(POTENTIAL CONTROVERSY) 007 Film Continued Discussion

Sports regulation is a murky battleground at the best of times, especially at the competitive scene where everyone is seeking an edge over their opponents, with many athletes being willing to do anything and everything in pursuit of that advantage. With that said, the issues faced by transgender athletes are very much tied to the fact that they often present a number of unknowns, through no real fault of their own making, that are difficult to quantify and regulate in the context of competitive sports without further segregation - something that I don't think would be fair for a demographic that is a vanishingly small subset of the general population.

Given that 00 agents have relatively short life expectancies, one having completed ten missions without dying would have to be exceptionally good at what they do, which is really the equivalent of calling in an airstrike.

 

The whole debate on Transgender people in sports is definitely a difficult one - as you guys have said already, it’s hard to strike the balance between being inclusive and offering up unfair advantages. Personally I think there could be a case for having trans-athletes competing in their cis-gender groups, but putting the emphasis in the fact it’s based on body type, not gender. There are other issues cropping up with things like testosterone levels and everything else, I think it would make sense to make the sporting divisions about sex rather than gender. However, one thing I and probably most of the other people here are missing is an actual transgender perspective on the issue. It’s all very well us going round saying “they should and shouldn’t be okay with this and that”, but the true fact of the matter is that, having not been through it ourselves or (I’m assuming) not having any particularly close friends who have, we simply have no idea what it feels like and to assume otherwise is wrong. That isn’t to say we can’t keep discussing it or anything - far from it, but I think we all need to bear in mind that in all likelihood we don’t really have a clue what it’s like to be faced with any of these things, and need to keep our perspectives open on a lot of this stuff until we’re able to gain a better understanding.

One thing that I definitely think would help towards the issue though is changing the perspective on what it means to change gender. That video by ZUBY, while raising a good point on the physical differences between the male and female body, is still quite insensitive as it essentially trivialises the act of changing gender. He’s making it out that identity change is just something you do on a whim, or to do to gain some sort of other benefit rather than just being who you want to be, and that’s a terrible perspective to have. The transgender community have enough problems already without a bunch of selfish arseholes trying to abuse it for their own gain. I think society has a responsibility to ensure that doing such a thing is utterly unacceptable, and making it clear that the act of changing gender is something done on a personal level instead. Conversely though, we also need to stop assuming that this is the motive for people to actually do it either - stereotyping transgender people as just doing it for the trophies is likewise horrible. I completely understand that this is far more difficult than I’m making appear - it’s difficult to strike the balance between ensuring the selfish arseholes aren’t abusing it and still making the transition easy for those who do it genuinely. I also accept that in cases like this there are always going to individuals who will try to exploit this sort of thing for their own gain. However, if we are somehow able to make sure that the idea of changing gender identity for trivial reasons is utterly inconceivable, I think it would go a very long way in sorting out some of these issues such as sport - there would be no question as to whether people are simply trying to cheat.

I have to say though, you guys are posting quite a lot of supposed reasons why, but I still don’t see how you can be feminist and still criticise transgender people without being a hypocrite. The definition of feminism we are accepting here is the belief in gender equality - surely if you truly were attempting to promote gender equality, there would be no gain as to identifying as male or female, so there would be no “loss” or “abuse” of gender rights of anything because there would be nothing to gain or abuse by it anyway? If you are trying to criticise people for changing gender (particularly if you are going after people changing from male to female), you are essentially saying there are or should be benefits towards being female over male and that those benefits should not be given the other way at all. If you believe the first, then A: your delusional and B: presumably not a feminist as it is based on the (justified) belief that gender equality is unequal favouring men. And as for the second, if you’re arguing for women having greater rights than men, then you aren’t arguing for equality and thus aren’t a feminist either. The only other reason you be be against transgender people while being a feminist is if you are somehow prejudiced against them, which of course makes an arsehole (or as I prefer, a Feminist Appropriating Reactionary Transphobe).

 

'fraid it doesn't roll off the tongue like 'pacifism' does

 

And i care too much about my readers' feelings when I write...

Then again, i'll probably pick up and read the testament whenever i wanna write an emotionally dying saurus though

Disagreed. Just because females are naturally better at one thing, and males naturally dominate in another, doesn't make egalitarianism irrelevant. And when i think of strength from a more historical/philosophical view, I don't think of Eddie Hall performing 1,000lb deadlifts, but the weak and the disadvantaged overcoming adversity. From a historical point of view, it is pretty clear women all over the world overcame so much to get where they're at right now, and with many differing cultural backgrounds they originated from and fights to win. In all fairness this also perfectly describes not only men, but the human race as a whole.

As members of feminism and men's rights (and those who don't want to get involved in the shit flinging of today's politics ), we've gotta realize that men need women as much as women need men, and as much as everyone needs everyone!

And though you never exactly made the point (as far as i can remember), I do agree that men's issues (suicide, depression, and all of the other societal injustices) shouldn't be ignored and be given attention that's at least comparable to the care given to women's issues.

In the imagery-intensive metaphor @ravagekitteh used earlier, that fire in the abandoned warehouse may be less severe than the fire at the children's hospital, but if it's not given attention soon enough, it'll soon spread and grow into something even more ferocious and uncontrollable. It can't be ignored.

Nice logical fallacy spot. I always love them, but perhaps not so much in my own arguments . Though i think @Infinity Turtle bested us all by catching everyone generalizing.

 

I think you would be right if I was trying to say that you cannot be a feminist and be homophobic or racist, because while those things are wrong and would certainly be difficult to reconcile with feminism, there is nothing in the definition of feminism that actually contradicts the beliefs of homophobia and racism. Certainly in the definition I’m using - feminism being “the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes”, which is generally considered to be the definition and is certainly the definition I’ve been using so far, there is nothing in it that would explicitly prevent someone who is racist or homophobic being a feminist, although it would be a difficult and unlikely set of beliefs to share. Had that been the argument I was making, you’d be right to refer to it as using the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.

However, the difference is, when it comes to being against transgender people, it does actually contradict a central part of what it means to be a feminist. From what you guys have been saying, the feminist “gripe” with transgender people is the idea that people transitioning from male to female would be receiving “undue privileges” or whatever from being a woman. But to have that view, you would have to feel that women deserve or receive greater benefits than men, and that directly and explicitly contradicts a key part of the definition of feminism - the fact that it is for gender equality, not the empowerment of one over the other. Say there was another belief - I’ll call it niceism - which the definition of it is to be averse to any form of racism. If you were to be homophobic and sexist, while it would be difficult and unlikely, it would still be possible for you to be a “niceist” - there is nothing in the definition of it that involves those things. If you were to say that “all true niceists aren’t homophobic or sexist”, it would be an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy, because although being those things makes you an arsehole, there is technically nothing mutually exclusive about being against racism and being sexist. However, if you were to say “you aren’t a niceist if you are racist” then that wouldn’t be an example of the fallacy, because being racist fundamentally goes against niceism - they are literally irreconcilable. If you are racist, you aren’t a niceist, it’s as simple as that.

The same goes for the whole feminism transgender debate. If your reason for disallowing transgender people is because you feel they end up getting underserved privilege from being a certain gender, then you cannot be a feminist because the very notion of deserving privilege because of gender is fundamentally against feminism. It even says so right there in the definition - feminism is about ensuring “equality between the sexes”, therefore advocating for the empowerment of one over the other is irreconcilable with feminism and if you do it, it means you cannot be feminist. Therefore, in taking the views that you guys have been proposing as “feminist” reasons to be against transgender people, you are immediately marking yourself out to not be a feminist. The only other way you could conceivably be against transgender people as a feminist is if you somehow felt that they weren’t people or something (which as a belief would have nothing to do with feminism anyway - there is no aspect of the system that in any way encourages that way of thinking), but that would be a transphobic argument, and thus fundamentally invalid anyway, the the same way that arguing that white people are better than black people or vice versa or that gay people are inferior to straight people or whatever is also fundamentally invalid. I would argue that the so-called feminist reasons to be against transgender people are also transphobic and thus entirely invalid, but whatever the case, I think it can safely be said that there is no legitimate feminist reason to be against transgender people, because such reasons are irreconcilable with feminism itself, or else have nothing to do with feminism and are in any case, transphobic and therefore invalid.

 

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that Occam's Razor applies here, and that each James Bond exists in their own continuity. Craig's Casino Royale was simultaneously a modern remake of the original movie and a reboot of the franchise as a whole, for instance, further reinforced by the groundskeeper at his family home in Skyfall flat-out referring to him as James Bond.

With that said, Bond's past has been explored multiple times in the movies, and it did come up in Ian Fleming's books as well. We know that he's an orphan, that his parents died in a mountain climbing accident, that he was a Commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and that his background is sought after by MI6 when recruiting for 00 agents in general. We also know that missions assigned to 00 agents are handed down numerically according to availability, and in the event of an untimely death in the field the next available agent picks up where the previous one left off.

On a different note, it still cracks me up that James Bond is in the public domain here in Canada.

 

I think you probably have a point there with the definition of feminism, or at least society’s perspective on it. Try as people like me might, the general public’s view on what feminism is like is also going to be coloured by different perspectives with varying validity. In terms of what people think, it’s highly unlikely I am going to have much impact. I guess as much as anything though, feminism (or at least my interpretation of it) is far too important a cause to me to allow all the misogynists and misandrists to corrupt the meaning of the term. For me at least, feminism is and will always be the advocacy for gender equality (called such because achieving gender equality generally require the elevation of women rather than men), no matter how many misandrist try to co-opt the term, and acting likely anyone else is the case only plays into their hands. I accept that, valid or not, my view will be unlikely to end up being shared by everyone and given I’m just one guy on some random Warhammer forum it is unlikely to change many minds, but nonetheless the cause is too important for me not to at least try.

I think another thing as well is that my perspective on the prominence of various different view on gender equality may be different to yours. I tend to spend quite a lot of time on the pages of various egalitarian feminists, and I think this may well have skewed or at least coloured my perspectives on things. Certainly the vast majority of feminism I consume is egalitarian, and there is definitely enough of it out there to make a case for egalitarian feminism to still be a significant part of feminism as a whole, even if you don’t see it as that in the entirety. However when it comes to the whole “misandrist man hating” side of feminism, whilst I know it is out there, there doesn’t seem to be that much of it in comparison - certainly not enough to justify the view that that’s all feminism is these days. Again, it could just be the circles I hang out in, but aside from the couple of token examples pulled out be people as ‘proof’ that feminist is all about hating men, I just don’t seem to find much in the way of that view actually being widely taken by “feminists”.

It is this fact I think that probably plays a key part in what is probably my other main point here, which is although I agree the whole misandrist inegalitarian feminist view is bad, for me the misogynist, sexist “men are superior”, “you already have equality now get back in the kitchen” view (which seems to be the other main one surrounding feminism) is almost universally worse. There seem to be two main sides to this subject, and each with a positive and negative aspect. And in much the same way that, certainly from my perspective, the misandrist parts of the feminism side are very much smaller than the egalitarian ones (enough that it cannot be considered the entirety of feminism while the egalitarian more feasibly could), the actual, positive part of the whole MRA movement seems vastly outweighed by the vast amounts of people using it as an excuse for misogyny or just flat out being against feminism no matter what form it takes. If I’m being completely honest, while there are a couple of exceptions like mental health and possibly custody (although I can’t claim to be knowledgeable much on the second), the simple fact of the matter is that men’s rights frankly isn’t an issue compared to the issues faced by feminism. That isn’t to say that (straight, white, cis-gender) men don’t face problems, but generally they don’t face those problems or have them exasperated because they are male (white, straight etc). That’s the core thing people are missing.

People seem to be getting the wrong end of the stick with the whole fire analogy thing, and to be fair it may not be the best analogy for it, but within the point, nobody is saying that the warehouse being on fire isn’t a problem or shouldn’t be dealt with if possible; men undoubtedly face problems and they deserve help for them just as much as women do. The point is, in the context of the debate (people facing problems as a result or made worse by gender), women are clearly facing a much larger problem and to deny that is utterly ridiculous - thus the children’s hospital fire is much bigger than the warehouse one. Perhaps I framed it badly originally. People should be dispatched to both fires to put them out. That much is a given. However, more people should be sent to the children’s hospital fire than the warehouse one because it is a bigger fire and could (and is) cause(ing) more problems. Both men and women face problems, but the majority of the time it is the women and not the men that have problems caused by their gender and not other things, and so can be considered to have the greater issue and need the most address because problems caused by gender is the entire context of the debate.

While suggesting that the gender based issues faced by men are equal to those faced by women is ridiculous, the suggestion itself (and certainly the advocating of sorting out what issues do exist) wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t come into conflict with feminism itself (and there is absolutely no reason it should). However, as I’ve said before, at least from my perspective the number of people who actually do advocate for men’s rights in a reasonable manner and aren’t against feminism seems an exceedingly small proportion - just like the misandrist aspect of feminism, far too small to be able to consider the men’s rights movement to be entirely okay with feminism. And that leaves the rest of movement, what seems to me to be a very clear majority, against feminism (for that reason from now on I will consider the non-reasonable MRAs and the other people who are against feminism as a single group). I’m sure there are still a couple of these that have “legitimate” reasons for disliking feminism- some might genuinely think that the two genders are equal, and there may be others that buy into the narrative that feminism truly is misandrist. But if I’m honest, I think you have to be a little delusional to think they are truly equal; it certainly doesn’t take much digging to find good proof that they aren’t, and I’ve said already how from what I’ve seen, the misandrist aspects of feminism just aren’t enough to be able to define the movement now and so being against feminism on the whole of that basis doesn’t seem to be valid.

That does in fact lead me into another point, which is that I hear the whole “all feminism is misandry” statement being uttered by those against feminism far more than I see “feminists” spewing out misandrist nonsense. This would suggest that the concept of misandry in feminism is far more of an “anti-feminist” viewpoint than it is actually based in fact. Some of them will be pressing this deliberately; it is far easier to assert that feminism is bad if feminism is supposedly misandrist instead of egalitarian, and if they are going to be against it regardless (which people who do this will be) they will want to take whichever view makes them look better, regardless of the validity. There will also be others who, whether it be through ignorance or misogyny, genuinely believe that the egalitarian suggestions and statements put out by actual feminists are instead misandrist, or are so desperate not to lose the privilege and entitlement they enjoy from the current system of sexism that they interpret any attempt to make things equal as an attack on themselves and their gender. Neither view is valid though - both have completely foundations in conscious sexism, and the fact that the primary source of the concept of feminism or some feminism being misandrist is these people, coupled with the fact that from what I see, misandrist feminism is such a tiny part of the actual movement that it can never be expected to have any effect on society properly means that if I’m honest, I see the argument against feminism on that ground to be fundamentally invalid.

Of course, in the discussion of all these sorts of things, it would be nice for me to be able to explain all these intricacies and grey areas in my viewpoint, but these days the culture of it all has made it very difficult. Everything now must be far more black or white; you can hint at the grey areas a bit, but at the end of the day, you have to be either for feminism or against it within the space of the argument. And for all the numerous reasons stated above, I will almost always end up taking the side of feminism on the subject. There is a good side and a dark side to both perspectives on the the debate, but for me, the dark side of being against feminism is much larger and much worse than the one of being for it, and likewise, while good aspects of MRAs are positive, they are nowhere near as essential and immediate concerns as the ones offered up the the good part of feminism (in terms of gender based persecution), and they constitute far too small a part of the movement as a whole to really be able to define it as such.

There will always be exceptions to the rule - that comes without a doubt as even the feminists who I most agree with will still come out with stuff I differ with them on. But as a general rule of thumb, in much the same way as I can’t bring myself to allow the misandrist nutters to appropriate the name of feminism, I will generally not want to allow the anti-feminists to believe they have won victories on subjects that bring them into conflict with feminists. That isn’t to say that I would go against what they are saying simply on the grounds of them being against feminism - if they are making a good point that is true despite going against what the feminists are saying then I will say as much, but I find that doesn’t tend to happen very frequently. Also if as is often the case I’m left having to pick a side despite both having good and bad points to them, more often thanfeminism will have more and greater good points than the other, and the negative part of “anti-feminism” will likely be dominating that side of the argument, so if push came to shove it would likely be feminism that gets my endorsement. Misandrist “feminists” don’t deserve the association with the word feminism or the feeling of having “won” from the praise of feminism in general, and likewise the misogynistic anti-feminists also don’t deserve the praise and sense of victory they can sometimes get from any sort of criticism of feminism, but given their respective scales and extremes of attitudes, but given the choice I feel it is more important to deny the misogynistic arseholes the perspective of having “beaten feminism” and them winning the debate than prevent the misandrists hanging on to the coattails of feminists making strong valid points against those who are against gender equality, although both should be stopped if possible.

(I could touch in the transphobic side of “feminism” here as well, but I think my previous post made it clear why these people can’t and shouldn’t be associated with feminism anyway, and thankfully these people are getting such criticism from across the board that they cannot be considered to be defining feminism anyway).

I think though, while there will be exceptions, my view will generally come down to the same in principle. Assuming there are no other differences, the woke film will generally always be better than the not woke one. Assuming that what it is being inclusive of isn’t harmful or hurtful to others, the viewpoint advocating for acceptance and inclusion for all will generally always be better than the one encouraging division and hate. Assuming that the views they hold are the true, egalitarian ones, the feminist argument will almost always be better than the non feminist one.

I think that might be by longest piece yet - you are all forgiven if you want to take a while to digest that! I’m sure it’s bad enough trying to crawl through my extended waffling at the best of times, so I accept that having to read through all that will be hard work, so be sure to take you time if you need to!

 

I think you’re almost there. Egalitarianism is good. I think feminism should and for the most part still is egalitarian, despite what certain people who are against feminism and a couple of nutters who self identify as “feminists” would like you to believe. Any “feminist” that is not egalitarian or that is transphobic is by definition not a feminist, and the proportionately low numbers of both makes any argument that they have come to define feminism invalid. Although misandry and some of the other darker aspects of “feminism” are bad, those arguing against feminism are almost universally worse, and if given between siding with feminism and siding with its detractors, I will almost always pick feminism.

In response to some of your points:

I don’t think you can possibly try to paint men as being the ‘victim’ gender if you are basing things on the past - just have a cursory look at the proportion or female leaders or rights or even just ask anyone with any basic historical knowledge if you want to find that out. Even the example you give doesn’t take into account that the washing machine was to make the washing process more efficient and thus make the woman more advantageous to the household instead of just being “to make their lives easier (plus you can’t account for the order in which different discoveries of preventing black lung or manufacturing washing machines take place). I could possibly understand if you were advocating for disregarding past instances of sexism against woman as there could be an argument for saying such things might have been reversed, but if you are arguing for taking into account historical instances of sexism then I’m afraid we have you well and truly “beaten” and to suggest otherwise is utterly ridiculous.

I think you could have a point in this particular area, although as far as I’m aware, while it might not necessarily explain the prison sentences, I do believe men have the higher rate for committing crimes and this and the associated views that could arise from such does seem like it could have an impact on this. The difference in crime rate in itself could probably also be associated with sexism, but I’d imagine that it would be going both ways in that particular instance - definitely present, but equally bad for both sides.

Your presentation of that as being supportive to your point is reliant on the idea that conscription and drafting is bad, and while I would agree with you there, if that is the argument you are making you should probably be arguing against conscription in its entirety rather than advocating that “women should be picked for it too”. If something is problematic, get rid of it, don’t go round trying to make it equally bad for everyone else, and if you are saying conscription is bad, then your problem should be with conscription, not sexism in that regard. The argument for this not being sexist against women also doesn’t work though even if you are saying conscription and joining the army is good. If such things are good, why prevent women from joining in on them if you aren’t being sexist! No matter whether you think conscription is good or bad, your argument is framed around the idea that conscription, or at least having an army is necessary, so in that case there is literally no reason to keep women from joining outside of sexism! It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if women are being kept from conscription and drafting, chances are the process for joining typically will also be more difficult and they will be more dissuaded from it, again with no logical reason other than sexism. And you can’t make the argument that it is the women that are trying to cause this either; they may well be trying to even things out a bit now, but I think we can safely say that almost the entirety of those high up enough in the military to be involved in the decision making processes that lead to this are male.

This is another point you are making that is utterly ridiculous. Women may well do better than men in tennis in terms of pay and coverage, but when it comes to almost every other commercial sport, they almost universally do worse in terms of pay and whether they are being idolised and given appropriate coverage and fanfare. You can argue that this is because female sporting events attract fewer viewers, and you would probably be right, but even that is down to sexism. People will give all the excuses about how it “isn’t as good” and that women “aren’t as skilled at the sport” or whatever, but in 2018, 5.2 million people tuned in to watch a game of golf, much higher numbers than other games like basketball. Now I don’t have anything against golf, but you’d be lying if you said it involved levels of physical skill comparable to basketball. Physical prowess, the one thing men can justifiably be seen to be better at that women, clearly is not the priority for people watching sport. I’m afraid that, like the historical argument, bringing up sport in an attempt to justify how men have it worse than women will almost entirely result in evidence to the contrary.

This is another case that I think you are right to argue that women have better off than men, but if you read my other posts, you will find that I repeatedly list this fact as an example of the exceptions to the rule, alongside mental health and a couple of other things. Nobody here is denying that this is one arena that it would seem women do have better, but to act like this somehow proves that men have it worse off everywhere is nonsense. As for mothers having a higher rate of child abuse, I think that partially stems from that fact they are more likely to receive custody, but primarily I think it’s to do with the fact that our society means it is far more likely in general that women will be in possession of a child than men. Part of this is undoubtedly biological - the fact it is women that make the child means it is inevitably easier for the father to clear off and leave them than vice versa, but I also think a good proportion of this stems from ingrained societal sexism - there is far more of an expectation for the mother to look after her children than the father, a fact that is undoubtedly more beneficial to the father (and therefore to men) than it is the mother. And if you assume that equal numbers of men and women abuse children (a completely reasonable assumption to make), it is only natural that figures skew towards women because they are far more likely to have a child in the first place.

There may well be some truth to this. However, in making this argument and some of the others, I think you are possibly partaking in some of the same hypocrisy you accuse feminists of doing. As you yourself point out...

There are two main ways your point about slapstick could be interpreted. One is that women are considered to be “too strong to have slapstick and death applied to them. First of all, this is really counterintuitive - surely if they were to be considered strong then it would be considered more okay for bad things to happen to them in media, not less. However, if you were to make that argument, it would also contradict the one you made earlier about conscription - if women truly were considered stronger, they wouldn’t be being passed up for conscription and drafting. The other interpretation of this is that women are “too weak” and so they cannot possibly have anything bad happen to them. If this is the case though, there is no way in which this is not sexist - to say that women are weaker than men in that regard is to say that they are inferior, the very definition of misogyny. But also, once again if you were to make that argument, it would be contradictory to your point about custody. There is no way women would be receiving higher shares in custody if that was how they were viewed; the “weaker” women would surely not be able to sufficiently fight her case if that were the case, and there is no way the courts would consistently favour the “inferior gender”. We are all guilty of adopting different perspectives on the same things depending on which supports our arguments better - there is no doubt as to whether feminists do it, and both some of the arguments you just made and likely several of my counter-arguments have also partaken in this. However, if you are going to criticise the feminists for doing it, that’s fine but I’d be careful not to throw too many stones in glass houses...

Going back to the broader point of what you were saying here, I think there is probably a good argument to say that explicit, outright sexism against women in media is now less acceptable than its equivalent in men. This is likely a conscious effort to attempt to right obvious wrongs in the media’s prior depictions in women (I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the media tends to be the quickest and certainly the most scrutinised when it comes to dealing with this sort of thing), and while I think that’s more justified than it would be if it was for men, it is hardly an egalitarian situation. However, just because that sexism against women is now unacceptable when it is explicitly occurring and being pointed out, doesn’t mean it isn’t still going on just beneath the surface and in far larger amounts than it’s make equivalent. And although sexism against men is possibly still considered acceptable on the surface, even when explicit, I would hazard that that surface level, mild sexism is the only real sexism (with a few other exceptions that I have already listed several times already so will not do so again) is the only sexism men actually face. It’s a bit like racism. It is now (quite rightly) completely unacceptable to be explicitly, or in many places implicitly racist against black people in the media, whereas it is probably still fairly acceptable to be mildly but explicitly racist against white people. However, that isn’t to say racism against black peoples doesn’t exist - it very clearly does so in very large numbers. Likewise, while mild explicit racism is still considered to be okay against white people, it is probably the only form of racism that occurs against them at all and certainly isn’t being acted upon - despite being “okay”, it”s not white people that are being hounded by the police and shot for the colour of their skin. The sexism against women is still very much greater than that of men even though is less explicitly acceptable in the media, and the presentation that it isn’t okay for women but is for men only serves to obscure that reality. That isn’t to say sexism against men should be okay, but the “mild but acceptable” form it takes is (with a few exceptions) the only form it takes and largely only really influences other media depictions of men, whilst the female equivalent, lurking beneath the surface but still very much easy to see if you bother to look, is far more problematic and far reaching. That isn’t to say that they both shouldn’t be dealt with and aren’t bad, but to try to equate the two or worse present the male one as worse is nonsense and shows a tremendous amount of shortsightedness.

I’m sorry, but I completely fail to see how trying to equate this fact with the idea that society doesn’t treat men as well as women is anything other than complete and utter nonsense. You trying to make this argument is like a feminist trying to say that the fact that physically men are naturally stronger and have an natural advantage is somehow sexist against women and proof of a patriarchy - both are completely ridiculous. It’s a question of biology, not attitudes! And the only way in which there would be any way to “correct” this would be to advocate women committing suicide or otherwise being killed at the ages at which men would generally die to make things “fair” - something that would achieve nothing and I think we can all agree, is utterly horrific. I’m sorry but the fact you are even conceiving the idea of making this argument is absurd.

I have largely been responding to your points rather than necessarily providing my own, but if you would like to look, and check back on some of my other posts, I have listed plenty more reasons that show that our society really isn’t as gender equal as it seems and should be. However, if you want a couple more to looks into, I would point you towards the fact that one in five women in the US has been raped or has had been the victim of an attempt, compared to only 4.8% of men. I would also encourage you to look into the continuing gradual criminalisation of abortion, with many women having the right to control over their own body removed - you cannot deny that that is a problem women face due to their gender and one men do not have to deal with at all.

As for your interpretation of my quote:

That’s not at all how to phrase it in the slightest. Both men and women face all sorts of problems, stemming from all sorts from family issues to societal problems to unfair employment and issues in government, and yes, for both of those groups some (arguably equal numbers) of those problems will be of their own creation. However, while they both face all of these problems, women also face the additional garnishing of plenty of other problems that arise simply due to the being a women that just doesn’t exist on the same scale for men. That isn’t to say that all women have it worse than all men - there are plenty of men that have it far, far worse off than an awful lot of women. Likewise, that isn’t to say that any problem faced by a man is instantly his fault by virtue of not being about gender, in the same way that the existence of gender based problems for women doesn’t automatically make any problem she faces a result of gender and doesn’t absolve her of the plenty of problems that will inevitably be her fault. All I’m saying is that in the context of problems stemming from one’s gender instead of anything else (the entire context of this discussion), women face far more issues based on what gender they are than men do. That is all. Please don’t be offended by this - this isn’t supposed to be an attack on you or anything and I accept that my initial explanation of it may have been lacking in ways I was unaware of, but if I’m brutally honest, I have to say I’m genuinely confused as to how from what I’ve said you could possibly reach the conclusion of “all women’s problems are due to gender and men’s problems are their fault” without deliberately completely misinterpreting the entirety of what I’m saying and applying a policy of extreme victimhood and offence at any prospect of men not having it worse than women - in other words, becoming the very extreme of the “snowflake” that those critical of feminism like to pick on and refer to negatively.

I’m sorry if I’ve been overly harsh in the way I have responded to your points. This in no way is supposed to be an attack on you or anything, nor is it meant to imply that I am somehow superior to you or that you are an idiot or something. You are a greatly valued member of our forum and an incredibly strong and fair debater, and nothing I’ve said was meant to imply anything else so I’m sorry if it comes across that way. If you do find any of my points a little strongly worded (which I recognise is entirely possible) then please do not take offence, and if there are any gaps in my arguments or reasons why your points are valid when I say they aren’t, please also do not hesitate to point them out! This has been a very reasoned and considerate debate so far and I have no desire to change that, so I hope you do not feel that my response to this has done as such, and that we can continue to have such thoughtful and eloquent discussions in the future.