Okay, let's try this:

[bast_setesh]

This is a public post, much more civil than the last.

I must make a few things clear:

I do NOT feel I was unjustified for my actions earlier, however after talking to glitterygashes, I do know I was wrong. Marissa is actually a very nice, very smart, and very interesting girl, and I was mistaken about her intent. I do feel badly about upsetting her, as the

Comments

[glitterygashes]

I'm more of a BLAME EVERYONE type of person, because usually it's not just one person's fault. It's the collected fault of everyone's. Furthermore, it's the combined efforts of both parties that will help change be possible. I mean, it's not only men who think a woman's job is to be at home. Women are holding down women as well; I believe that. People think Feminism is automatically about just females when the reality is it's about everyone. It's about equality. No one's looking to be more favored than someone else. And if they are, then maybe they're on the extreme side of Feminism and I don't agree with that personally. Most feminists do admit that males are harmed in the process...
I guess it's just my personal experience that EVERYWHERE I look I see male supremacy. Women having to take a man's last name, how I'm expected to cook and clean, how I'm a bitch when I voice my opinion while at the same time my male counterpart has been expressing his the entire time, how magazines and the media completely tear women apart into inferior beings (more about that: Watch "Killing Us Softly."...why gay men are insulted because to be gay is to be "like a female" and that's not a valued thing in our society... It's just everywhere to me. Apparently everyone doesn't see it that way, which is why I'm extremely interested in knowing WHY.

I also am trying to get that other entry on the lj community deleted because I'm just TIRED. I now have people on my own LJ saying things to me and now there's LJ names being posted on there and I don't think that's right. I'm disappointed that there are many people on there being complete assholes, because the community rules state that there should be no "personal insults."

But the parking thing for women? It may just be a necessity. If she HAS to go somewhere for some reason, even though she's in pain, then, well, she has to go. If she has nobody else to help her, what else is she supposed to do? If she has no money for a taxi? But seriously, you can get a handicap spot for just about anything. So pregnant women got together and made it possible, so can some other group, with like, ADHD (and I swear I've heard that you CAN get a handicap parking spot with this disorder...of course, it's hearsay, but I can totally believe it.)

I'm tired of fighting this particular thing because quite honestly, there's info for each side. I also don't feel like debating because I'm not able to express myself very well at all, and I don't have time to research where some of the information came from. I wish that the whole of the conversation wasn't posted because I was not in my proper mind last week and didn't have time to fully state what I think, and in doing so, I came off in the wrong way entirely. That's what happens in haste, and I apologize.

I just wish the whole thing was dropped because I'm pretty sure both parties have learned things, and that's all I really care about.

[aristaea]

People think Feminism is automatically about just females when the reality is it's about everyone.

Yes, but that's partly because of the whole misleading name "feminism," when it should be called "non-gender specific equalitarianism" or something... :P

I sympathise with you on personal experience of male supremacy, I really do. I come from a very strict Hispanic family and men are always the ones in charge, women are always expected to cook and clean and be pregnant and look pretty, and when women don't comply with the demands of their husbands/fathers/brothers/elder men, they are yelled at, sometimes even beaten. But that is my family and their culture; with most of the people I encounter in daily life, gender equality is something that simply is. However, I am aware that inequalities exist, and I am aware in how they vary across societies and regions of the globe.

Sa-Ra thinks you might be a psychology major; I'm a psych major, too. And from one psych major to another, I can say that the reason not everyone sees it the way you do is because people are extremely influenced by their own experiences because that is the only thing they have that they can honestly believe. We can never really now how other people feel, what they think, or why they do what they do; all we can experience is our own existence. Thus, what you experience every day is not the same as what I experience-and it wouldn't be the same even if we were the closest of sisters. That is why I could voice the opinion that oppression exists but doesn't really factor into women's daily lives-I won't say that, though, because I know it is wrong; I am just pointing out that, based on experience, I could say that. That is why experience is often times misleading.

You have to take into account the fact that societal factors don't just vary between societies-they vary within societies. Thus, feminism in the American South is different from feminism in the American Northeast, and it is likely that American feminism will differ greatly from feminism emerging in central African states and the Middle East (although perhaps not quite so much, if American media and popular culture continues to exert its influence overseas). I live in Northern Virginia, a very prosperous, well-educated, political area of America, and feminism is mostly a talking-point here. Gender inequality is not a problem that many of the generation Y kids encounter. However, drive four hours southeast into Appalachia, and it's like going back in time. Women are still subjugated, barefoot and pregnant, serving "superior" male counterparts their whole lives. They have little education, no opportunity for economic improvement, and thus have very little time to think about, much less apply, feminist principles in their lives-even if they understand what exactly those are.

Thus, the viewpoints you hear from women even within the same society are going to be radically different depending on experience. That's just how people are.

[glitterygashes]

Yeah Latino culture is just....really messed up in their view of women. I had a Cuban boyfriend. I don't even want to get into how much I had to put up with.

I agree that personal experiences vary. But when I see trends, I start thinking. My experience is mine only, but then I've met many people who are on the same page as me and continually see the same things I do--and that's when I begin to see there's a problem. I'm a psychology/sociology double major, and that might have something to do with it. In sociology, we constantly learn how our society is based on inequality. It becomes impossible to say that everything is equal, when, based on the statistics, it's clearly not. Even some fields of Psychology this inequality is dealt with. Take the Sociocultural view, for example. That view blames society for the fact that poor people and women tend to have more mental disturbances. Of course, the Biological view can say something otherwise, but my point is that some people involved in the field of psychology would probably agree with social inequality having a large effect.
I understand that our culture is very different; for example, we have larger amounts of Body Dysmorphic Disorder because of our fixation on outward appearance (this actually is even between men and women.) Anorexia is a big one, too. I'm basically talking about American society because that's my concentration. We're on a different level than other societies (not to say ours is better, but that each is different).
But while our experiences are different, there appears to be significant trends amongst the experiences of certain groups.

part 1

[aristaea]

But trends in this case can be interpreted as a good thing. Belief is based on experience, so if you have a large number of women saying they don't see male privilege everywhere, then for them it probably doesn't exist, at least in any meaningful way. Isn't that the goal? To eliminate gender privilege and have true equality? If all these women say it doesn't factor into their lives, then we are accomplishing that goal. Perhaps not everywhere, and perhaps slowly, but we are doing it.

We must, of course, be wary of the possibility that they could simply be unaware of the practice of patriarchy around them-but when significant numbers of educated females say they don't see it, it is more likely that they truly do not experience it than that they are all overlooking it.

No one should be saying that everything is equal, at least not for a whole society. That is a ridiculous generalisation that is easily countered by some simple polls. But for some women to say that they are equal in their experience-that is valid. It is probably true. You don't have to be a sociologist to look around and see that everything is not equal-but if the sociologists are basing everything on statistics, they should remember that statistics are easily manipulated to support whatever theory you want. Basically, stats lie.

Biopsychology declares that both environmental and biological factors be taken into account in assessment and diagnosis, because both play a part. This means that poor people have higher rates of mental disorders because they have decreased access to basic needs like food, shelter, and healthcare. But, like all fields of psychology, biopsych recognises that mental "disorders" are specific to and defined by the societies in which they occur; thus, industrialised Western nations have a higher incidence of depression than other countries, but that is because we recognise depression as a mental illness. People in third-world countries are probably more depressed than people in industrialised countries, but they are so used to being that way that it wouldn't occur to them that how they felt was actually a "disorder." Instead it is a natural response to living in a third-world country.

part 2

[aristaea]

Translate that to feminism. For so many women to say that patriarchy means nothing in their lives, there must be something going on. It could be that the patriarchy is losing power in large scale. I rather think that is the case. But you could also claim it as truth on some level that women are becoming complacent with the staus quo, and that many of them truly do not notice inequality because it has become background noise. I think that this plays a small role, but not a significant one. I also think it is more likely to be seen among older women of generation X, because they will have struggled with second wave feminism, glass ceilings, and similar barriers and by now either gotten fed up or gotten to where they imagine they should be.

The third and even fourth wave feminists of generation Y have grown up in an environment where they expect equality, and would certainly raise hell if they didn't get it. I eventually learned to stand up to my father and his family and stop taking their misogynistic abuse. And when my not-boyfriend pulls that crap with me, I kick his arse verbally. There are a lot of strong women in the latest generation who have been raised by second wave feminists in environments conducive to female empowerment. And they have male counterparts who have also been raised in these environments-even my not-boyfriend admits that he just talks anti-feminist s*** to make me angry, because he likes to push people's buttons (so he's a jerk, but not actually a misogynistic jerk). So you have a new group of men and women coming of age who have been taught that the genders are equal. The problem is that there are still a bunch of old white men in power right now-and this isn't just a problem for women. But what will happen when these old folk get truly old and start dying and getting dementia, and the young people step into their shoes? Will the ideals we've been teaching our children hold? I think they will. In my experience they do. But we won't really know.

In many senses, feminism is still in the experimental stages. I mean, America is over 200 years old and we still haven't gotten that experiment in freedom right; feminism is part of that experiment. It just takes time, and we can't expect the world to change all at once. Frustrating, but true.

[aristaea]

now there's LJ names being posted on there and I don't think that's right.

Why? Everyone who comments on the thread is making their username public; why should the people originally involved in the thread not also be public? If you are going to comment on someone's argument, you have to give that person a fair chance to respond. Otherwise you are just sniping at them in secret. Imagine if all feminist thought were carried on behind closed doors: it would never reach the public, nothing would ever be accomplished, and most of the women whose opinions and lives you could change would go on living menial, meaningless existences as servants of tyrannical men.

Who's saying rude things? I haven't noticed anyone making personally insulting comments, and I have tried to be polite within the bounds of open debate. Please don't delete the entry; I think this is a good discussion. I think that these subjects should be addressed because it will help open up lines of communication between two feminist factions: those who call themselves feminist, and those who are wary of doing so because it is a serious label with a lot of scary implications behind it. In fact, I'd be very pleased if you unlocked the entry so that more people could see it and comment on it, because I don't think it's fair to arrest an intellectual argument. Ideas want to be free; that's a founding principle of feminism. No one should have control over knowledge and everyone should be allowed to have their say on an issue. Why do you think the Vote was such an important goal, or equal education? Knowledge is power, and the goal is to empower as many women as possible.

[glitterygashes]

I wasn't "sniping" on anyone, nor is keeping any entry on an LJ commmunity private doing so. If it is public, it gets too crazy and less civilized. I was definitely planning to discuss what was said on there with bast_setesh, and for the most part, we did discuss it.

I actually did make the post public at one point until I got extreme negativity about it. It's a wonderful discussion, and I wish I could have kept it public, but obviously people aren't mature enough for that.

[heartofkara]

And thus this is why I prefer the community posts to be "friends-only".

[aristaea]

nor is keeping any entry on an LJ commmunity private doing so.

It is if you are taking a formerly public discussion and posting it privately in a place to be discussed by other people where the original author is given no chance to reply to whatever those people might have to say. If you wanted to post her comments elsewhere, it would have been common courtesy to ask if you could discuss them on another forum-and then she should have been invited. As it was, she only found out because I got bored and started reading friends-friends-friendslists. I find it a little hypocritical to take someone else's comments and post them publicly for discussion, and then say that that discussion will be private and no one is allowed to mention it elsewhere. *shrug* That's what I think and we may just have to disagree on that.

[glitterygashes]

*sigh*

I have extremely low confidence. I posted it on that site because it's a relatively safe space, and it was at first friends only until someone requested i make it public. I did, got crap, then made it friends only again. All I wanted was to have some people say that yeah, I'm not a moron for disagreeing with her view. I've never been confident enough in what I believe personally, because all of my life I was told I was stupid. If a group of people told me that I had a point, then maybe it gave me a slight bit of confidence needed to actually continue to debate the issue.

Neurotic? maybe. But it's true. It's not because I'm some malicious bitchy person who likes to talk behind people's backs. (Surely if you knew me, you'd know that I'm big on saying things to people's faces).

[aristaea]

Okay, I accept that answer, because I can relate to it. I still would like to know who is causing you trouble over this, because as Sa-Ra said below, it's completely uncalled for. If I've hurt your feelings I really haven't meant to; I tend to be very straightforward and sometimes brutal in debate and it's nothing personal, just academics. I don't think you're a moron for disagreeing with her any more than I think she's a moron for having sometimes flawed arguments-although I do think that there are things both side could learn from each other, and what you did seemed sort of sneaky and underhanded to me precisely because I don't know you and I didn't know why else you might have done such a thing.

But I actually would like to get to know you better, for I find your ideas interesting. Can I friend you?

[glitterygashes]

Yeah you can befriend me but I rarely get into these issues on my LJ. It's mostly just me and my lack of confidence. But if you wish...

[bast_setesh]

Rom and this other girl have clearly declared war, and I have 15 posts to catch up on, and just got back from praying to Allah, so am exhausted. I just wanted to address this specifically:

I also am trying to get that other entry on the lj community deleted because I'm just TIRED. I now have people on my own LJ saying things to me and now there's LJ names being posted on there and I don't think that's right.

If it's somebody I know posting on your lj, inform me and I'll speak to them, as that's grossly uncalled for. Also, people who are part of any movement HAVE to debate this with others who don't agree. It's important. For instance, I had a lot of jaded views about feminism before I spoke to you. I wish, at the time, I had better control of logical actions, so it would have been under more pleasant circumstances, but I've learned much more about the movement nevertheless, and have much more respect for certain aspects of it that I had before decided were questionable at best. It was my views mentioned, ergo it's logically my journal they would come to in order to argue with me.

Again, if anybody is posting something inappropriate on your journal, please tell me so I can get them to stop.