@ joek.
You don't know me, so you don't get to say what I believe if you actually think I was saying 'Don't be offended' meaning that I'm telling people they shouldn't be offended by something as opposed to, ffs people stop being so damn sensitive then you're wrong. Plain and simple. I know what I was writing and the intonation, you do not.
If you fail to communicate what you mean clearly, and I challenge the only sensible interpretation of what you mean from where anyone who is not you is sitting, it's not my fault if that was not what you actually meant. The onus is on you to communicate your meaning more clearly. Inability to read intonation is a known problem with text-based debates.
That said, I'm still, after you've told me that's not what you meant, I can't think of any other possible interpretation of:
Don't be so offended
or:
when I say things like 'Don't be offended' it's not to you it's to whoever I'm talking about...
I was using the ridiculous moniker 'femenazi' to differentiate quickly the difference between femenists and men haters, sorry if this was a little too much to understand. I'll try and be clearer next time on that as well.
The fact that you can't even be consistent about why you used the word "feminazi" (and the fact that despite my objections to it, and the fact that it's massively offensive, you continue to use it) is making it harder and harder for me to continue to believe that you are arguing in good faith.
You're all for equality, but you think that criticising men for doing something which actively harms the fight for equality is a bad thing? Which is true?
See, you're making the assumption again that you are unequivocally right in what is and isn't equality or harmful. If you take a look from my perspective: Objectification of assets is not the same as objectification of people. Then what I'm saying is not contradictory at all. Which leads into:
"Objectification of assets" and "objectification of people" is a distinction without a difference. The use of the word "assets" as a euphemism is a prime example of the kind of objectification I'm talking about -- it's indicative of the idea that the only thing that women have to bring to the table is their looks.
Yes I realise that is the technical definition of objectification, which is hugely harmful and should have proper sanctions against it. However, colloquially and more often (and as I am in all cases here) it is used to mean thinking of people as sex objects.
NO, THINKING OF WOMEN AS SEX OBJECTS IS NOT A NEUTRAL THING! WOMEN ARE NOT OBJECTS, THEY ARE PEOPLE!
Those of us who believe the radical notion that women are people can still think of women as sexual beings, but the fact that you keep on referring to women as sex
objects is indicative of precisely the kind of attitude I'm talking about.
That is just a neutral thing. I'm not saying anyone is acting on anything, if objectifying male was then to insist on buying 'privileges' from whoever he's objectifying then it turns into the former. Of course there are other ways that it turns into the former, I'm giving one example. I hope that's clear.
No, that's not clear. Not at all. I'm not clear on how thinking of women as objects is "just a neutral thing", I'm not clear on what it would take for you to consider something objectifying a person rather than reducing her to merely her breasts and then objectifying them (hint: you can't objectify breasts -- they're already portugaling objects), and I'm not clear on why you think that referring to a woman's "assets" is okay. Among other things.
Your continued skepticism does indeed please me. Don't believe me, I don't care. I am more than happy for you to continue going about things the way you do, I'm not trying to change you. I'm not in the habit of trawling back through the internet to find posts I read days ago, frankly I've got better things to do.
You could have just said that you weren't willing or able to support your argument at the beginning and saved me the time of dragging such an admission out of you.
Again, maybe I wasn't clear enough, maybe you're misreading, I don't know. Not *everything* I say is literal, take some time to think about what I'm saying when I say 'I'm looking for pictures of cats'. Take a second and you may discover that really what I meant was 'when searching the interwebs for various things' and feminism seems to come up frequently,
Again, maybe I wasn't clear enough, maybe you're misreading, I don't know. Not *everything* I say is literal. Take some time to think about what I'm saying when I say "If you're just looking at cat pictures, you shouldn't have come across this debate at all. I've never searched "funny cat pictures" on Google and come up with a debate on feminism". Take a second and you may discover that really what I meant was "when searching the interwebs for various things, it's entirely possible to avoid having to read any feminist discourse whatsoever".
I'm saying is it too much to ask for people not to have this same argument in places like here/dedicated forums instead of on twitter where things get nasty so quickly or youtube where I'm trying to read what people think about the video and not if the singer is a slut, whore etc and how the people who say that can go kill themselves.
Here's a radical thought: maybe you should stop trying to police where other people express themselves. The internet is not solely for your convenience, and feminists have the same rights to post what they want on their own Twitter feeds that everyone else does. If you don't want to hear what any given Twitterer person (what is the noun for this this week?) has to say, you don't have to read their Twitter feed.
Similarly, youtube commenters can all say what they want. Personally I think that 9/10s of youtube comments are at best inane drivel, and frequently hideously offensive. I survive by not reading the comments on youtube videos. You can too.
Look, one of the major problems that feminism has historically faced is the systematic silencing of women's voices. In Classical Athens, women weren't allowed to speak in the Assembly, or in law courts, or even to give evidence in court cases. It wasn't until 1893 that women gained the right to a voice by voting in New Zealand, the first country where this was permitted. British women didn't have the right to sit in parliament until 1918 and didn't get the right to vote on the same basis as men until 1928. Your saying that feminists should shut up and not speak where you, a white man, might hear them, is part of a historic pattern of oppression. Do you understand the problem, here?
Today I learned:
* Rosa Parks did not real.
* Martin Luther King did not real.
* The Stonewall Riots did not real.
* Malcolm X did not real.
* Emmeline Pankhurst did not real. Nor did Emily Davison. Nor any of the other Pankhursts.
Real equality has never been made by straight white men. I see no evidence that it's going to suddenly become so now. (And besides, many straight white men did comment on this, so your point is invalid).
They did all the hard work, I'm not denying that. Ok maybe I have to be clearer once again: Right now, this present day, the only thing stopping equality from being a real thing is white men not wanting to give up position of power. They have to accept it for it to become real *because* they currently hold power. I'm also saying that when Jub, yourself, penty, othko are in your 30's/40's it'll happen naturally as our generation has been brought up with more equality than any previous generation and I do believe that you have the potential to be the most accepting and equality based generation in history because you'll probably keep a lot of the ideals that we're espousing here.
I agree that the most important thing stopping true gender equality is that white men don't want to give up on their position of power. Guess what: that was
even more true in all the historical examples I gave. You know how equality wasn't achieved? Women, people of colour, queer people, trans* and gender-non-binary people, non-Christian people sitting back and waiting for straight white cis-hetero Christian (and increasingly atheist) middle-class men giving up their own power out of the goodness of their hearts.
You say it will happen naturally eventually, but I'm not content to wait for it to happen naturally, eventually. I want to do what I can right now to improve the position of people who have been historically disadvantaged, and the largest group of those, by far, is women.
Finally: Did Taylor put on the shirt in the morning with intent to piss people off? Hell no. His shirt did not read: Women are objects. It had pictures on it of scantily clad women on it, not even real ones. So even if you think he's objectifying the women on his shirt....They're not real people anyway. You can't then tell me that because he has a shirt with that on, he objectifies all women. That is simply ridiculous. You can't tell me that 'it's a symbol of society' because he's a scientist damn it, not a social role model. (Post needed a Trek misquote)
I am not saying that Taylor wore that shirt with the intent to piss people off. I have not read anyone who has said that. Almost every critique of the shirt I have seen thus far has begun with the disclaimer that the author doesn't believe that -- because people like you are so concerned with making this point. No one is even saying that Taylor consciously objectifies women. I don't believe that he does. I think he simply didn't think. I am happy that he apologised, I believe that he was sincere, and I hope that he has learnt something positive from the incident.
The problem is not Taylor's intent, or lack thereof. The problem is that that shirt, and the fact that not a single person noticed, or thought it might be inappropriate for a press conference broadcast around the world, out of Taylor, any of his superiors who saw him that day, the interviewer, the interviewer's superiors, any of the camera or sound crew, either thought that it was problematic, or thought that it was worth calling Taylor out for it. Which is indicative of the scale of the problem both in ESA, who, lets not forget, in theory have a campaign to bring women into STEM fields, and in the media.
Matt Taylor's intent is utterly irrelevant to the problem that people have been pointing out.
As for the idea that Matt Taylor is a scientist, not a social role model:
I don't care what his day job is, when you go on TV in front of millions of people you have a duty not to alienate half your audience. Especially a half of your audience who have historically been oppressed by society in general, and excluded from the field which you are representing in particular.
So while in general Matt Taylor is not, you are right, a social role model, in this specific instance he absolutely is.
