Feminists Outwanked By Oppressed White, Middle-Class Males?

[britpoptarts]

So, yeah. On THE_Forum, a woman posted a little tale about her co-worker (giving lots of personal information about said co-worker, easily enabling any bored stalker online to find out precisely who she was talking about; when confronted, she claimed that "Jo" was reading over her shoulder and aware that her personal business had been broadcast

Comments

[sisterite]

Ugh.

That is my only thought regarding that. :P

[britpoptarts]

Hee!

Yeah, me, too, but I am less succinct.

I admire your verbal restraint!

[ian_scuffling]

I do research on gender roles and stereotypes and power dynamics for a living (yay academia), and this kind of thing just makes me shake my head because it's so damn frustrating. To my mind, there's, like, three or four different things going on here

[britpoptarts]

That...was amazing. And thoughtful. And, you know what? I agree with it. I do

[ian_scuffling]

I think that a thread about those very issues would have had the same feministas agreeing, actually.

My advisor's a feminist, as are most of my friends in my graduate program, so I've gotten quite the education over the last four+ years. :)

Moms don't get magic child-rearin' skills when the baby is born. (See previous thread for baby-related wangst.)

I totally agree. I think the problem here is that so much of the stereotype of women in general is based on their role as mother and caretaker. Let's face it, giving birth and breastfeeding is the one thing women can do that men can't. So there's one theory of gender (social role theory) that suggests how we think about men and women is based on the historical pairing of certain traits with certain jobs, and those jobs with the sex that typically performs them. So: a) Women take care of kids. b) You need to be nurturing and compassionate to take care of kids, ergo c) Women are nurturing and compassionate. I think mothers get custody more often because there's this expectation that the

part 2

[ian_scuffling]

Men do have their own shit rows to hoe, it's true. But that was not what this thread was about, and no one suggested that "all" men were oppressive bad guys. That was assumed and wanked over by the men on the thread.Well, yeah. I think a lot of that has to do with the nature of the discourse around gender roles. There really isn't much of a dialogue for men's needs and problems. Part of that is how we're socialized - we don't talk about shit the same way women do. And when one group has most of the power and resources, I think there's a tendency to discount whatever complaints they have. But it's that weird intersection of race and class - while all white men have it better than black men, not all white men have it equally well. The line I used to use a lot was "well, if I'm part of the patriarchy, why the hell am I still having trouble making my rent? Where's my check from the conspiracy

speaking as a feminista

[rohinax]

I enjoyed all of that immensely, and it cheered my black bitter feminist heart to see comments from some one with a guy name "ian" that are so insightful.