'Bag a Slag' Event Canceled

This forum is full of rich straight white men who think they know best about everything, even stuff they have no experience with.
Much like politics I guess...

Oh well. I guess a lock that gets opened by many keys isn't a good lock, but a key that opens many locks is a good key.

A potato peeler that peels many potatoes is a good potato peeler, but a potato than can only be peeled by one potato peeler is only good for making jacket potatoes and god dammit I wanted mash

Oh well. I guess a lock that gets opened by many keys isn't a good lock, but a key that opens many locks is a good key.

If your penis resembles a key, you have problems

Really that's all you've got, the typical feminist BS of trying make women's benefit into a negative? It is laughable how you turn even the most clearly anti male expectations into support for feminism. The fact you really believe this shows how blind you are to anything but the supposed suffering of women. It is reminiscent of racists who claim that only whites can be racist while making racist remarks themselves. Past society may have been predominantly run by men however this doesn't mean every thing from that time was about supressing women. Men may have been more in control but we also had far more far more responsibility placed upon us, something which still exists today but that you seem unwilling to see. Men were already social and politically in control, what possible purpose could paying for women have achieved? Men were expected to pay for women because women couldn't pay for themselves, now this is no longer the case the expectation should be gone- it isn't. Feminism was more than happy to expect women be paid equal but conveniently left behind the women supporting social expectations which balanced out this inequality in the past. It may have originated from men, it may not have but in todays society women hold this view as much as men.

Regardless of its origins the fact men are expected to pay for women today when they have the means to pay for themselves (therefore men gain no control) is purely detrimental to men. Only someone blinded by clearly biased interests could think that being emotionally pressured into paying for someone else could be in my interests. It is as sexist as any issue faced by women but of course feminism isn't interested because only women matter.

Again the expectation of women be virgins until marriage (as much as you may wish it be in order to suit your clear pro feminist motive, this wasn't as a means of controlling women for the benefit of men- it was because at the time sex= children which was a bad idea outside of a stable marriage) came from a previous time so blaming modern day men for it is ridiculous. Our society developed from patriarchal society but that doesn't mean all our issues still only damage women. While not so bold women have had an effect on our society before equality came and in the long time since then have had a drastic place in moulding social views. Society and its expectations has developed a long way since then and there has been plenty of room for anti male behaviours to develop.

The repression of female sexuality is wrong but that doesn't change the fact that men are seen as inferior for being virgins while it is perfectly acceptable for women. You support women having as much sex as they wish without any condemnation with the argument that people should be able to have as much sex as they like, but as I would expect of someone so clearly blinded by an agenda you ignore the fact men are also stigmatised for their sexual behaviour. The fight against women being pressured not to have sex constantly makes the news, have you ever seen anyone complaining that men are seen as inferior if they don't have sex?

Interesting that "man" acts as a prefix so that's it's clear that you're taking about a male and not a female, suggesting that the norm is female.

Where does the idea of men paying come from? Could it be from times when men wanted to see themselves as breadwinners (and often were because women were expected to stay home and do domestic chores, or were earning far less than men in the jobs they did have) and saw paying for things as an expression of their masculinity. Again, this idea does not benefit women!

There's lots of 'negative' words which the default is male, like bastard and ****er.

They don't relate negatively to the guy's sex habits. Face it, you can't deny that whilst men are obviously discriminated against in some fields, guys who sleep around don't get half the stick that girls who sleep around do (guys are lads/legends/studs, girls are whores).

Who is it who says that female virgins are virtuous? Is this not an idea originally perpetuated by men who wished to prevent women from having sex before marriage so that they could marry virgins and repress female sexuality that they saw as threatening. This idea does not benefit women!

Where does the idea of men paying come from? Could it be from times when men wanted to see themselves as breadwinners (and often were because women were expected to stay home and do domestic chores, or were earning far less than men in the jobs they did have) and saw paying for things as an expression of their masculinity. Again, this idea does not benefit women!

Please, put some more thought into things before posting, none of these examples actually support your claims.

Re. the pub, i'm glad it was cancelled, it is quite obviously incredibly sexist and it shocks me that anyone could defend it as 'just a joke' when the ramifications of this sexual double standard are far from funny.

As I said, they weren't/aren't benefits for women, they existed to help men - albeit usually white, upper or upper middle class men, to get and keep women, and to advance their social status. All they did was convince women of their subordination to men - how exactly does this benefit me??

What they were originally created to do is completely irrelevant. Aspects of society has changed so drastically that they have a completely new effect. How is the social pressure on men to pay for women (which is much more widespread than you seem to appreciate) a bad thing for women in modern day society? Explain how that negatively effects modern women. If you feel offended you can make that clear and avoid offense if you don't find it offensive you get paid for. The hurt feelings that may stem from behaviours began by a patriarchal society aren't comparable to being pressured to suffer financially because of your sex. You keep repeating that they are negative to women but give me one way in which they harm women that can't simply be removed by offering to pay yourself.

Who exactly still has the expectation that men should pay? Who is emotionally blackmailing you into paying? (Perhaps if someone is, you're picking the wrong people to date...) I certainly don't think you'll find any feminists who believe a man should always pay, it's just hyperbole on your part.

There have been many threads on this forum and many others and it is clear that a significant enough number of people (men and women) expect this behaviour for it to be prominent in our society. It may not be a view you hold but plenty of people expect men to take the lead in dating and this involves paying for women. I'm not accusing feminist of thinking it, I'm accusing them attacking even the smallest slight against women while completelty ignoring much larger mens issue and then having the cheek to call themselves pro equality. If they were truly for equality they would be as intolerant of these double standards as they are of those which harm women

I never once blamed modern-day men for these things (although if you cling to these outdated ideas still, as you seem to, then more fool you) I clearly said that they originated out of a patriarchal society, which implies they came from the past...

If you aren't blaming modern men for these things then what relevance is it to bring up their origin? The fact they originated in a patriarchy has no influence on how they affect modern society. Today's society is so incomparable to the time when they were formed that they serve a completely different purpose, where once they worked with other expectations to limit women today they benefit them. There are clearly double standards (not that I ascribe to but I can see around me and am clearly aware that I am judge by many people for my refusal to comply with them) which support women but it is people like you who are wilfully blind to them. They may be of minor detriment to women if you are to take a overly sensitive position in an attempt to find as much offense as possible but in the real world they actually affect men.

You have made some pretty big assumptions in that last paragraph, and made the typically anti-feminist mistake of assuming everyone thinks the way you do - again, who is it that is stigmatising men for their sexual behaviour? Where is this happening? and why is this an issue for FEMinism? Why don't you do something about it?

There are plenty words to describe women who have multiple sexual partners, such as slag, slut, etc. all have negative connotations. Men, however are called studs, players, pimps. Not negative. Why is it everyone's business if a woman chooses to have sex with multiple partners? As long as it's safe and consensual, there is nothing wrong with it, just as there is nothin wrong with being a virgin. Your sex life has nothing to do with anybody else.
I don't care if you're a virgin, have had multiple sexual relationships, have sex with someone of the same gender, have a weird sexual fetish... None of my business, so I withhold any judgement.


Posted from TSR Mobile

And nowadays women can get jobs and earn money themselves. So why do lots of them still expect men to pay? It certainly benefits women now - some want to have it both ways.

Yes, you are correct, but words change more slowly than society, and that imperfectly. I have laid out the socioeconomic reasons behind the "lock and key" mentality in my long post above. This only ended in 1960, it's not reasonable to expect words with such long histories as slag and slut and whore to change their meanings overnight.

In fact, you will be happy to learn that the new swear-words are those which go against the ideology of equality. ****, **** and **** are no longer shocking, used liberally on the television in a way that 30 or 40 years ago would have been beyond unthinkable. The most prominent new swear-words are n****r and paki - the first so bad I felt the need to star it out myself rather than type it. In America, fag is similar. Bigotry in language is quite naturally becoming taboo. The fact that women haven't been oppressed in the same way black and gay people have been, due to not being a minority, has led to backlashes against feminism meaning words like bint are not really so bad. But still, you are agitating for a phenomenon that is likely to happen quite naturally as women take the reins of power from men during our generation.

You also completely ignore the fact that men are also vilified for their sexuality, that is for being virgins, which is often expressed using words for homosexuals, so you might not have understood it for what it is. In a way that is worse than vilifying women for having too much sex, since virgin men may not have chosen to be virgins - while promiscuous women certainly have had much more choice in their decision to have lots of sex.

Look, I'm sorry, this is very simplistic history. The reason women were "oppressed" in the ways you talk about was because families had to divide the labour because it was so gruelling. The alternative to the female role of sitting in with the kids, cooking the meals and spending all Sunday scrubbing clothes over a wooden board was strapping a gaslight to your head and going down the mines for 12 hours a day.

Doesn't sound like women were so oppressed now, does it?

Since work was so physical, men had to be the ones to do it, by and large. (And in fact, certainly in any community that was in any way rural, women were out working the fields too, there was no alternative.) The fact that it was all so much harder than today, particularly in the Victorian era (which is when the sort of urban working-class norms I'm centring my analysis on emerged), when humans worked longer hours than they have ever worked before in history, meant that the division of labour was absolutely paramount.

There is a well known economic law that if one person is really good at making X and another person is really good at Y, but only average at making X, the second person, and the total output of the economy, is hindered by trying to make X and Y in capacities according to his expertise in each. Output is maximised when the first person does X to full capacity, and the second abandons all thought of X and focuses on just Y.

This is the basis for specialisation in the job market, national industries like cars in Germany, finance in Britain, cuckoo clocks in Switzerland, the organisational structure of companies, and, wait for it, the division of labour in couples - particularly where there was as little efficiency to waste as in Victorian working-class households.

Now, why was being slutty shameful? Until 1960, sex meant the possibility of babies. Quite apart from the pill, abortions back then consisted of taking a big swig of whisky, sticking a knitting needle up yourself and hoping the baby died. Being slutty was shameful because women could never really hope to do the sort of work described above that was available in working-class communities. If you slept around, you were a massive risk to the community, because if you ended up with a bun in the oven, you'd be relying on community charity forevermore - or, more likely, crime.

Note that the same concerns "oppressed" men into marrying women they knocked up out of wedlock. This social pressure to "do the right thing" was applied hard because otherwise the woman would be relying on the community.

Why did men own women's reproductive capacity? Because they wanted to provide for their old age. Pensions didn't exist at all until the 1920s. Marriage was a bargain between men and women. Women yoked themselves to a man because women couldn't really earn on their own. Men yoked themselves to a woman because they needed to pump out enough offspring to mitigate against the risk of death in infancy, and in the hope that one might stumble into wealth. Of course, ownership of women, insofar as a slight against one came under the law of chattel, was because there was a massive incentive to mitigate against the chance you were raising the milkman's baby (10% of men are unsuspectingly raising kids that aren't theirs). It was also to mitigate against the chance that the woman, with all the sunk costs associated with her, wouldn't run off with another man before the debt had been repaid, because if she ran off, the kids would go with her.

The flip-side to the fact that men "owned" women - really the correct way to say it is that the family unit, not the individual, was the basic unit of society (allowing for invisible abuses within it in some cases, but in others stabilising the environment for children) - was that men were legally responsible for anything their wives did. If the wife ran up debts or murdered someone, it'd be the husband thrown in prison. It was risky stuff marrying, and that's why women were socialised into being goody-two-shoes. It's also why wife-beating was relatively more common. Men were afraid that a rogue wife would land them behind bars. Still, contrary to what you have probably heard about the "rule of thumb", wife-beating has always, always been very illegal and vilified by society.

And this whole thing is the basis of today's outdated gender roles, where the man is meant to be strong and uncompromising, and the woman chaste until she's married. Because men's value was in their muscle and sinew, and women's in their reproductive capacity. It's no accident that the feminist movement had its first victories after WWI and has gathered momentum since: it was a reaction to the changing model of society.

While an imperfect ideology, feminism has been essential for adapting our society to the post-industrial, highly automated economic world. It has driven the move, in my view, from a collectivist to an individualist society among the working classes. But it is a patent lie to suggest that men have been engaged, for centuries, in this big patriarchal conspiracy to oppress women. I have laid out the reasons why the supposed "oppression" of working-class women also meant oppression of their men, as well as why it was not nefarious oppression by husbands but rational choices given the socioeconomic system.