I already gave you a better word for it than “emotional”. A rights-based view of morality is not inherently more nor less 'emotional" than a consequence-based view. In fact, arguments for a rights-based view are often predicated on a notion of injustice that is developed through the use of highly emotional examples. Consequence-based is “for the greater good” and is often argued as the less emotional, more rational perspective. (I don’t buy it, but then I don’t subscribe to either of those views.)
I’m not entirely sure how to interpret this statement. “More and more equal rights” suggests that “we’re living in an age” in which women are actively gaining rights thus implying that they don’t have all the same rights and they’re catching up. Based on the tone of the statement, though, it seems like you’re saying there’s no problem even while the content suggests there is a problem.
However, you should already know this is a nonsense argument either way. We’ve had 150 years now to figure out the “equality under the law” is not actually equality (even ignoring the admittedly few areas in which women’s legal rights don’t match men’s).
[quote=“bcsizemo, post:220, topic:16422”] I base my opinion on my observations of the real world, which certainly can be flawed, and on basic reasoning and logic. I, personally, have never seen a woman oppressed, not in a class/group based fashion. My wife has had to deal with a sexist boss, but I don’t consider that some wide spread sign of female oppression by men.
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First of all, I always groan when I hear people say stuff like that first sentence. Your observations of the “real world” are really observations of a model of the “real world” your brain has constructed. It’s not based on reasoning and logic – sensory data is not subjected to either when it impinges on your brain and is incorporated into your internal model of the world. Plenty of psychological and neurological research demonstrates that incoming sense data is filtered according to a “best fit” with the existing model – the brain selectively admits data that is consistent with its current state and rejects data that contradicts that state (a phenomenon called confirmation bias).
Second of all, what would it mean to see “a(n individual) woman oppressed…in a class/group based fashion”? It seems to me you’re somehow bracketing off unequal treatment of women so that it “doesn’t count” as oppression. Obviously a great deal of “class/group based” oppression will manifest as consequences for individual women. My girlfriend isn’t necessarily directly affected by your wife’s sexist boss, for example, but that doesn’t imply that your wife’s boss’s attitudes aren’t part of a more broad social more that results in unfair treatment of women. Perhaps if your wife’s boss was an aberration you might have a point but when there’s thousands of assholes like him in management all across the country you get effects on the whole “class/group”. Whatever the state of parity between men and women before the law, the attitudes of individuals like your wife’s boss results in fewer women managers and executives and lower pay.
When you say “oppression by men” you almost seem to think that it only “counts” if these effects are intentional. Well, no. I’d agree there’s little intention by men to oppress women. But many people – men and women – subscribe to belief systems that do seem to have the effect of promoting unequal treatment of women. They don’t see it that way because to them it’s normal.
Just like separate water fountains and lunch counters seemed normal and not unequal treatment to an earlier generation of white folks.
That’s the point of feminists calling out this shit. If it doesn’t get called out it just goes on and people see it as just another part of the wallpaper. You say this:
Yeah, “hopefully.” The odds are a lot better of this sort of thing improving if people actually note it as a problem rather than just accepting it as part of life.
I (and most feminists I’d expect) aren’t talking about individual relationships between men and women. I’m talking about attitudes held and acted upon across society. If you can believe there’s such a thing as institutional racism (and given nothing besides the sentencing disparities between crack and cocaine I’d say there’s obviously such a thing) then I don’t understand why it’s so hard to recognize that there might be an analogous institutional sexism. Technically blacks have been equal before the law since the late 1860’s. How has that worked out in practice?
Now obviously some progress has been made. Yes, women can vote and own property now. Some progress has even been made in the last few decades which is when most laws against spousal rape were implemented. However, it’s quite clear in the context of the civil rights movement that such attempts at equality de jure do not necessarily translate into de facto equality. Feminists typically argue that there is still not de facto equality between men and women. As evidence they point out circumstances from their lived experience. You can blind yourself to those experiences and continue to insist that there’s no such thing as male privilege but please don’t do so in the same breath that you insist that you observe the “real world” using “reasoning and logic”.
