01-21-2014, 12:00 AM
delawaredan wrote:
Julio Juliopolis wrote:Bigotry - The belief that one group of people, on the merits of their birth alone, has entitlements from the outside group which in turn has obligations to the first. For example a racially bigotted person might believe that whites are entitled to own slaves, and blacks are obligated to perform as slaves for white people. Note that hatred is not a requirement for bigotry, merely indifference. People didn't make their slaves work because they hated them, they did it because they felt entitled to do so. When angered with a slave, a bigot needed to do something else in addition to making them perform as slaves in order to feel satisfied. Indifference is far more dangerous than hate. Hell hath no fury like someone who already feels entitled to mistreat you scorned.
Promoting bigotry - The promotion of bigotry can take many forms. However behind all of them is the idealization of and/or justification of the entitlements for entitled grou; or the dehumanization of and/or justification of obligations of the obligated one.
This thread - This thread promotes bigotry by idealizing women and treating them as all entitled to our appreciation, (while ignoring all men who in any way are deserving of such). Like most bigotry when examined from a logical point of view it is absolute nonsense, as appreciation should be given on the basis of people actually doing things for us and others; not by virtue of having performed the wonderous accomplishment of being born with a vagina. Of course pointing out specific things we should be thankful to people, (of any type), for doing is not the point of this thread. Closing our eyes, breathing deeply, imagining idealized women, and then pretending that is reality is the real point of it.
Would it even things out to make a male appreciation thread? This was not meant to cause anyone offense or to be indifferent. I am sorry it bothered you, and your point of view is valid of course.
I know you didn't mean to cause offense with this, but thank you for saying so anyway.
True, a male appreciation thread might help to even it out, and it would be a step up, but I'm hoping we can evolve a little further and to an enlightenment level beyond "seperate but equal"
I find that sometimes, when people cannot see bigotry because they've been so immersed in it their whole lives, it helps to imagine the scenario with a different target; either by reversing the genders or switching to racial groups. So imagine if you will.... that you had come into a forum like this one day and saw a thread like this, called "White Appreciation", written by a black person. Other black people joined in, posting images of somewhat evil-looking whites wearing crowns and songs with lyrics like "I believe in whites, I believe in whites, don't no white need a black, etc." Imagine these people were really serious about this, closing their eyes and sighing to themselves about how great white people are. They felt like heros, knights in shining armor for doing this, and anyone who would point out that they were in fact supporting bigotry against themselves must therefore be the evil dragon.
Or think about it with the gender switch. If women had made a thread like this called masculine appreciation, how long do you really think it would have been before the men here returned the favor? I highly doubt it would have taken more than a day. But to continue with the example, let's say they didn't do it. Weeks went by and the only man who replied simply joined in to show his appreciation for males as well. Keeping in mind that I'm asking you this not to judge your answer as right or wrong, how would you honestly feel about those men behaving that way? How about switching back to the racial example, how would you feel about the actions there had the only white person replying simply joined in with an example of a white person they appreciated?
The actions in each case are the exact same, yet we're trained to respond to them differently. Justice itself is supposed to be blind, it's supposed to judge actions purely on the merits of the actions themselves. If one looks at an action and cannot do that until they know what race everyone involved in the action is, that person has a racist view. The same thing applies if one needs to know what gender everyone involved in the action is, that person would have a sexist view. Our society is nearly universally composed of people with the latter view. People aren't judging actions so much as judging genders, and the gender that obviously gets judged harshly is the male one.
It isn't done out of hate. It's done because we are taught to believe in and enforce roles on each other. We are taught this so thoroughly we identify with the roles, we build our self-image around them. And part of men's role is an obligation to correct gender inequalities which favor men. When men fail in this role we think of them harshly; we would call men cads or jerks if they failed to reciprocate a "masculine appreciation" thread started by women, (especially considering how rarely women show appreciation for men as a group). Women's role does not include this obligation, and in fact has an opposite entitlement aspect.
Seeing people according to their roles blinds us so that we cannot see who they really are. I don't like the words masculine and feminine for this reason. The word feminine, which is things associated with women, is linked with beauty, being soft, sweet, loving, nurturing, etc. And every time we add a word to that list we are in part taking that trait away from men. A man who has those traits is a man. He's no less of a man because of them. Nor should women get creditted when it's a man doing something. If a man is a good father to his children, he's not "Mr. Mom", he's not "In touch with his feminine side", he's a man who is acting like a man and being a good dad like many men are. But if you don't see the sexism there, try switching over to racism again. Imagine defining these traits instead as white and black and telling blacks who act like good parents that they are "in touch with their inner white person". See any bigotry there?
The concept of how our beliefs in roles and traits associated with them is excellently demonstrated in the following video. It's title is poorly chosen and doesn't actually relate to information presented in it so I hope you'll all overlook the name of it. Ironically considering my complaints, but appropriate for the thread this video was created by a woman I appreciate greatly.
Julio Juliopolis wrote:Bigotry - The belief that one group of people, on the merits of their birth alone, has entitlements from the outside group which in turn has obligations to the first. For example a racially bigotted person might believe that whites are entitled to own slaves, and blacks are obligated to perform as slaves for white people. Note that hatred is not a requirement for bigotry, merely indifference. People didn't make their slaves work because they hated them, they did it because they felt entitled to do so. When angered with a slave, a bigot needed to do something else in addition to making them perform as slaves in order to feel satisfied. Indifference is far more dangerous than hate. Hell hath no fury like someone who already feels entitled to mistreat you scorned.
Promoting bigotry - The promotion of bigotry can take many forms. However behind all of them is the idealization of and/or justification of the entitlements for entitled grou; or the dehumanization of and/or justification of obligations of the obligated one.
This thread - This thread promotes bigotry by idealizing women and treating them as all entitled to our appreciation, (while ignoring all men who in any way are deserving of such). Like most bigotry when examined from a logical point of view it is absolute nonsense, as appreciation should be given on the basis of people actually doing things for us and others; not by virtue of having performed the wonderous accomplishment of being born with a vagina. Of course pointing out specific things we should be thankful to people, (of any type), for doing is not the point of this thread. Closing our eyes, breathing deeply, imagining idealized women, and then pretending that is reality is the real point of it.
Would it even things out to make a male appreciation thread? This was not meant to cause anyone offense or to be indifferent. I am sorry it bothered you, and your point of view is valid of course.
I know you didn't mean to cause offense with this, but thank you for saying so anyway.
True, a male appreciation thread might help to even it out, and it would be a step up, but I'm hoping we can evolve a little further and to an enlightenment level beyond "seperate but equal"
I find that sometimes, when people cannot see bigotry because they've been so immersed in it their whole lives, it helps to imagine the scenario with a different target; either by reversing the genders or switching to racial groups. So imagine if you will.... that you had come into a forum like this one day and saw a thread like this, called "White Appreciation", written by a black person. Other black people joined in, posting images of somewhat evil-looking whites wearing crowns and songs with lyrics like "I believe in whites, I believe in whites, don't no white need a black, etc." Imagine these people were really serious about this, closing their eyes and sighing to themselves about how great white people are. They felt like heros, knights in shining armor for doing this, and anyone who would point out that they were in fact supporting bigotry against themselves must therefore be the evil dragon.
Or think about it with the gender switch. If women had made a thread like this called masculine appreciation, how long do you really think it would have been before the men here returned the favor? I highly doubt it would have taken more than a day. But to continue with the example, let's say they didn't do it. Weeks went by and the only man who replied simply joined in to show his appreciation for males as well. Keeping in mind that I'm asking you this not to judge your answer as right or wrong, how would you honestly feel about those men behaving that way? How about switching back to the racial example, how would you feel about the actions there had the only white person replying simply joined in with an example of a white person they appreciated?
The actions in each case are the exact same, yet we're trained to respond to them differently. Justice itself is supposed to be blind, it's supposed to judge actions purely on the merits of the actions themselves. If one looks at an action and cannot do that until they know what race everyone involved in the action is, that person has a racist view. The same thing applies if one needs to know what gender everyone involved in the action is, that person would have a sexist view. Our society is nearly universally composed of people with the latter view. People aren't judging actions so much as judging genders, and the gender that obviously gets judged harshly is the male one.
It isn't done out of hate. It's done because we are taught to believe in and enforce roles on each other. We are taught this so thoroughly we identify with the roles, we build our self-image around them. And part of men's role is an obligation to correct gender inequalities which favor men. When men fail in this role we think of them harshly; we would call men cads or jerks if they failed to reciprocate a "masculine appreciation" thread started by women, (especially considering how rarely women show appreciation for men as a group). Women's role does not include this obligation, and in fact has an opposite entitlement aspect.
Seeing people according to their roles blinds us so that we cannot see who they really are. I don't like the words masculine and feminine for this reason. The word feminine, which is things associated with women, is linked with beauty, being soft, sweet, loving, nurturing, etc. And every time we add a word to that list we are in part taking that trait away from men. A man who has those traits is a man. He's no less of a man because of them. Nor should women get creditted when it's a man doing something. If a man is a good father to his children, he's not "Mr. Mom", he's not "In touch with his feminine side", he's a man who is acting like a man and being a good dad like many men are. But if you don't see the sexism there, try switching over to racism again. Imagine defining these traits instead as white and black and telling blacks who act like good parents that they are "in touch with their inner white person". See any bigotry there?
The concept of how our beliefs in roles and traits associated with them is excellently demonstrated in the following video. It's title is poorly chosen and doesn't actually relate to information presented in it so I hope you'll all overlook the name of it. Ironically considering my complaints, but appropriate for the thread this video was created by a woman I appreciate greatly.