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I would disagree. How a culture entertains itself is often very telling of its values.

And trust me, I've been in plenty of situations where I was at a disadvantage because of my gender (and sexual orientation, for that matter). I've been involved in several group projects where my ideas were not valued because I was in a group composed chiefly, or even partially of women, but when I protest this, everyone (including any authority figures nearby) tells me that I'm a chauvinist b*****d and that I believe that mens' ideas are superior to womens' (not true, despite what you may believe). My school regularly goes on camping trips, and I'm out of the closet. Guess where I get to sleep?

And just for the record, I am not anti-feminist. But I do have complaints about the feminist movement: Namely, that it has become incredibly splintered and lacks unified direction. I'm never entirely sure what's considered acceptable behavior towards women and what's considered sexist behavior, nor am I 100% sure of the difference between a positive female role model and a negative female role model.

Verma, NONE of us have said that there is no sexism towards men. All we are disagreeing with is that being stereotyped in one way because of gender is somehow "better" or "more okay" than being stereotyped in another way.

ALL sexism is bad. Whether it's against men, women, homosexuals, hermaphrodites, or the twelfth gender of another planet, it doesn't matter. It's all sexism and it's EQUALLY reprehensible.

As for what makes a role-model, that depends on the individual. Someone looking to better control their anger may look towards Gandhi or the Dalai Lama to be able to combat brute force with intellectual integrety. Someone in a very crappy situation may look to someone like my sister who got herself out of a terrible marriage and overcame an alcohol addiction to become an astrophysicist. Someone who needs more confidence in their body and their looks might look to Christina Aguilera (as Nopen mentioned). There is no set requirement for a role-model. It is simply finding someone who has achieved what you hope to achieve, who is what you hope to be. It doesn't matter whether you are male, female, black, white, or anything else. A role-model is simply someone with a trait you wish to possess.

As for lack of central coordination, I've talked about this before. Half the world is female. That means black, white, homosexual, straight, poor, rich, etc... It's very difficult for this huge variety of women to see passed their differences and fight for a common cause. The black movement was easier in that way because they all had their skin color in common and, because of the nature of racism at the time, nearly all of them were very poor and undereducated. They all had this in common and could much easier identify with each other.

But frankly, I'm not all that for a "feminist movement." We had one and the groundwork it did was essential to where we are now. But I think at this point it's important to a) maintain our level of advance (ie: NOT remove reproductive freedom), and b) learn to stop fighting and start integrating. That means learning to give our seats up for MEN who need them (like, say, he is carrying a lot of books and it is obviously difficult for him to stand), or opening doors for everyone, and simply treating everyone with dignity and respect without constantly wondering if every movement or sentence uttered is a veiled sexist remark.

Basically, stop drawing attention to ourselves as "different," but rather meeting as equals and of equal ability.

This is moot now, but the black civil rights movement wasn't unified either: and many blamed it on the feminist movement for taking female support. No movement is ever truly unified because of all the variables in people involved.


And just another point, our brain filters our experiences based on what we expect. For example, people who are positive tend to only notice the good in their lives and shrug the bad off and vice-versa for pessimistic people. If you expect to see something, you'll see it and just filter out the other stuff. It's just how the brain works to try and deal with all the information you deal with everyday: it tries to prioritize and give you the information you deem important. Until I hit about 19/20, all I ever saw was discrimination against women because that was my focus. It wasn't until I stepped back one day because an incident stood out to me that I realized it's a more-encompassing problem. Because once I was aware of it, I started to notice more and not filter it out.

Anywho, guess the topic is dead now and I can put my little soap box away. wink

I find it funny that people say "women are oppressed, so men are NOT oppressed". People use an assumed dichotomy to come to the conclusion that one group (men) is automatically lording over another group (women).

The truth is that this is a false dichotomy that does not really exist, except in all of our expectations of how we think things are (TV is a prime example).

Now, you might say that there's this group called "women" out there and this group called "men". But you'd be hard pressed to put all women and all men side by side in a massive line-up and view all of them as "the same". What we think of as "male" or "female" is what we look at in our biology text book of that cut out man or woman, with all the see through layers of inner body parts. We see the 'average Joe' or 'average Jane' that is portreyed in nearly every Hollywood movie. But that's not true.

People are lumpy. They have hair in the wrong places. they have different shapes, different colored hair, different facial constuction, different personalities.

To say that "women are" or "men are" in any specific way, therefore, is very dangerous.

Men have many problems with sexual and gender expectations, but those go hand in hand with female gender roles and sexism.

As long as men are seen as "above" women, with all of the gender actions that are expected of them, both genders will be trapped in "roles" that restrict and hurt them.

We must work TOGETHER, rather than point the finger, because by blaming our problems on the 'other side' we are merely exacerbating gender problems rather than working towards a happy resoultion.