vanna:
<Squeers,
I have been waiting for someone to call Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Julia Gillard “men” or “male”.

I have noticed the habit amongst male denigrators, or prejudiced and bigoted people to call anything they don’t like “male”, and this habit seems particularly common amongst university academics.>

vanna,
predictably, you fail to appreciate the subtlety of the allusion--this is because yours, rather than mine, is the bigoted and partisan position. I have consistently criticised men "as a class" above, and even made allowance for individual exceptions to patriarchal dominance. Moreover, allusively I have been much more critical of "women" for not using their hard-won (often, alas, on their behalf) rights and their electoral power to initiate meaningful change). By naming Gillard et al as men, I thought I was making their complicity in patriarchy clear. Women are devout patriarchs "as a class"; they worship at the various institutions (religion, patriotism, the shopping mall) with greater fervor than men do.
So I agree with other posters, patriarchy was an evolutionary compromise--necessary even. Hegemony transcends (Gramsci is the one to read) class and gender.
My position is that women "now" have the power to change the rules. But do they have the balls?
Doesn't look like it!
Women seem disposed to be the world's domestics

On toilet seats.
Has it not occured to the ladies that men lift the seat out of consideration, so as not to piss on it?
And why do women never lift the toilet seat for men?

Sqeers,
You have called men “established failures” (rather discriminatory of you) but no opposition from feminists or any university academic.

Then you labeled Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Julia Gillard as being “male”, and this was meant in a deragatory way.

I have also been suitably unimpressed by the number of teachers and university academics who have minimal interest or understanding of risk management.

Now call me a bigot, but I have been to many inductions (IE. In my work I go onto many sites, and each new site I go onto there is an induction).

In nearly every induction I have been too, we are told about risk management and also told about anti-discrimination.

Due to the almost total ignorance, disinterest and disregard for risk management and anti-discrimination by university academics, I would think university staff inductions would have to be the least effective I am aware of, and a total waste of time and taxpayer funding.

Maybe a better system would be for university academics to pay for their own inductions, and that way they may pay more attention, and university staff inductions would not be a total waste of time and taxpayer funding.

Squeers, Your last comment re Gramsci was helpful. Also the illusion of complexity, which could be mystification.

Squeers,

On toilet seats - I think you have a valid argument regarding why the onus is on men to put the lid down.
(I think vanna is confusing the lid with the seat in his little anecdote)

It would be nice to think women had the gumption to act collectively in an electoral sense to change consumer society or at least to ease it up a bit. But it's difficult to imagine that it could happen. People always act with their security in mind. They might make forays in pursuit of attractive propositions, but if the new paradigm offers less security they their present one they will not stray for long, retreating to familiar ground.

Vanna,
Regarding your strolling humans - why do you ask me strange questions?
It is normal for people to stroll together without the desire to assault one another. We're not all as paranoid as you about the opposite sex

Poiriot,

I think you are being mean and nasty because I'm male.

“and all toilet seats are left up by men” from Briar rose.

After cleaning men's and women's toilets many hundreds of times, on not one occassion did I (or any other cleaner) ever find the toilets seats left down in any toilet.

I hope that clarifies the situation.

Ironic that I have seen so many single women with groups of men and they are normally happy, smilling and cheerful.

According to feminist theory, they should be oppressed, abused and sexually assaulted.