Feminine appreciation

[Guest]

Now THAT is an excellent question, Littlepaw.

[Julio Juliopolis]

Littlepaw wrote:I have a question Julio

If we eradicated bigot ism from our selves would we still recognize it in others?
I don't think I understand what you're really asking here. I'm inclined to answer "Of course, much like if we eradicated playing tennis from our lives we'd still recognize it when others played the game", but I'm not sure if that answers what you're really trying to ask.

[Littlepaw]

I said eradicate bigot ism from our selves

you said eradicate playing tennis

If I stop playing tennis I could surely enjoy watching a tennis game but if I eradicated tennis from my self?  All traces of tennis removed, how could I recognize it then?  
Can we eradicate tennis from our self?   

what is the self ?

[Julio Juliopolis]

Littlepaw wrote:I said eradicate bigot ism from our selves


you said eradicate playing tennis


If I stop playing tennis I could surely enjoy watching a tennis game but if I eradicated tennis from my self?  All traces of tennis removed, how could I recognize it then?  

Can we eradicate tennis from our self?   


what is the self ?
So are you asking if we could recognize bigotry if we eradicated all knowledge of it from ourselves, wiping it out of our minds completely? I would think in that case we would not be able to recognize it. I'm not sure if that means we wouldn't be affected by it though. There's an arguement that says a person could walk out of jail by erasing all knowledge of the walls enclosing them from their mind. It's also been said that none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. The walls of bigotry are a bit different than a prison cell. Many men will not consider walking around wearing makeup and dresses because of bigotry. A lot of those men are not aware that bigotry is what took considering that option away from them in the first place and don't seem to even know that specific piece of bigotry exists. Perhaps in some deep, dark part of their mind their is a tinge of awareness of it and if that were removed they would consider the option. I don't know, and I'm really not qualified to answer that, but I certainly hope all us humans can manage to eradicate or at least minimize bigotry.

[Guest]

JJ, I have a few ideas and questions for you

1. The term bigot according to http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot is: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

So would this imply you are a bigot in your approach to the appreciation of femininity? Also, the thread did not view men with hatred or intolerance. So how does femininity imply bigotry?

2. Your innocent swap of men into blacks and women into whites doesn't work. You're saying men are the weaker social class by calling them black. Traditionally women are the weaker social class. Look at history, women weren't allowed to vote, not even before the blacks. It took 50 years for women to gain voting rights, after the blacks gained theirs. Women were the subservient ones in history. Also, blacks were pushed down to the point where they became ashamed of themselves, hated themselves due to their race. Something they had no control over. So when they do black pride events, it's not bigoted of them to rejoice in their race. Especially not by the definition of bigotry.

They are simply celebrating who they are, beautiful individuals without the intent to put down or show intolerance for other groups.

So you should swap men into whites and women into blacks, and then maybe give it another look.

[Julio Juliopolis]

Kaomea wrote:JJ, I have a few ideas and questions for you


1. The term bigot according to http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot is: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.


So would this imply you are a bigot in your approach to the appreciation of femininity? Also, the thread did not view men with hatred or intolerance. So how does femininity imply bigotry?


2. Your innocent swap of men into blacks and women into whites doesn't work. You're saying men are the weaker social class by calling them black. Traditionally women are the weaker social class. Look at history, women weren't allowed to vote, not even before the blacks. It took 50 years for women to gain voting rights, after the blacks gained theirs. Women were the subservient ones in history. Also, blacks were pushed down to the point where they became ashamed of themselves, hated themselves due to their race. Something they had no control over. So when they do black pride events, it's not bigoted of them to rejoice in their race. Especially not by the definition of bigotry.


They are simply celebrating who they are, beautiful individuals without the intent to put down or show intolerance for other groups.


So you should swap men into whites and women into blacks, and then maybe give it another look.

Answers
Question 1 - I disagree with that definition of bigotry. It requires hatred and as I mentioned earlier hatred is not a required component of bigotry.
Question 2 - I disagree here in several ways. First, you're using a 2 wrongs make a right argument. Second, I strongly disagree that women have historically been the weaker social class, and they are clearly the priveledged social class today and for all of mine and your lifetimes. Dr Warren Farrell debunks the historical myth of women as the weaker social class very thoroughly in his book "The Myth of Male Power" available at

Basically it comes down to what you pick as indicators of power, and once you stop looking at the few people who had power over others and look at how much power the masses had over their own lives a much different picture emerges. Also, many of the historical claims of oppression against women are exagerrated or simply made up. For example, the claims that women were not able to work or own property in the US at one time have been proven false by the thousands of examples of women working and owning property from the beginning of this country. Even the vote which you mentioned is exagerrated. It took men thousands of years to earn the vote, and cost them many lives. Also many men, (who were racial minorities not including just blacks, or who were simply poor), did not get the vote at this countries formation either. Most of the time the women were fighting for the vote the fight was to convince other women they wanted it. Some of the most outspoken opponents to the vote were other women. Once most women did decide they wanted the vote, the men quickly and freely gave it to them. Also, during the time that women weren't voting, the laws that men were writing protected women more than men. So while wrong, it wasn't quite the oppression we've been taught it was.

You do however make a good point about how biases regarding the specific groups I've switched too can still cloud our judgement. So I propose we change it to just Human Type A and Human Type B. Giving it another look from that perspective, I still see bigotry.

[Guest]

Before we get into the history of femininity, maybe we should clarify a few points.

Question 1: If you're subtracting 'intolerance' from the definition of 'bigot' then the new definition reads as: a person who is devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.

That doesn't sound terrible, that just basically means a person who has their own opinions, their own perspective, their own AP position. To say someone is a 'bigot' does not mean the same thing as saying somebody has their own opinion. The 'hatred' you removed from your definition is what defines a bigot. If you're going to make up a definition, best make up a new word as well. Using the word 'bigot' as you do here, creates the illusion of a wrong doing when you're merely saying people have an opinion.

You're right as well, with your new definition for an old word, any argument others make will be bigotry. Even your opinion on matters would be bigoted. As are mine.

Question 2: It depends on which era you're viewing in terms of the social status in regards to women. A citation of a book is irrelevant to the appreciation of women thread. I'll toss citations in tomorrow, in regards to the oppression of women when I'm more alert and the bigotry word is sorted out a little more; but essentially, displaying a single book (a single perspective) and hoping that will set truth to what happened in history (not to mention without a reference to ideas, just a book, with unspoken ideas) doesn't really make a great argument.

[Julio Juliopolis]

Kao, I think you missed where I defined bigotry in the original post I made in this thread. I'll do so a little more clearly here. I'm defining it as the belief in or support of a multi-class system of people based on what they were born. This is demonstrated whenever a person supports entitlements or obligations for people solely according to their birth group.

As I tried to explain earlier, it is important to leave hatred out of it, because hatred is not a required component for bigotry. If I don't hate blacks but still own a few as slaves, my ownership of them does constitute bigotry regardless of my lack of hatred for them. I believe back in the day a lot of plantation owners did not hate blacks. Their used to be a common joke about people who went to whites only country clubs claiming they weren't racist with the line "some of my best friends are black". Also, there were a lot of whites only hotels back in the day. Some of those were operated by people who didn't hate other races, but knew that they would get more business that way. That action still qualifies as bigotry by my definition. None of these incidents would qualify by the merriam-webster definition you offered.

As far as the book citation goes; well we've all heard lots of feminist propaganda all our lives from the mainstream media, our teachers as we grew up, and others. This creates a lot of foundational beliefs which build on top of each other. The media has been dead silent on the alternative view. Since the base foundational beliefs of our structures are so different I cannot just in one or two sentences demonstrate why I subscribe to the model of gender inequality that I do. So I cited a 450 page book that does so. I thought it better to cite the book than try to write a new one in here.

I feel like you are right in that I haven't been doing a great job presenting my argument, and it's a very challenging one to try to give to people. I'll make a new thread, (I'll try to get it done tonight but I'll commit to finishing it before next Friday), in the Mastering Awareness forum to focus more on laying out what I believe is a more accurate and more mature description of the relationship between the sexes throughout history and today than the "Men oppressed women", "women should run the planet", "it's okay if men are victims of sexism because once upon a time women were", "when men are victims of sexism it's just a power pendulum swinging so it's unavoidable and will self-correct" model which is promoted everywhere today. Since our sex is such a major part of our identities I think it is necessary to closely examine the judgements we make about the sexes if we are to truly understand ourselves.

Further, let me finish off in this thread, (I won't be posting in it again), by apologizing for offending some people. I announced to people earlier that I would be doing some self-stalking at this time, and this is part of it. I know this thread by itself doesn't matter a hill of beans, nor does it make any noticable difference in the world at large if I conviced all 20 or so people who might read it to see things exactly the same way I do. I know it shouldn't bother me but these issues do still get a rise out of me. It's necessary for me to self stalk this on my path at this point.

Finally, I want to say one more time that I don't hate any of you and I'm not judging anyone here as a "bad person" or anything. Please remember that.

[Edit: what edit? ]

[Guest]

Thank you for the explanation, JJ.

Good idea on moving this into it's own topic. When you start it, maybe swap out the term bigotry for possibly sexism and/or racism? You might not agree with the Marriam-Webster dictionary but it's important to find a more fitting word for what you're describing. There are others here from other countries and if they tried to find a definition, probably best to provide a word to help them do that.

[JJ wrote: This is demonstrated whenever a person supports entitlements or obligations for people solely according to their birth group.]

Might be useful to keep in mind this will bring up American-Indian rights, Hawaiian rights, African-Americans, orphans, kids of deceased soldiers, the elderly. If you make a broad stance, it'll be easier to find weaknesses in your argument. I know you're just talking about birth group but I don't see why the elderly couldn't be tossed into this kind of argument. Just something to maybe keep in mind.

Looking forward to the new thread!

[delawaredan]

I don't think we should split this up into different threads. I like the natural flow of ideas that were sparked from my thankful respect.

[shamanka]

a child has no bigotry, she just misses her mum...


An Iraqi girl in an orphanage - missing her mother, so she drew her and fell asleep inside her.

[Guest]