It seems to me that we are not so much arguing the same points but rather miscuing. I certain think that your viewpoint from what I understand is slightly opposed to mine but I feel we are slightly mussing each other in the exchange.
We're what?
Maybe I'm being dull but I don't understand what you're saying here.
Odeon, Its ok. As mentioned above. I felt as though we were not really going head to head as it were. I inferred you were at least slightly opposed to my opinions but I do not think either of us had really contested much or engaged vehemently, on any position strongly. Felt like we were either missing each other or feeling out. I do not like that. It made me feel like made I was misreading something and setting myself up for an embarrassment, where at some point you or someone else would say "What the hell are you on about? I/he was not saying that at all"
I do think we are sort of missing each other's points. Or at least viewpoints.
For what it worth, I don't think you are dull by a long chalk but I think this could turn out to be a knock down drag out fight....or at least another argument like our callout. The fact that you are not "dull" makes it worth having
It is an interesting argument and I'm tempted to argue also because it's you.
I will start with these mentions of "recent times".
In days of old, women did not work, men did. In fact men had to. The reason was not about inequality. Nor was it to "dominate" women.
The reason WAS biological. Women, simply were too valuable to risk.
What do you base this on?
I'd argue that part of the reason was, and still is, biological. It's just the way this has all been set up. It's not fair, it's not unfair, it just is.
The consequences then were that yes, most women did not work outside the home. It was a consequence of the setup and not necessarily unfair. It just was.
But even though it's no longer an inevitable consequence and hasn't been for quite some time, it still lingers.
Indeed there is an inescapable biological/evolutionary/primal/instinctual/hormonal pull to this.
BUT we have to also face facts that as much as man and woman may be lead by emotions and hormones and everything else, we are thinking creatures too. This is why crimes of passion and PMT and "heat of the moment" type acts only go so far in law courts. We know as a society that there is genuine chemical predispositions exist but that the thing that separates us from even the next most highly evolved mammals is our ability to intellectualise and that MUST be given more weight.
It should be given some weight, but we are also beings of highly evolved bureaucracy and the need for sameness and unchange. Sorry for that last word, but I think it fits.
Think of it as sociological inertia. It was convenient for the male who no longer risked his life going out the door but instead held a job and liked to grab a pint with his mates after the long hours at the office or the coal mine, convenient to have the little woman back at home, convenient to have her prepare the kids and the dinner so both would be ready when you re-entered domestic life. Western societies, especially pre industrial revolution, are full of examples of this.
And if you, as a woman, accepted this, you would be valued and a good wife, but if you had other ambitions, like studying and finding out and having a career and a life outside that door, you would disrupt that inertia.
So what do I mean by "Women, simply were too valuable to risk." This is not a hard one to figure.
You are a caveman. Born male. You are 16. Your smelly, hairy, ugly, parasite infested, 13 year old girlfriend is 3 months pregnant. You have been on the Earth long enough to know that the next 6 months are crucial to the survival of your girl and your children. There is about 30-40% chance she is going to die in childbirth. Suddenly she becomes extremely important to you. You become the guy who gets and gives. Too cold? Have my blanket. Need some fruit? I will go out and pluck it. Need fresh meat? I will risk life and limb obtaining it. Need protecting from those horrible neighbours that may wish to steal you away? I will fight to the death to preserve you. You stay here safe and warm in the cave.
One man can easily service and impregnate a number of women. A woman may have a number of children but show me the woman who has had as many children as Genghis Khan's mistresses had and I will happily tell you I have made no point at all.
Why do you think polygamy as a concept will generally be about one male and several females but not the other way around? I'd postulate that women in that context only have value as child-bearing creatures. Not valuable at all otherwise.
So I would contest the fact that with a 30-40% risk of dying in childbirth, she becomes more valuable to you. Quite the opposite. It's how polygamy happens in a society. You simply cover all your bases, you maximise the chance of your genes to survive.
But arguing the emotional lives of cavemen is ultimately rather pointless because while the timespans so far are grossly in their favour, we've introduced more change in the last few generations than we have in millenia before, and certainly we've done quite a bit about the survival rates for both mum and child.
Time spans feed that inertia. I dare say that it's been easier to bring about a change in those survival rates than it has in the rights of women as anything as domestic service.
Women are more valuable. Their ability to have children gives them an undefined edge over men
They have a different role. Value is not just about the ability to give birth.
One of the man's best traits to strut out is their ability to protect a women and to take on any physical threat. To expose themselves to the harm that she may be spared from. Whether it be on a macro-scale : war or a micro-scale : noise outside.
Men are physically stronger than woman, and natural selection probably amplified this for some reason. This fact is in no way in opposition to what I'm saying.
Back to Cave times. A war on a cave of 10 men and 10 women leaving 3 men and 10 women was not nearly as bad as a war leaving 10 men a 3 women. I do not think a better case than all of this needs to be made for male disposability needs to be made, but let me know if so.
The alternative with 10 men and 3 women left would mean a mini war in itself, and you know it. What the woman thought about it would make little difference.
So I'd contest their value as individuals, with their own wills and ambitions and hopes and fears... They wouldn't be asked.
Of course, the 3 men and 10 women remaining would still mean that the remaining 3 set the pace. Better-quality harems, methinks.
The chances of surviving childbirth were not crash hot. Those that did, wanted to have a few children survive them to help look after them in old age and reach childbearing age themselves. Therefore child after child was born and IF they survived this ordeal, they would have spent most of their adult life by the time they were unable to bear children, either nursing or pregnant. In the meantime"someone" had to provide for the family. Men needed to support this and so they were given the right to work BECAUSE they had the obligation to carry out such duties. The women did not have the obligation to provide for the family and so did not have the rights associated with the obligation.
What are these rights? Please define them.
I'm sure this was the consequence, "back then", but not all of it was necessary. Where did it say that the division of labour had to be like that for life?
I think nowhere. It happened because the initial division of labour, defined by childbirth, was like that, and perhaps the first few years, especially with a couple of babies being produced every few years.
Society would stick to that definition long after the last sibling had been born, however. Would you like me to list a few examples? History is full of them.
You "can". In as much as you could list how many left handed people there were in history books or red headed or blue eyes or people over 7 foot....
Not that doing so would prove anything really.
But it would show examples of that sociological inertia. A hundred generations of cavemen going about their business would show little but three or four generations of renaissance and Victorian societies should show inertia and resulting bias at work. You could have a queen but you couldn't have a woman out in the open.
Why did society work the way it did? Now we "could" suggest "patriarchy" or more charitably suggest it was "flawed" or even that it was actually ineffective for the masses and that it worked far better in equally dividing work and raising children well before women's rights/feminism movements came to the fore.
I hate the word "patriarchy". It is so grossly misused by the militant feminists that it has lost its value.
Was the division of labour equal? It may have been, at one point, but I do think that it became another consequence of that inertia, something one party came to accept more readily than the other as the years went by and your chances of surviving childbirth increased.
You could suggest that. I would simply not agree with you. I am sorry.
I didn't, so don't be.
I will say that there was and is a period of time between the changes in medical practices and health practices in which the two forces of contraception and childbirth mortality to woman and child drastically fell behind the change to work and life changes for women. My Grandmother was not privy to this kind of change. My Mother certainly was and bitter about being in the wrong generation for it. My own female peers reap the rewards of the changes and my daughter would not have known what the fuss was about, were not for her Father.
But are your female peers equal to you now, in every way, or do you think there might be imbalances left, some lingering inertia from the pressure of a dozen past generations?
If a partner in a marriage is going to be unable to work and seen as at extreme possibility to die within the year, the responsibility and obligation to provide for that partner and any previous issue of both partners falls on.....the one at risk of dying in the imminent future...is that where you put your eggs so to speak? No it is in the partner that is likely to live. Hedging your bets for the better bet. That is with the man on the marriage. He will provide for that family. His job in society. He is identified and defined as true provider (not the nurturer). BUT if he is obliged to provide does it not follow that he has the right to provide (i.e. work). It must be that he has to work so we will give him the right to work. What about the women? They are not expected to work. What if they do work? Are they expected to? Obliged to? Must they provide? Why then should they be given the right?
Because they wanted to? Because their place was now defined by inertia rather than by an actual fact? Because they'd see that there was more to life than to give birth, cook dinners and make a home out of the cave?
See, at the same time as your chances of survival increased, other advances would be made in society, things that would allow you as a male to provide for the little woman and your offspring without risking your life or spending your every waking moment simply *providing*. Things like technological advances, books to read (in quite a few societies, you'd learn how to, but the little woman back home wouldn't), and public houses to frequent when the providing was done for the day.
You might think that as a provider, it would be your right. But then, so would the little woman, because she, too, would see herself as a provider. Your colleague. Your peer. But she wouldn't be allowed to, her place would be at home.
^^^^^^^ This reasoning is perfectly sound....to a point. Until society changes. Until society finds and recognises that because of adequate survival rates and contraception that women are no longer forced into accepting a toss of the coin survival on each of the 10 year long 6-8 child procreation spree that they and their partner had to endure.
(Odeon: Imagine right now that every time you had sex it was a toss of the coin whether you just Fathered another child? I would fucking shoot myself personally...but there you go)
I'd rather not.
But now. Men in society are still financially obliged to support their family. Women in society are working like men so are THEY needing to support their children as the men are? Or do they get society paid pensions and child support and maybe assistance from any other man they may be seeing as my ex-wife does with her new husband?
That same inertia at work, methinks. No more fair than the woman forced to stay back at home, but something that needs to be addressed and changed. Two wrongs and all that.
Right and obligation. Did women in taking on work, get the obligation men had associated with work and did men lose the association. Right = obligation or does it?
See above.
It was only "recent times" that infant mortality and death in child birthing has substantially reduced.
Yes, but the division of labour has lagged behind long after that.
To keep bring up "only in recent times" in ways to suggest that the women were "held back" or "disadvantaged" is simply not true representation. It is not at all to say that once these things "stabilised" that men eagerly embraced women's wish to be workers in society. No this was a complete culture shift. Right up there with the shift from Stone Age to Bronze Age or Bronze to Iron Age.
I disagree. I'm saying that there was no reason to wait until "recent times". I'm saying that there have been all kinds of reasons to cling to this setup even though it hasn't been a necessity for most societies in a long, long time.
No Odeon. I think you are being far to ideological and simplistic.
You really have to place yourself into a traditional setting. Far easier for me to do unfortunately.
Different, maybe. Easier, no. I don't know more about your society than you know about mine. But I will say this: I have seen different societies at work because I have lived in several. Have you?
(I am from country Australian cultural background - for me to understand a very uneducated, ignorant (i know you know the difference between these two similar terms), xenophobic, religious, sexist, rigid, homophobic mindset is pretty easy)
OK all you know is that men protect women, women like big strong fit guys, women don't like poofs, no one likes poofs, you have to protect your women, all blokes may want to move in on your women (especially if pissed) if so you have to protect your women by beating the men senseless), you have to provide for your woman and your family, you have to protect her not only from physical but also finical and reputation harm. You are her shield. If she gets pregnant, she will have your child. You have to make sure she is "covered". Make sure that she is not vulnerable to any of the the very little you can control.
That is your mindset, Odeon.
Not very different from the ones I have seen, I think. On the surface, sure, but the "traditional" values of the Finnish society of my youth are very similar to the ones you describe.
A sociologist would pinpoint several differences, of course, but I do think the division of labour between men and women happened largely in the same way.
Work factored for you and work factored for her in this mindset (especially (x100) in the event of the child mortality and such as mentioned early plays far more into dissuading/barring/cosseting from than it does to being accepting about a partner working.
Please take into account that getting people to understand and appreciate and jump on board such a cultural shift takes time. Imagining that it would be accomplished from when it became viable, to overnight is ridiculous, 50 years...I would say bare minimum.
Oh yes. Far more than that. Sociological inertia at work. It takes generations to change anything, and not all the changes are what you expect them to be, regardless of your sex.
As far as how many years? Hell you can find remote little countries that I think most people in Australia have probably never heard of (OK I dunno, maybe they have. I will ask my daughter tomorrow. I have heard of Liechtenstein and know roughly here it is in Europe) it. But I do not think that laws in respect to women's rights in say Australia, Sweden, America or England will be relate to Liechtenstein. Maybe I am wrong BUT it looks to me like a deliberate red herring. It wasn't was it Odeon?
It was and it wasn't. I brought it up because even though the example is rather extreme, none of us lives in a bubble. Lichtenstein as a concept is not an isolated island because it affects, and is affected by, its surroundings. Think of Lichtenstein as one of several mindsets of which there is a whole spectrum. You and I live on opposite sides of the globe but nevertheless we affect each other. This is how small the world has become.
This is how we constantly affect each other. This is how we change and how we stay the same. It takes years.
I tell you what. I will trade you the "Liechtenstein is somehow representative of the Western world's views about gender equality" to the "Australia, America, Sweden, and England, is somehow indicative of Western women's rights"
Cool.
They are ALL examples of how things work today. They are not the same and they won't ever be, but they affect each other.
Do you know what the butterfly effect is? I'm sure you do. Such seemingly innocent changes are not innocent, not insignificant. Or UNchanges.
We have a long way to go, but I am hoping that the increased means to communicate will bring about a change in inertia faster.
The other thing is of course, men as the provider is still a societal pressure. If men and women split, invariably it is the Father forced to support any of his children and often the new partner too. (Often with Government support by way of pensions) So he keeps the obligation of the provider.
Is the woman in joining into this once male domain similarly obligated to provide for the family? Perhaps instead of the onus falling on her, the government and the ex partner and perhaps any new partner is obligated instead.
By contrast, is the man now given more credibility in the old female domain of nurturing and growing up the kids?
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/welcome-to-the-school-for-blokes-where-young-boys-become-men/story-fnet08ui-1226786857255
Believe me, when we get to the stage where we are THAT far down the rabbit hole that we are saying "Where are all the male role models?" we REALLY have to take a look at the system and ask whether or not the Fathers are all bad or whether the mothers find it all too easy to minimise, marginalise and supplant the Father's role in nurturing an raising children in their way (which is absolutely not necessarily the Mother's way) and whether society debases the Masculine and the Father and uses them to be obligated for cash towards children but with unequal access and rights as a parent? Certainly looks that way. In fact looks like a verifiable imbalance.
It is an imbalance, sure. I'm not arguing that "equal rights" should tip the scale the other way. I know there are plenty of feminists saying pretty much that, that this is somehow the punishment for past injustices.
It's as fucked up as the imbalance I have been talking about. Two wrongs doesn't make one right.
But I do think it is a reaction, a result of the former setup. Some kind of weird cultural inertia at work. And I do think it is interesting that it is frequently brought up whenever the rights of women in society are being discussed.
Why argue against one injustice by bringing up another?
I think it is "funny" that it is dismissed whenever it is bought up. True story. Mention this and it is the case of "back to our issues".
Sorry, I don't mean to dismiss it, not in the way you suggest. I think it needs to be addressed, too, but I also think allowing it to derail the other discussion is just as wrong, just as fucked up. Inertia at work.
What "injustice specifically". I think I have adequately defended the work "imbalance issue" as seems to have been suggested. Unless of course there are other aspects to it you wish to discuss.
But I am happy of curse for any "reasonable injustice" to be bought up and discussed. I am anti-feminist. No ifs or buts. I am also all for gender equality. My daughter I hope will have the same entitlements and rights as her male peers.
If you by "feminism" mean the militant women shouting patriarchy at the top of their lungs whenever equality is discussed by the wrong gender, I agree with you. I don't want to tip the scale the other way.
Personally the feminists that you are discussing , that are wanting to bring up past injustices MUST ABSOLUTELY show me that they BOTH suffered systematic (not personal or individual douchbaggery issues) AND did not receive equal benefit on basis of their gender that went in their favour.
Um, see all of the above. I don't agree with the feminists of that type at all.
The fact of the matter is that men do not go through childbirth (no hear me out), so I can not directly compare women giving birth to men given birth. It is not a given that IF we can not compare this exactly condition/experience/situation to a man's, that any conclusions we can draw from looking at time off from work is horribly flawed and not cogent.
I am not trying to directly compare a prolonged illness or operation or such with childbirth and give merits as to the ways they directly compare as physical experiences. My attempt to mention this was also not a moral comparison or a matter of looking at the way that such conditions or experience may affect life.
It was simply to say, if you are on top of your game in the workplace and know your job inside out and the procedures, policies and processes and the who's who and what's what, a small break from work will not hurt you ably in this regard. You may read a few emails have a quick fill in, and ask a few questions. You are not quite up to date but close enough. Out of the loop for a year? Now this would be akin to being employed to a new firm in the same field almost. You MAY be able to get on top of things of course but it will not be easy AND the people who you left a year ago have an extra year's earth of knowledge over you and extra year of perhaps exposing themselves to a vacuum left by your departure.
So why make it harder for them? Why not HELP them instead?
How many weeks will a Father get for "parental leave compared to a mother. If a father splits with a mother, how much does society support him, in comparison to the mother, and .....sorry what are you talking about?
If you are away for a year, it should make sense to bring you up to speed in any way possible and thus embrace the fact that you have been allowed leave for that long.
Regardless of your sex.
It is my personal belief that the infants need their mother more than their father, for the first few months at least. I don't know if this is the case or not, but to me, equality should not be about sameness, it should be about equal opportunities in harmony with your actual differences.
Not sure if that makes sense as a sentence but can't be arsed to edit it, not now.
Now If a man was to take two weeks off or even four weeks off with annual leave, sick leave, long service leave, or whatever this i negligible effect or career or his saved super or his understanding of the company as stated above.
If woman was to tae this kind of time off to have a child...same deal.
If a man was to be long term sick and was introduced back into the workplace he would be in foreign territory for al the reasons I have just shown.
Ditto if a lady returns to work a year after having given birth.
The difficulties are not unnatural or unfair or needing to be adjusted. Whether it should be up to one parent to stay hime or both or neither, that is not unfair choice or disadvantaged to either sex. It is certainly a decision that ought to be made before having children. One percent working to provide for children is no less fair on them than what it is to the parent staying at home, regardless of gender.
I am hoping that these comments can get us actually to duel over viewpoints. Again I think we are miscuing.
Hmm. I think we already are, but correct me if I'm wrong.
But, just because it's the kind of guy I am:
Bloody good song.
We are now 
There is not enough Lennon in the world. This is a gross injustice.
