There is a fine line between valid criticism of gender roles & sexism.
An example of the former would be, “Men are dangerous for women”. Of course not all men are dangerous, but it describes the experience of many women & how they have to navigate the world, to not be assaulted.
This one describes the dynamic of a relationship between individuals & assigns a thought pattern to one of those individuals, based on their gender.
Maybe I missed some nuances here & I would be glad to be enlightened, but this looks like plain sexism.
There’s a long, documented, researched, history of men being raised to expect things from women. It’s not just housework but all kinds of things are taken much more seriously when a woman does something “wrong” than when a man does. It takes a lot of serious introspection and effort to break out of that programming so it’s not a surprise that the majority of men don’t, or only do so partially. The default state is that this stuff is sort of “invisible” because it seems so normal to how things are. So no, this is a factual description of a “standard” behaviour for men that only some are able to avoid.
If you at all accept that there are harmful but culturally ingrained gender roles then this is a natural consequence of that for anyone who hasn’t deeply and actively questioned them. Then as those roles are indeed slowly being broken down it stands to reason that each successive generation is less willing to put up with them - but if you still see them as normal it will come as a surprise.
If you at all accept that there are harmful but culturally ingrained gender roles
The problem is that all too often those harmful gender roles are only called out as being harmful to women, not to men, but they are. The solution to the gender roles issue is not digging trenches between genders.
I’d phrase it differently. Unrealistic expectations of the opposite sex [^1] exist by both sexes, but that there outcomes for women when the stereotypes of men hold true are often more dangerous. One is saying it isn’t sexist; the other is saying that there’s a vast difference in risk. This becomes one of those tautological arguments where women can’t be sexist because sexism is redefined to mean “it can only be sexist if it’s men doing it.”
The “Would you rather a bear or…” question could be reused in a very uncomfortable way. You could swap men with a group of yoing, black, inner city men and rural white men for women. But instead of demonstrating that men are the issue and women the victims, suddenly it’d be black men who are the victims and rural white men the problem. And, yet, the fear and the risk of confirmation of stereotypes is the same - only in this case, believing those stereotypes makes people racist.
These sorts of tautologies - only whites can be racist, only men can be sexist - is sloppy, lazy, and dangerous, because it prevents introspection and always externalizes blame. I’m not saying that you are arguing a tautology, but that’s the essence of this thread: minimizing sexism against men in the basis that it can’t be sexism if rape isn’t involved. Which is exactly how this thread went, isn’t it?
I want to reiterate that I agree that there’s a false equivalency; consequences for women can be higher. My argument is that it doesn’t make it not sexism to broadly brush all men with a demeaning funny little tweet.
Also: there should be a Godwin’s Law for rape. The conversation was about household stereotypes. That was a bit of a leap.
Also: there should be a Godwin’s Law for rape. The conversation was about household stereotypes. That was a bit of a leap.
I’ll leave this here.
Across their lifetime, 1 in 3 women, around 736 million, are subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence from a non-partner – a number that has remained largely unchanged over the past decade.
So no, jumping to rape is not a leap. The fear of sexual violence is part of beeing a women. I don’t know a single women that wasn’t in a situation that did or did almost resulted in sexual violence.
It’s not part of beeing a men. I have never in my life feared about sexual violence and I share that with the vast majority of men.
It’s not at all an uncommon story. Go to any women’s support group or site, and it’ll be a very consistent trend. A lot of people still have the old gender roles stuck in their heads, but they fail to acknowledge that some things have changed.
The big one is that women can now be financially independent. We’re only 2 generations away from women being able to open a bank in their name in the US. Before that, women didn’t have the financial freedom to live alone or divorce abusive/neglectful spouses.
The other one kind of ties into the first one, freedom of choice. It’s not as big an expectation for women to marry, and people are finding that a lot of women would prefer to be alone and single than married. Where do you think all these memes of childless cat ladies come from? It didn’t start with JD Vance. He just amplified it.
The point being made is that you won’t solve the issue if you divide society between men and women, instead of normal people and sexist bigots. The point is not to replace existing harmful sexist stereotypes with your own sexist stereotypes, but to come together and listen to each other.
There is a fine line between valid criticism of gender roles & sexism.
An example of the former would be, “Men are dangerous for women”. Of course not all men are dangerous, but it describes the experience of many women & how they have to navigate the world, to not be assaulted.
This one describes the dynamic of a relationship between individuals & assigns a thought pattern to one of those individuals, based on their gender.
Maybe I missed some nuances here & I would be glad to be enlightened, but this looks like plain sexism.
There’s a long, documented, researched, history of men being raised to expect things from women. It’s not just housework but all kinds of things are taken much more seriously when a woman does something “wrong” than when a man does. It takes a lot of serious introspection and effort to break out of that programming so it’s not a surprise that the majority of men don’t, or only do so partially. The default state is that this stuff is sort of “invisible” because it seems so normal to how things are. So no, this is a factual description of a “standard” behaviour for men that only some are able to avoid.
If you at all accept that there are harmful but culturally ingrained gender roles then this is a natural consequence of that for anyone who hasn’t deeply and actively questioned them. Then as those roles are indeed slowly being broken down it stands to reason that each successive generation is less willing to put up with them - but if you still see them as normal it will come as a surprise.
The problem is that all too often those harmful gender roles are only called out as being harmful to women, not to men, but they are. The solution to the gender roles issue is not digging trenches between genders.
Long documents and researched history.
They say with no support.
This is a chat thread on a meme post, not an academic paper. “Gender roles exist” does not need a citation.
Women expect things from men: “women power!”
Men expect things from women: MISOGYNY !
Expectations of women of men: basic human decency, don’t rape
Expectations of men of women: be completely subservient in every way
atro_city: “these are the same picture”
Hmmm.
I’d phrase it differently. Unrealistic expectations of the opposite sex [^1] exist by both sexes, but that there outcomes for women when the stereotypes of men hold true are often more dangerous. One is saying it isn’t sexist; the other is saying that there’s a vast difference in risk. This becomes one of those tautological arguments where women can’t be sexist because sexism is redefined to mean “it can only be sexist if it’s men doing it.”
The “Would you rather a bear or…” question could be reused in a very uncomfortable way. You could swap men with a group of yoing, black, inner city men and rural white men for women. But instead of demonstrating that men are the issue and women the victims, suddenly it’d be black men who are the victims and rural white men the problem. And, yet, the fear and the risk of confirmation of stereotypes is the same - only in this case, believing those stereotypes makes people racist.
These sorts of tautologies - only whites can be racist, only men can be sexist - is sloppy, lazy, and dangerous, because it prevents introspection and always externalizes blame. I’m not saying that you are arguing a tautology, but that’s the essence of this thread: minimizing sexism against men in the basis that it can’t be sexism if rape isn’t involved. Which is exactly how this thread went, isn’t it?
I want to reiterate that I agree that there’s a false equivalency; consequences for women can be higher. My argument is that it doesn’t make it not sexism to broadly brush all men with a demeaning funny little tweet.
Also: there should be a Godwin’s Law for rape. The conversation was about household stereotypes. That was a bit of a leap.
I’ll leave this here.
https://www.who.int/news/item/09-03-2021-devastatingly-pervasive-1-in-3-women-globally-experience-violence
In the US it’s 1 in 6 women (and 1 und 33 men).
https://rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
And last but bit least:
https://www.humboldt.edu/supporting-survivors/educational-resources/statistics
So no, jumping to rape is not a leap. The fear of sexual violence is part of beeing a women. I don’t know a single women that wasn’t in a situation that did or did almost resulted in sexual violence.
It’s not part of beeing a men. I have never in my life feared about sexual violence and I share that with the vast majority of men.
lesser pain vs worse pain doesn’t mean that lesser pain is inexistent
Yes, those are the only expectations all men and women have /s
It’s not at all an uncommon story. Go to any women’s support group or site, and it’ll be a very consistent trend. A lot of people still have the old gender roles stuck in their heads, but they fail to acknowledge that some things have changed.
The big one is that women can now be financially independent. We’re only 2 generations away from women being able to open a bank in their name in the US. Before that, women didn’t have the financial freedom to live alone or divorce abusive/neglectful spouses.
The other one kind of ties into the first one, freedom of choice. It’s not as big an expectation for women to marry, and people are finding that a lot of women would prefer to be alone and single than married. Where do you think all these memes of childless cat ladies come from? It didn’t start with JD Vance. He just amplified it.
https://www.zawn.net/blog/hello-youve-reached-the-not-all-men-hotline
It isn’t about what an individual’s in or out groups are, it’s about what they are in society at large, and the power imbalance between them.
The point being made is that you won’t solve the issue if you divide society between men and women, instead of normal people and sexist bigots. The point is not to replace existing harmful sexist stereotypes with your own sexist stereotypes, but to come together and listen to each other.