned into a right-wing nut infested movement without any attempt on findig solutions but uttering accusations... because... its so much simpler to critizise than to actually build.
Most of these cases are stunningly hard to solve. And I have seen not a single comment to date that cares to present a solution at all.

[40kGamer]

I for one am sick to bloody death of hearing white males claim they are in any way oppressed. We're not. That is utter, utter bollocks.

Women are oppressed. Evidence is everywhere. They're treated as lesser citizens than men.

Ethnic minorities are oppressed. Look at shootings in the U.S. Look at the expectation of young black men in the UK (overly sexualised, hyper masculine).

Going to need a little more context mate. Is this the definition you have in mind above?

op·press
əˈpres/Submit
verb
keep (someone) in subservience and hardship, especially by the unjust exercise of authority.
"a system that oppressed working people"
synonyms: persecute, abuse, maltreat, ill-treat, tyrannize, crush, repress, suppress, subjugate, subdue, keep down, grind down, ride roughshod over, rule with an iron fist/hand More

[Path Walker]

I'm a white male and its very hard to take for granted the immediate advantages that gives you, having a ****ty lonely nerd life, it is even easier to think that you've not benefitted at all from your white maleness.
Not recognising how much easier you've had it than others and still managed to **** it up is the hardest part of accepting white/male/straight/cis privilege.

[eldargal]

Also no one wants to take away the privileges white males enjoy, but extend them to everyone. Of course this means they no longer are privileges, but that is the point. They are supposed to be rights. The freedom to dictate ones own path, being chosen on merit, living life without discrimination or persecution etc. White men have them, no one else does, not entirely. A lot of men like daboarder see it as a zero sum game because they cannot conceive of a world without domination. They see feminists not as wanting to extend privilege to all as a moral, health choice but of feminists seeking to punish and dominate men, to invert the patriarchy into a matriarchy. Men are to be stripped of their privileges and those privileges given to women, rather than those same privileges simply extended to women.

This comes form patriarchal values were every interaction is viewed as a competition where dominance has to be established and where some group or another is always going to be on top of hte pile.

Oh and to touch on an earlier topic there has almost been no money put into male contraception in the West because it is seen as a omans issue. This is even more despicable than it seems because known forms of male contraception are vastly superior to female contraception. In India (I think) there is a gel treatment that is 100% effective, no side effects and completely reversible but it isn't being investigated ot cleared for use in the West because of the sexist attitudes that pregnancy is something women have to avoid, not men prevent.

[Gotthammer]

The privilege isn't some secret bonus you get, it's the privilege of being able to safely ignore issues. Like I'm white, and I can feel terrible about the institutionalised racism that permeates western society, I can get angry, speak out about it but at the end of the day I can also choose to ignore it.

Just as Erik has repeatedly said he thinks about stopping supporting LGBTA rights because he can as a straight person. I am not so I can't just ignore the problems as they effect me every day in small ways (and some days in very very large ways) and I can't escape it. In western society straight white men have the least to worry about and the least to keep them down and are in power for the most part. That's why it's "easy mode" in life. Any hardship you face is one any person can, but there are plenty of hardships you will never have to even consider existing, let alone care about in your life.

[eldargal]

You can see that attitude clearly when white boys start whining about political agendas and 'diversity for diversity's sake', because if you are a white man you can ignore rape, sexism, racism and all that because it doesn't affect you, even if you support it you can reduce it to an abstract political issue and forget for people who are affacted it is a matter of life and death, often literally.

Also I used fairly cissexist terms when talking about contraception just now, my bad.

[Path Walker]

I can almost understand the fear of equality that mostly comes from straight white men, if everyone is equal, then they no longer have the easy mode, feminists want to take away the advantage they have in this society, in a way, by extending that to everyone.

In the race that they were never winning despite their head start, they'd be far behind if everyone started at the same time.

This of course is ridiculous, wanting to hold others back because you worry that with equality, people who work harder than you will get further.

- - - Updated - - -

This sort of fear isn't a new thing, its not some clever reaction to "tumblr feminism", its always been there, ridicule those struggling and try and down play their issues. Claim that solutions to bring about equality are "diversity for diversities sake" or "political correctness gone mad"

[Charon]

Oh and to touch on an earlier topic there has almost been no money put into male contraception in the West because it is seen as a omans issue. This is even more despicable than it seems because known forms of male contraception are vastly superior to female contraception. In India (I think) there is a gel treatment that is 100% effective, no side effects and completely reversible but it isn't being investigated ot cleared for use in the West because of the sexist attitudes that pregnancy is something women have to avoid, not men prevent.

Propaganda is strong in this one.
I really want to see a proof of the "almost no money put into male contraception", as sources state the opposite. Conspiration?

Here:
Just to see the problems of refining male contraception..

This is a very effective approach, but some men still carry on producing enough sperm to cause a pregnancy. The reason why this happens is unknown, but it may be that some men carry on producing enough testosterone to continue to stimulate some sperm production.

An important disadvantage of using synthetic testosterone is that sperm production is suppressed at different rates in men of different ethnic origins.

[url]http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/contraception-guide/Pages/male-pill.aspx[/url]

Also the "wonder gel" from India made me laugh. It is VASAGEL and its actually cliniclally tested in India. You can look that up.
This also invalidates your point that "almost no money has been put in male contraception". It is in the works for longer than 10 years.

100% effective, no side effects and completely reversible

Missinformation.
It is not 100% safe (no contraception is) and there was 1 case of pregnancy in 250 volunteers (which might be a injection gone wrong, but this is still a possibility)
It does have some side effects but yes they are few and negligible.
As for "completely reversible": this is not tested yet. We can conclude that it is from animal studies but there was no test on humans so far.

But keep blaming sexist attitudes when ranting about a topic you know nothing about.

[eldargal]

Yup, and that's why you get people thinking being aware of and talking about privilege and wanting to extend privilege to people who don't have it is in itself bigotry, because it is an attack on people who have it. Which is ridiculous because the thing about privilege is you don't earn it, or take it, you are given it without trying. Having male privilege is not reprehensible, only actively or passively maintaining the status quo that benefits you unfairly is reprehensible.