"That is not what I meant, at all": How to Connect Respectfully

[Love Zhaoying]

10 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

As for this . . . this is just gratuitously insulting:

21 hours ago, Orwar said:

feminists generally don't care to actually read or understand the data or statistics

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if people are intentionally insulting, or if they think little of other groups due to their ignorance and privilege (whether gender, race, social, etc.),

[Luna Bliss]

21 hours ago, Orwar said:

  But it's the wage gap issue all over - feminists generally don't care to actually read or understand the data or statistics, they need to be victims because then they can weaponize that. The world has changed a whole lot since Mary Shelley's time

Well this feminist knows how to read them just fine. I majored in Women's Studies, Psychology, & Social Work, learning a wealth of facts regarding the specific details of discrimination against various groups (including men, btw). Also, I made an 'A' in graduate level statistics. And I'm here to tell you that your interpretation of statistics regarding the pay inequality between men and women is BS.
Children are suffering due to this inequality because most children live with women, and increasingly they live with single women.

[Luna Bliss]

21 hours ago, Orwar said:

they need to be victims because then they can weaponize that

I am sick of people with your mentality saying women are being victims when they express a desire to be equal, and that their goal is to "weaponize" some type of victimhood neuroses so they can win an imagined war you've created.

They want equal rights...not rights over you..

[Selene Gregoire]

32 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if people are intentionally insulting, or if they think little of other groups due to their ignorance and privilege (whether gender, race, social, etc.),

So true. Still, intent doesn't negate the insult(s) or the consequence(s).

[Akane Nacht]

5 hours ago, BelindaN said:

So are we any nearer a concensus?

 

This thread covered a lot of ground so not sure that's even possible 😄  I believe we have agreed to disagree on certain points, and were not differing much to begin with on others. But life would be boring if we all thought alike, no?

[Luna Bliss]

54 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if people are intentionally insulting, or if they think little of other groups due to their ignorance and privilege (whether gender, race, social, etc.),

The intent is to remain dominant over women.
Facts are skewed in debates so as to better chances of maintaining their dominant position.
How much is conscious/unconscious...depends on the individual I imagine.
With Red Pill individuals though, I think they're pretty conscious of what they're doing.

[Akane Nacht]

ps. Labeling each other, especially with an intent to hurt, will not end happily, nor be a very interesting conversation. Just saying. 

[Orwar]

18 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Well this feminist knows how to read them just fine. I majored in Women's Studies, Psychology, & Social Work, learning a wealth of facts regarding the specific details of discrimination against various groups (including men, btw). Also, I made an 'A' in graduate level statistics. And I'm here to tell you that your interpretation of statistics regarding the pay inequality between men and women is BS.
Children are suffering due to this inequality because most children live with women, and increasingly they live with single women.

   'You are wrong' isn't an argument, but since you're a grade-A student of statistics, perhaps you could use your expertise to give an opposing position to the one I presented, rather than trying to appeal to authority and emotion? Here's an article supporting mine for reference: https://fee.org/articles/harvard-study-gender-pay-gap-explained-entirely-by-work-choices-of-men-and-women/

   Children suffering is unfortunate, and perhaps society's systems in place to avoid such are inadequate - but you're confusing cause and effect. Single mothers might not be able to work as many hours, and as such their income is lower, but that doesn't mean that their wages are lower. Wage and income aren't completely synonymous, even if the norm is that they are (a full time, 40 hours/week job = 100% of the income through the wage for 40 hours of work, +/- overtime/leave). Single mothers should, however, and often do receive economical support from the child's father, as is usually ordained by law if not free will. There are outrageous examples of this not being the case, single mothers whose partners were killed in service and then receive insufficient financial compensation by the government, for example - but those kind of examples do not, in my mind, form sufficient basis for somehow law-enforcing increased wages for women. After all, most countries have laws that say that wages must be equal between the genders - that means that it can't be swung up for women alone, either; that's equality.

22 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

So true. Still, intent doesn't negate the insult(s) or the consequence(s).

   My intention wasn't to insult anyone, but considering how I was trying to convey that most feminist policies are driven by emotional ideals rather than rationality based on facts, and those who label themselves as such took offense... Well, I think that's slightly amusing. This communication is done through text, what tone of voice people chose to project onto it is up to them. The last few pages are just a lot of that, people being upset by not being agreed with, and trying to attack each other rather than meeting the opposing arguments in a logical manner.

   But I'll admit, attempting to defame my opponents (in this, and this subject alone - I don't look down on anyone or think any less of them as individuals for their beliefs even if they do not appeal to me) through such an accusation may not have been very diplomatic on my end - but it's difficult to remain mature and reasonable when people chose to twist your words and employ social suppression techniques at every turn (and to be fair, politicians these days rarely come out of a debate without having spent a large portion of it pointing the finger at their opponents rather than trying to present their terms - and rhetoric is unfortunately not on the standard school curriculum these days).

   I'm not a psychologist specialized in the field of upbringing of children, I used the term 'fight' because that's the term that I thought would best describe children challenging each other physically (and no, I wasn't talking about sports) - no one said any much about the studies I supplied to support my statement, instead people whined about terminology (and turning it into bullying, which is a wholly different matter, and another issue that I've very harshly opposed on this very forum) and said that it didn't clearly explain all of it; life is a complex thing, and sometimes the reader is going to have to connect a few dots on their own - I'm afraid that I'm not going to write a 'super-theory essay' here. But, to make a very brief summary: if children who are disallowed throughout their childhood to engage in physical challenges against their peers and being taught to control themselves grow up to be less socially capable and more likely to cross the line of physical aggression, it's not too far fetched in my mind to suggest that such individuals would be more likely to go too far in a heated argument with their partner. That's my extrapolation of it, at least. I just grabbed a few of the first articles that came up on the subject, I invite anyone who is interested in the subject to seek out more on their own accord, there's a ton of more stuff saying more or less the same thing - and yes, some of the articles focused on play between a child and their father rather than among their peers, but that's because both are important aspects of it, one doesn't exclude the other.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Orwar said:

My intention wasn't to insult anyone, but considering how I was trying to convey that most feminist policies are driven by emotional ideals rather than rationality based on facts,

Didn't mean to insult .. BUT .. huge sexist insult.

 

[Orwar]

Just now, CoffeeDujour said:

Didn't mean to insult .. BUT .. huge sexist insult.

   You are the one who chose to perceive 'feminist' and 'woman' synonymous. There are male feminists, too, were I being sexist towards them? No, I addressed a school of thought, not a gender - there's a huge difference.

[Selene Gregoire]

34 minutes ago, Orwar said:

but it's difficult to remain mature and reasonable when people chose to twist your words

My words get twisted by others on this forum every day. You've done it to me in the past.

Stop doing it to others if you want them to stop doing it to you.

[Amina Sopwith]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

   You are the one who chose to perceive 'feminist' and 'woman' synonymous. There are male feminists, too, were I being sexist towards them? No, I addressed a school of thought, not a gender - there's a huge difference.

Surely you must realise who is usually accused of being "driven by emotional ideals rather than rationality based on facts". Which is also odd in this instance, given that Scylla, probably the most feminist person we've got here, seems to have read your sources more thoroughly and critically than you have.

[Love Zhaoying]

In general, generalizing is what gets one in trouble.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Bearing in mind, among other things, the admonition from Jagix Linden several pages ago, as well as past experience here, I am going to suggest that we walk away from this particular sidebar in this thread.

The accusation that "feminists" (and by implication, women) are too emotional to be rational isn't a new one, so we know how it works. It is impressionistic and unprovable -- there is no "data" to support it -- but because it is an insult, it is employed to provoke an emotional reaction that then becomes ammunition for the accuser. In the case of forum threads, provocation of this sort also becomes a mechanism to get a thread shut down, as it descends into endless bickering -- endless, again, because there are no "facts" to deploy for or against.

I honestly don't think that anything worthwhile is to be gained by tripping down this particular side road. And the subject is a digression in any case.

This has, for me, been a hugely enjoyable and enlightening thread, and I've really valued the discussion and contributions of everyone here. I'd like to think that it's also fostered a bit of a sense of community.

I'd really hate to see it get locked because of this.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

This thread covered a lot of ground so not sure that's even possible 😄  I believe we have agreed to disagree on certain points, and were not differing much to begin with on others. But life would be boring if we all thought alike, no?

Yep! It would be dull as ditch water.

There are a couple of different ways to think about forum threads like this. You can certainly launch into them expecting to be able to "win" -- because, hey, someone was wrong on the internet, right?

Or you can think of them as gloriously messy and noisy round tables, where ideas get floated, and considered, and shot down or modified, and everyone -- or at least the ones who have really been listening -- learns things.

And if the thread is just an echo chamber, then you're going to learn that much less, right? So, when you or Kanry or even Orwar(!!!) bring different perspectives to the table, it's useful and actually makes the thread more worthwhile. So, thank you for that!

[Luna Bliss]

2 hours ago, Orwar said:

'You are wrong' isn't an argument, but since you're a grade-A student of statistics, perhaps you could use your expertise to give an opposing position to the one I presented, rather than trying to appeal to authority and emotion? Here's an article supporting mine for reference: https://fee.org/articles/harvard-study-gender-pay-gap-explained-entirely-by-work-choices-of-men-and-women/

Appealing to authority? Well you are saying feminists are too stupid to parse out statistics so yeah, I'm gonna tell you I've got some stuffs up there.
Appealing to feeling? Yes, I feel.  Sorry.

You have chosen an article by a UK conservative who belongs to numerous conservative organizations, and he cherry-picked one study that possibly demonstrated there is no clear difference in pay between men and women WHO DRIVE BUSES. To then extrapolate ONE study to the entire issue of wage disparity between men and women is faulty.

Most of my information comes from Scientific studies in the field of Psychology, where participants are given tests in an attempt to determine who they think is best in a leadership position, and they more often than not think men should be in a leadership role. As I said on that other thread, those promoted to leadership positions with the higher pay accompanying them are more often given to men because society (in general, and especially in the U.S.) thinks leaders should be tough, and they perceive men as more tough than women -- this, more than anything, is the source of the wage gap. The fact that some women can climb the pay ladder into leadership positions does NOT negate the fact that most women have trouble climbing the ladder (as you tried to do in our previous short debate about the wage gap, once again attempting to extrapolate one case to mean all cases).
What is sadly funny about this, is that other tests have shown women make better leaders! Because leadership is more about having empathy for those you lead and facilitating their cooperativeness rather than being some sort of tough warrior type who commands and gets others to behave due to their strength.

I suggest as a start to research the pay differences between male and female actors/actresses in the U.S. -- it's been a big issue of late. The actresses were paid far less for the same work and 'star quality'. Why is that? It would appear that women are determined to be worth less even when doing the same amount of work.
Then, there's a wealth of Psychological studies with results available online, although some are behind paywalls. It can be pretty creepy though, to discover just how biased people are. For example, most participants believe blacks are more likely to be criminal in a situation, or more likely to be dishonest. It's so easy to see how those with power in society maintain that power through the biases and cultural norms in any society, even though many are not even aware of their bias in daily life. Power begets power in this way, and though great strides have been made by women in recent years we are not there yet -- we are not considered as worthy as men.

[Orwar]

   So the best you can come with out of your statistical degree is to shift the burden of proof back to me without presenting anything of your own, and that bus drivers aren't a good representation of people's income statistics - but movie stars are? Yes, there's inequality in Hollywood, and yes, that's terrible - truly - but it's like a whole world of its own. A plumber in London became a millionaire through targeting his business at the wealthiest clients he could find, is he a good go-to source for the income statistics of plumbers? No, usually that's the kind of discrepancy of data that you'd remove from the statistics as it serves to distort the numbers rather than giving you an accurate average - and Hollywood is a world of millionaire plumbers.

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

This has, for me, been a hugely enjoyable and enlightening thread, and I've really valued the discussion and contributions of everyone here. I'd like to think that it's also fostered a bit of a sense of community.

I'd really hate to see it get locked because of this.

   Agreed (see, I'm capable of agreeing!). I'll withdraw from furthering this debate even if I think that it's been both educational and interesting. We may not always agree with each other, but I think I'd find you pretty boring if we did - but we don't, so I don't. Resists the urge to ruffle Scylla's hair.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

16 minutes ago, Orwar said:

Agreed (see, I'm capable of agreeing!). I'll withdraw from furthering this debate even if I think that it's been both educational and interesting. We may not always agree with each other, but I think I'd find you pretty boring if we did - but we don't, so I don't. Resists the urge to ruffle Scylla's hair.

Resists the urge to kick Orwar in the shins. Hard.

[Amina Sopwith]

I actually find that feminist discourse, even the stuff I don't agree with, is usually extremely reasoned. It's almost as if feminists expect to be accused of being irrational and emotional. Fancy that.

35 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   So the best you can come with out of your statistical degree is to shift the burden of proof back to me without presenting anything of your own, and that bus drivers aren't a good representation of people's income statistics - but movie stars are?

You're the one who made the claim about feminists being irrational, emotional and essentially not very bright so, yes, I do think the burden of proof should be on you...and indeed you seemed happy to provide that "proof" initially, before it was looked at critically by the likes of Scylla and Luna.

And actually, movie stars (that's what Luna presented, by the way, as well as reference to psychology studies) are an excellent example to use, far better than those in a job that is generally low-paid and considered to be low-skilled and menial. Why? Because movie stars are very prominent and sought after. If anything, the women are probably more visible than the men (admittedly because they're being objectified and judged more, but we'll leave that aside for the sake of the argument). They are generally perceived to be powerful and desirable people. And yet the men still draw more money than the women even for equivalent amounts of screen time and star appeal. And they tend to get more respect and juicier roles (remember Scarlett Johansson asking an interviewer why her male co-stars were being given meaty questions about their characters while she was asked about how she dieted into her costume?). I'm sure you've heard of the Bechdel test and while there are indeed films and books that pass it (and it's sometimes surprising which ones do and which ones don't), it's significant that it ever had to be devised in the first place.

[Selene Gregoire]

33 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Resists the urge to kick Orwar in the shins. Hard.

I'd either be wearing the old heavy metal roller skates or aim for the kneecap. Or both.

[Akane Nacht]

9 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Bearing in mind, among other things, the admonition from Jagix Linden several pages ago, as well as past experience here, I am going to suggest that we walk away from this particular sidebar in this thread.

The accusation that "feminists" (and by implication, women) are too emotional to be rational isn't a new one, so we know how it works. It is impressionistic and unprovable -- there is no "data" to support it -- but because it is an insult, it is employed to provoke an emotional reaction that then becomes ammunition for the accuser. In the case of forum threads, provocation of this sort also becomes a mechanism to get a thread shut down, as it descends into endless bickering -- endless, again, because there are no "facts" to deploy for or against.

I honestly don't think that anything worthwhile is to be gained by tripping down this particular side road. And the subject is a digression in any case.

This has, for me, been a hugely enjoyable and enlightening thread, and I've really valued the discussion and contributions of everyone here. I'd like to think that it's also fostered a bit of a sense of community.

I'd really hate to see it get locked because of this.

Aye. I've seen the word "redpill" a couple times too. I have an inkling what that was aiming at, and it's also unsavory and an unfair lumping of people into a single category. No, I don't want to open a debate on the meaning of that term, we all have internet and can draw our own conclusions. Just, lets stop with the labeling. Pretty please with big mesmerizing kitten eyes.

[Akane Nacht]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Resists the urge to kick Orwar in the shins. Hard.

considering he's wearing a kilt, that's harsh...

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Akane Nacht said:

considering he's wearing a kilt, that's harsh...

Considering he's wearing a kilt, it could be a lot worse.

[Zeta Vandyke]

11 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

What is sadly funny about this, is that other tests have shown women make better leaders! Because leadership is more about having empathy for those you lead and facilitating their cooperativeness rather than being some sort of tough warrior type who commands and gets others to behave due to their strength.

These tests at general are sad, because they still compare genders. One in favor of men, other women. Its all a bunch of crap imo.

When looking for a leader position, you look for what is needed in that specific role and position, the environment, and then pic the person with the best matching skills and personality. No matter the gender.

Saying woman are the ones with empathy and men the tough warriors is quite stereotyping in itself.

Over here the government have set quota's on how much % of management positions in civil services and local governments have to be female. I do see the intent, to close the gap. But is also puts less capable women on positions over more capable male candidates only because they have a quota to fill. Instead of looking strictly at the skill set and capability they decide on gender. Even if in favor of women in this case imo its still a load of bollocks.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

Saying woman are the ones with empathy and men the tough warriors is quite stereotyping in itself.

Well, yes. We all know lots of deeply empathetic men. And I've known more than a few women warriors. So, applying these sorts of generalities to individuals is nonsense.

That said, I don't know that there isn't some truth to the generalization, even if it only means that a slightly higher percentage of women are empathetic. I don't think that's innate to the gender, but I do think we have been socialized that way. If so, that will of course change, as the socialization changes.

I don't know that this is so, and I'm certainly not insisting upon it, but I wonder. Does anyone doubt, for instance, that men are socialized to be "tougher"?

But suggesting that this sort of principle should be applied, again, to individual hiring decisions is clearly nonsense. You judge on the basis of the individual.

11 minutes ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

But is also puts less capable women on positions over more capable male candidates only because they have a quota to fill.

I have all sorts of reservations about quota systems, one of which is precisely that it perpetuates the (false) perception that women can't "make it" by their merit alone.

But is it actually true that "less capable women" end up in these positions as a result? Has anyone ever demonstrated this, statistically? Or is this just a truism that seems intuitive, but that may not be based on the reality? Probably, we can all think of anecdotal instances where the woman was "the wrong choice," but that doesn't actually prove this.

In some cases, there may be a situation where there is one, clear choice for "the best candidate." But I suspect that in most cases, any one of a number of candidates are likely to be pretty much as good as the other (although they may bring different strengths to the position). In such case, does it not make sense, maybe, to hire the woman, where one is available?