Thoughts on Feminists

I'll just leave this right here...

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The eight-story building lacked emergency exits. When the fire broke out, workers reportedly tried to flee but found themselves trapped by locked gates.

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Bangladesh factory fire was act of sabotage, committee finds - latimes.com

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"The workers were trapped or just had to jump from the upper floors. Still the casualties would have been much less had the supervisors allowed the workers to leave the factory when the fire broke out."

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Bangladesh factory fire was 'sabotage' - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English

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[The managers] told them "it was for a mock fire drill"

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Panel calls Bangladesh factory fire sabotage, says owner should be tried - CNN.com

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

That "default state" is itself a product of oppression and exploitation.

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Oppression and exploitation are default states as well. Scarcity of resources is an underlying reality that will ALWAYS express itself in one way or another, regardless of the policies and initiatives society chooses to deal with it. I am not romanticizing sweatshops, I'm only suggesting that there aren't any good alternatives for increasing the standard of living and wealth of a society.

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Sweatshops have been a piece of transitions not because they have to be but because they can be. The fact that they are transitional instead of permanent shows that they never had to be sweatshops in the first place

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This is more employment of the "economics is a zero sum game" fallacy. Sweatshop labor is transitional in third world countries because the countries get richer at a very fast pace. See the double digit growth rates in the economies of these countries. Once wealth and human capital accumulates past a certain point, these countries are no longer candidates to be massive export economies anymore and they transition to being more like modern Western economies.

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Sweatshops are not "cheap labor" aligned with economic imperatives at all. They are highly sociopathic and abusive human rights violations. I'm not entirely sure why many in the US have romanticized them

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Originally Posted by boost

I'll just leave this right here...



Bangladesh factory fire was act of sabotage, committee finds - latimes.com



Bangladesh factory fire was 'sabotage' - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English



Panel calls Bangladesh factory fire sabotage, says owner should be tried - CNN.com

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Again, I don't romanticize sweatshops. I think that an honest conversation needs to be had about what constitutes a sweatshop and what is acceptable. I think everyone can agree that sweatshops shouldn't be life-threatening conditions for the workers. But leftists take the anti-sweatshop crusade way too far and say that sweatshop workers aren't paid enough and that capitalism exploits workers. They'd rather these people resorted to prostitution or petty theft to make a living instead. They'd rather everything in the world cost twice as much. They'd rather live in a world where people in third world countries have nothing to offer to the world economy, and no means of building wealth for themselves.


BTW, this all should get moved to the workers rights thread.

Renton, you seem to be saying that the end justifies the means, ie the economic growth and progression that is a result if sweatshops justifies the exploitation. I think the argument against this, assuming it is true, is that it isn't the only way or the morally right way.

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Originally Posted by rong

Renton, you seem to be saying that the end justifies the means, ie the economic growth and progression that is a result if sweatshops justifies the exploitation. I think the argument against this, assuming it is true, is that it isn't the only way or the morally right way.

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No, even the means are justified because the alternatives are far worse for these people.

I don't believe we've tried many alternatives. This is what I was getting at earlier by the starting point of your analysis having a direct effect on the conclusion.

If you start with: these people are poor and starving, they have no means of improving their situation themselves. Then concluding that working in a sweatshop is better for them makes sense. Good old Perato efficiency.

However a higher level approach combined with an ethically considered set of minimum standard leads to an entirely different outcome.

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Originally Posted by Renton

This is more employment of the "economics is a zero sum game" fallacy. Sweatshop labor is transitional in third world countries because the countries get richer at a very fast pace. See the double digit growth rates in the economies of these countries. Once wealth and human capital accumulates past a certain point, these countries are no longer candidates to be massive export economies anymore and they transition to being more like modern Western economies.

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This isn't due to them being sweatshops though. Sweatshops do not play a pivotal role whatsoever in the growth of these economies. Industrialization does, but that isn't the same as abusive labor. Furthermore, for various reasons, the growth of the economies is largely dependent upon the non-abusive conditions of related economies.

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I am not romanticizing sweatshops, I'm only suggesting that there aren't any good alternatives for increasing the standard of living and wealth of a society.

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There most certainly are. Sweatshops are not just cheap labor. Cheap labor relative to economic imperatives is fantastic, but that also has nothing to do with sweatshops. All the factories employing people in poor countries do not have any need to engage in such abusive and deleterious practices. Them doing so merely turns their enormous profits into extra super enormous profits, and that's why they do it. And they would keep doing it forever and ever if they were somehow able to stifle the cries of those they abuse

This is fundamentally no different than slave owners arguing for why their slave plantations are beneficial. Not only is this stuff romanticizing terrible practices but it isn't even smart economics. I'm not sure if in my lifetime we'll ever figure out that suppliers would have nothing without consumers. That seems a silly thing to say until you begin to follow the logic of what it means when, on the macro scale, the act of spending inherently is the same as accruing income. It is only through an existence of laborers who are not in sweatshops who can buy products that those in sweatshops can be brought out of the sweatshops. This then means that the sweatshops are not themselves necessary even on a purely economic basis regardless of their rampant human rights violations

Even if we could decouple the human rights violations of sweatshops out of the equation, the basic bargain model is still what actually works and grows the economy, albeit much too slowly because the oppressors fight it tooth and nail. When basics of monetary and resource stability are met, every and any economy that has ever existed has been only as healthy as how much purchasing power the consumers had. Many of the very wealthy have never liked this fact and try to trick everybody into believing the opposite, so much so that they even believe it.

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Originally Posted by Renton

Aside from slavery and central planned economies, no. I don't think it is possible to exploit a worker in a free market economy other than slavery.

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What The Fuck?

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Originally Posted by Renton

Again, I don't romanticize sweatshops. I think that an honest conversation needs to be had about what constitutes a sweatshop and what is acceptable. I think everyone can agree that sweatshops shouldn't be life-threatening conditions for the workers. But leftists take the anti-sweatshop crusade way too far and say that sweatshop workers aren't paid enough and that capitalism exploits workers. They'd rather these people resorted to prostitution or petty theft to make a living instead. They'd rather everything in the world cost twice as much. They'd rather live in a world where people in third world countries have nothing to offer to the world economy, and no means of building wealth for themselves.

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Those aren't the only two options. By far the best model we've ever seen for boosting an economy is one that pays employees enough to purchase what they produce. But this has never been a popular idea among those who fancy themselves modern day royalty, so it gets pushed under the rug as much as possible, and we end up believing false ideas about how we need extremely cheap labor and executives need enormous vaults of profits. This globalized trade model you're describing is actually extremely inefficient and is really just slave wages for producers and purchases on credit for consumers, all of which is meant for maximum profits for the "owners".

Not only is this not the only model, but it is a terribly inefficient model. We have done better models in the past and would could do them now if we pulled them out from under the rug

Conversations about sweatshops should include the fact that oftentimes these people are forced into the city in search of jobs because their traditional rural way of life gets fucked in the ass by more developed countries coming in and destroying, poisoning and whatnot land in an effort to get at natural resources.

There are also strong arguments that while some economies were able to move through the "sweatshop phase" if you want to call it that and use industrialisation to pull up their economies, they were only able to do so by in turn fucking over more periphery countries - ie that this kind of "solution" only works if you're able to exploit even more disadvantaged countries and therefore it's not possible to use it as a way to pull everybody out of poverty, but rather just furthers the core/semi-periphery/periphery system.

If you're accusing leftists of being too negative, you're being in turn far too positive. Sexual abuse and other such fun stuff has been shown to be rampant in many sweatshops, and it's common that people are paid below a living wage - ie. that the wage isn't just low in terms of dumb "wow that's not many of my dollars, they couldn't even get a cheeseburger from my local McDonalds here in America for that!" thinking, but also it's too low for them to survive off. This leads to people working ridiculous hours to half-survive, which in turn takes employment out of the hands of other people since those hours are no longer available. inb4 you again come back with "well they're being forced to choose between sucking a big fat dick or taking it up the ass until it bleeds or dying and they choose sucking dick, so sucking dick must be alright for them".

Are all sweatshops like that and is the concept of a sweatshop inherently bad? Absolutely not, but that doesn't mean you can make a sweeping statement that all sweatshops are helping and that leftists just don't get it.

Your arguments about labor revolve around the fact that Wuf believes human life is precious, while other value it less. You will never agree.

I don't ever really think of the point of these discussions being to reach an agreement

Ah, mental masterbation at its finest.

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Originally Posted by !Luck

Ah, mental masterbation at its finest.

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You could always, like, learn from other people's viewpoints and such. Also, I'm not sure whether or not self-expression and articulation of your ideas count as mental masturbation or not, but then again I should stop pretending like I give a shit about rhetorical taxonomy.

"Suffering, starvation, and scarcity is the default state of humanity."

I strongly disagree on the use of the word humanity. I've been taught that it is not humanity, but civilization which is the root of these deprivations.

Before the rise of cities, humans had longer life expectancy (longer than most civilized societies today, even), better nutrition, less disease, more egalitarian social roles, etc.

The hunter/gatherer cultures that still exist today are a stunning counter-example to the civilized way of life.

Hunter/gatherers spend only about 2 - 3 hours per day "working". Most of their time is spend relaxing with each other. The small communities make disease far less prevalent, as there are fewer vectors for the disease to follow.

Scarcity is only an issue when external boundaries place restrictions on the ability of the group to go to where the food is... and this is only an issue during drought times or other similar disasters to the "local" food source.

It's hard to measure suffering, but these people do not say they are suffering, and frankly don't understand why "civilized" people "trade their time".

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

Before the rise of cities, humans had longer life expectancy

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LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE YOU SMOKING

You guys take that shit to another thread.

But back on the topic of feminists, here are some other quotes from that same site that I pulled the original quote from (Who Needs Feminism?)

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I need feminism because a guy on Facebook said that some women need to accept that they are going to be perved at.

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This is the plain and simple truth. They do need to accept that it's going to happen because it will allow them to be better prepared to deal with it in whatever way they see fit.

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I need feminism to remind me that I’m not WORTHLESS just because I’m considered an UNATTRACTIVE WOMAN!

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I agree that she is not worthless, but she is worth less. She has a lower worth in the sexual marketplace because she's not desirable (and it doesn't look like that she's trying to be from the picture), and that means that men aren't going to give her as much cool shit like favors that would help her to elevate her value.

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I’d like to state my opinions and be taken seriously without being dismissed as an irrational, overemotional woman.

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You are probably dismissed as an irrational woman because you're being irrational and you're a women. Learn to use some reason and logic.

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The world needs feminism because absolutely NO ONE should feel like they have to take bullshit from anyone...

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A guy wrote this one. This is simply not true. Taking bullshit from people is an important part of everyday life, and society would be worse without it.

These are a few examples taken from the first page. They don't seem to have much to do with feminism. I don't have much of a problem with feminism per se, but I do have a problem with a lot of self-proclaimed feminists.

I replied to all your posts in the "right to work laws" thread.

My main problem with feminism is men and women are not equal. There are differences between the sexes that must be addressed. It hurts both sexes if they are forced to be treated exactly the same.

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

My main problem with feminism is men and women are not equal. There are differences between the sexes that must be addressed. It hurts both sexes if they are forced to be treated exactly the same.

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Fortunately I think this is a straw man of feminism, but it's not entirely our fault for creating the straw man because most women don't understand it either. Feminism isn't about turning the race into the borg, but not deleting from rights and opportunities for women based on sex and gender. On a more fundamental level, feminism is humanism which seeks the same for both sexes, but because we have been and are currently partriarchal-dominant, we have the feminist movement instead of a "humanist" one that does the same for masculinity where needed.

Feminism is about making women equal members of society. This is often confused with making them equal in every way. The former is something like what MMA has been doing with women, the latter is a bastardization that isn't really feminism that makes weird claims like women should be allowed in the NFL right along with the guys. There is a distinct difference between promoting womens' participation in sports as much as mens and putting women in the mens' leagues. Feminism is about the former but so many people think it's the latter, which makes sense because we don't live in a society that tends to not care what women think (most women not excluded) and so we don't listen to the feminists in the first place to get an understanding of their positions

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Originally Posted by !Luck

Your arguments about labor revolve around the fact that Wuf believes human life is precious, while other value it less. You will never agree.

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While that is true, that is only half my argument. The other half is based on the reality that the notions presented are actually bad economics in the first place

So far I am close friends with one self-declared feminist who also knows a ton about the movement and culture, and she is pretty much the opposite of what is commonly called "feminism". To her and her friends who are also feminists, it's not about making the sexes ubiquitous, but about not oppressing women based on sex. This doesn't mean not treating women as if they're different than men, that is all fine, but it means not treating women in such a way that the sex itself is oppressed by the culture due to that sex.

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A feminist is "an advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women".

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Taken from Wikipedia.

Well, yes, but there are differing interpretations of what that means, of which I have argued some are straw men

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Taken from Wikipedia.

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Does "equality" in this context mean that the sexes are completely equal? I don't think any intelligent feminist could possibly argue against the fact that in general, the sexes do certain things better.

The issue is when that generalization becomes so hard-lined, that women (or men) are forced into a role by societal pressures. A firefighter has to have a certain minimum strength to be effective, and it's true that less females would fit that requirement, but policies like "no females" aren't fair to the butch chicks who are able to and want to fight fires. Feminism was born out of stupid rules like that.

The funny thing is that we're starting to see some women feeling like they HAVE to have a career and be independent and self sufficient else they conform to some horrible 1950s gender role. That guilt is one of the bi-products of the feminist movement, and it's shitty to women who may have no career ambitions and legitimately want to raise kids and martha stewart the fuck out of life.

If everyone just fucked off, and quit pushing shit down other people's throats, feminism wouldn't exist.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Well, yes, but there are differing interpretations of what that means, of which I have argued some are straw men

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Cool story bro. Ain't all bitches got pussies.

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Originally Posted by d0zer

Does "equality" in this context mean that the sexes are completely equal?

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If someone says 2+2=4, should I assume they mean it doesn't completely equal four, only kinda-sorta?

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I don't think any intelligent feminist could possibly argue against the fact that in general, the sexes do certain things better.

The issue is when that generalization becomes so hard-lined, that women (or men) are forced into a role by societal pressures. A firefighter has to have a certain minimum strength to be effective, and it's true that less females would fit that requirement, but policies like "no females" aren't fair to the butch chicks who are able to and want to fight fires. Feminism was born out of stupid rules like that.

The funny thing is that we're starting to see some women feeling like they HAVE to have a career and be independent and self sufficient else they conform to some horrible 1950s gender role. That guilt is one of the bi-products of the feminist movement, and it's shitty to women who may have no career ambitions and legitimately want to raise kids and martha stewart the fuck out of life.

If everyone just fucked off, and quit pushing shit down other people's throats, feminism wouldn't exist.

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I agree with all of this.

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

If someone says 2+2=4, should I assume they mean it doesn't completely equal four, only kinda-sorta?

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equality noun (Concise Encyclopedia)
Generally, an ideal of uniformity in treatment or status by those in a position to affect either.


Before you take this too literally and say that this means that "equal treatment" would imply that an equitable man with stick his weiner in the pooper of just as many men as he did women, or something ridiculous like that, this is to be taken on a societal-scale. Equal treatment of the races, for example, doesn't mean that when you describe black people, you have to call them white because surely if they were white, that's what you would have called them, so it would be asymmetric treatment to call them something different.

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Originally Posted by surviva316

equality noun (Concise Encyclopedia)
Generally, an ideal of uniformity in treatment or status by those in a position to affect either.


Before you take this too literally and say that this means that "equal treatment" would imply that an equitable man with stick his weiner in the pooper of just as many men as he did women, or something ridiculous like that, this is to be taken on a societal-scale. Equal treatment of the races, for example, doesn't mean that when you describe black people, you have to call them white because surely if they were white, that's what you would have called them, so it would be asymmetric treatment to call them something different.

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Stop with your strawpeople.

Feminism is basically adult penis envy.

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Feminism is basically adult penis envy.

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It's like...chill out babe. not my fault god put your junk inside you, but mine is on the outside for me to flaunt on the subway.

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Stop with your strawpeople.

Feminism is basically adult penis envy.

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If only they understood that penises are a finite resource, so they're really just hoarding it all for themselves. I actually prefer to say that they're whoring them all for themselves.

It's sheer harlotry disguised as egalitarianism.

upvotes for everybody

http://i.minus.com/ibgvdlJlvyy9MF.gif

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Feminism is basically adult penis envy.

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And now that I think about this even more, I think it's a truly avarice stance, even as far as envy goes. I mean, you think if you had nothing in the way of penises, then you would at the very least start out with baby penis envy. Then, once you have at least something to start with, your jealousy could graduate from there.

But NO! Nobody ever has baby penis envy, do they? We live in such a culture of entitlement that it's not until a woman sees the full magnificence of an adult shlong that they begin to think, "Yes, I could see me having one of those. Nay, I will go as far as to declare that I SHOULD have one."

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

If someone says 2+2=4, should I assume they mean it doesn't completely equal four, only kinda-sorta?

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I know, I know, your brain isn't designed for the "soft" sciences like sociology or other such nonsense. Pure math or fuck you amirite?

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Originally Posted by d0zer

I know, I know, your brain isn't designed for the "soft" sciences like sociology or other such nonsense. Pure math or fuck you amirite?

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Equal means equal my negro.

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Equal means equal my negro.

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If you're trying to troll an etymology or semantics rant out of me, I ask why. The results will always be boring.

This page exemplifies the muddiness of the word:
Equality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


go troll the OED.

I used to think very badly of feminists but I think woman of all social groups in the present day have it the worst, so I understand the complaining. Prejudice against woman is completely socially acceptable in a wide variety of instances in our culture.

Woman and men are naturally very different humans but any instance of a man or woman is capable of many oddities and abilities beyond the typical stereotypes.

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According to a 1996 Department of Justice report, “in about 25% of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI, … the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing." It should be noted that rape involves a forcible and non-consensual act, and a DNA match alone does not prove that rape occurred. So the 25% figure substantially underestimates the true extent of false allegations.

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Yeah if anything fans the flames of my misogyny, it's false rape accusations

A few weeks ago I read this article about a protest against a guy named Warren Farrell: The Warren Farrell Protest at the University of Toronto

The article itself is interesting -- a bunch of "feminists" (not sure if they are actually feminists or just badly informed people) rather forcibly protested his speech at a college campus because they didn't like a few of his quotes taken out of context. Based on what I've read on Wikipedia, his ideas are interesting but I haven't read any of his books so I can't really say how much merit they have.

Also, the wikipedia page: Warren Farrell - Wikiquote

I mean those ladies are pieces of poo, even if they weren't aware they were acting base on incorrect quote-mining rubbish, but I guess it's like do you say that WBC or some other group of religious nutters are actually christian or just badly informed? You gotta say everyone of them're christian since it's kind of a self-identifying thing, but then it certainly doesn't follow that just because some subset is batshit insane or quite reasonable that the rest are, or that the "movement" is.

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Originally Posted by kiwiMark

I mean those ladies are pieces of poo, even if they weren't aware they were acting base on incorrect quote-mining rubbish, but I guess it's like do you say that WBC or some other group of religious nutters are actually christian or just badly informed? You gotta say everyone of them're christian since it's kind of a self-identifying thing, but then it certainly doesn't follow that just because some subset is batshit insane or quite reasonable that the rest are, or that the "movement" is.

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I completely agree. But I wasn't sure if they self-identify as feminists, or if they just heard "OMG, pro-rape speech! we can't allow this!"

Honestly, I found the ideas in the Wikipedia page more interesting than the actual protest, that was more the reason I posted it.

My fav so far:

“We have restricted humans from giving ‘free’ food to bears and dolphins because we know that such feeding would make them dependent and lead to their extinction. But when it comes to our own species, we have difficulty seeing the connection between short-term kindness and long-term cruelty; we give women money to have more children, making them more dependent with each child and discouraging them from developing the tools to fend for themselves. The real discrimination against women, then, is ‘free feeding’.”

I love feeding women

*grabs crotch provocatively*

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Originally Posted by rong

The real discrimination against women, then, is ‘free feeding’.”

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What, like lunch dates?

The videos of that protest are fucking disgusting, and they are feminists no matter how much anyone wants to say they are not. You can't point at crazy Muslims and say that they aren't really Muslims just because they're fucking psycho and do stupid shit. It's the same shit.

Oops, apparently I can't read domain names -- the second link was to wikiquotes, which is why it only has quotes and doesn't directly talk about this guy's books or history (duh). His wikipedia page is also pretty interesting (Warren Farrell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Apparently he used to be very influential in the feminist movement, until it started becoming too anti-male for his taste.

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Originally Posted by spoonitnow

The videos of that protest are fucking disgusting, and they are feminists no matter how much anyone wants to say they are not. You can't point at crazy Muslims and say that they aren't really Muslims just because they're fucking psycho and do stupid shit. It's the same shit.

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If I ever use a fallacy, it's the no true scotsman one.

http://i.imgur.com/szl6r.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gjlil.jpg

Super related considering the tipping threads.

http://i.imgur.com/mGUJZ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7sfqI.jpg

I need feminism because I drunk too much last night and now my head hurts.