The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[it]

It's being done... To a much better effect:

[xoxoxoBruce]

Not better, not even the same.
Youse guys suck, this is how it should be done.

[Happy Monkey]

No heroes in that discussion... One side jumps to throat slitting, and the other equates "male heterosexuality" to catcalls and ogling.

[DanaC]

They're such extreme positions though. Someone finding me attractive isn't an imposition. Never had a problem with men looking at me.

If a woman I did not know, had never met, and had no social context for interaction with, initiated a conversation with me, out of the blue, by telling me I was too skinny - I'd find that an imposition. Quite a few random blokes, over the years, have felt quite comfortable in telling me, a total stranger, how much they like a particular body part, how much better I'd look if wore a short skirt, or that I should get some meat on my bones (actual phrasing).

A total stranger shouting things at you in the street isn't nice. The lads, and indeed grown men, who engage in that kind of nonsense need a lesson in manners - and who the fuck knows, maybe even empathy. And I get that sometimes it may be hard to know what signals (if any) are being put out - that not everyone is equally adept at reading social cues - but headphones on, collar up, head down and eyes on the pavement is not easily misread as interested in interaction. That's what I mean by imposing - often quite literally. That doesn't mean any social interaction from anybody at that point is an imposition - but it is really not the time to make a romantic approach and certainly not a time I'm likely to give a flying fuck what a total stranger thinks of my tits.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Of course they're extreme, stupid extreme, but not uncommon on the net. They're also highly counter productive because they drive non-teeth gnashing people away from the subject entirely. Anyone taking a moderate stance is risking snipers and hooligans from both sides.

I did think this was funny, however.

[Lamplighter]

Separate schooling for young boys and girls ?
...Maybe OK

Separate academic locations for men and woman ?
...No, this knight is not going forward

Women Respond to Nobel Laureate’s ‘Trouble With Girls’
NY Times - DAN BILEFSKY - JUNE 11, 2015

LONDON — A Nobel laureate has resigned as honorary professor at University College London
after saying that female scientists should be segregated from male colleagues because
women cry when criticized and are a romantic distraction in the laboratory.

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Mr. Hunt said Monday
at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea.
“Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them,
they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”
...
“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he said.
“I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me,
and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important
that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”

And he elaborated on his comments that women are prone to cry when criticized.

“It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them
and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth,”
he said. “Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything
that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.”
...

[Sundae]

He's quite right of course.
Ban gay scientists too.

[glatt]

The argument for choosing to attend all women colleges is not so different from what this caveman is saying. But of course, how you say something is sometimes more important than what you say.

[xoxoxoBruce]

What you say, too often has no bearing on what they hear.

[glatt]

Funny how that works.

[Happy Monkey]

[DanaC]

That was awesome. Nice find.It's so true I think - we all, as individuals experience gender (or the absence of a sense of the same) in our own way. At so many different levels as well. I have a strong sense of myself as female - but my sense of what it is to be female is not necessarily in line with what a lot of other people think being female means.

Certain elements of gender can, I think, be separated out as probably more cultural than biological - if for no other reason than a wealth of evidence to suggest not just a range of gender conception, but paradigm shifts depending on historical circumstance. Different cultures have different degrees of fluidity in gender conceptions - and allow for smaller or greater ranges of gender expression. But there are also elements that seem far more biological - and then you have complexity within that as the divisions don't always break down comfortably between male and female.

However contingent on particular cultures and social structures, those elements of gender as experienced by the individual are no less real or profound.

Unfortunately our sense of what is to be male, or female is so wrapped up in what our culture understands as male or female, that it becomes almost impossible to separate self-conception from social-conception of gender. Hence another person not adhering to the same sense of gender can threaten the bounds within which that sense of gender is set.

[DanaC]

Watched a really sweet film last weekend - Ready? Ok!, a little independant coming of age comedy about a kid growing up with gender issues; or more accurately a kid growing up with a perfectly sound sense of self whilst some of the adults in his life have gender issues on his behalf. Which I just thought was such a lovely twist on the usual way of looking at it.

I found it via my watch everything Michael Emerson's been in mission :p It's a nice little film - it's not perfect - there are couple of odd moments that didn't quite work for me, but it has heart and was made on pennies and goodwill. And there are some excellent performances.






Sidenote: Michael Emerson is playing the gay neighbour who ends up as a kind of mentor to the kid - his wife, Carrie Preston is playing the boy's single mother. How many guys, if they were actors, would be comfortable playing a gay man in scenes with their wife?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Do women and men have different brains?
Back when Lawrence H. Summers was president of Harvard and suggested that they did, the reaction was swift and merciless. Pundits branded him sexist. Faculty members deemed him a troglodyte. Alumni withheld donations.

But when Bruce Jenner said much the same thing in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, he was lionized for his bravery, even for his progressivism.
“My brain is much more female than it is male,” he told her, explaining how he knew that he was transgender.

NY Times

[Happy Monkey]

Which goes to show how wrong Summers was.

What breaks his mold more than a transgendered person?

Does Jenner get the male aptitude or the female aptitude?