Why is sexism such a difficult topic?

Dudess wrote: »

Where have people said that?

PrincessLola, only a stupid person would say women have it better than men in general here - no point addressing them. To be fair, I don't think most guys here would think that.

I do think gender quotas are a bad idea and one which only fuels the "feminists are crazy bitches" way of thinking. Encouraging women more to become interested in politics would be the way to address that one IMO.

This really, hiring someone competent is good, hiring someone to pad out the number of ladiez is not. a woman hired purely because shes a woman will have a harder time benig taken seriously as a politican than one who has a track record of being good at what she does.

the gender in kids thing, a lot of it is nonsense, hippy parenting at its worst,using their kids as a social experiment instead of just teaching them to be themselves and respect the the other sex and see them as equals.. i'd wager the vast majority of people here were raised with that primitive notion that boys and girls are different and turned out as well rounded individuals, I have a nephew who's 8, he plays soccer, loves video games but loves helping my sister cook and he wants to learn to bake things properly as he enjoys helping her make cakes and the like, thats healthy, he doesnt look at an apron and go "ew, thats for wimmin!" and she encourages it, but she doesnt tell him that such and such a toy is evil and gender based, she just lets him play with what appeals to him.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

And no - there is not a massive difference between being told 'we will arrest you if you go out' and 'if you go out and are brutally raped and murdered it's your own fault because we did warn you' which was the message the Yorkshire police were giving out.

The sheer fact that they felt it was acceptable to tell women to just stay at home as it was more important that men were still able to have freedom of movement beggers belief. Yet, the ides of telling men to stay home so that any man who was out and about could be questioned, recorded and checked if another crime occurred during the curfew never dawned on anyone. It was simply unthinkable. But apparently it was perfectly reasonable to expect women to become prisoners in their own homes.

In all fairness, I don't think the police were involved in some chauvinistic conspiracy there at all. The ripper was killing random women in Bradford and not men, therefore their message was only warning women to stay inside after dark for their own safety, not as some kind of punishment for being female!

Sharrow wrote: »

Nice False Analogy you have going there.

Stop trying to use the fact that there are women who have it worse in other countries as a reason to try and paint women here and whinging, which is a way to try and shut women up and not let them talk about how our society and culture effect us.

If these discussions aren't allowed to happen then gendered attitudes and thinking will remain unchallenged and unexamined and things won't change.

hows that a false analogy? its a very real one, and nobodies telling anyone to stop whinging, just that context and perspective are important, tell me one thing you as a woman in 2012 Ireland you cant do purely based on your gender and I'll agree with you.

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

If someone claims to care deeply are the protection of horses but never actually does anything to protect horses then they are hypocryts. You dont seem to be understanding basic logic here.

What part of the following logic doesn't make sense to you?

The core principal of feminism is gender equality. If feminists only campaign for increases in female rights then what their real core principal is is increasing female rights. The claim that gender equality is the goal is in fact false.

If you can find flaws in my reasoning or assumptions I am more than happy to change my opinion.

Your assumption appears to be based on the idea that mens rights and womens rights began at an equal level, lets say both at 0, and these campaigns for womens rights are about pushing past that of men so that they are at say 1 while claiming eqaulity as their aim.
The key thing that you seem to be missing is that feminism came about because women were at -10 while men were at 0 and the campaigning is to move women closer to zero.

hardbackwriter wrote: »

well , one example is the kind of thing where Vincent Browne sees everything though the prism of equality , therefore any kind of anti social activity can be rationalised through the they started off with less angle , where do you draw the line and start asking what happened to good old personal responsibility

Not to get too off topic, but one doesn't have to simply take a criminal's disadvantaged background as the only reason for their crime. It's not an all-or-nothing situation.
You can acknowledge the person's background as a partial cause and attempt to improve conditions for the disadvantaged and attempt to remedy some of the effects of the criminal's disadvantaged situation, while simultaneously accepting that the criminal is ultimately responsible for their crime and punishing them.

The fact is: social disadvantage does lead to increased crime and while that doesn't excuse criminals, it's also only fair to factor that into evaluating their crimes.
And greater social equality would undoubtedly reduce anti-social crime.

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

This is a nonesense hpothethical situation

No it's not, it's what transgender people often have to do.

Zulu wrote: »

I have of course. You've missed my point, but it's trivial so don't worry about it.

You'd prefer if the police didn't warn the public? (I agree the language wasn't ideal, it's the principle I'm refering to)

Sorry, but there is a massive difference. Explain your comment to people unfortunate enough to have lived under a real curfew.

My point is that it was considered acceptable by the authorities to suggest that approx 50% of the adult population had no real business going out at night based only on their gender.

Tell me this - why couldn't the other 50% of the population have been told ' Look, a man is committing these horrendous crimes so we are asking all men to please stay indoors until we catch him. Any man out at night will be stopped and questioned and we will ask you to provide ID plus a record of your movement that we can verify'?

The answer was because officialdom believed that women didn't need to go out at night, but men did. One couldn't seriously advise men not to go out - they had important things to do, but women - sure they will all be watching Corrie on the Tele and none of them have any business being out after dark if they are respectable. Do you really think the message that sends is acceptable?

Remember this included winter when it gets dark by 5 p.m. - so women didn't have jobs that finished after dark? Women didn't attend lectures that finished after dark (one of Sutcliffe's victim was 20-year-old Jacqueline Hill, a student at the University of Leeds, he killed her on 17 November - while on bail awaiting trial for a night time DUI arrest).

Can you imagine the outrage now if women were 'advised' not to go out after dark by the police and if they did the implication being what happens to them is their own fault as they had been warned? Yet, at the time this was deemed perfectly acceptable by the authorities.
Things changed because of campaigns like Reclaim The Night (a global movement) showed up the double standards for what they were - one rule for men, another rule for women.

pickarooney wrote: »

Are there schools in Ireland with no maths and physics classes?

Yes when it comes to honors maths, applied maths, physics and honors physics if there are not enough pupils in the school interested in taking them (which can and does happen in all girls school) then it's considered a waste of teaching resources and the classes either don't go ahead or get canceled.
We'd one teacher who ran an applied maths class for the 5 of us that wanted it after school hours for no paym but when she was in a car crash the classes stopped.

pickarooney wrote: »

It's utterly disgraceful that a college lecturer would say something like that. I honestly did not think that kind of attitude existed among allegedly educated people in the 20th century.

There was 1 female lecturer which we had for one subject, I was the only female student in the year who picked her option and she told me point blank she was going to be harder on me to protect herself and her reputation so no one could say she was favoring me and I would never get the highest grade in her subject no matter how hard I worked. Talk about encouraging your students.:mad:

pickarooney wrote: »

Do you reckon a man on a murderous rampage would have just packed it in if the police advised men to stay indoors?

I get what you're saying about the police's incompetence and the inference that society would survive all right if the female population weren't about at night but surely you recognise that telling half the population to stay in just in case they were a bloodthirsty psychopath is not quite the same as advising half the population to stay in as an extreme measure of self-preservation?


The ultimate get back in the kitchen comment

If men had been asked to not go out at night Sutcliffe would have had to account for why he was out. Thereby bringing him to the attention of the authorities faster.

It seems as if some here find the stance taken by the Yorkshire police to be acceptable so we will have to agree to disagree on that. I think there was a chauvinistic subliminal message stating that it was no biggy if women stayed in after dark - that's what I thought then and I still think it - but it was utterly impossible to expect men to do the same thing.

As for that former lecturer - yes, I did enjoy becoming his head chef years later.

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

Once again my main point is being ignored.

What is the main goal of feminism, gender equality or to increase the rights of women?

Has anyone ever come across a feminist pissed off that women have better conditions than men?

I get it that you're afraid women's rights = oppression of men, you see any kind of movement to try and help women as being anti-man.

To answer your point, the main goal of feminism is hinted at in its very name: feminism, its for the progression of women so that they are given an equal standing to men. It came about in the late 19th century when women decided to stand up and fight for their right to vote/ own property/ have careers/ run businesses/ not be under the control of their husbands/ just be seen as equals. So yes, it was born out of a need to address the inequal standing of women in society. Its main focus was women, i this a bad thing? No.
Black equality groups focus on black people
Fathers' rights groups focus on fathers
Not every social movement has to be related to you.

To answer Dudess, I agree with you, but you'd be surprised what some individuals think. You see people complaining that poor little boys are doing badly in school with only female teachers who they can't relate to. Yet girls are expected to just deal with the fact that most world leaders/doctors/characters in tv shows & movies are male. :rolleyes:

hardbackwriter wrote: »

have you ever seen a GAA star without a cracker on his arm , most women like men who engage in playing sport , the GAA has been an almost overwhelming force for good in this country and is the bedrock of rural Ireland , btw , I say that as someone who prefers soccer

its also parochial bigoted small town Ireland at its worst, but thats a whole other debate