Feminism

Feminism is one of those ideas that started good and has lately derailed. According to Wikipedia, feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment.

When the movement first appeared, many women lived in a misogynistic environment, and even today some probably do. While I agree that both men and women deserve the same rights (why wouldn't they?), I also hear from many different sources that women still don't have the same career opportunities as men, still get paid less than men (except in porn), still feel treated with inferiority in a work environment.

My girlfriend showed me Lean In, a book from Sheryl Sandberg, where she accounts for a meeting she had at some company with several male employees and one other female employee. While someone was giving a speech, if a male employee questioned something, he'd be answered, but when either of the women interrupted, they got reprimanded. One of the male employees even noticed and commented this with the author.

Sexism is one of those things that I don't understand in society. If an employee or employer judges someone in the work environment by their work quality, they are in their right. But why would they neglect opinions just because they come from women? It makes sense that it has to do with sexual desires and/or frustrations, but problems like those should be solved with whoever was the source of the problem, and not with an entire gender.

Like I said, feminism started well. If feminism could solve these situations I just described, yay! The problem is, just like many other movements, there is a small percentage of the group which is much more aggressive, much more noticed and talked about, and much more wrong. I'm talking about the sexist feminists, the ones that don't advocate equality between genders, but that women should be above men.

It's because of these women that feminists and regarded as a joke across the Internet. These moronic women openly ridicule their own movement, with comments about how men did something and it caused them trouble and they want equality by being superior to men. They spread images claiming women, in no case whatsoever, should be physically hurt by men. It has become so widely known that even other women have tried to stop it.

I understand that this is just a small group of people, but as in most situations of society, a group is classified by their worse members and until they change, feminism is regarded by most men as some moronic claim from women that got fired for being incompetent but believe they got fired for being women.

As to my own opinion about feminism, I think women are different from men in many ways. Men are much more obsessed with sex than women, for example, and this leads to situations where a guy that sleeps with a lot of women is called a stud but a woman that slept with lots of men is called a slut. Because most men really just want to sleep with a ton of women and women are regarded as passionate and long-relation lovers (at least where I grew up), men who do are praised and women are insulted. While we have these differences among us, I think it's completely normal to treat people differently. If it was the other way around, if women were known for trying to screw every guy that showed, and men were known for trying to have meaningful long relations, then men would be called sluts and women studs. 

I support equal rights for both sexes, but I don't think equal rights means women should be treated the same way as men. I think the way we treat people is based on the way people act and the way we expect them to act. While race, for example, doesn't set a behavioral pattern (that I know of), at least in my opinion, gender sets behavioral differences and causes us to judge them differently. Maybe I'm being sexist, but show me proof and I'll change my opinion. 

I also think that women should not disregard their role as 'mothers' because they think it makes them look weak. I think a woman can chase a career, can be a strong and independent woman, and can still be a wonderful soccer mom, just like men can. It's all about balance. I'd like to quote Varg Vikernes on his (quite aggressive) opinion about feminism:

The modern women can no longer cook, they no longer want children and they are no longer warm, tidy and loving creatures who think spending time with their family is a good thing. They are probably too "independent" and "strong" to even have a family of their own. The only thing modern women have to offer men today is sex. So instead of being loving housewives who cook and raise children, they are reduced to being sexual objects only – and they are so messed up emotionally and intellectually that they often spend most of the money they make on their jobs on plastic surgery, cosmetics and tons of clothes they think will make them look good, in a desperate attempt to stay or become more attractive. Well, they have no other qualities attractive to men, so what else can we expect? This is the fruit of feminism. The fruit of “women’s liberation".

He does have a strong and aggressive point of view, but I find some truth (about some women) in his words. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this post.

Toodles!

David

Racism, Sexism and Stereotypes

Hello, dear readers! It's been a while since I've posted something, but I've been quite busy with college and my thesis and all of that. Yesterday I finished all of my courses (18.5/20 average, fuck yeah!) and now I'm "only" missing my master's thesis to finish my course, yay! 

Well anyway, today's post is about discrimination. Let's start with a widely known quote (which I heard in V for Vendetta), by Gloria Steinem, a famous feminist:

Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends.

I don't think anyone can refute the truth spoken in these words. The white male has been a major opressor of non-white races and non-male genders for centuries. Lately, it's improved quite a lot (no more slavery, good job, society) but you listen to stories all the time on the media about race crimes and all of that. The biggest problem with today's media coverage on race crimes is that the white race is still paying for last century's slavery (I am talking mostly about America).

Let's think of the following example: a thief walks into a designated house, expecting it to be empty. He then finds that the family was in the house, kills them all, robs it, leaves. Then he gets caught. If this crime were to be done by a white thief to a white family, media will announce "brutal murder in a robbery gone wrong". Black thief to a black family, same story. Black man to white family, same story. White man to black family "brutal race crime, racist finally caught". It's somethind that really annoys me in the media. The media follow the stereotype of "white people are racist and black people aren't".

It's just the same as when little children go missing. White 6yo girls spend 6 months in the news (remember Maddie? in my country she still pops up in the news once in a while), but spanish and mexican girls aren't even "worth mentioning".

But alas, we diverge! Back to discrimination. Why racism and sexism happen. 

Like Steinem said, it's easy to distinguish someone based on race and sex (and religion, but that's another topic). Why do people use that distinction to classify people in terms of superior and inferior races, I have no clue. I guess that, in mankind's eternal desire for power and control, the majority group could classify minorities as being less powerful, just because they're outnumbered. They could classify women as inferior just because the feminine physique is tipically smaller and weaker (strength-wise) than a male one. They could think less of other races just because they look different. At the bottom of it all, I think most people are just stupid.

Anyway, discrimination leads to stereotypes, which aren't always bad, but which aren't usually good. "Asians are smart", "black people are criminals", "white people are racist", shit like that. I think that stereotypes exist for a reason, in the sense that maybe statistics show that the asian community has better academic results than the american one, or that black communities have higher crime rates that white ones. I don't know if these are true or not, but I'd like to believe that stereotypes do have a proper source. The problem is, I also think you can't judge an entire race for what a small subset of them have/do/are.

I saw an interview on the Ferguson riots, which I can't find right now, but it mentioned the same point I'm trying to stress here. The internet was riddled with jokes about Ferguson (which, I have to confess, I found hilarious, I'm sorry, but I really have a twisted sense of humour) and how black people were just showing how inferior they were compared to white people, because they trashed the town in a protest. And again, I stress my point, whether you think the black community overreacted or not with these protests (which I think they have, to be honest), you can't judge an entire race by this small group of people.

However, one must also recognize that, as critical human beings, we judge people. Based on looks, actions, etc, we judge everyone we see. When I see someone that has adhered to the "swag fashion" (jeans below your ass, multiple caps, that kind of stuff), I can't help but think "this person has some issues". Well, the guy may be actually the coolest guy on Earth, but it's the same principle as to why you dress nicely for a job interview. Your looks count. 

Let's give an example. Imagine a painting showing 3 white men hanging a black man. Is it racist? If you immediatly thought it wasn't, then you might be a racist, because the white men may be hanging him just because he is black. If you immediatly thought it was, you're distinguishing the black race from the white race, so you judge people based on their looks. If you thought that it depends on whether this black man did some crime to deserve being hanged, then you are a wise one.

Obviously, and returning to Steinem's quote for the third time, race and gender are visible, and if you have an opinion like "black people are criminals", then when you see a black person you get wary of them. I think that this kind of logic can't really change for us as a species (the kind about judging someone and reacting to our beliefs, not about believe blacks are criminals), and I think that as long as your reaction does not step into the other person's freedom, it's ok. By this, I mean that if you cross the road in fear of being robbed, then you're not disturbing anyone. If you refuse service to a customer, then you are in the wrong. 

I've been focusing a lot on the thought of "black being criminals", but the same applies the other way around. If I lived in a black community, and the few whites that lived here were drug dealers, hey, I'd be ok with moms crossing the road with their kids to avoid going near me, it's in their right. I wouldn't be ok in applying to a job and being refused on the basis that I'm white.

Nowadays, it's sad that really offensive forms of racism and sexism exist. It's sad that black people have 42 more times the chance of being checked at airports than white people. It's sad that slavery still exists in parts of the world. I can only hope that one day this changes, but I believe it never will, unless we face a radical evolutionary change.

I wanted to address sexism and feminists and all of that, but the post is already too big, so maybe another time. All the best,

David

Evolved Beasts

I've been thinking about evolution a lot lately. I don't mean the topic of Darwin's Evolution Theory VS Creationism or other theories out there, but the very concept of humans believing themselves to be evolved creatures. I'm going to quote 3 scenes from Hollywood. The first 2 are from the The X-Files, the Jersey Devil episode. 

Mulder: Eight million years out of Africa. We're not all that different.
Scully: We've put men into space. Built computers that work faster than the human mind.
Mulder: While we overpopulate the world and create new technologies to kill each other with. Maybe we're just beasts with big brains.

In this episode, Fox and Dana find a kind of Neanderthal living just outisde Atlantic City and they philosophize about the differences between the "beast-man" and modern men. Later on, they meet an Anthropology Professor, Dr. Diamond, with whom they have the following conversation.

Mulder: What's this chart?
Dr. Diamond: lt shows the historic entry of man onto each continent, and the effect on other species, which, as you see, has been disastrous.
Mulder: Why?
Dr. Diamond: We humans have retained hereditary traits that have proven to be extremely destructive. We tend to be tribal, aggressively territorial, oriented by selfish sexual and reproductive drives that make co-operation beyond the family or tribe extremely hard for us.
Mulder: We kill other species in order to survive?
Scully: Humans sit at the top of the food chain, and we reduce other species' chances of survival.

Now, seeing this immediately reminded me of a movie, where a certain Hugo Weaving performs the following (epic) monologue:

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops an equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease. A cancer of this planet. You are a plague. 

We cannot deny these facts. The human race has been exhausting Earth's resources at an alarming rate. Whether it is the destruction of the rainforests, oil spills, air polution or simple over-population, we are bringing upon ourselves the extinction of this planet. Not only are we a warring race, with corruption, violence, rape, etc, but we are also lazy, self-centered and extremely selfish. Look at factory farming, it's one of the most disgusting acts of mankind.

And yet, we claim to be an evolved race?

Dave

Abortion

Finally, a controversial topic! Most people, when I talk with them about abortion, seem to immediatly assume that being pro or against abortion is the same as thinking it should be legal or not. There is, however, a very big difference between those lines of thought, and here's why i believe so:

• In a country where abortion is illegal, families that really want to abort will find someone with no medical licence that will do the cirgury for them with minimal safety and health conditions
• Earth is overpopulated. Not only do i believe world-wide birth control laws should be implemented, but so should the legalization of abortions
• It's none of our business what other people do with their bodies/unborn children. If you don't think abortion is right, then don't abort! (this is also why i think gay marriage should be legal)
• Accident or forced babies (i'll come back to this one)

Now, these motives seems a bit cold to some, right? Most anti-abortion activists call abortion "murder". However, most of these activists won't adopt a child that would join the Adoption System because the parents couldn't raise him properly and couldn't abort him. If abortion were legal, what anti-abortion activists could do was to stand in front of abortion clinics and try to talk people out of doing it. For people that claimed "I don't have conditions to raise my baby", the TRUE activist would offer to adopt the child and raise him/her himself and then he might save a life.

Now, the biggest reason why i think abortion should be legal is my 4th point. Accidents happen all the time, right? Do you think those 16yo girls with no means to make a life, no job, no driver's licence, still in high school are meant to have and raise another human being? They still can't take care of themselves!

And then... There are rape babies. It just seems wrong that a raped woman who got pregnant should have to live with this. Having a constant reminder in your life of (probably) the most traumatic event that has ever happened to you seems like something no one should have to endure.

And so we reach the conclusion of my first topic for this post: abortion should be legal, yes. (Keep in mind that when i say abortion, it's up until a certain age of the fetus!). If you disagree, just comment down below with your opinions and show me your point of view.

Moving on, we now join the discussion of being pro or against abortion. This no longer is about whether it's legal or not, but whether you, if faced with the situation where abortion was an option, would consider it or not. Now, assuming that a pregancy was discovered, from a consentual relationship between 2 adults (i say adults, but anyone with the given capacity of thought and of having sex), why would you want to abort or why would you not want to? 

We can discard most types of pregnancies and just stick to the unexpected ones or ones that would endanger the mother (still assuming consentual between adults). Now, assuming an unexpected pregancy, we can think of a couple of motives for wanting an abortion.

• No conditions (money, love, time and stability-wise) to raise a child
• No desire to raise a child (too soon for one, not the right person to have on with)
• Can't have a child for external motives (One Child Policy)
• SO (significant other) doesn't want a child

If all of these prove false, then you have the conditions and the desire to have a child and abortion isn't an option. If your problem is an external motive, then you are forced to do one of two things: terminate the pregnancy or change those external conditions (moving to another country, for example). 

If your SO doesn't want a child, it is a problem that will lead us to gender equality. Nowadays, in most countries, the woman is the only one to decide whether to abort or not. The male has no saying in it, and i think that's retarded. If a woman can decide to keep a baby and then even sue the father to get regular payments until the child is 18, a man should be able to do the same. If a man wants to keep the child (and the birth poses no realistic risk for the mother), then you shouldn't be able to abort and the mother should help support the child until it's an adult. Gender equality, darn it!

No, but seriously, i think both parents should have to agree to an abortion in order to be able to legally procure one.

Now, the other 2 points, having no conditions or no desire to raise a child, those are personal and will always depend on the situation. If you are a brimming young woman that doesn't want to throw away a great career in engineering because of a one night accident, you may consider aborting. You need to, however, consider what you might be giving up.

You can be destroying potential, a young Charles Darwin that would change the world. You can be losing something that would make you happy and proud for the rest of your life.

Then there is the other side of the coin. You can be ruining your life and waste your own potential because of a child. You can regret having it and not being able to pursue your dreams anymore.

For these 2 points in particular, i can offer no opinion. Your SO and family are there for that, as well as adoption centers. It will always depend on what you and your SO want and whether you are ready or not to deal with all the responsabilities and problems/great moments that come associated with having a child. Personally, i feel that if you don't have conditions to raise a baby healthily and with love, you should consider adoption and, depending on what country you are in, if adoption is something you don't wish for a child, only then consider abortion.

This was a long one! Show me your opinion on the subject in the comment section down below. 

All the best

David