Why is sexism universal?

[Wodashin]

It wasn't a husband on wife, it was just general "man" and "woman", in the case of that one thing I mentioned I saw once in a domestic abuse campaign ad thing. And I doubt it was a study.

Queen Elizabeth matters how? If we want, I can say "Boudica" now, and then you can name a female ruler who was just a figurehead, and I can name another actual female ruler with power. Or I could name male figureheads, like any Japanese Emperor during the time of the Shogunate. I don't see your point at all in what you wrote, save for proving something about England at one point in time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17094830
http://ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=20858
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... LvafgTRFtI

Spoiler:

THIS IS A PICTURE OF A MAN WHO GOT MAULED BY A LION:

“If only they worked harder, women wouldn’t need to put them in a hospital.”
“Just women evolving faster than the men.”

Enter Kenya, a nation with a major domestic abuse problem. Unlike India, where men beat their wives, sometimes to death, in Kenya, wives cut you or set you on fire or dump acid on you. Depending on where in Kenya you live. Parts of Kenya are so advanced that domestic abuse has switched sides. As you noted, less developed nations have greater discrepancies between men and women, so this problem in Kenya must be due to their over-development. In most of Kenya, domestic abuse is "normal", with men beating their wives. However, certain parts that are seeing development have seen a complete shift. How do you feel about this?

I'm not "fudging the numbers", or do you not think men are less likely to report or reveal abuse? Because if you think they aren't less likely than women to report, you're sorely mistaken. 45% of all abuse is against men. Men are less likely to report or reveal their abuse. Therefore, more than 45% of all abuse is perpetrated against men. Aid for abuse victims DOES NOT REFLECT THIS.

However, I don't want to argue what happens in the third world. What happens there shouldn't affect policy here in the West. Yes, bad things are happening to women over there (and to men, as pointed out earlier. You don't see as many videos of women being set on fire as you do men, or so it seems), and we should stop it, but that shouldn't affect how we deal with Western problems. Domestic abuse in the USA is about even. Domestic abuse shelters are not. Help for abuse is not even. A woman being unable to drive in Saudi Arabia does not affect domestic abuse statistics in the USA or UK, nor should it affect how we deal with those subjects here. Men deserve, if not an equal amount of programs and shelters, at least half as much help. At the very least, we shouldn't be putting children back with their abusers because they have a penis and are too old to not be abused.

And you keep going on about men being "more violent". Well, I made an entire post about that which you didn't even touch. Men are more violent because men at the bottom have no options. Women are less likely to ever truly see that bottom, in the West, because women have much more access to help when abused/homeless/mentally ill/abusing substances. A PERSON who is homeless, abusing drugs, was abused as a child, and suffering from PTSD will be more violent than a PERSON who has a home, is not abusing drugs, had a great childhood, and is of sound mind. A woman like the former would be more prone to violence than a man like the latter. More men are violent because more men are homeless, are mentally ill, are abusing substances, are being or have been abused.

However, that's a separate issue from the question of whether there is a stronger tendency toward violence among males.

There is. It's one of the differences between the sexes...

Let us ask, what are the traits of people most likely to commit violence and crime?

More often in poverty.
More often has mental health issues.
More often has been abused in the past.

Men and women who are impoverished, and/or mentally ill, and/or have been abused in the past are more likely to be violent. The homeless population is a perfect storm of all these things. Most homeless are single homeless, with most single homeless being male. Just with this, we can see that males being "more violent" is pretty logical.

When it comes to poverty, more women than men are in poverty, due to more women being single parents than men. However, many more options for assistance are open to women in poverty that are single mothers, unlike for men. Therefore, women would be less likely to turn to crime, as they have other, better avenues (usually) to provide for themselves. If someone does not have any other option but to turn to crime because there is no government assistance for them, they will turn to crime. I don't have the numbers, but I don't think it'd be that crazy to assert that single women in poverty commit more crime than single mothers in poverty, and single men in poverty commit more crime than either.

Men and women experience mental illnesses at around the same rate, but women are far more likely to seek and get help than men. This can be seen as a more societal than bureaucratic problem, unlike the last. Still, societal problems can be fixed. While mentally ill people are not all that more likely to be violent, mental illness in conjunction with other things (substance abuse, past abuse, poverty) drastically increases the chances of violence and crime. Men do not seek help as often, or get diagnosed as often, and men abuse drugs at much higher rates as well, once again, most likely due to social stigma around getting help, and the lack of avenues for that help in some cases. [ http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-inf ... men-women/ ]. Men also make up the vast majority of PTSD cases, and war vets with PTSD or other mental illnesses make up 40 to 50% of male homeless.

Men and women, as statistically proven earlier in this thread using the CDC's data, get abused at around the same rate once you account for men's being less likely to report or reveal abuse, and once you insert a margin of error. Severe abuse accounts for 20% of abuse. 14% of all abuse is severe abuse against females. 6% of all abuse is severe abuse against males. So, in general, men and women are likely to experience the same amount of abuse, though women are a bit more likely to experience severe abuse, though severe abuse is rarer than non-severe abuse. However, women have access to domestic abuse shelters and are more likely to report and get legal help against their abuser, where men do not have access to domestic abuse shelters (even though they should statistically get 1 out of every 3 if we base it on severe abuse, or 1 out of 2 if we count general abuse), nor do men report their abuse as often, or get their abuse taken as seriously (not to imply women's abuse is always taken seriously, just moreso) when they do report.

Not only that, domestic violence shelters have ceiling for the age of males that can be sheltered. Because of this, many male teens are forced to remain with their abusive mothers and fathers, creating a higher potential for violence and abuse in them, and mental illness. Statistically, young men are the most likely to be committing violent crime. Young men are also the most likely to be homeless, to be mentally ill, and to have been abused. Mostly due to cultural stigma over men seeking or getting help, and the gendered abuse programs which discriminate against men, thus disallowing them to be helped, and therefore ensuring more violence to come.

Taking all this into account, we can see that "men are more violent" is simply a reflection of our culture and our government's lack of care, and the lack of avenues for help of those men. Young men are logically more likely to be violent. To say "men" is to negate any and all other variables, ignoring things like age, socio-economic status, access to help, and mental illness. I'd like to see statistics on gender and age demographics, and I'm sure it would show near parity between men and women after a certain age, though with a slightly higher male rate due to their being less likely to get the help that would prevent such violence and the like.

If we actually took a look at the problems of men, we'd see that by solving them, we solve a lot of crime as well. A lot of society's problems of violence and crime stem from these things stated before. Homelessness, poverty, mental illness, and abuse, and the lack of avenues for help. If you create a system wherein many young men have no legal options of bettering their lives, taking statistics from that group and applying it to them, and all men, as proof of men's inherent violence, you're being sophomoric and disingenuous.

So please, instead of using a broad brush to paint all men in a certain way with absolutely no thought as to why more men are violent, take a look at the societal factors that go into this so you can realize that, by only focusing on women's problems, we are only creating more problems for men and women.

[Fire Brns]

And what happens when artificial uterus technology becomes available, then?

I think the point was that differences in reproductive methods have in the past been linked to sexism.

My point was that sexism is in our blood, it is something older than civilization. It is even evident in other species due to reproductive capabilities: I have seen male birds peck hatchlings to death so that they can claim the mother as their mate.

[Wodashin]

How is that sexist? Female spiders eat their male sexual partners. Male seahorses give birth. This doesn't reflect on human nature at all.

I feel like when you, and many people really, say sexism, they mean "sexism against women". As if they're interchangeable, and as if biology is inherently so.

One of my first posts addressed this point:

Not only that, but I feel like this thread, by sexism, only means it in favor of men. Throughout history, there have been mostly men in power. However, men have always been on the bottom as well. There is nothing glamorous or powerful about being a serf or coal miner or mill worker, or, even as recently as the sixties, having all personal agency stripped from you and being shipped to the other side of the world to be forgotten and disposed of on the whims of those in charge. There may be men in charge, but men are not in charge. It is fallacious to say that, because some from a group are in charge, that that confers some sort power to the whole of that demographic. It's not maleness that creates the skew, it's power. Power has mostly been in the hands of males, because males are going to more easily dominate. However, this is a human thing, not a male one. And the humans on top subjugate those on the bottom. That's how it works. There've been queens and empresses throughout history that've been the most powerful people on earth at certain times, and they oppressed everyone just as well throughout human history.

I'd assert that it's not really sexism. It's the common thread of the strong, the powerful vs. the weak. More powerful men, but that tiny sliver of the top doesn't really do wonders for the huge bulk of people underneath, regardless of sex. It's the natural order of things for the top to press down on those below them. 'Least that's how I see it.

[Fire Brns]

I didn't intend that the same nature applies to all animals. I meant that all animals have their brand of gender discrepancy and ours just happened to be a patrilinear society.

[CorruptUser]

Except there are societies that are matrilinear. Unless you want to start claiming that humans are made up of several different species, it's kind of clear that sexism is cultural.

[Outchanter]

Women are far more valuable than men in the long term viability of a species

Not really - if women were more valuable reproductively, evolution would favor humans who had more daughters, until the population naturally contained far more fertile women than men.

The fact that genders are pretty balanced shows that reproductive value is pretty balanced too. In mathematical terms, the 1:1 ratio is an evolutionarily stable strategy.

[HungryHobo]

Not really - if women were more valuable reproductively, evolution would favor humans who had more daughters, until the population naturally contained far more fertile women than men.

you're conflating, "good for the individual" with "good for the group".

If there was, lets say, 10 females born for every male then individuals who gave birth to more males would have an advantage and pass on their genes more so it would gradually approach a 1:1 ratio.

"value" doesn't really come into it.

attrition on the other hand can make a difference. If one gender is simply less likely to make it to breeding age then there can be a genetic advantage to producing more.

[Outchanter]

"value" doesn't really come into it.

"Reproductive value" is pretty much what it says on the tin: ability to pass on genes.

The basic theory makes some simplifying assumptions. In reality slightly more human boys are born because on average (due to higher mortality) parents will invest slightly less resources per boy born. Other examples of assymmetry are covered in Hamilton's paper. Some incestuous insects, for example, will produce far more female children, all of which are inseminated by one or two of their brothers.

[HungryHobo]

Some incestuous insects, for example, will produce far more female children, all of which are inseminated by one or two of their brothers.

In most of those cases the males are haploid and aren't there so much for competition purposes, they're merely a filter for deadly genes.

the "(due to higher mortality)" bit would be what I mean by attrittion.

[Azrael]

After several reports, I went to put a spoiler around wodashin's picture earlier in the thread, and noticed the url:

Code: Select all

http://urbanlegendkampala.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Domestic-lion-victim.jpg

Domestic. Lion. Victim.

Wodashin: You're expelled from the thread for being that unbelievably duplicitous. There is simply no excuse.

[jules.LT]

To be fair, the (humorous) original context is ambiguous.
Not that it excuses using it for its shock value when the nature of the wound is *at the very best* ambiguous.

[Yakk]

Urban Legend Kampala is a humor, parody, satire, and fine-literature website, wherein Ugandan ninjas congregate to do ninja things, the moonwalk and to present to you sundry funny articles for your enjoyment, amusement and Facebook-liking pleasure.

...

Hey now, play nice.

[Azrael]

To be fair, the (humorous) original context is ambiguous.
Not that it excuses using it for its shock value when the nature of the wound is *at the very best* ambiguous.

Given the words in the article and the url of the picture, we must have very different definitions of ambiguous.

[jestingrabbit]

Here's a different article from a different newspaper, that at least seems vaguely reputable, with a different photo of the same victim, clearly identifying him as a victim of domestic violence.

http://www.the-star.co.ke/local/central ... ng-husband

That said, the picture of Kenya as a place where all the domestic violence is women attacking men is absurd.

http://www.voanews.com/content/cases-of ... 13574.html

But a 2008 report by the Federation of Women Lawyers of Kenya, or FIDA, says almost 75 percent of women they surveyed reported being abused.

It seems likely that Kenya is another place where partner violence effects women and men, but women more frequently.

[Wodashin]

I'm sorry I was tricked. I googled "Kenyan domestic abuse men" or something like that, and that was one of the pictures used in a news report, I believed it was legitimate. However, I suppose I've been duped, and that news station was duped, and/or purposefully deceitful. So, I guess I'm unsure as to my lesson here, other than to be more careful. I could've taken a still image of the youtube video, but who knows. Now I don't know what to trust about that video at all. It seemed like a real thing.

And I didn't say Kenya has the roles reversed. Just that the roles are reversed in one portion of the country, and that's why men are going on a food strike of some sort in that area.

And once again, not my fault. The photo was used in the video. It was used in articles. Also, how the hell is a lion attack domestic abuse? I'm just confused as to this photo thing now. I mean, I could put up a guy who had acid used against him or something I guess. Or perhaps the lion was a pet. Idk.

E: And now as I research it again, it seems the picture IS of this Simon Kiguta Nyeri fellow having been slashed by his wife with a machete. Hell, it's the FIRST THING you see in this youtube video, which is a video coming from Kenya's news station. Damn the url name, this is a legitimate knife attack if multiple articles and videos are to be trusted, so I rest my case. Unless this video is fake, and no Kenyan men are really being abused, and a bunch of unrelated events are being made to seem like men are being abused, all to allow random people on the internet to use this in their internet arguments, then I stand by my original posts.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/gl ... otts-meals

[HungryHobo]

it would appear that it really is an example of domestic abuse, not a lion attack.

Doing a reverse image search on that is depressing as you get the blogs defending it.

Apparently mutilating your husband is ok if he's pathetic enough.

[Wodashin]

Mhm. The url is obviously a joke in bad taste. It would be like taking a bruised up woman's picture and going "Domestic Stair Victim". This man suffered intense abuse, as have many others. This is why they are protesting meals cooked at home, to instead congregate with other men and discuss their abuse and support each other.

In the Youtube video, the women defend themselves by calling the men weak or lazy. A sociologist defends the women by saying they are "becoming more evolved" with their new avenues for financial independence. These aren't uncommon lines of thought, even in the West. And it's been like this for a long time. Men who were abused by their wives in the past were forced to ride a donkey backwards throughout the town to be ridiculed. Even in this day and age, people still find the abuse of men utterly hilarious, or justified. The Talk laughed and laughed over Katherin Kieu's cutting off her husband's penis and then throwing it in a garbage disposal. Pierce Morgan, iirc, berated an athlete for claiming his wife abused him. Men apparently just need to "man up". If they get hit, it's either because they're weak or they deserved it. What Would You Do? had an episode where they reversed the genders of abuse, and only ONE person stepped in to help, and it took hours of filming. One woman even cheered as she walked past, and the women they interviewed after said that the man "looked guilty". A police officer walked on by, doing nothing to help. When asked if he would do it differently if the genders were reversed, he said he would step in immediately.

Violence against men has been, for thousands of years now, normalized.

We should be looking into these things as seriously as we look into female abuse, and be giving men the same avenues for help. Disallowing male children to enter domestic abuse shelters helps how? Perpetuating abuse only allows more abuse to come in the future.

[Fire Brns]

Except there are societies that are matrilinear. Unless you want to start claiming that humans are made up of several different species, it's kind of clear that sexism is cultural.

Key phrasing "there are" not "half of them are", there are always outliers on a scale. And back to my original explanation for why women were not allowed to do things: Woman dies, you loose her ability to produce children. Man dies, you loose a man.
To your "species" point, there are many different races, had we not formed civilizations I am fairly sure we would have developed into distinct subspecies.

One fact that makes humanity amazing is that we defy nature and do things like: enter monogamous relationships, form speech, build tools, enter recreational activities, ect. Because we as a whole are an outlier on the scale of the animal kingdom already its very easy to overlook the tendancies of nature.

Getting offtopic and I'll shut up before I derail the arguement.

[Yakk]

Cases of women battering their husbands are not new and many in Nyeri say it is not likely to end soon. Statistics released last year show that 460,000 men in Nairobi and Central provinces faced domestic abuse from their women. These abuses were either physical, mental and emotional. The survey was conducted between February and August last year. Out of these figures 310,000 of the men were denied their conjugal rights. They were involved in forced domestic work like baby sitting, kitchen work and even bathing children.

Note that physical abuse here includes "not sleeping with your husband". And emotional abuse includes "demanding that your husband wash dishes".

Maendeleo ya Wanaume Organisation chairman Nderitu Njoka says statistics show that in Nairobi and Central provinces, a total of 460,000 abuse cases were reported in 2011. Out of these 300,000 were physical abuse including battering and denial of conjugal rights while 160,000 were emotional abuses that include insults, disrespect, scoulding, cleaning utensils, bathing kids and baby sitting etc.

...

At least four men have gone public after they were recently battered in Central Kenya region.

...

I really don't know what to say. The more I look into this, the less real it looks.

[Wodashin]

"insults, disrespect, scoulding"

Nothing bad going on here. I mean, it's not like people look down on men insulting, scolding, and disrespecting their wives, or see that as abuse. And as for cleaning utensils and whatnot, Kenya obviously has a different culture. I wouldn't be surprised if making men do these things is seens as incredibly demeaning and embarrassing, making them social outcasts or laughingstocks. And it doesn't make the men who had acid poured on them or their faces carved up with machetes disappear. Nor does it get rid of the fact that many people sympathize with the women here, saying the men need to be less lazy or tougher, or that the women are just becoming more evolved and liberated.

If I hand-waved away female abuse by going, "Oh, well sometimes 'not talking to your wife' is counted as abuse, and women in France can sue their husbands for not having sex with them, so I don't think abuse is real", I'd probably get banned for trolling or being inflammatory. People justified the situations in France as the man being "obligated". Not many people have a problem with that reasoning, though I do.

[gmalivuk]

The point is that by lumping ridiculous things like "she made him do the dishes" in with "she carved up his face with a machete", and just reporting the total numbers of men subject to either kind of "abuse", means that your whole study is useless. You literally get no useful information whatsoever from a statement like, "500,000 men were attacked with machetes or told to wash the dishes by their wives in 2011".

Yes, you would get banned for trying to hand-wave away all female abuse by counting a few non-abusive things and thereby dismissing all abuse. But if I posted a study claiming X number of women were sexually assaulted in the US last year, and you called me on the fact that the definition used by the study counted any type of physical contact that was not explicitly invited as "sexual assault", you would be commended for pointing out a very serious flaw in the study.

[Wodashin]

Mm. Still, you'd think the Kenyan news would be representative of their own problems. That study isn't one I posted, I don't think. I posted videos and articles about the problem.

[gmalivuk]

you'd think the Kenyan news would be representative of their own problems.

Really? What reason do I have to believe Kenyan news is so fantastic compared to the news in my own country?

[Wodashin]

I didn't know "report news" was such a high standard as to be fantastic. And, in a third world country where men are shamed for things like being abused, you wouldn't think they'd report on the abuse of men as being a serious problem. And if they did, you wouldn't think they'd sensationalize the amount of it. Least, that's what I'd think would be logical. We don't even touch this subject here in America, and if we do, it's about how hilarious or pathetic it is, and only specific cases. Very rarely an actual look at female-on-male domestic violence itself.

[RoberII]

And as for cleaning utensils and whatnot, Kenya obviously has a different culture. I wouldn't be surprised if making men do these things is seens as incredibly demeaning and embarrassing, making them social outcasts or laughingstocks.

Do you not realize that this is sexist, if it is true? That if it's demeaning for men to do women's work, then that means women as a whole have much lower status than men?

[CorruptUser]

Reminds me of my more arrogant, snot-nosed years. My father insisted that I take out the trash. I said "taking out the trash is beneath me", so he replied "oh, so you are too good to take out the trash but I'm not?".

[RoberII]

And another thing - verbal abuse is very, very much worse when directed from someone with high status to someone of low status. Being a bitch or slut is much worse than being the male equivalents - jerks and, well, there's really no equivalent term for men. This applies to other issues than gender, btw - there is a reason why racial insults directed at minorities are worse than racial insults directed at majorities - I have read several accounts of African-Americans being genuinely hurt, distraught and otherwise 'gotten to' by the n-word, but I've never read, or heard of, white people who thought cracker was anything but a mildly offensive.

This is important in that most cases of physical abuse start out as psychological abuse - I know this from personal experience, too, btw, although feel free to look this up - and often escalates and is internalized and normalized by the victim, you know "Well, it's my own fault he hit me, I should have done/not done X". It's important to note that emotional abuse, unlike physical abuse, is much, much harder to define, but I personally think that unless there is emotional abuse on a serious basis, physical abuse is much more likely to end in a terminated relationship - again, this is something I have seen myself in others, where otherwise strong women were hit once by their partners and left, but in another case stayed in a severely abusive relationship for several years as a consequence of emotional abuse by that partner. In many ways, physical abuse is just a continuation and escalation of emotional abuse, and as such I am not sure it even makes sense to talk of physical abuse unless there is emotional abuse first, at least not in cases where the victim has any chance of leaving, which is not always the case - victims may be financially dependant on the abuser, may suffer ostracism or be tied to the abuser in other ways. But at any rate, the psychological effects of aggression, whether verbal or physical, are the main point for both the abuser and the victim.

Now, I know all of this is anecdotal evidence, but my main point isn't that physical or emotional abuse (actual abuse) doesn't happen to men, but that there is a large amount of culture which determines how physical or psychological violence and aggression is handled, and that men have it easier in some ways when it comes to this layer of culture, in that they have higher status (note how much abuse toward men basically consists in emasculating them, basically feminizing them and legitimizing them as victims), in that violence towards men is normalized (meaning that it is, paradoxically, less of a problem on the psychological level), and because men, statistically speaking, are wealthier than women. All of this means that these self-report studies are flawed in one way or another, because abuse happens past this level of culture, and is therefore hard to quantify - abuse is a psychological, and therefore subjective, phenomenon.

Again, I don't think that we should ignore the plight of men being abused, but I think there is a step from being hit or scorned, even regularly, to being abused, since being abused is mostly a psychological phenomenon. And at any rate, The Patriarchy Is Bad For Men Too.

[HungryHobo]

And another thing - verbal abuse is very, very much worse when directed from someone with high status to someone of low status. Being a bitch or slut is much worse than being the male equivalents - jerks and, well, there's really no equivalent term for men.

jerks and creeps is the word you're looking for. If a girl shows interest in someone (or fails to show interest) and they want to insult her she's a slut, if a guy does the same he's branded a "creep".

It's also more often directed at lower status males just as "slut" is more likely to be directed at lower status women. the lables serve the same purpose.

"Asshole" or "dickhead" is probably closer to "bitch" in their usage.

nice subtle playdown of primarily male-directed insults btw. "jerk" certainly does sound less mean than "bitch".

and because men, statistically speaking, are wealthier than women.

Repeat after me:

on average

men are overrepresented at the top of society and at it's very very lowest reaches.

Men are overrepresented sitting on the boards of companies and sleeping in the discarded packing boxes behind those companies headquarters.

your views are sexist but you're remarkably good at justifying them to yourself.

[RoberII]

But if a guy is successful in having lots of sex, he's not a creep, he's a player, whereas a girl is still a slut. Again - female sexuality is punished, male sexuality is rewarded, and a creep is someone who fails to obtain sex due to whatever reason. In other words, a woman who displays any kind of sexual behaviour is in danger of being labeled a slut, but a man is only in danger of being a creep if he fails in his endeavor. So yes, there are some of the same things at stake, but they are different in important and pretty telling ways. There is no such thing as creep-shaming. There is no such thing as player-shaming, either.

And men are statistically more likely to be wealthier than their female partner than the other way around, AFAIK.

As for my views being sexist 'in the extreme' (nice edit), I really do not see how. Because I think our culture (and most cultures) handles male and female violence differently? For instance, there's the fact that we don't really take female aggression as seriously as male aggression - there is a huge difference between if my girlfriend slaps me or if one of my male friends did it. I realize that that difference is largely a product of centuries of sexism, but it's still an important difference in how I would handle such a slap: One would affect me deeply and might even lead to a fight, the other is 'just' a slap from a girl.

[HungryHobo]

But if a guy is successful in having lots of sex, he's not a creep, he's a player

or of course a "manwhore"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... an%20whore

just for fun the acompaning stereotype:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6rkXGikuNA

That claim get's repeated ad-infiniteum but there's a strong negative image of any guy who has a lot of sex unless he happens to be rich or exceptionally attractive.
Upper class "bros" are players.
Lower class guys are "creeps" or "man-whores"

[Panonadin]

Hobo, I would take a moment. It seems as though he is describing society and the general publics views and not agreeing with them in full. I understand the need for the discussion but it doesn't have to be so directed.

Unless of course they are his own views.

Also your above still falls in line with what he is trying to convey in my opinion. If a woman is labled a slut/whore by some social circle and on the other side of town a guy is labled a man whore/creep are they viewed on the same level?

I have known some women (friends) that have more than the average amount of sexual partners. some many more and some people would lable them as a few of the words above, how ever in the same light, I have known men who end up in bed with a lot of women, and calling them a man whore wouldn't even be considered an insult.

[HungryHobo]

Hobo, I would take a moment. It seems as though he is describing society and the general publics views and not agreeing with them in full. I understand the need for the discussion but it doesn't have to be so directed.

the wonderful thing about attributing views to "the general public" is that you can attribute anything and disprove nothing. If you think being called a creep or whore isn't really demeaning then you can just declare that "the public" doesn't view it as such with no need for support beyond assertions relying on someone you know or some guy you met down the pub.

The other great thing is that anything can be spun around: a guy who chooses not to have sex for whatever reason is a loser, a creep, pathetic, a loner and so on while a girl who makes the same choice is chaste, pure or virtuous.

of course that's also a load of bull since as you'll notice, similar to the opposite claims made by others above I leave out all the negative descriptors on one side and all the positive for the other but it's still not actually false so that people can think of a few example from everyday life and nod along. it's just one of the wonderful ways you can attribute just about any view to "the public". It's a common tactic amongst the more manipulative type of writer and unfortunately extremely common on these boards.

are they viewed on the same level?

Using the standard of "what some guy I know thinks": "creep" most certainly can be at least as nasty as "slut". Friends can use "slut" and "manwhore" as a greeting but I've never heard even friends call each other creeps in a positive way.

I've never known anyone stop going out to parties after being called a slut but I know at least one person who was so affected by "creep" that he just stopped going to parties/clubs entirely because he didn't want to be "that guy".
Of course I'm sure some people here know girls who've stopped going out after being called a slut by someone since that's why just having "someone you know" is such a low bar.

[Panonadin]

To add,

I don't disagree with what you are saying hobo, just giving you my opinion.

In "my" social circle, calling a woman a slut would probably get you an angry conversation from anyone else in that same circle. You, just don't. However as I tried to convey in my other post in "my" social circle calling someone a manwhore or a creepy guy wouldn't hold the same weight. I guess that's a problem, doesn't make it any less true.

Mind you, it's not as though I or my friends think the two are different per se' and that male and female sexual preferences should be viewed as one worth congratulating and the other worth shaming it's just how the words are taken "in my neck of the woods".

The same goes for other slurs as the other poster described, I'm not however endorsing this behaviour or even agreeing with it, I'm just pointing out that it's observable in a lot of social situations.

You have to consider that your sample is not universal. Just like his isn't and neither is mine.

[omgryebread]

I've never heard manwhore in anything more than a "jokey insult" kind of way. It definitely doesn't usually have the ferocity that "slut" usually gets thrown at people. I've only ever heard creep in reference to uh, actual creeps.

If you're seriously saying that guys have the negative stigma to being sexually active that women do, yeah no.

The other great thing is that anything can be spun around: a guy who chooses not to have sex for whatever reason is a loser, a creep, pathetic, a loner and so on while a girl who makes the same choice is chaste, pure or virtuous.

This is not reverse sexism. This is just regular sexism. Perhaps a case of The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too, but it's not some female advantage here. It's a symptom of the fact that

Men Having Sex = Praiseworthy!
Women Having Sex = Shameful!

Sure yeah, both genders get praised or dissed. However, one gender gets praised for having sex. Oh the horror of having to have sex. It sucks that guys need to engage in an enjoyable activity to be socially accepted.


Note: Yes, I realize that for a variety of reasons, many guys may not wish to have sex. Yes, this situation harms them. I trust people to understand my point regardless, and yeah, it's fully acknowledged that archaic gender roles hurt those who don't follow it, of both sexes.

[Wodashin]

In what world do you have to live in where you think men who sleep with tons of women are praised by everyone? Or that women who have sex are shunned by everyone?

The kinds of men who sleep with tons of women are also the types to look up to those types. These people live in a vacuum. They also tend to be the most vocal and easily seen group. The type to go to night clubs and bars and the like to pick up other people, be they men or women doing it. People who get called "sluts" and "douchebags" tend to congregate, and are also the ones giving each other the names.

Maybe I'm all wrong and am living in my own world, but I feel like these people are just a very in-your-face minority, and not to be construed with all of society. A lot of people are introverted, and the most extroverted are the ones in the spotlight, so the other half of people disappear. The guys who praise guys who go prancing around having sex everywhere they go are usually the guys who do do that, or wish they could, and those who wish they could are basically the same as those people who do. I really don't think these people are representative of society.

It's not "men", it's "young, extroverted assholes in high school or college".

At least, this is how I think it is.

[Panonadin]

In what world do you have to live in where you think men who sleep with tons of women are praised by everyone? Or that women who have sex are shunned by everyone?

Not you particuarly, but stop doing this.

No one said this. From what I can read in my post and others it's stated specifically to be in thier OWN subset and/or what THEY observe.

[CorruptUser]

Guys that would never have anything to do with the girls if sex wasn't involved are known as "assholes".

Similarly, a girl is a "slut" if she has sex with guys that again, she would otherwise have nothing to do with if sex wasn't involved.

A guy isn't a "player" based on how many women he has sex with, but how desirable those women are. (Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well; even the more shallow guys try to avoid crazy or stupid). A guy that has sex with a different Jabba the Slut each night is actually mocked by most men. And whether or not the girls are attractive, most other guys hate the guys that brag about whom they had sex with.

Yes, the threshold for how much sex is "allowed" is unfair, but it's not completely one-sided.

[Wodashin]

Men Having Sex = Praiseworthy!
Women Having Sex = Shameful!

I'm sort of pointing at comments like this, Panonadin. So, you know, things pointed out as universal truths are kind of like saying they're universal truths. Or not, maybe "equals" means something different than it did yesterday, and sweeping statements like "x = y" really means "nuanced discussion on different demographics".

[krogoth]

I would have thought pervert was the other word he was looking for, I would think it's a closer gender synonym to slut, as while both genders are aiming for the same thing, one can get it while the other can't. Interesting how the one with the power here is reversed in a sense.

Creepy always felt more like a word meaning scary but weak/small.
Dictionary seems to agree:
Of or producing a sensation of uneasiness or fear, as of things crawling on one's skin:
Annoyingly unpleasant, repulsive.

Anyway that's (and the way the discussion is going feel to me to be)beside the point as obviously you are using a common newer meaning of the word that is similar and understood.

The point really is that while there are differences, do we think we should treat any person as if there is no difference?
Or is it justified to treat them differently. When I say differently I mean with only respect to the differences, not disrespect to them.

We can agree that there are better levels of female support over male support, and while it's not proportional to the difference in required support is this getting better or worse?

Terminology is a primary issue of a culture. Much like rape culture, where making jokes about it can make it seem acceptable to those whom do the deed. Making jokes about the 'weakness' of others cause's more issues. Allowing people to think that it's ok for men to sleep with whomever they want and get praised for it, and allowing the same people to put down a woman that does the same, making it a sexism culture, and we allow it to happen.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

I really liked the way this reads http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_origin_of_the_phrase_'Evil_will_prevail_when_good_men_do_nothing'#ixzz1vYXct3O6
(my first url link so it could probably look better)

Obviously, one must know that the culture is allowing it to occur, to fight against it, rather than think these 'evils' just happen.

[gmalivuk]

In what world do you have to live in where you think men who sleep with tons of women are praised by everyone? Or that women who have sex are shunned by everyone?

The magical world you invented in your mind when you stopped understanding the difference between "everyone" and "many people".