@Animekenny@xanga - I absolutely agree. Very well said.

I think about these things a lot...I've come to the conclusion that in most cases, it is a man's world and we are ruled by patriarchal standards and rules. Most "female privileges" that people see and point out actually come from patriarchal oppression (or gender roles). At the same time though, I feel like we are all individuals and we all have different circumstances, and every group has some strikes against them. I don't think that "every man needs a woman", because not everyone needs somebody and some people are better off and happier alone, and this is kind of a hetero-normative statement anyways. But I mean that in the gender role sense not the reproductive sense.
My definition of feminism is the belief that every gender should have the opportunity to do exactly what they want, which includes women being CEO's if they want to, or housewives if they want to...and men can stay home with their kids or be successful at work too, or anything in between. Everyone should be able to be or do whatever they want without obstacles related to their gender. I'm definitely not radical either, I just want equal rights and opportunities for both sexes. This is a great post!

i'll put it bluntly, it's a woman's world. parts are run by men, but it was a matter of delegation:

who has control over shaping people's minds? (pariential control and teaching)
who has control over whatever societies desire?
who is allowed to make decisions about interpersonal relationships?
who chooses what goes to market?
who is brought up to value the ability to choose?

in some cases men do make the choices of the above, BUT Who teaches them what and how to think? other men? no, women do. women built the glass ceiling, women will have to tear it down. BUT let it be said that choosing people based on gender rather than ability really pisses me off (i'm reference a makeup company in the US, where stock holders chose to fire a CEO because he was male). feminist sexism upsets me, because the beginning of the movement was great. but pushing people up or down based on gender is wrong. if people wish to allow their gender to handicap them in pursuit of other possibilities, that is fine, but it is wrong to give certain groups more privileges than others (unless it can be shown that one is signifigantly better at the job, meaning the absolute worst of one group preforms better than the best of another).

evidence for the voting? i'm asking for evidence because if men don't (on average) have control over what they think, and have weaker interpersonal/comunication skills... so we never have had the vote and still don't, what is the grounds of complaint? i'm not saying that votes should be weighed on gender (cause that is preposterous).

 just making the observation that women have had the ability to vote/converse since you created language; men designed a way to make up for our (general) poor ability to communicate, which was indulged by women until it eventually became of use to women. so it was taken back. the vote was to give men the illusion of actually having control over our fates, and to instill the idea that if he tries hard enough, maybe he will work himself to death for the one he loves, and the world that succeeds him will be good enough for her and their kids to survive. but again it was a delegation, women at the time knew basic's and got men to do the shit work like actually designing the bridge or damn. but now with computers and machines the idea that men arn't needed at all is resounding louder and louder; we can use hydrolics to lift it, computers to count it, lazers to measure it, AI to ship it (et all)... men arn't needed, cause women can get what they want, how they want it... so while as a feminist you must think of this as a huge female revolution, but really it is the male one.

using man power to do tasks is inefficient. which allows the more emotional side to take precedence. women and men no longer need each other for things, so pure relationships based on love can develop. unfortunately the roles of antiquity are still ruling. do you want to be anti-man, or pro love? and which would the original feminists choose?

ha ha ha ha.... i love your questions.

mankind would be nothing without women. but at the same time i'm single, and i'm worth something. 'are women better off alone'? i hate to say it but some are, and the rest are either lesbians or dating me, so yeah. XD (it may sound funny, but it makes it so i'm never temped to cheat)

i believe it will change too, soon the only things with jobs will be robots. (literal, not figurative) and somehow i think giving conveyor belts a vibrate function, while incredibly fun to ride, would loose a ton of efficiency.

 i don't think women have to be careful, at least in the US, you have the law on your side. you can just walk up to a stranger you never saw before next to a cop mace him, or assault him and walk away. and in the off chance you are asked why, you can say he made advances on you by standing there, and that you were scared. (the above i why i hate women who engage in misandy)

i can't wait until, kids have parents. both father(s) and mother(s) taking care to show the little one it's value. <3

@Shy___Away@xanga - Maternity leave averages 12 weeks out of a year and the average american woman produces about 2 children. That's six months out of their entire careers. Additionally, women who stay home with their kids are not counted in comparision to men with full time jobs; these women are counted as unemployed.

I believe the glass ceiling is real, unfortunately. My own mother experienced it. She's been an attorney for 20+ years and at her last job she still made ten percent less than men perfoming the same job as her with nearly the same credentials. This is a story not unlike thousands if not millions of others across the world.

My best advice is to experience it when you get into the workforce for yourself

@Shy___Away@xanga - i mean, the workforce in twenty years.

@backporchpoet1@xanga - @Shy___Away@xanga - 

I'm a 21 year old woman and I've experienced wage discrimination first hand. I work in a suburb of NYC (a place you wouldn't expect it to happen, right?) and a male LESS qualified than me was being paid a third more than I am now for doing the same job.

@ItsNona@xanga - men have it easier in this world because their career trajectories are not interupted as much as women's are, so yes, I agree with you on that point

@zeeron@xanga - glad you liked it.  thanks for your comments.  :)

@zeeron@xanga - well, i'm glad you disagree so we can talk and maybe find some common ground :D. i wrote allot more indepth including psycology, and sociology but since you're the only response, i'll let you choose if you want me to PM you with it or not. :)

here is the simple responce.
 there have been no great male conversationalists. a few found out how to manipulate people to do what they want, but there is a perhaps subtle difference between getting someone to obey, and mutually fixing stuff. is it any different from comparing 'we' and 'you'?

"there would be no war today, if mothers all would say, i didn't raze my boy to be a soldier". ;) isn't the irony beautiful? because we know, in fact, she did by attempting to raise him in a culture with different values. there is no mixing pot of values, only the confused vs the normal... but that is a topic for another time.

i guess the glass ceiling comment could be summed up colloquially by saying "boy, could you get me some X (or 'do something') while you're out". for that phrase times a few quadrillion, plus being okay with a guy 'protecting' a girl (by keeping her at home) is the glass ceiling.

granted it isn't quite as nobel, or indifferent (or even outside the family) as some want to believe, but if you look at human history, it isn't a bunch of guys conspiring in a dark bar against their wives and deciding unanimously 'women suck'.  in older cultures women had equal rights roles, and do you really think that women would just take 'being enslaved' lying down?

not unless they had a hand in building it. perhaps with nobel intent like i don't know, wanting the baby in her woom to live? but still it wasn't purely male. and even if it was (and i'm wrong), it wasn't the men who are alive today. and it is important to make sure there is a cohesive, resounding agreement about some basic form of this position because while a group blames another group for doing something, time and effort is spent on the blame rather than the resolution. AND it alienates possible man power. (i don't mean that as a pun, but as opposed to non-human work via robots)

to solidify this, i'll accept that much of culture is determined by men, but because until recently there were more women than men, it seems obvious to me that the majority would at the very least give consent for the social structure to continue.

men are 'better' with computers because women are socially dis-motivated to take classes (i talk allot more about this and advertising in the longer letter). there is a similar adversity in men towards things collectively deemed effeminate. i think for true equality (through changing what exists), that this is the most important thing to tackle; the media.

(sry, i guess the original was a tangent) my point was the exact opposite, original feminists (talking like 1800-1920) were not anti-man. they were trying to fix some of the problems and while the frustration they felt was shown to sometimes feel kinda like misandry. but at no time (that i know of) was "men are evil", "men are stupid" et cetera- _a mantra_ for those feminists. i've been to a NOW (national organization of women) meeting/conference and been TOLD i was those things and worse for being male (which like the gender of women in the origin of the movement, was not a choice). i've also been asaulted by open feminists (though i have no proof that the cause was their distorted view of 'feminism').

what i was trying to connect the original post to was: to be pro woman you have to be (at least grammatically) anti not-woman (cause it is a logical reference point), which is a very different position from being pro social equality. or to rephrase that idea:
 "there should be more women protagonists" reads (and is interpreted) different from
 "there should be a fair amount of female protagonists". even if everything after that is letter for letter, the same. because men will see that it isn't a BS thing like that male/female postfix of career title, but rather someone expressing a position about the relationship of the genders in roles, and fair play; and not another female empowerment. (if the ratio still holds, there are 20 male to 1 female heros. also another fun fact, many languages have masculine and feminine words).

my overall point is recognizing a problem is a good start, but recognizing a problem over and over again is different from trying to solve it. and frankly it irritates the people who could help you, rather than motivating aid.
 it only could be a man's world, if you let it be a man's world. and it only remains if your efforts were not sufficient to change it. never forget that shouting 'hey Ladies, we are awesome' is very different from pouring concrete; different means, cause different ends. (reference to 'the ends justify the means')

she may not think she is 'radical' any more than flying into buildings is radical to the act's respective group, its for people outside the group to provide the labels here are what causes mine:
"...do men need the opposite gender the most?  Do they need them..." (SIC)
"Is man nothing without a woman? Are women better off alone?"
"it's a man's world because man make everything, however, the world 'wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.' " (accurate, but still disturbing)
"Male dominance transcends to the political sphere."
"Together [women] have to push for change." (i assume that quote refers to women)
i may be a misogenist by many definitions, but every woman that has harmed me physically or emotionally on the grounds of feminism, made those same claims. which is why my first responce was a bit more emotional than logical.

@lenybobsyouruncle@xanga - I would love you to PM me some of the sociological and psycological discussions. I think it's a really interesting subject.

As you say there is a subtle different between getting people to do your bidding and working things through together, but maybe it is more similar than you think. By working things through with someone you are giving them the ideas and values you want to push forward yourself - I agree that the same can be said for the other party, but it is still partially getting people to obey.

I see you point about glass ceilings more now you have phrased it like that. I can see how over generations it does build up into a barrier - but I think that over time men (generalising) have come to see women as not as able to do the jobs (because of your example) and taken a bit more advantage; I agree that women have contributed - but I men have hopped on the bandwagon of doing everything laborious, turning chivalry into a sort of power-hold.

I agree wholeheartedly about tackling the media to sort out inequalities; I think the media can be helpful at times giving people knowledge and communication otherwise unable to obtain, but I think they control us more thana single gender could ever claim to control. I like to compare the media to a sort of tyrant. It is pushing upon us ideas that we may or may not agree with or want to hear, and sure there will be people who say you can turn your tv off, or not go on the internet, but the people yo ucorrespond with may still watch tv, your education system will watch tv and even your police force. I think no matter where we are, we are unable to get away from the media - even if we want to go back to living humbly in an agricultural society with no electricy, the rest of the world is controlled by media and will somehow get to us some of the phallacies or verbal-garbage the media wants us to hear.

Grammatically being pro-woman is being anti-man, and I do see the differences, but I think in some cases (the more extreme) being anti-man is the way forward to push out ideas of a male ideal, and once the ball is rolling, then strive for equality and fair and just rules and laws.

I agree with you, people moaning about a problem but doing nothing to solve it is irritating. But in this case I think not only is it providing a basis of an enjoyable discussion, but it is educating people who may be more suited to helping the case, rather than appearing as an uninformed radical.

I saw some emotional points cropping up in your speech, but I think if someone is really into a subject and discussion then it is near on impossible to detatch yourself from the topic while still giving a well thought out reply.

Zee.

I work in electronics, as an engineering assistant; not typical "women's work". Although most aspects of my life are decidedly atypical of most women, I'm neither "unfeminine" nor current-standards "feminist"

Rather, I am a "feminist" in my perspective as a woman who can simultaneously accept when a door is opened for me, pay my own tab at a restaurant, divide household chores, vote, keep current with the political atmosphere, accept assistance from colleagues [whether male or female], give assistance to colleagues [likewise: whether male or female], and just live as I am.

My dollar is mine to spend. My vote is mine to decide.

I teach others likewise, encourage mathematics and sciences to women and men alike, etc.

The other half, likewise, holds an equal, balanced respect for me, and I expect no less of him than he of me.

We get by...