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Ok, so well I was talking with a half dozen trans-women today, at various stages in transition and one of then just had not come to the realization that the moment you put that skirt on you lose some of your privilege. Later when you get whacked and finally have the shovel handle insertion procedure administered, you lose all your privilege.
Yes, sure the more passable you are the better it is if you simultaneously load the feminine wiles and deportment routine. I have had the worst problem in tuning my approach to become sweet and endearing without actually flirting.
Yes ladies many men realize that having a dick gives them power, testosterone and privilege. Men are seen as more able and capable. And they are often less tolerant to us because we willingly cut off our power and authority. They just can not handle it. So, the result is that you wind up not being treated as nicely as they treat genetic women.
So, no whining and complaining about not having the same rights and privileged that you did before. Women are born to their fate, we choose it, so no more complaints. :)
Comments
Need not be
The fight for equality is going on right now. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, be part of the fight.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
You assume much grass hopper
You have no idea what part I play in this.
G
That's a very negative opinion of women to have Gwen
And one I definitely have to take umbrage to.
Does the glass ceiling, in all its myriad forms, exist? Yes. Does that mean it's something that women -- genetic or otherwise -- should just shut up and accept? Absolutely not! That's like saying, well...
It's pretty much the same type of argument used against the idea of transgendered individuals being able to transition in the first place.
"Put up with your place in the world" isn't that far off from "put up with the body God gave you," when it comes right down to it, and they BOTH often come from people who find it to their advantage to keep others beneath them. It's a power trip, and an attempt to support a way of life that hasn't been feasible -- and most certainly hasn't been reasonable -- for decades at the very least, if not ever. Everyone should expect fair, EQUAL treatment, regardless of their circumstances of birth. There really isn't any way one can justify mass inequality based on sex/sexuality/gender the way that so many people try to, at least no way that relies on any kind of actual, reasonable, ethical code of conduct.
Man or woman, or race, or LGBT or otherwise, shouldn't make a difference in how someone is treated. Ever.
Melanie E.
Alas
Alas, no matter how many laws we enact, those laws will not change peoples' hearts.
While the laws are necessary, they have the unfortunate effect of angering people and encouraging them to hold ever tighter to their bigotry.
I did not say give up...
Women are a great deal more subtle than we even know. And after being at it for 10 years, I am just starting to get some idea. Oh, the complexity of the struggle for rights for women boggles one's mind, and often it is a give and take thing.
In my circle, I am seen as a strong, powerful woman, but I have also had to learn subtlety and manipulation; honing those skills to a fine point. And, lots of time we have to settle for losing or perhaps just gaining a fraction of what we want.
Still, in being with women most of the time, I have seen a strength that makes me respect them so much
The implication that manipulation is where women's strength lies
doesn't really appeal to me either, to be honest. I've met as many brash, open women as I have sneaky, subtle and manipulative guys: the wiles of either type of interaction are no more a gender specific lock than are the careers people can have despite how mass culture tends to represent such things.
I am not a manipulative person. True, I'm not an out and out brash person most of the time either, but I've long felt that honest intentions deserve an honest approach to accomplishing them, and if those around you have a problem with that then it's THEIR problem, not yours, and you should find other people to be around.
Think about ninety percent of the time you see women being taught "feminine wiles" -- or manipulative techniques -- in books and movies: they're doing it for underhanded reasons, or out of a sense of putting something over on others when they use them. It is treated as a negative or circumspect form of interaction, and typically has negative connotations for the group using them as a whole. Mean Girls is a great example of this. Or look at the mass number of movies where the most overtly feminine women are the villains for another example of the implication that such behavior is negative: The Chronicles of Riddick, for example, or just about any movie featuring an evil queen. Heck, even when movies have male villains it's nothing to see them take on a feminine affectation to their mannerisms or interactions, further embracing the common ideal that such things are bad.
And yet this is what is often considered how women are? How they're supposed to be? I don't think so.
*sigh*
Sorry for getting rant-y, but I REALLY hate gender stereotypes in either direction. Just because you're a girl/woman doesn't mean you have to be subtle or manipulative or passive, just like being a guy doesn't mean you have to be brash and daring and all that. All these things might be part of someone's personality, but that's based on WHO, not WHAT, they are.
Melanie E.
Chose it?
I think not.
You might have chosen to have your plumbing problem sorted, but you didn't choose being female.
Feminism
is about fair rules for all. How can half the population be a minority? It is only ignorance and fear by some paternalistic cultures that prevents equal rights for all. Only stupidity seems unable to see that equal rights for all, means no one becomes the underdog, so there are no losers, only perhaps those who thought they had an inherent and misplaced right to superiority without earning it.
Angharad
That's my boy/girl/whatever you are standing in the way of...
The only individuals not fighting for equal rights seem either to be fighting against them or have never been stopped from doing what they want to do on spurious grounds.
How you choose to fight is your choice Gwen but imagine how you would react if another woman unfairly denigrated or tried to manipulate your son or nephew...
Rhona McCloud
Let me re-state that
The original intent of this thread was to highlight how women endure UN-instutionalized discrimination as a part of every day life. And, yes, I was married to a man hater woman before and over a period of 40 years ... ah well. So, I know it can go both ways.
Without going all Freudian, in my life of 10 years as a woman, I see more clearly each day that Genesis 3:16 plays out whether we even believe in God or not. There is something in the tightly focused male brain that in relation to women, that causes them to be fascinated by us, and driven by the mind controlling drug testosterone, generally puts them in a dragon like state of possessiveness and arousal. On the other hand, women are drawn to men in an inexplicable way. The rub comes when the 32 bit 1 meg memory male brain encounters the 64 bit 8 meg female brain.
I see and experience both put downs, and complements by men every day, and have come to the conclusion that both men and women engage in put down behavior out of a sense of inferiority. The reasonably secure men and women just don't appear to engage in sexist behavior.
Pray for Acceptance
It says in the Bible that we should treat everyone with love and compassion, except for the misfits . . . like women.
(Couldn't help myself.)
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Windows vs OSX
I like your 32-bit 1mb RAM coming up against 64-bit 8mb RAM analogy Gwen.
To borrow that and extend it; this thread might be summed up as suggesting that in a world where stereotypically men are running on Windows and women on OSX we all would be better off to wake up and run Linux!
Sorry but despite knowing little of computers I just couldn't resist that....
Rhona
Rhona McCloud
It Is Better Now
It is strange that I am reading a historical romance novel that has the main character doing a "man's job" for that time as the manager, but is denied the right to own the business, to vote, access to this job's organization, and easy access to the political system because she is a woman. I realized that those characters who wanted to keep the status qua wanted to keep the women down to keep their privileges were using the same kind of excuses that were used for slavery and other discriminations. For more than 3300 years (the reason for the Exodus, there are probably older events.) there has been the same cry against those who wish to control others. We need to be constantly vigilant working to stop these controlling people from succeeding.
Note the headline said "better now" not right.
shalimar
It depends a lot on profession too
Some glass ceilings are lower than others I think. Some just have glass front doors actually. I suggest that commentators who comment here also mention the degree of first hand experience they have with the female real world if we can properly respond to their perspective on this matter.
And as far as manipulation goes, the old boys network is the ultimate in manipulation as far as I am concern. By holding the same consensus on female roles they effective manipulate the system against competent (not obligatory, mind!) females for a position.
35 years real world
35 years real world experience in work as a woman. In that time I have had to fight against those who would have stood in my way just because I'm a woman but also sometimes refrain from doing things I enjoy and am skilled in so as to be taken seriously .
My work is public with a relatively few top women so I won't say more.
Rhona McCloud
Cool
I have 24 myself now. I am in engineering and have found the discrimination can be subtle at times but it is there now and again. Ironically there is a bit of gung-honess I see among some women who are ambitious enough in the profession that would surprise some folks too but men hold no monopoly on that sort of thing. Of other women engineers I have occasioned more then one bout of ugly cattiness too for one reason or another and is one quality that I can do without. Men do the whole dominant thing to people they do not like more than the social and personal attacks behind my back from other women. It is something that I have to keep my guard up at all times.
Life as a woman
I don't wish to say that my life as a woman is negative. It is 10x better than as a man. Mostly, I get to be this happy bubbly woman, and at 67, thankfully I do not have to put up with work place warfare.
I have lots of female friends and the ones that know, are mostly gentle when I get upset about discrimination but then say, "You did ask for it".
If I do get upset, even mad, which is not frequent, most people, especially men just seem to laugh at me.
Some Folks See It ALL the Wrong Way Round !
Can we just stop and look at the Situation and try to get it right ?
Firstly, there are MORE women than men! Women are tougher than men. Women outlive men. So in a democracy Women as the Majority should decide things !
Males are made using one X and one tiny Y chromosome - that male Y chromosome is TINY, compared with the XXs, and it has been steadily losing size, and genes, for the last several thousands of years.
Then as to Attitude and Reaching Goals: All those expensive courses I was sent on before promotion to Higher Management, included a statement to the effect that one should assume the achievement has been achieved already, when trying to realise any goal, which includes gender equality same as any other. If people assume they are not equal they wont be, so change your attitude !
Finally, the Environment favours Women. In this age of ubiquitous Plastic. all plastics contain plasticizer chemicals, which mimic the structures and shapes of female hormones.
Poor little boys these days are bathed in feminizing chemicals, from the things they use in the bath or shower, from the drinks they drink, even in the air they breathe. An ever increasing number of boys grow breasts these days. These compounds do not just decay and disappear, they persist for years in the environment. Fishes consume ever more of them in the seas and concentrate them so that when the boys eat the fishes they get stronger doses of the feminizing compounds. They are even found in the beer that boys drink to drown their disappointments at no longer being on top !
Where once more muscles were desirable, today they are a disadvantage, as machines do all the lifting and carrying. Even in that most masculine pastime of making war on each other, girls with their nimbler fingers can fire a gun at least as well as the boys.
The male gender is on the way out !
Briar
There has been a contravaling article about that
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/science/researchers-see-ne...
Will somebody rid me of that meddlesome priest? :)