Genuine Equality - Vision of the Future

Now, I want to state this from the beginning. I don't want this thread to be a bashing of feminism, masculinism, whatever. I don't want this to be a rehashing of insults either. Let's leave them to the other thread on sexism.

Instead, I was thinking today of the future, and how we were to achieve actual equality. From a male perspective. I say that not as a sign of sexism, but rather because I can't for the life of me think of many men campaigning for equality, and actually talking about the future. I'm sure they're out there but feminist visions tend to be far more vocal. That doesn't really need to be debated again, does it?

I've heard alot about giving rights to one side or another but usually from a very female perspective. So, I'm curious about the male perspective. Do you believe that it is possible? How would we practically go about doing it?

And rather than a small paragraph, could you think about it a little and give me three paragraphs or more? I realise I'm asking a lot.

I'll add my own opinion in a second post.

I've always felt that the foundation of culture is education. It is culture that ultimately shapes us and our perceptions. Experience is a powerful aspect in this but education and culture both guide towards certain perspectives on Gender, Race, etc.

And I feel that if we want a future with true equality, then we need to start recognising the biological differences as fact. It's not an insult. We are different. Psychology I don't believe that we are. Sure, there are instincts that are more common in females and viceversa... but aren't humans proud of our ability to surpass our instincts and use logic? Our basic psychology allows us to learn to be, well, anything.

Education from the earliest periods in our lives is vitally important so that we raise children to believe in actual equality rather than re-inforcing a gender or racial gap. Children are the future. Changing Adult minds is incredibly difficult to do, since even when they change their "minds" on a topic, there can often be remaining resistance (a partial hesitation) or remnants of cultural upbringing.

Children on the other hand accept vision. They have the imagination to see things before culture starts its work. History has shown that certain applications of education/psychological conditioning can change existing beliefs and resist previous cultures. Already these practices are in operation but they simply reinforce the focus on people being different. Isn't it time that we took control of what we are teaching children and pointed them in a better direction? (and if existing teachers can't teach in the right manner, nothing says we can't design computers to do it for us)

And then come the adults (and teens) whereby laws are the main influencing agent. Most people obey the law. We all have our reasons but, for the most part, we obey the law. The law today is not designed to be equal between genders. Laws have been added to make one gender or another stronger than the other. Laws are just thrown in, here and there, without any plan or research into how this will affect our society and more importantly will it actually improve conditions for both genders in the long term. And for adults changing... the long term is where we need to be aiming. It will take decades to "shape" the perceptions of those alive today. Application of new laws cnnot be introduced in bulk otherwise there would be massive resistance from both sides. Nobody likes to lose privilages. Instead, laws must be introduced gradually, following a reasonable timeframe, with an acknowledgement that people need time to adjust to certain laws or certain areas.

We need a plan. A series of steps over fifty years, whereby we have a schedule for changing laws and everyone publicly knows the schedule... Complete transparency. A plan that acknowledges the need for application, review of the change, and monitoring of its implications. That we learn to understand how all these gender laws will affect us.

Because right now, I don't see any plan. Instead I see hundreds of factions, grabbing power/influence from each other, laws being introduced randomly, and no clear acknowledgment to how it changes society. We have no focus. No real concept of where we will end up. We need to get past this punishment of men (many new laws definitely give more legal rights to women in certain areas over those of men), and start (not return) seeking equality. Introducing laws that level the playing field.

[Note]: there are always those people who don't fit in with any particular system. Misfits, revels, crinimals, whatever. [I've never really fitted in, which is why i started travelling and haven't stopped.] You cannot provide one system for everyone. That's been tried repeatedly and has failed. Instead, we can provide a fair society, where your success is based on your skills, knowledge, talents.

I do believe a completely equal society is possible. I honestly don't think Humans are evolved enough yet for it, so I don't think our society should ever be completely equal in all areas. Part of humanity's power comes from division and competition. But we can strive for a better society than we have today... and more importantly we can actually plan for it.. instead of stumbling around in the dark.

NOTE: The above isn't a plan. haha. It's just an opinion. I'd like to hear your opinions. Pessimistic or optimistic. Whichever as long as they're honestly yours. Also.... I've tried to avoid anything that suggests bashing a gender... I hope i've found anything that suggests it and removed it. I really don't want another bashing thread. Something different would be nice for a change.

fly_agaric

I suppose this is more of a general post than dealing specifically with issues of male/female equality/inequality.

From what I've seen of joe(sephine) soap who casts a vote and the legislators and would-be legislators in Ireland, they are
motivated in the main by a ruthless self interest in their political decisions.

It is who'll do the most for me, my relatives and neighbours? (and devil take the hindmost).
Who'll put a few bob in my pocket via a daft tax break/tax cut?
Who agrees with me and my pov & always makes me and mine feel "good" inside when they speak? Who would I "sit and have a drink with"? etc.
That's the depth of consideration.
Certainly not the future or any kind of societal "vision".

What's happened with splintering of media in the last few years (well 10-15 years really) has made things even harder; everyone can now choose their own specific brand of comforting lies and feed themselves full of only the rubbish they choose to hear, which reinforces all their existing biases and gives them a warm glow.

That makes the kind of holistic plan for constructing a better society you are hinting at impossible in a democracy IMO.
Certainly our democracy anyway. You'll only get that sort of thinking under benevolent despots and technocratic rulers
and of course such systems come with their own big drawbacks that can be more catastrophic than the failings of democracy.

What you have in our system is a competition of interest groups "mediated" by a media that is flawed and self serving and legislated for
judges and lawyers who are also flawed and self serving.
The only time I think you will get such consideration of wider society, planning and broad visions etc in a country like Ireland is if there's a war or some external threat, and everyone temporarily pulls in the same direction (or will hang separately if they don't).

Who knows maybe the unstable global political situation that seems to be brewing up around us with Brexit, Trump, make of break for the EU etc might provide that stimulus?

Anyway to finish on a more positive note one thing I'd like to see that could help with a more equal society is more evidence based policy making.
I know that sounds buzz wordish, but I mean real evidence; quantitative research, experimental/methodological rigour brought to bear on big issues.

Relatively impartial people in the civil service and the public sector researching things from first principles without any fear or favour.
Not hired guns publishing reports on pet issues of whatever lobby (or govt department even?) has paid them to frame an issue with the right statistics.

I'd have a hope that that combined with a political system where results of such research is (largely) made available and trusted by the public,
and a culture where politicians are expected to have a damned good reason for going against what the technocrats' research suggests, could lead us to a better society. Have to say I fear it is a pipe dream though.

That's my internet "crank" ranting and raving done for the year.:) Time for bed.

red ears

The media will need to lead the charge, they could easily start to highlight men's issues as well as woman's issues. But they won't unless they feel men's issues will get clicks. The likes of the BBC and RTE really should be much more balanced in their coverage of gender issues though. Just look at international woman's day yesterday it was wall to wall woman's issues. The same won't happen on the 19th of Nov for international men's day. We need the media to question feminism more and to highlight men's issues more. As it stands things are incredibly one sided.

seamus

I think in this arena men are generally their own worst enemy when it comes to thinking about what's expected of equality. What I mean about men being their own worst enemy is that they/we have a tendency to think of the equality movement as being biased towards women and ignore the areas in which it should apply to men to.

So for example, while we acknowledge that we should no longer assume that women are weak or emotional, we continue to assume that men should be strong and stoic. Where in the past there were two gender roles into which people were slotted, we've now removed the gender role for women, but not for men. And it's nobody's "fault". Since women were in the inferior position and overall still tend to have less advantage in society, the focus was on "addressing the imbalance" as if it were a simple matter of treating women like men.

But as we know now, it's not. Treating women "like men" leads to no more equality than treating men "like women". Treat everyon as equals rather than assuming any roles or types exist.

Where I find this most stark is in raising children. Parents are quick to tell daughters that they can be anything. Any talk of "that's for boys" is shut down quickly. But sons don't get the same. Mothers are quicker to let boys do what they want, but fathers still tend very strongly into trying to make boys be boyish and avoid "girly" things and behaviours.

"The secret life of five year olds" on channel four had a segment where they paired off boys and girls and gave them gender-specific clothes to wear. Then they told them to swap. The girls had no issue, but there was both resistance from the boys in wearing girls clothes, and ridicule from the girls about it. This isn't something innate - the girls weren't ridiculed for wearing men's clothes. So it's something coming from society, and mostly coming from men's expectations of what other men should be.

seamus

seamus wrote: »

"The secret life of five year olds" on channel four had a segment where they paired off boys and girls and gave them gender-specific clothes to wear. Then they told them to swap. The girls had no issue, but there was both resistance from the boys in wearing girls clothes, and ridicule from the girls about it. This isn't something innate - the girls weren't ridiculed for wearing men's clothes. So it's something coming from society, and mostly coming from men's expectations of what other men should be.

In terms of social approval/disapproval, I'm unable to think of a single 'male' article of clothing that a woman can't wear without it being acceptable. However, if a man wears any 'female' articles of clothing, then he's a sexual deviant.

I would agree that there needs to be much more balance in teaching about gender/sexuality. There is a very strong double standard about fashion.

johnnyskeleton

seamus wrote: »

Where I find this most stark is in raising children. Parents are quick to tell daughters that they can be anything. Any talk of "that's for boys" is shut down quickly. But sons don't get the same. Mothers are quicker to let boys do what they want, but fathers still tend very strongly into trying to make boys be boyish and avoid "girly" things and behaviours.

"The secret life of five year olds" on channel four had a segment where they paired off boys and girls and gave them gender-specific clothes to wear. Then they told them to swap. The girls had no issue, but there was both resistance from the boys in wearing girls clothes, and ridicule from the girls about it. This isn't something innate - the girls weren't ridiculed for wearing men's clothes. So it's something coming from society, and mostly coming from men's expectations of what other men should be.

I wish they would stop f***ing with childrens minds to prove some dubious point about the unfair treatment of a gender based on something utterly vacuous and trivial, like clothes style. We shouldnt encourage them to make these ridiculous programmes.

silverharp

seamus wrote: »

I think in this arena men are generally their own worst enemy when it comes to thinking about what's expected of equality. .......

Im raising a son but I wouldnt be thinking "equality" , the world will judge him as a man so as a dad I see it as my job to "nudge" him with this in mind.

Sleepy

seamus wrote: »

So for example, while we acknowledge that we should no longer assume that women are weak or emotional, we continue to assume that men should be strong and stoic.

TBH, I try to teach both my kids to be strong and stoic. "All crying does is make your face wet" is a phrase that both of them have known since they were 4 or 5.

smacl

Sleepy wrote: »

TBH, I try to teach both my kids to be strong and stoic. "All crying does is make your face wet" is a phrase that both of them have known since they were 4 or 5.

So do I, both girls though. When eldest was looking to take up a sport, I took her with me to the local boxing gym which is great for strong and stoic. Why cry or sulk when you can take out the pads and throw some digs or spar for a bit. Funny enough, her boyfriend is learning to be stoic too... :pac:

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

newacc2015

I think the whole equality argument is making women on par with men. But what if women don't want to choose the same path in life as men? If women constantly choose different careers to men, maybe we should just live with their chooses than trying to blame society

The problem with underrepresentation of women at board level, in finance, IT etc is that they don't choose the careers or the education background to get there in the first place. I know people who work in finance, who will tell you few females will apply for entry level/grad finance jobs. Instead of blaming society etc. Maybe people should just accept statistically women will earn less than men, as they choose different careers.

What I don't get about the whole equality thing is that it is purely based on gender. Instead of praising corporations or IT companies for hiring gay men, we tend to shout at them "why aren't you hiring women". We completely ignore that corporations which are allegedly biased to women, have no issue with hiring gay men. If we live in a society that is adverse to LGBT people, why is it that they thrive? The highest paid female CEO in America one year was Trans. If a trans women can be successful in business, there is no reason why any other female can't be successful.

OP I notice you said we should tilt laws in favour of women. What laws are in favour of men? There is a lot in favour of women ie rights to the family, rights to their children, they can't be charged for rape, they can't really be punished for underage sex, women can't be charged for prostitution anymore etc.

professore

I don't need a paragraph, just a few words: Remove all double standards. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. That's it. Same sentence for the same crime. Same opportunities to compete for the same salaries. Same compromise to be a stay at home parent or career go getter depending what each party wants, not based on stupid quotas. Everything else is bull****.

For example, "My body my choice". Fine - but if you are fine with that you also have to be fine with a guy legally being able to disavow all responsibility for a child he fathered if he so wishes - as women have this right (not here yet as some pedant will point out). Also prosititution is a ridiculous double standard currently where the purchasers of sex are criminals and the sellers are not.

Recognise that men and women are fundamentally different.

H3llR4iser

seamus wrote: »

...Mothers are quicker to let boys do what they want, but fathers still tend very strongly into trying to make boys be boyish and avoid "girly" things and behaviours.

Plenty of mothers WILL and DO tell off their daughters from things they deem as being "for boys" - like pursuing STEM careers, while on the same subject many fathers of girls will be way more open. I've witnessed this plenty of times, I've posted abundantly about my CoderDojo experience.

A lot of adult, mature women with daughters also still hold the insane idea that guys won't like or "marry" their girls if they aren't the embodiment of the "girly delicate wallflower", and oppose them taking up sports and generally physical or dangerous activities. It works both ways and has plenty of ill effects.

Deleted User wrote: »

In terms of social approval/disapproval, I'm unable to think of a single 'male' article of clothing that a woman can't wear without it being acceptable. However, if a man wears any 'female' articles of clothing, then he's a sexual deviant.

I would agree that there needs to be much more balance in teaching about gender/sexuality. There is a very strong double standard about fashion.

Fashion is fashion and it changes all the time - years ago it would have been insane to think about men wearing leggings for exercise or skinny jeans on the street, yet younger dudes do now and nobody has an issue with it.

There's no telling if in 50 years time miniskirts, tights and stiletto heels will be the norm for guys (high heels were invented for men, back in time). I know I don't wanna see that day out of pure personal taste (:D
:D), but it might very well happen...

As for the "true equality", I could go on forever, but really it is about removing any double standards. It might be a silly reference, but the "gender dynamics" shown in the original "Starship Troopers" movie comes close - leaving aside the whole Fascist undertone; Female and male lives are valued the same (very little, but that happens in time of war, unfortunately), serve side by side in any line of duty with the same rights and expectations, are even shown to play non-professional level sports together and so on.

Sleepy

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Plenty of mothers WILL and DO tell off their daughters from things they deem as being "for boys" - like pursuing STEM careers, while on the same subject many fathers of girls will be way more open. I've witnessed this plenty of times, I've posted abundantly about my CoderDojo experience.

Sorry, tried the search but it didn't come up with anything. Curious as to your CoderDojo experience in this regard. My 11 year old just started in the past few weeks and his 8 year old sister is starting to express an interest that I'd like to encourage.

H3llR4iser

Sleepy wrote: »

Sorry, tried the search but it didn't come up with anything. Curious as to your CoderDojo experience in this regard. My 11 year old just started in the past few weeks and his 8 year old sister is starting to express an interest that I'd like to encourage.

To keep it simple and short, I was involved with my company's CoderDojo initiative over 3 years (in Cork); One thing that was immediately obvious was that the vast, vast vast majority of kids coming in each week were boys; Often there were no girls at all in the room, and we're talking sessions involving between 40 and 60 kids.

Interestingly enough, we also had a "Women for STEM" initiative going on with some of the people in the office (mostly the ladies, but a few of the guys as well) going into secondary schools to promote technical and scientific careers for female pupils, so the natural choice was to team up.

We tried everything - from the "Women in STEM" folks telling schoolgirls about CoderDojo to involving more women as tutors, nothing worked; The girls themselves usually showed no interest whatsoever (some would show up once or twice, spend the whole two hours twiddling around with WhatsApp/Facebook/SMS, then disappear), but the parent's attitude was quite a problem and while dads would often go the "I'll tell my daughter and see what she thinks" way, the majority of mothers would come up straight and go "I don't know, isn't it something more for boys with computers et all?" or "no, it's going to be mostly boys there, she wouldn't like it".

professore

H3llR4iser wrote: »

To keep it simple and short, I was involved with my company's CoderDojo initiative over 3 years (in Cork); One thing that was immediately obvious was that the vast, vast vast majority of kids coming in each week were boys; Often there were no girls at all in the room, and we're talking sessions involving between 40 and 60 kids.

Interestingly enough, we also had a "Women for STEM" initiative going on with some of the people in the office (mostly the ladies, but a few of the guys as well) going into secondary schools to promote technical and scientific careers for female pupils, so the natural choice was to team up.

We tried everything - from the "Women in STEM" folks telling schoolgirls about CoderDojo to involving more women as tutors, nothing worked; The girls themselves usually showed no interest whatsoever (some would show up once or twice, spend the whole two hours twiddling around with WhatsApp/Facebook/SMS, then disappear), but the parent's attitude was quite a problem and while dads would often go the "I'll tell my daughter and see what she thinks" way, the majority of mothers would come up straight and go "I don't know, isn't it something more for boys with computers et all?" or "no, it's going to be mostly boys there, she wouldn't like it".

I also had a coder Dojo experience with my then 14 year old daughter who is now in first year of a STEM degree (not IT but fundamental science). She brought her less technical friend. Everyone ignored them except for one of the organisers who suggested they could do a pink background on a web page. This to a girl who got an A in honours maths in the leaving cert.

I ended up doing some stuff with them myself as no one else showed any interest in them. I haven't​ seen such sexism before or since. I'm not surprised it's all dudes.

H3llR4iser

professore wrote: »

I also had a coder Dojo experience with my then 14 year old daughter who is now in first year of a STEM degree (not IT but fundamental science). She brought her less technical friend. Everyone ignored them except for one of the organisers who suggested they could do a pink background on a web page. This to a girl who got an A in honours maths in the leaving cert.

I ended up doing some stuff with them myself as no one else showed any interest in them. I haven't​ seen such sexism before or since. I'm not surprised it's all dudes.

I'm sorry you had a poor experience, what did exactly happen? Were the girls asking for help/directions and being told off? One thing I've seen happening was, at times, tutors' attention being "sucked away" by the 3/4 more advanced kids attending, who would be working on relatively complex personal projects (I've seen plenty ranging from AngularJS pages to Unity games). Shouldn't happen but does, often the tutors themselves are not exactly experienced at managing time and effort.

One of the hardest things is to figure out and propose realistic tasks if the kids ask while not knowing their starting level at all; You can't really ask them "what would you like to do" because...well, kids will be kids - they'd come up with simply impossible stuff; You will probably not be surprised if I tell you the most common reply to this question was "make Call of Duty but better than Call of Duty" followed by insane lists of "requisites" ranging from lasers to flying dragons

CaptainPants

I think at this stage in Western countries most of the heavy lifting in regards to progress in gender relations has already been done. There are no legal barriers to women or men doing pretty much anything they want (except for abortion laws, but they are voted for by a majority of both genders, and women are more likely to be anti-abortion than men). The real challenge now is how to get gender relations in the rest of the world (particularly the Middle East and Africa) up to the standard we have achieved in the West in the past 70-odd years.

Most of the gender issues that we have in the West are essentially 'First-World' problems at this point. So for example, there is too much pressure on young women to be seen as sexy, leading to all sorts of self-esteem issues and so on, but ultimately this regrettable outcome is not the result of the persistence of old-school patriarchy, but a consequence of its decline: Women are free to show off their bodies now, and as a result feel a pressure to compete that was unknown to my grandmother, who wouldn't have known what a 'thigh-gap' was. Secondly, a lot of research has shown that parents don't bring up girls significantly differently to boys - the idea that parents are still telling girls to be pretty princesses and not study science is at least 2 generations out of date.

While it certainly would be good to get numbers approaching 50/50 in political office and corporate boards- there are plenty of factors other than 'sexism' causing these disparities. Probably the main one, is the fact that 40 odd years ago we came up with the idea of completely overhauling the economy so that both men and women did paid work in the workforce. However we didn't have a serious think about who would look after the kids when this was implemented, so we have the strange situation of both men and women struggling to earn enough money to make their mortgage payments, while handing over the lion's share of one of their salaries to get somebody to look after their kids while they do so. This often results in one of them going part time or quitting altogether for a few years to make this easier (Hint: It usually ends up being the woman who does this): This is probably one of the main reasons behind the 'pay gap', and behind women's lesser participation in the very small minority of people who reach the upper echelons of politics and business.

Therefore, I would say universal free childcare is necessary to bring us closest to equality of opportunity in this regard. Whether it will lead to equality of outcome I don't yet know.

We also need to find some way to encourage both boys and girls to seek that in themselves and their partners that will actually make them happy. We often hear well-meaning lefties say things such as "Our society teaches boys/girls to..." without mentioning which part of that society they are talking about. Our "society" is made up of upbringing we get from our parents and teachers, and that we get from popular culture, which are often completely at odds with each other. Thus as parents we may be bringing up our girls and boys to love themselves as they are, while popular culture is telling them to dress like Nikki Minaj and find themselves an edgy bad boy. How one takes on the negative messages of popular culture without suppressing free speech is beyond me though. I guess all we can do is try and bring people up to resist them better.

Lastly I think we should stop trying to imagine utopian solutions to gender problems. There is never going to be a world where there is no conflict between men and women - the difficulties and mutual misunderstandings are necessary parts of human life. If we see every instance of friction as damning evidence of the persistence of 'patriarachy' we'll all be writing breathless Guardian articles while Rome burns. From this point on, (at least in the West) most of the solutions should be technical, not transformative.