Yuri2356 wrote:One of the reasons I felt unable to resist the pull of this discussion in the first place is that I spent much of my adolescence in a quite sexually repressed state, feeling constantly threatened by the looming sense that "modern" society was implicitly distrustful of me...
<snip the rest>
Sir, in accordance with standard Male procedure, I'd like to buy you a sympathy Beer.
I don't drink beer or vodka. Anything else is fine. (The idea of men being expected to drink beer - especially engineers - or of certain drinks being seen as "girly" is ridiculous, BTW. Ditto stupid drink names used for flirtation purposes.)
cephalopod9 wrote:Women don't just "get raped", men rape them.
Er, in my mind, the statements "the man raped the woman" and "the woman got raped by the man" are logically equivalent. I can see what you're getting at, but I didn't intend to imply the idea you seem to infer.
It actually sounds to me like you empathize a good deal with people who suffer because of sexual oppression. (I am having a horrible time with finding the right words.) It seems like a lot of your greif comes from the effects of the actions a small minority of men have taken, which I would think would give you something in comon with rape victims**.
Actually, you'd probably be right on this, except that overall I'm a pretty selfish person. x.x There's something in common (and I *do* blame "those men" a lot), but...
Which is why it puzzles me why "women have it worse" offends you. While I will say "who has it worse" is not a good way of looking at it, and to use an extremely crude metaphor, I don't think it trivializes cancer patients to say it's worse to have cancer and AIDS.
It's not even that statement that offends me really, but the way it's arrived at. The things men have to deal with or which women get as bonuses tend to be quite ignored, and then the pros and cons are directly weighed, when a lot of things simply aren't directly comparable. It's not something where you can clearly say something like that, because women don't - to extend/reuse the metaphor - "have cancer", or at least most of the symptoms of that.
As you said yourself:
I think we have a reoccurring problem with setting up men's gender issues and women's gender issues to be in conflict with eachother.
I'm not trying to deny the claim so much as cast doubt on it.
It's not an analogy. I think the labels "for kids" and "for women" get used in a similar way and send a similar message ("you get this section over here"). Like I said, it's largely a matter of opinion.
I think I see your POV now. Making the label explicit causes a problem. If the for-women version of Stuff were called, say (let's make it really bad) Girl's Stuff, then there would be hue and cry. But if it were, say, Things, and the target audience were simply inferred, that would probably go over a lot better. (But then, what could go into such a magazine without reinforcing stereotypes.
Lies! (that was probably inapropriate, but I needed a segue)As things stand now, men simply don't look good wearing lacy lingerie or posing seductively
Maybe it's because I'm one of them, and straight, but I just can't see that working for men. We tend to have this surplus of body hair (yes, I know about the whole leg-shaving thing; I'm saying we'd have to take care of that in addition to lots of other places women don't normally get much hair, to have the same effect), and bits that would hang out of a thong (very uncomfortably at that) and ruin the intended "streamlined" effect.
Last I checked, men are not angular,
I'm considering posting a picture of my elbow now, I really am...
Further more, it's these ideas that men can't be pretty, and that male nudity is shameful
I wasn't aware of a gender bias in the meme of nudity being shameful. Actually, I was aware of one the other way around: consider who more often gets away with being topless in public.
Shai wrote:Lastly, societies views aren't balanced or fair. I, for one, am not a fan of porn (so boring). I'd rather be intimate with my girlfriend then sit in the dark watching other people fake intimacy. Though I've always been strange. **shrugs**
DeadCatX2 wrote:I disagree, somewhat. Sure, some men end up creating the stereotype of a stalker, but it was not any specific man which hurt him, but women.
And you were on such a streak of understanding me, too. >_< It's society hurting me, AFAICT. The meme that a man, being the "penetrator", is inherently dangerous.
I find it disappointingly ironic that a shy man can have such a high percentage of rejection, while an aggressive male seems to have a much lower percentage, and yet the shy man (who is most definitely safer) is considered more dangerous by potential dates.
I've since worked through it, more or less - though I'm still not having nearly the success I'd like to. And I haven't, in fact, become anything overly "aggressive". Turns out it's not that difficult. But man oh man do I wish I could go back in time and tell my former self a few things.