Athiesm and feminism

[SweepTheLeg]

Amber knew the fun I was going to have by continuing the trend by quoting the past 5 posts and made it impossible on this website. She knows me too well.

 

[LadyLuna]

Amber knew the fun I was going to have by continuing the trend by quoting the past 5 posts and made it impossible on this website. She knows me too well.

That's when you eliminate the innermost quote.

Also, I believe you can still do it all if you just move the innermost quote out of the main quote, cause I think it's just nesting quotes that can only go to four.

Test:

I feel I should point out that though I am a feminist I will open doors for the ladies instead of yelling at her to do it her damn self and giving her an equality high five.

LMFAO!!!! Omg.

I'm not sure what the right label for me would be. I don't think it's as black and white as anti-feminist or feminist.
I'm more 50/50, I think. I believe woman should be able to have careers and get paid as much as men do and not have to stay at home cooking and cleaning. BUT I don't think it's right when women have chidren and both parents work 40hours a week. Don't have children if a nanny is going to raise them. Of course, this does not apply to single parents. I'm also pro-life *gasp*. So I really don't think I am anti-feminist nor a feminist.

I think a person can consider themselves "feminist" even if they don't agree with a particular feminist group. It's really not a monolithic term...it's about freedom and equality, and personal choices. As far as being "pro-life," I think someone can be against most abortions and still believe that people have a choice, as opposed to putting anyone in jail if they have or perform an abortion. The President, for example, once said he's against abortions but believes in choice. As a term, "Pro-Life" is very monolithic...and doesn't allow for many choices. It's a political movement rather than a personal description...it doesn't mean that people who are "pro choice" are against life.

Oh, I'm actually the definition of a real pro-lifer. I believe it should be illegal. I understand that many pro-choices would not choose an abortion for themselves, but believe it should be legal. Some people may call themselves "pro-life" but if you believe it should be legal, you are not, by definition. I'm all about the definitions. Lol

:-D This opens an entire bucket of worms of possible conversation. lol I'll refrain.

For the sanity of the forum, I think that's best. xo

Anyways, without going off topic, my real point here was that it's not so black and white.

 

[LadyLuna]

Anyway, to expand a bit on my original thoughts:

Today's feminism seems a bit out of place in most of the western world. I do think they're trying to go too far in the countries where it's already won. I think, instead, feminism needs to focus on the countries where women aren't allowed to learn, or drive, or wear pants...

(I would like to note that when I wrote this post, I remember the bit about Athiesm but I couldn't remember which points against feminism she used, so I went back and watched the video again. It turns out, the points about feminism came first, then the points about Atheism. BTW- her beef against feminism is the idea that the patriarchy society was developed for the express purpose of giving men what they wanted, regardless of what was good for women. Or that the patriarchy is a tool to suppress women.)

The video talks about how Atheism is supposed to be "I don't believe in God." and not "I believe in God but I don't agree with xyz parts of religion and so I'll be an atheist." or "I'm angry at God so I'm just going to deny it's existence." The only reason to be an atheist should be "I haven't seen any proof that God exists, therefore, I will not believe in one." She talks about how Atheists let people become Atheists because of the consequences of Atheism, instead of because of the objective reality of no proof. And thus, you now have a bunch of morons who have turned Atheism into a religion, talking about sin and shunning people for doing certain things.

She also talks about how women are more afraid of violence than men are, but less likely to experience violence than men are. And how feminism pushes for more awareness about violence against women, and pushes violence against men out of the picture. This one, well... I'm not sure about her argument that women don't experience as much violence as men. Even assuming it's true, it's also true that men are more capable of dealing with violence than most women. (Not saying ALL women, as there are plenty of women who are more capable of dealing with violence than many men... just in general, the average man is going to be less traumatized by it than the average woman.) Most women that I've met feel more pain than most men I've met. Meaning, hit both just as hard, the woman will be in more pain than the man.

She then says that feminism is dogmatic (talking about the Patriarchy Theory). That it starts from a premise and seeks validation for that premise, dismissing anything that contradicts that premise. Points out that when it comes to health, women are healthier and live longer than men, yet more focus is on women's health than men's. That in the past, women were supposed to be taken care of by a willing man, her husband, but now, she is being taken care of by unwilling men and all of society through the government.

----

I do not believe the society was created to subjegate women. I believe that it happened the way it did because it worked best when most women focused on the home and family and most men focused on earning the money for the household. That in many places both sides lost sight of what women were supposed to get out of the deal, and what men were and weren't supposed to get out of the deal. Hence why I don't call myself a feminist.

Why do I work instead of keep house? Because in the current society, I earn more money than my male partner. For awhile. The master plan is actually to get to a point where I don't have to work anymore. At that point, I will still cam, but it will be for fun and spending money. It will also not be very often.

 

[southsamurai]

a bit of historical perspective on patriarchy. i dont mean the type thats been around since judeo-christian world domination, thats a whole other kettle of fish. i mean the idea of patrilineal succession and male leadership of society. this is going to get long and probably confusing, but bear with me.

ok the roots of patriarchy go back to "caveman" days. the basic premise being that while the female carries the young in womb she is unable to hunt, gather etc, so the male must do so for both of them as well as the young. the first year or two after birth this situation remains the same. considering the lack of birth control and the primality of urges and society most likely there will be a chain of this occurring very often. now this is all before property inheritance came into the picture, but it sort of set the duality of gender roles despite the historical veneration of the female mysteries. (the oldest deity icons are goddess, with the gods taking a bit of a backseat). man= hunter/defender woman=breeder/gatherer.

next up comes the idea of property, and we're talking much much later in early civilization. this is well after man settled into small clans and villages, but before cities and nations formed. basically the house, fields, farm critters and such were left behind when folk died, so who does it go to? there are two ways that were used: matriarchal and patriarchal descent. dont think they need much definition, so ill go right into the benefits of each and why we settled on patriarchal in so much of the world.
matriarchal descent assumes that women hold property, either solely or alongside her mate, and that her children inherit, usually to eldest daughter. you see way back when there was no such thing as DNA testing. they hadnt even figured out any means of assuring paternity of a child other than " looks like him, must be his". a matriarchal descent allows for a clear way to follow a bloodline for any given purpose. there are still some societies that follow these customs.

patriarchal descent has only one benefit, and it has nothing to do with genetics. even in a matriarchy where women rule males were traditionally the warriors. they defended property and children, and conquered new property. patrilineal descent allows their efforts to be preserved, if only in name. not a big benefit you say? well lets look back to mating again. for around 2-3 years a female who bears a child is partially defenseless, must feed the child, and can not roam far to do so. to ensure the survival of the child some help is needed. enter the big brawny men. if you find a good warrior.hunter you want to keep him around to make better babies with, so you have to motivate him. sex works for short term, sure, but long term? not so much, not when civilization rears it's head. at that point you have more males available for mating and as said before no way to be certain who fathered which child. if we set it up so that males own and bequeath property they have reason to stay. their name, their legacy remains, even if there is no guarantee of genetic connectedness.

either form of inheritance will work just fine really, but in those early days one form might work better in one place than another, so we find that both were used where they worked, then stuck around for a while. this form of patriarchy is fairly benign assuming that the females have a sacred and important role in society beyond breeding. some places they did, some they didnt.

now after a time civilizations grew, expanded. they became cities and nations. true warfare rather than just small scale fighting cam into play. for the most part the successful nations and rulers in war tended to be led by men. (not downplaying the warrior skills of women, just going by percentages here) so when these more aggressive conquerors came through a new land their laws and rules tended to be enforced, which lead slowly to most of the world being male led. but there was one more factor that turned things from just that and into patriarchy as we think of it now.

this one thing was the reduction of the idea of sacred femininity. there have always been a few religions in history where the gods ruled the goddesses, but again the winners set the rules. the place that did the most world conquering tended to be southern europe and the areas closest to it. greece, rome, macedonia, persia. these were the guys that ruled the most places and their way of life tended to dominate even when the nation in question didnt force religious conversion. most of these areas had their pantheon (a greek term) led by a male deity. eventually the idea of it being the right way of seeing the world soaked in. now if you add in the egyptians the great conquerors of the western world have one thing in common beyond territory. they all conquered the hebrews at some point.
and as we can all remember it was one rather famous hebrew who changed the world greatly. the name he is known by for most people is jesus. now jesus was a pretty cool cat imo. a bit old fashioned from a modern perspective, but damn open minded for his era. now im not going into the religious side of it at all. believe or not, that is your choice. what i do maintain is that the person we call jesus started a movement that snowballed far beyond it's rather humble origins. it mutated as all good ideas do into a monolith called the holy roman empire.

and since i opened with mentioning the judeo christian empire being the origin of what we tend to call patriarchy in the modern era ill stop the premise there.

now, i am aware that my description would give real historians a fit. they would call me an obtuse moron probably, since i stayed so broad and generalized as to be nearly useless for real dissection of the time scale. im just giving my perception of the flow of things without hitting my references. this isnt that kind of forum. why did i bother? well in looking at feminism i see an effort to reset the balance of things back to a more natural way of thinking and living. more in tune with how our genes and history work. to do so we sort of have to work backwards past the roman empire and the reach it had into western thought.

but if we swing all the way into an unbalanced matriarchy we end up just as bad off. i just like to look at what we might do now that we have a society ready for equality. no need to worry about lineal inheritance since we can just check the DNA. we're sort of stuck using the patrilineal form since changing that would be a pain in the as, but it can be informed by the knowledge that matrilineal lines are valid and equal.a lot of times it seems to me that the closer we hew to the most primitive balance, updated and taking into account modern technology, the better off we are.

 

[bob]

Anyway, to expand a bit on my original thoughts.......

ahhhh...i'm glad you posted, Luna....and for everybody else's post, too
it took me awhile to understand the depth of your OP

.....her beef against feminism is the idea that the patriarchy society was developed for the express purpose of giving men what they wanted, regardless of what was good for women. Or that the patriarchy is a tool to suppress women.)

[rant] i agree that this is an archaic pov in much of the 1st world....and i feel some part of that is simply the result of outgrowing cultural values that were in fact patriarchal, in the sense the word is used by the women in the vid.

around the world, these values persist....organized around religious, cultural, and economic aspects of various societies.
to varying degrees -and certainly for some individual women- camland is a force for liberation for some young women in those societies....a reflection of the ongoing struggle of women to stand on equal ground with men.

this forum and the part it plays in the acceptance of egalitarian sex work is one small result of "the modern world", where religious, cultural, and even economic values are discussed more openly and critically (a segue to atheism i guess)......this modern world has been created in part by women, and camland provides a place where many can find empowerment, self esteem, and economic success.

many of the foreign models i know are envious of what they see of western models in camland, and more and more of them have begun to emulate their business models.

but the cliche is true....all that glitters isn't gold....there's enough anecdotal evidence that the sex industry ends up degrading and exploitative for some western women, and ample proof that it remains downright abusive and horrific in many parts the developing world: a patriarchal system that is damn near openly protected by prevailing religious, cultural, and economic imperatives.

and all of this got me thinking about sex work in general, and specifcally camland, as a force for feminism....certainly there are plenty of individual successes...i'll probably get beat up for this, but mila milan is one example i'd point too (olivia is the same kind of example, from a completely different approach, imo)....both of them seem to have found -in sex work- a path to those goals of empowerment, self esteem, and economic success....and have used it as a springboard to more personal forms of expression.

for the sake of this discussion, mila remains the better example, imo, because a part of what she has found is political.
whether you feel that her rants are accurate or not, it feels to me to be a feminist voice....even a rather militant one that "rages against the machine"...and to me, since she speaks from inside the machine, it's a poignant voice.

but this post isn't about mila....it's about the way the more vocal representatives of the "feminist movement" view sex work....and my take is that those voices would probably view her much the same way so many see her here....self serving and hypocritical

but the hypocrisy to me is not that she profits from an industry she openly calls out as exploitative and even corrupt...that's just a successful woman looking back down the ladder and pointing out flaws in the system, imo.....and one of those flaws is that the industry still remains largely organized, financed, and controlled by patriarchs...it's legitmacy is a tea brewed in the promise of the economic benefits that exist for individual women, but the tea is drunk from a cup built on "the world's oldest profession", where a woman's body (which is of course her own) is an object to bought and used by a patriarchal culture

in the modern world....where disposable income is a form of freedom, that can be fun, and make a lot of people happy (although we've all got examples of it still being a feeding ground for rude, abusive guys)....but it's still built on principles that are excuses for exploitation and abuse in so many other places....to some degree then, it remains symbolic of that disconnect between a world where the sex industry has earned a certain respect, and a world where it remains an insult to women everywhere.[/rant]

had to get that off my chest.

 

[camstory]

 

[HarmlessSquirrel]

I feel I should point out that though I am a feminist I will open doors for the ladies instead of yelling at her to do it her damn self and giving her an equality high five.

First off, I do this too, although I will also hold the door for men.

Upfront, I will admit that I only skimmed the previous posts. Normally, I'll read them all, but I'm still half-asleep and don't have the energy. Mostly I'm just going to post what I think.

I said 1) I'm an atheist, although really I'm an agnostic waiting for proof of atheism which isn't bloody likely. 2) I'm a feminist because I believe women should have equal opportunity to men. 3) I disagree with today's feminism (which I think requires generalization because certainly there are multiple types of feminists today) because I see too much man bashing, and I don't think I and a lot of other guys deserve it.

Statistics are misleading because fixing an existing problem doesn't magically equalize the numbers overnight. If discrimination ends, the disadvantaged group will gradually filter into the areas it was denied, but it won't get full representation instantly. There are more female CEOs than there used to be, and I expect the trend to continue, but it will be some time before the numbers show they have full representation. There are also other factors to be considered, such as taking time off to raise children, etc. Men can do that too, but it's not as common.

 

[RedGrapefruit]

Atheism: I was raised in a pretty hardcore Christian home and believed until I was 15, and then spent the next 10 years being ambiguously spiritual/agnostic. The past two years I have finally "come out" as atheist. I do not believe.

Feminism: As a teenager I was very into feminism / GLBTQ activism. I grew to see a lot of misandry, heterophobia, and hypocracy. I don't call myself a feminist anymore. But I still fight for equality, true equality, for women and GLBTQ folk. Using the term feminist, though, really leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I have no problem calling "radical feminists" and "radical queers" out on their bullshit when I see them being hateful and hypocritical.

 

[curvyredhead]

I have not gone through the thread yet. I will have to next time I get on. My answers were

I am religious
I am atheist
I follow an organized religion...and was raised in the same religion.