<Most of us who try to discuss power, entitlement and gender inequality
< have experienced this twisting of arguments.
Posted by Sarah Russell, Monday, 11 May 2015 9:59:37 AM

OK where do we go to from here?

You want to discuss power, entitlement and gender inequality.

The elephant in the room is the twisting of arguments.

The Feminist arguement is that males are born with all this power and privilege. Sure Prince Harry and William are certainly born with alot of power and privilege, but then so is Princess Charlotte born with an enormous amount of power and privilege.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/

Depending on what side of the arguement you want to make, one can claim that the female gender has specific privileges that are not available to males, but then the argument could be twisted to claim that very advantages are in fact disadvantages.

A lot also depends on what adverbs and adjectives that are used.

I will use some recent examples, like the report of 32 women being killed by another person as an "epidemic of domestic violence"

Lets consider the fact that almost 400 people died from asthma last year. What adjective could be used to describe that? a slaughter, a massacre, genocide.

Lets consider the past, feminists use history to find examples of how women were oppressed, yet the real elephant in the room is that we are judging the past social behaviour from our socalled modern enlighten perspective.

This creates a values conflict.

Talking of the past, feminist often point to issues around women getting the vote, but leave out certain inconvenient details.

In an Article titled the 'Green Fields of France'( I will put up the link when I find it} Thousands/ millions of young men who were not entitled to vote were sent to the front.

The suffragettes in winning the right to vote, also won the right for these young men who were previously ineligible, to also be able vote.

There was also the introduction of English labour laws for women and children, that limited the number of hours that they could work, these laws did not apply to men.(I have long lost the link to this article)

The other issue is when looking at the past, is what level of society are we comparing.

Women in the middle, upper middle class, and upper class, definitely were far better off than the males in the lower classes, who generally could not vote, and were more than likely illiterate.

The men who worked in the coal mines had an horrific death toll. Nor were the industrial work houses particularly, safe places to work either.

Phanto

I agree with everything you said in your post on Monday, 11 May 2015 6:13:55 PM. Anyone who expresses an opinion in a public forum must be prepared to back their opinion up with reason and logic.

In my opinion, people (both men and women) respond to discussions about power, entitlement and gender inequality emotionally. I also believe forums such as OLO encourage people to emote (i.e shoot off an emotional response) rather than think rationally before they type.

Issues that were raised in my article - domestic violence, childcare, glass ceilings, political representation, bullying, salaries and superannuation - are all complex social issues, not merely “feminist” issues. We need evidence based policies to respond to these complex issues.

I chose to use a feminist framework to analyse some of these issues in this article (and previous one). However, I could just have easily used a different framework. Masculinist or neo-liberal or Marxist or Keynsian etc etc. These social issues are complex so we need lots of different ways of looking at them before we can implement strategies to make the world a more just place.

I suggest that interpreting my analysis as “nagging” is an emotional, not intellectual response. This is not meant as a criticism – I too had an emotional response when I witnessed Tony Abbott et al treat Gillian Triggs with such disrespect. The challenge for me was to reflect on my emotional response, and to try to understand it. I do not claim that my analysis is correct, or indeed tells the whole story. But I believe both “Good blokes or smug thugs” and “Male champions of change” are a contribution, albeit rather small, to the debate about these social issues.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices
Never shared and no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows

Read more: Simon And Garfunkel - The Sound Of Silence Lyrics | MetroLyrics

And the people bowed and prayed
To the feminist gods they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, The words of the prophets are written
On the subway walls and tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence"

Read more: Simon And Garfunkel - The Sound Of Silence Lyrics | MetroLyrics