Posts by Bart Janssen
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to BenWilson,
Give me a word for “males who believe in some selection of feminist principles”
Do you really need to be labelled Ben? What’s wrong with having ideas and opinions and experiences and thoughts without having a label?
Hi I’m Bart, if you want to know and understand what I think and why, I’m sorry but there is no easy peasy label to use that will allow you to skip the hard work of actually trying to understand me. Or not because frankly most folks can’t be arsed. Which is fine really.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to ,
no worries - sorting out quotes can get messy - this feels a lot like an interesting dinner party - mmm more chardonnay
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Emma Hart,
sparkle-pony
I can haz sparkle pony
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to ,
Bart, I was asking a serious question.
That wasn't me and no I'm not going to engage on this one.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Emma Hart,
Joss Whedon
Please ... and more shopping
It's important to balance the serious with the trivial ... and yes I'm being serious
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Danielle,
O RLY?
Yeah RLY. Some feminist positions have been demonstrably imbalanced over the years. Sometimes they were posited simply to demonstrate how imbalanced the existing state is, but sometimes as a reaction. Sometimes because of a genuine belief that an imbalanced but pro women state would be better for all. I don't really even have a problem with feminists doing that because I can see so clearly how far we have to go to get close to a balance.
But I can't adopt such a position for myself. I'll push as hard as anyone to get to the balance point and I'll work equally hard to try and see where that point really is, because that ain't easy either. But I don't feel that makes me a feminist.
Where I work the sexism is so obvious that it's depressing. The whole scientific field is horribly sexist. It's amazing that we stand for it, we try really hard to change it but the best we can do is point out to our HR department that ya know giving the pay rises only to men might look a bit dodgy in the annual report. And that isn't even the worst of the sexism, that's just the easily testable portion. Women who succeed in science are mostly forced to become clones of the worst sexists and work harder at the damn science than any man. They are scorned if they wear anything other than the uniform of the female scientist, you know, sensible shoes and ugly glasses. I've been in scientific meetings where ideas were only worthwhile when they were repeated by a man. I HATE all that shit. It destroys incredibly talented valuable people. I drove myself into depression fighting against sexist pricks here, admittedly not just fighting over the sexism, but it was a part. But I still don't call myself a feminist.
sorry little emotional over some of this
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
least three male posters here support feminism
Assuming I'm one of them ... I understand (some of) feminism and I support and demand equality but that doesn't feel to me to be feminism. Certainly not as Greer would describe feminism.
It has nothing to do with my gender.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Danielle,
I’m not a feminist
Nothing to do with the idea that men can't be feminists, although I've seen some women say that. For me the aim should be equality.
I understand that because we have an imbalance now, feminists feel the need to push harder to shift things to a balance point. As a result I see feminists pushing for what is obviously an imbalanced position (but the opposite to what exists now). I understand why they do that and I can even understand why it may be necessary to finally achieve balance - but understanding doesn't change the way I feel - I simply don't feel comfortable pushing for anything other than the balance point where you demand equality but nothing more.
Hence I don't describe myself as feminist, nor does Sally and nor I think would most feminists.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to sally jones,
making the point that men who are neither gay nor feminist like women to be promiscuous and wear as little clothing as possible.
Sally I'm not a feminist, lifestyle or otherwise. Nor am I gay. Yet I disagree with the statement. Perhaps I should be excluded from analysis as an outlier. Or perhaps the statement is not taking into account all the data available and is hence a flawed hypothesis.
Personally I think it's a trite shallow simplification but that's just my opinion.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Emma Hart,
Can I just say how freaking happy what's happened to this thread makes me?
This is like one of those conversations you have with your friends and suddenly someone asks "how did we end up talking about this?" ... I love those conversations.
But Danielle I can say without prejudice that I hated Wham when they came out first and I still hate them ... which is not the case with ABBA but then again we haven't had a Muriel's Wedding for Wham so who knows...