Bullshit much?
Okay over the last month or so I've been doing a little reading on various blogs on gender rights. It is a known fact that when the word rights come into the equation things get sticky. I personally would one day like to see equality between the genders as I would like to see equality between the races.
When reading about gender issues you will see things from two sides: female and male. From what I've seen both sides have their reasonable debators, activists, people that want to be active but don't know where to start, extremists, and people that are there to learn but not much desire to get active (like myself).
Well whenenver you have multiple sides in a situation (gender issues in this case) things are bound to get a little chaotic. Words get twisted, people are misquoted/misinterpreted, personal insults are thrown about. But what we have here unfortunately falls in the category of "That's some 'ole bullshit." Feel free to read it but basically it says that women cannot be sexist agianst men because women don't have any institutional power over men.
Now don't get me wrong. Men commit acts of sexism against women and its a very bad thing however what the author of this definition of sexism has done is introduce institutional power into the equation of sexism so that suddenly the only way sexism can occur is when its male against female. But the author does take to the time to explain that when its female against male it is "gender-based prejudice".
Notice what that does? The author has managed to give gender based discrimination a separate definition depending on the gender of the victim but takes the time to assure readers that they are equal in negativity. Does that sound familiar?
Sometimes (but not always) a good way to look at things like this is to apply them to another situation. Oh I don't know let's try race. Based on this definition (which adds power to the prejudice) it would mean that since they have institutional power no other race can be rasist against white people. Yeah read that line again and let it sink in. Imagine someone saying, "It's not rasism when its against whites. It's only racial based prejudice". So I wonder which is it when its black against latino, native american against asian, (basically minority vs minority) and so on? But the thing is you don't have to worry about that with sexism since there are only two genders (versus the dozens of ethnicities, races, and nationalities).
So what we have here is one side of a major issue altering the definition of a word so that magically they are immune to it.
I'm sorry to say but I come from the school of thought that discrimination based on gender is sexist no matter what. When male manager fires a female emplyee just because she is female that is sexism at work. When a female landlord refuses a potential male tenant just because he is male that is sexism at work.
There are plenty of legitimate gripes that women have with they way they are treated so why do they feel the need to alter the definiion of words in order to suit their needs (assuming of course it was a woman that did this)?
I'm seriously thinking about creating a free blog space somewhere so I can put these kinds of posts elsewhere.
When reading about gender issues you will see things from two sides: female and male. From what I've seen both sides have their reasonable debators, activists, people that want to be active but don't know where to start, extremists, and people that are there to learn but not much desire to get active (like myself).
Well whenenver you have multiple sides in a situation (gender issues in this case) things are bound to get a little chaotic. Words get twisted, people are misquoted/misinterpreted, personal insults are thrown about. But what we have here unfortunately falls in the category of "That's some 'ole bullshit." Feel free to read it but basically it says that women cannot be sexist agianst men because women don't have any institutional power over men.
Now don't get me wrong. Men commit acts of sexism against women and its a very bad thing however what the author of this definition of sexism has done is introduce institutional power into the equation of sexism so that suddenly the only way sexism can occur is when its male against female. But the author does take to the time to explain that when its female against male it is "gender-based prejudice".
Notice what that does? The author has managed to give gender based discrimination a separate definition depending on the gender of the victim but takes the time to assure readers that they are equal in negativity. Does that sound familiar?
Sometimes (but not always) a good way to look at things like this is to apply them to another situation. Oh I don't know let's try race. Based on this definition (which adds power to the prejudice) it would mean that since they have institutional power no other race can be rasist against white people. Yeah read that line again and let it sink in. Imagine someone saying, "It's not rasism when its against whites. It's only racial based prejudice". So I wonder which is it when its black against latino, native american against asian, (basically minority vs minority) and so on? But the thing is you don't have to worry about that with sexism since there are only two genders (versus the dozens of ethnicities, races, and nationalities).
So what we have here is one side of a major issue altering the definition of a word so that magically they are immune to it.
I'm sorry to say but I come from the school of thought that discrimination based on gender is sexist no matter what. When male manager fires a female emplyee just because she is female that is sexism at work. When a female landlord refuses a potential male tenant just because he is male that is sexism at work.
There are plenty of legitimate gripes that women have with they way they are treated so why do they feel the need to alter the definiion of words in order to suit their needs (assuming of course it was a woman that did this)?
I'm seriously thinking about creating a free blog space somewhere so I can put these kinds of posts elsewhere.