Emma Watson and equality

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Hype
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#151 Post by Hype » Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:22 pm

perkana wrote:I liked George better than Seinfeld, if you made me choose. I would choose George :lol: (my favorite episode is when he eats an eclair from the waste basket and he gets caught. Then there's some fire alarm and he tramples on the girl's poor grandma :lolol: )
He's the perfect example for this thread. Here's another one, about ES's "signals".


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perkana
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#152 Post by perkana » Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:33 pm

:lol: I prefer complete honesty too.

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Essence_Smith
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#153 Post by Essence_Smith » Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:38 pm

perkana wrote::lol: I prefer complete honesty too.
When I pulled the chair out from underneath that girl I pretty much had to come clean about the fact that I was trying to sit NEXT to her lol. We ended up dating for a few months :)
The truth is definitely the best route

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farrellgirl99
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#154 Post by farrellgirl99 » Wed Nov 12, 2014 11:44 am

i think the only way to solve this is to somehow have a random, but controlled experimental meeting set up between es and me on the streets where he's just being friendly and see what happens :lol:

but seriously, i said i wouldnt keep commenting on here but it's hard. every person is different in terms of how they feel comfortable. i am simply cautioning men who seem to think that any comment, innocuous or otherwise, is welcome. because some people, like myself, will probably not react well to it.

it's interesting to think about how meeting someone at a bar is different sometimes, and i think thats because you are in a public, controlled environment, usually surrounded by other people. bad things can happen at bars, of course, but maybe the fact that you are in a public space makes it less worrisome if someone tries to talk to you? i really dont know. i am more inclined to engage someone if i talk to them at a bar or other public area, and not on the street. yes, the street is public and people can be surrounding you too, but theres something very invasive about it. i dont like when i am approached when i am alone sitting in public plazas or trying to eat something, etc. because i do not want to be bothered and i wish people would respect that.

like whats been said, i do think it comes down to body language. is the girl sitting alone in the park busy? does she want to be bothered? is she on her phone? or does she initiate eye contact with you and smile? then go ahead. and if she does engage you but then isnt interested after talking to you, go on and leave her alone. i still think telling a woman to smile is bullshit because its related to thinking a woman's body is there to please you, but we will have to disagree on that.

i urge respect and caution when speaking with women you do not know. that is my main point. i would suggest not engaging strangers on the street. but if you are so inclined, engage with someone who seems to invite your conversation. it needs to be remembered and realized that you may be a perfectly nice guy who will respect a woman's wishes and space, but the next guy might not be such a nice guy. every man is a potential threat, and thats the sad truth. its not your fault, but thats the unfortunate truth. thats why women like me err on the side of caution most the time. its not because we are unfriendly or rude, its because we dont know who the nice guys are and thats why we might be reluctant to engage any random person on the street. instinct goes a long way, but the reality is you never know.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#155 Post by LJF » Thu Nov 13, 2014 7:37 am

every man is a potential threat, and thats the sad truth. its not your fault, but thats the unfortunate truth. thats why women like me err on the side of caution most the time. its not because we are unfriendly or rude, its because we dont know who the nice guys are and thats why we might be reluctant to engage any random person on the street. instinct goes a long way, but the reality is you never know.[/quote]


I've been sitting on this comment since yesterday, but decided I had to say something. Sorry to hear that is how you choose to feel or believe. How would you feel if someone put, choose any ethnic or racial group, in place of "every man", or "guys" in your statement?

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Hype
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#156 Post by Hype » Thu Nov 13, 2014 8:08 am

I think the point is about how women have to operate, which is totally distinct from racist beliefs... and you just fell right into the standard "not all men" line... which is obvious but beside the point.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#157 Post by LJF » Thu Nov 13, 2014 8:40 am

I get why women might be leery, but the reality shows that it's more likely someone they know. Saying every man is a bit extreme.

https://www.rainn.org/get-information/s ... -offenders

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Essence_Smith
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#158 Post by Essence_Smith » Thu Nov 13, 2014 11:04 am

farrellgirl99 wrote:i think the only way to solve this is to somehow have a random, but controlled experimental meeting set up between es and me on the streets where he's just being friendly and see what happens :lol:
I am charming yet very sincere...I think it'd be a polite brush off at worst... :hehe: :wink:

I find it VERY sad that you view strangers as a threat...I am a life long NY guy and I completely understand the mentality but walking around with your guard up all the time isn't necessarily the best way either imho...I think trust is a funny thing to just hand out, but until someone gives me some subtle reason to be wary of them I HAVE to trust that the guy sitting next to me on the train is just trying to get home too. Anything other than that is just adding stress to an already stressful life in a major city.
Adurentibus Spina wrote:I think the point is about how women have to operate, which is totally distinct from racist beliefs... and you just fell right into the standard "not all men" line... which is obvious but beside the point.
I don't think they're that far apart actually...again living in the same town I understand exactly where she's coming from, but I also know that this can pose a lot of problems...I remember growing up and seeing women pull their purses closer when they saw me coming closer to them in public. I had a BIG problem with this and it framed the way I looked at white women in some regards. It's not just about what women have to do to protect themselves, but also the way in which people now view them because they're on the defensive in some ways...I think the word threat bothers me...I find it pretty sad even I don't necessarily disagree with the thinking behind the statement.

This whole drift reminded me of Chris Rock saying that its only sexual harassment if the guy is unattractive... :hehe:

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Hype
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#159 Post by Hype » Thu Nov 13, 2014 12:02 pm

I think the key issue is that women are stuck having to be hyper-vigilant in public because genetics and culture and history have led men to tend to act toward women in ways that don't account for women as autonomous individuals, but, worst-case as 'prey' and more generally as pleasure-providers.

I agree that there's a way in which people react to black (male) strangers on the street that is related to this, but that's just because racist thoughts can provoke hyper-vigilant (or anxious) behaviour. The difference is that there's no good reason to associate black skin with threats, but there are many good reasons to associate maleness with potential threat (as farrellgirl put it). This is why LJF's attempt to equate the two fails. In the case of racial prejudice, the cause of hyper-vigilance is unconnected with an essential feature of the perceived threat; in the case of perceiving men as a potential threat (not just sexually, but socially), there are clear connections to the features associated with the possibility of danger.

The goal of the current emphasis on this in feminist arguments seems to me to be pretty clearly to press on the point that men seem to see invading a woman's mental and physical space in public as justifiable, normal, and even necessary -- in the ways you guys have brought up: what if the guy's attractive, what if you get a signal, what if you're suave, what if you're a nice guy, how else are people supposed to meet women, how could men find women to fuck without pursuing them on the streets???

The psychology of threat perception can be faulty, or it can be irrational, or it can be causal... and yes, it's sad that we can't all trust each other, but it should be sadder that men continue to try to justify failing to treat women as independent human beings while defending their own trustworthiness and niceness and good-intentions and politeness, and so on.

Think about the analogous case I've brought up a couple of times of other power-mismatches like boss-employee: the reason why it's wrong for bosses and employees to interact in certain ways isn't that these interactions always end badly, but because the built-in power differential necessarily means that the potential for mistreatment is far greater -- it is a locus of corruption.

As an employee of my university, I have to be cautious in my interactions with both my peers (who are fellow employees) and my superiors, even the ones that I consider friends. Not doing so means taking a huge risk with one's future, and even though there are exceptions, the downside is so stark that any clear-thinking person should see why it's just not worth it (see, e.g., the volume of Title IX cases that have arisen lately: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX#I ... l_violence ).

Unfortunately, men have had a historically privileged power-position relative to women in general, and this means that women who want to maintain some kind of control over their autonomy are reasonable to adopt a version of the cautious employee model when interacting with men. Otherwise, it's just luck if nothing bad happens.

One other way in which I agree with ES is that hyper-vigilance fucking SUCKS. I hate it. It's that feeling of hair on the back of your neck from a micro-manager at a bullshit job who spends all-day everyday concocting reasons to tell you what to do. And I think personality will play a huge role in the way people deal with that kind of stress. Some people just are able to be care-free, and for many of them, nothing bad will happen, but violence, and social mistreatment, of women is so exceedingly common that there's a disanalogy here. When you have a bad boss, you can go home and ignore the text-messages and phone-calls and relax (or drink yourself into a stupor to get away from it). When you are a woman, you have to be prepared to face that shit a lot more often. LJF's attempt to minimize this by appealing to statistics about rape misses the point, since the issue isn't just about whether a woman is likely to be raped in a given scenario, but about the way women are treated, and have to behave, unequally to men in many more situations -- not just extreme cases, but day-in day-out soul-crushing inequality. It's no wonder that some women react to this angrily, or irrationally, or man-hatingly, or hysterically, or whatever the epithet is that some people want to use to discredit the point. Lots of women won't react this way, or even agree that they are on edge all the time, because they aren't. But that was never the point anyway. There's a culture of normalcy around behaviours that many women experience and no men do.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#160 Post by farrellgirl99 » Thu Nov 13, 2014 9:32 pm

i feel like AS understands what im trying to get across and encapsulates it best in this thread.

ES, i dont walk around terrified and wary of everyone all the time. obviously, i would not be able to function in a place like nyc if i was afraid of every man thats near me. my point is more about people who approach me when i have not initiated contact or conversation. this has nothing to do with who approaches me, but how they do it.

i do not think any man can truly understand what it is like to walk down a street as a woman, just as i dont think any white person can truly understand what it is like to walk down a street as a black person. this is just my opinion. i just wish more people were open to trying to understand this perspective instead of becoming immediately defensive.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#161 Post by creep » Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:12 pm

:conf:
BERLIN

British physicist Matt Taylor brimmed with excitement as the European Space Agency's Philae lander successfully separated from the Rosetta spacecraft, showing off a colorful tattoo on his thigh of both, while proclaiming "we're making history."

But it was his garish bowling shirt that attracted more attention than the unconventional Rosetta project scientist's words or ink — a collage of pinup girls in various states of undress.

Summarizing the firestorm, the Guardian proclaimed in a blog post: "ESA can land their robot on a comet. But they still can't see misogyny under their noses."

On Friday, Taylor — wearing a non-descript navy-blue ESA hoodie — offered an unsolicited apology.

"I made a big mistake and I offended many people," he said, breaking down in tears. "And I'm very sorry about this."

Image

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Hype
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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#162 Post by Hype » Fri Nov 14, 2014 7:59 pm

So I think I think it's okay to wear "offensive" shirts, though I think there are probably cases that wouldn't be work-appropriate, and might indicate that you're a misogynist or that there is something wrong with you, like depictions of rape, or something.

I have made some pretty strong and detailed arguments in defense of much of the current feminist push for equality, but I also think there are pretty clear reasons why these valiant motives should not be used as a cudgel to beat down everything one doesn't like or approve of, irrespective of its practical force. I said something similar about "mansplaining" -- it's a genuine phenomenon, and men ought to be concerned with the ways in which their historical dominance in academia and commerce can be easily used to simply silence women, but it can also be trotted out by anyone who simply doesn't like a person or what they are saying (and I've admitted that I think that's happened to me before, though I could be mistaken). So yeah, I think probably there's no good reason to go around trying to get everyone to stop wearing shirts that depict women in ways one doesn't like. Why should people be concerned with that when it's entirely possible it was a gift from the guy's mom, daughter, or girlfriend... This is what I meant by 'cudgel' -- insensitive and blunt use of a genuine and important motive to bash people indiscriminately.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#163 Post by perkana » Fri Nov 14, 2014 8:35 pm


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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#164 Post by creep » Fri Nov 14, 2014 8:41 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:So I think I think it's okay to wear "offensive" shirts, though I think there are probably cases that wouldn't be work-appropriate, and might indicate that you're a misogynist or that there is something wrong with you, like depictions of rape, or something.
:lol: really going out on a limb there.

i have a problem with how ugly the shirt is not the women on it. i can't see the whole shirt but it doesn't look that offensive. the guy could have made a wiser choice since he was going to be on tv but all the outrage is silly and made the poor man cry.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#165 Post by Hype » Fri Nov 14, 2014 9:13 pm

creep wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:So I think I think it's okay to wear "offensive" shirts, though I think there are probably cases that wouldn't be work-appropriate, and might indicate that you're a misogynist or that there is something wrong with you, like depictions of rape, or something.
:lol: really going out on a limb there.

i have a problem with how ugly the shirt is not the women on it. i can't see the whole shirt but it doesn't look that offensive. the guy could have made a wiser choice since he was going to be on tv but all the outrage is silly and made the poor man cry.
My view is that offensiveness has nothing to do with anything, as far as morality's concerned. You could wear a shirt that says "Hitler was right." or "Fuck Jews." and there wouldn't be anything necessarily wrong with it, even if it is universally accepted as highly offensive. There *would* be something wrong with wearing such a shirt as a boss in a workplace, as a government employee who deals directly with the public, teacher, or police officer, or even in a place where it's highly likely that someone might actually be hurt by it (not just offended but sincerely traumatized, as in, say, a Holocaust survivor whose memories are brought back by it). There's a vast difference between innocently offensive and insensitive, and there is no objective sense of 'offensive'.

In fact, it's just bad if feminists are conflating offensiveness with defenses of women's rights. Denials of rights to women are offensive, but they're also wrong, not because they're offensive, but because they're fucking wrong.

But I think it's hard to say exactly why people are calling this shirt out as offensive.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#166 Post by farrellgirl99 » Fri Nov 14, 2014 9:19 pm

Yeah I saw this and was kind of confused why people were so outraged. I think it's a dumb/ugly/maybe slightly inappropriate shirt to wear for a tv interview, but im not offended by it at all :noclue:

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#167 Post by Hype » Fri Nov 14, 2014 9:20 pm

perkana wrote:My mom sent me this

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -feminist/
And I thought this was important to read too
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... y-science/
I was just talking to someone in the grad department in Comp. Sci. here, about that exact fact (in the first link) that for some reason Comp. Sci. women's enrollment hasn't kept pace with mathematics for 30 years. There are a bunch of pop articles about this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new ... 11/?no-ist
What happened? The answer isn’t straightforward, but Planet Money's hosts lay out some potential contributing factors. In the early and mid-1980s, personal computers entered the home. But these Commodore 64s, Radio Shack TRS-80s and others were marketed to boys. As NPR reports, you couldn’t do much with these early computers, and they were sold as toys—machines to play games on.

This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were and it created techie culture.

So computers entered the category of "boys' toys." Having access to and familiarity with these machines gave boys a leg up in entry-level programing classes. Women in these classes were learning programming for the first time, while men were honing skills they had been developing for years. "I remember this one time I asked a question and and the professor stopped and looked at me and said, 'You should know that by now," Patricia Ordóñez, who attended Johns Hopkins University in the early 1980s. "And I thought 'I am never going to excel.'"

Research suggests the snowballing of this effect is a big part of the gender imbalance story.
If you combine that with a less motivated effort to encourage women programmers (seriously, how hard would it be to show off how awesome Ada Lovelace was?)... it makes a lot of sense.

I remember taking programming in high school, there were some guys who found it difficult, and only a few girls who took the class and they all found it extremely difficult, but the guys who didn't find it difficult (like me) were people who had been programming since very early childhood in the first place.

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Re: Emma Watson and equality

#168 Post by perkana » Wed Nov 19, 2014 4:43 pm

I don't know how many women enroll in Comp. Sci. here nowadays, but they've always been more than any of us who have enrolled in engineering.

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