In other news: I moved to San Francisco. Went to the beach with Shannon yesterday. You should fly out here and tap some of the westcoast weaker sex with me. Like twinks. I mean chicks.

The dimorphism isn’t as pronounced as in, say, seals, but it still gives men a distinct advantage in terms of violence. That is why armies and police forces are 90-99% male (worldwide) and even in the US Army, women rarely serve in direct combat. Men have an advantage in violence, and men stronger than women. It’s not an extreme argument, and aside from being obvious, it’s pretty well supported.

Say, how come I never see you at my site. No, wait, on second thoughts, don’t answer that.

Especially here, where some women are.. um. big boned.

As for women not having a choice of mate, same usually applies in the animal kingdom, except when the females are larger or rarer than the males… or something…

I disagree with the whole humans = strongly dimorphic concept.. For what it counts I’ve written my own alternate view and I could have sworn I sent you a nice pingback unless my pingbaker got broken, or something..

I like the way you think, even though I am a woman. It’s nice to read an idea that though through. Would you mind thinking through what I should do?

Love sha

i don’t know how relevant this is, but here’s something i used awhile ago (i read it somewhere) –
To some scientists and theorists, the biological differences between men and women make their gender roles inevitable. These “essentialists” contend that gender behavior is coded in the brain and in the chemistry of the body. Brain structure is cited as a key reason for gender differences. For example, neuroscientists have discovered that women’s brains have a larger corpus callosum, which serves as the bridge that carries messages between the right and left hemispheres. Some theorists believe this difference in structure explains why women are more intuitive and better at expressing their emotions—the two hemispheres communicate more in women’s brains, so information flows more readily from the emotional right hemisphere to the verbal left hemisphere. In addition to differences in the brain, other biological factors may play a part in shaping gender behavior- (end)

gender roles define a lot of who we are and who we are expected to be, especially in more conservative and conventional socities like our own. although i do think biology must have initially had SOMETHING to do with the creation of these conventions and gender roles, i don’t think biology had everything to do with it. this may be digressive, but what i’m trying to point out here is that women should be treated and judged as what they are : human beings. we are people, and we should be loved/hated for the same reasons you love/hate any other person. just the same, we should be respected/disrespected like you respect/disrespect any other person. i suppose this would appear as though i’m asking for equal rights, but it is not equal rights i am interested in so much as it is equality. equality so far as can be created, because complete equality is totally impossible, for obvious reasons.

the law should protect the victim, as ru points out, and not always is the victim victimized due to his or her comparative weakness. the law shouldn’t protect the weak, but should focus on protecting the victim, no matter how weak or strong he/she is.

certain laws have been put in place to specifically protect women, however, because this has become necessary. not only because women are weaker and helpless to defend themselves most often, but simply because women are victimized on the ground of their sex and it’s so-called weakness more often than men are. even if a woman isn’t physically weaker than her perpetrator, more often than not, she will NOT do much to defend herself, purely because she believes she is the weaker party. this is what her gender role is, and what she has been taught. please note that most of this applies largely to sri lankan (or similar) society, and then again more the rural ones than the urban ones. most women will never physically lash out at their husbands when they are being raped or beaten, nor will they take a complaint to the police, NOT always because they are actually weaker, but because traditional gender roles have them believing they are.

I may be of a generation of women that never had to fight for freedom or borrow it, but you are from a generation of men that never lent it out. It was apportioned equally. And the hardcore sisterhood will tell you that we never saw the fight.

You know all the stuff about ‘fighting for freedom’? Women don’t fight (as much), so any freedom they have is necessarily borrowed.

atta girl, Ru.

You, Sophist assert that these cosmetic gender battles get in the way of honest-to-god harassment and abuse and real battles, and it’s the sisterhood that propogates this state of affairs, empirically I agree with you. There are women who tell me that I should be offended when a male colleague calls me sweetie, love, sugar, baby or any manner of endearments. I say piss off. I’m not offended and stop trying to take the fun out of work. I think it’s an inadvertent show of respect that I am a part of the team, they don’t value my contribution any less, and so what if it gets sexual? We all like sex. I don’t have time for platitudes but I’m damned if I let it get in the way of the quality of work I produce. I cringe when the boss steps in and hands out a round of sensitivity training and reprimands the men in the office for calling us ‘girls’. This is just a layer on the multitude of laws and niceties that is a part of this protective construct and I will only say this once: I don’t need anyone telling me I’m equal, and I don’t need a law or a rule or a verbal directive declaring that I am equal to a man – I’m humiliated to discover that I wasn’t before, and I went to law school just to understand that.

i believe your assertion that you’ve read some reactionary feminist claptrap. i’m not trying to paint you as an oppressive male chauvinist pig here. but your writing shows a level of disrespect (for me, as well as for the kinds of things i was trying to be serious) that suggests either unfamiliarity, misapprehension, psychological self-defense, or major nasty cynicism.

i suppose i’ve run this topic into the ground, seeing as no one will talk with me except to malign my social life. it’s a shame; with Ru and Electra and Sophist’s comments, i thought we had the makings of a good juicy dialogue.

i support and cheer Ru’s hot/cool assertion 100%. wish i had the confidence to say the same for myself. a majority of feminists that i know *do* think this way, in terms of affirming the right to be awesome and proud and attractive as part of that. i think the point of feminism here is that there might be more to women than their looks, and that unattractive (by birth or inattentiveness to appearance culture) women should not be fodder for public ridicule. and come on, the voices of feminism in the public media are extremely minor (and can’t ‘tell women what to do’) as compared with the many voices of patriarchy.

in danger of taking myself too seriously–i just want to make a complex counterargument to indi’s theory! is that allowed?

but now, can i dissect just a little? you misunderstand me:

1.The entire ethos that women are vulnerable and need to be protected by special rights and the strength of solidarity only serves to weaken your case.
My case was that women (and men) are made vulnerable to systematic (gender and economic) violence through culture and that the biological “inherency” argument is merely a post-facto rationalization. I said NOTHING of the sort you mention. Though, come to think of it, I like solidarity. I don’t exclude males from that, though–I want us all in solidarity against violence inherent in culture!

2.I work on a floor with 14 women. … But it is my lot. I put up and I shut up. …. But never have I felt discriminated against or harrassed or manipulated.
Okay, this is not a valid argument against the issue of workplace discrimination. I’m sorry, but one professional man’s non-discrimination (though clearly you suffer or you wouldn’t cite ‘putting up and shutting up’) does not erase or disprove the experiences of thousands of people. You say, “I am a disadvantaged minority too.” So what? it’s great that you’re not feeling too oppressed, but your position should make you compassionate rather than grumpy.

3.The fact that men get paid more is a generalisation.
and it’s true. check it out (for the USA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male-female_income_disparity_in_the_USA which, incidentally, has lots of complex analyses of the why and how of income disparity.

4. People get paid more or less for purely professional economic considerations.
that’s NOT true. companies have time and again been proved to pay people different wages for the same jobs, whether because of pure seniority, age, gender, or simple personality considerations. it may be true that many companies have extremely standardized payscales, but even within that model managers have control over promotions, wage increases, hiring/firing, etc.

5. If you don’t understand this you probably wouldn’t have understood much.
i’m sorry to be so darned stupid!

6.the law is and always will be an ass. So don’t flatter yourselves by thinking that it was designed to subjugate women and further the patriarchal dons that run society with an iron fist.
“the law” isn’t anything more or less than what people make it. it doesn’t exist outside of what we enact and how we enforce it. it can’t be an ass unless some ass made it. (or someone acting like an ass, having grown up in an ass-producing society, as i’ve argued; these systems get in place and they perpetuate themselves). i’m not crying blame here, not claiming it’s all out to subjugate women and elevate men. i said that “people are made to feel weak and sexually unempowered through economic power relationships. the oppressors are similarly traumatized by society’s demand for them to oppress. male sexual violence is an outgrowth of the trauma cycle of the whole system.” that is, we are all trapped in a prison of past devising and current perpetuation. no puppetmaster dons, just a big cycle of fear.

7. How can you tell Ru she is spot on and contradict her without a shred of remorse throughout your entire post.
wtf? i obviously agree with her–
Ru says:
“It isn’t physical weakness per se, it’s more complex, it’s our anatomy.”
and i say:
not size but “having a penis vs a vagina is for most people the most blatantly important difference between men and women”
Ru says:
“I am by nature opposed to women’s rights… I’d like to think I’m not a special subset of man in need of their protection…I want to believe that rapists and molesters are sick, and need to be rehabilitated, but my ‘womanhood’ recoils from the idea and wants them to be seized.”
and i say:
“we are in danger of painting the issues in a naturalized black and white: men are violent, and women need protecting. (or access to violence, which is merely a more proactive way of saying the same thing.)”
…which is me saying that there’s this trap, which Ru outlines, clearly, between our humanistic impulses (‘they’re sick’) and our protective impulses (‘they’re violent/we’re weak’).
…there are more examples of this, but largely, she’s talking about the natural body and how we read it (culturally) and live in it (emotionally). i’m talking about the macro-cultural narratives that we use to rationalize gender relations.

okay? again, i’m sorry to have irritated you… but i think you’re reading something else into my argument than what’s actually there. and could you lay off the generalizing about ‘feminists’? if you haven’t done your reading of serious feminist writers–or blogs, hell, they’re there! try http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/ for hilarious clever material–just don’t write reactionary claptrap without knowing the terrain.

i seriously hope you don’t tar me for being a victim-monger here. i’m trying to spread the fun around, not claim it all for us gals! have some, it’s tasty a la mode.

For once…I agree completely with Ru and consequently Simone. The more of her and the less Greers the better.

As long as there are feminists in the calibre of Reb the plight of women will be perpetuated. The entire ethos that women are vulnerable and need to be protected by special rights and the strength of solidarity only serves to weaken your case.

Funnily enough you should mention it Reb, I work on a floor with 14 women. 4 of whom are partners and make a fuckload more than I do. I am one of two (since last week) males on the floor. The lunch room discussion generally varies between babies, husbands and where you bought that saree. None of which interest me. But it is my lot. I put up and I shut up. Because the women are the majority. But never have I felt discriminated against or harrassed or manipulated. The fact that men get paid more is a generalisation. People get paid more or less for purely professional economic considerations. If you don’t understand this you probably wouldn’t have understood much.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. As you yourself acknowledge violence against women is not so rampant that it is of epidemic proportions. It is a problem but the remedies are in place. The law has always tormented the weaker and as Electra points out very insightfully, it doesn’t matter if you’re the employee, or the rapee, fraudee or the victim of whatever gamut of offences, the law is and always will be an ass. So don’t flatter yourselves by thinking that it was designed to subjugate women and further the patriarchal dons that run society with an iron fist.

I very rarely get irritated with the people that post on indi’s fine fine blog. Amused yes, offended yes, abused yes, but this….

How can you tell Ru she is spot on and contradict her without a shred of remorse throughout your entire post.

‘I’m cool and I’m hot!’ I remember Ru once saying to me. Why can’t more women think like that? Because the goddam feminists keep telling them not to.

-do you really think that “every man is born perverted”- by a woman’s standards, yes, i do believe so. women and men have very different approaches to sex and sexuality, like ru said, this is almost innate. a woman doesn’t think in the same way a man does about sex, and if a woman were to peep into the thoughts of even the most civilized, well behaved man she knows, she would be surprised by what she finds there, simply because it is different to her mind set.

so, yeah, there are these biological drives, but why is it that some men (and disproportionately of different classes and social backgrounds) abuse women? is it that society teaches boys that the way to feel good about yourself is to be stronger and better than girls? that if you’re not the biggest most aggressive boy, you’re inadequate?

the best-case scenario, as you and indi seem to believe, is that men can be all properly taught to control their greater strength. with that thinking you’re always going to get a substantial number of angry, small-hearted men, with no outlets for their emotions, who have ‘learned’ that women are weak and can be preyed on.

reb drives home a very valid point, too.

i still think indi made a good post. this was his attempt to draw some logic from a situation that seems, at its core, illogical.

it is always really hard to define ‘equality’. frankly, i think its a myth and doesn’t, and will never, exist. there will never be actual equality between the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, and between men and women. there is and always will be, naturally, this rift that separates some from us from the rest of us, be it because of where we live, how much we earn, how much we know or what kind of reproductive organs we were born with.

those of us who are weaker are victims of harassment on a daily basis. we are harassed by the law, by other people, by culture, by the pressure of expectations. of course, like sophist says, if you are not weak, especially by the standards of those who think you are, you are less likely to get harassed.

it would be nice to believe that women’s rights are unnecessary, because technically, women are human and human rights should rightfully apply to everyone. i don’t know what we are fighting for when we fight for equality, but the truth is, ‘equality’ is never going to happen. but the reality is that we have come to need special laws and a special set of rights as women so that we may be protected by these things, as this is about the only protection we can get that we can depend on, no matter what. we cannot depend on ourselves unconditionally, we cannot depend on those that seem to care, either. the law is about the only thing that is impartial and unchanged by feelings and nature, and therefore about the only thing that we can count on to stand up for us, simply because we are people.

women shouldn’t have to carry pepper spray around. essentially, unless men need to carry pepper spray around too, this is almost as bad as saying women should watch what they wear on the bus unless they want to get felt up. where’s the equality? and you see, this is what harassment is. every man is born perverted (naturally) by a woman’s standards. but some men actually practise self control, and behave respectfully and maturely. and some men just don’t. so none of it is justifiable. where’s the equality?

harassment doesn’t have to constitute physical abuse, or sexual molestation. harassment is something women deal with every day. because as a woman, the law, the state, the world as a whole, barely takes you seriously. you (technically) have no privacy and no one respects the decisions you make. because of this so called biological weakness. because as a woman, people think you need to be told how to live, and what to do, and what to wear : men need to protect you from other men and society needs to protect you from all the things that could happen. because of this so called biological weakness. because as a woman, you’re inherently guilty of everything you are, and inherently thankful to those who are stronger. because as a woman, you are born a certain way that is interpreted as ‘weaker’ and therefore more vulnerable, so you spend your entire life trying to curb this vulnerability and trying to be strong(er).

- ‘biologically weaker than man’- women can’t even just be. they have to be something in comparison to something man is.