Quote:
Originally Posted by Trimac20
I think the very fact it would be unacceptable to say anything which makes whites seem better than blacks shows there IS a double standard when it comes to this.
I think what some men are frustrated with is that very few women seem to believe/acknowledge that some double standard exists. They're not denying that some men are bitter/can be sexist, it's just that they firmly believe that men on the whole DO get more flak for being anti-woman than vice-versa, in mainstream society at least.
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Now THIS...
Yes, even I cannot argue against the "fact" of double standards. Unfortunately, playing fields vary widely and people seldom have the intelligence, let alone the applicable insights or ability to comprehend that every argument has at LEAST two sides, and quite possibly more.
One of the clearest illustrations from my own past (and FAR-FAR-FAR-FAR-
FAR from the only one) was a woman I used to live with back in Japan. She was stocky, athletic, packed some solid muscle on her frame for all that she was shapely and could be extremely feminine. And she was generally ROUGH, to boot. But she carried around a WHOLE lot of that "feminine unaccountability" notion so highly popularized during the 80's-thru-00's (which I THANKFULLY see finally dying slowly away!) so that she simply couldn't see any side of what she was saying beyond her own. She was VERY fond of espousing all the things "everybody KNOWS" about teh Menz, NONE of it good.
She thought NOTHING of "playfully" blind-siding me on a physical level, absolutely SLAMMING into me as I rounded a corner, bouncing me off the far wall.
Now, don't get me wrong; I LOVE rough play, but she couldn't see that when totally unexpected in attack she was capable of actually causing HARM. One day she did this DESPITE multiple entreaties from me about how while I liked rough play I was getting roughed up very inopportunely.
But I was just "being a baby" according to her.
On this occasion I not only braced myself, I pivoted the hips and twisted my shoulder, the result being that she bounced/flew away from me at pretty much the speed with which she had approached me and bounced off of THAT wall.
Suddenly it wasn't so funny. Suddenly she was angry, VERY upset over the injustice of it all, and ranting about how men are so stupid over these things. She was infuriated with me because -- in her words -- "I was only playing! You're bigger than me! You didn't have to use your full strength on me, that's not fair!"
I could never manage to get through to her:
1.
You just got a taste of what you've been doing to me. She didn't see it that way, because NO ONE ever does.
2.
I didn't use my full strength. Very little of it, in fact. If I did, you'd be dead. Wrap your little mind around that. She couldn't grasp this, absolutely could not.
Later that very evening at a gathering of friends elsewhere, the women suddenly came rushing out of the kitchen to confront me
en masse because
how dare I be brutal with her, how dare I exhibit the slightest violence, how dare I ABUSE, when all she was doing was PLAYING. I should be MAN enough and TOUGH enough to take the playful gestures of a little ol' GIRL! (Make special note of the SHAMING LANGUAGE and DOUBLE STANDARD utilized.)
Double standards are real, and they strike everywhere, in myriad forms, AGAINST both genders.
Then again -- what can we necessarily DO about them? Because without them a large number of people on both sides WOULD be suddenly excluded from [insert activity here].
In the military for the PT test (Physical Training):
- men are required to do more pushups than women because tests clearly demonstrate that men have greater upper-body strength than women; this is ACTUALLY the written justification given on an official level when this question has been brought up
- men are required to do a faster run -- the justification being that men have greater proportional (read that word again: PROPORTIONAL) lower body strength and aerobic capacity. Odd, since all the literature I've ever read says precisely the opposite.
- men are required to do more situps, DESPITE that even the military acknowledges that women have greater proportional abdominal strength.
Women want to be in combat. I know none of the women HERE want to be in combat, but there is a general PUSH by womens' groups to BE allowed in combat -- and yet women do not have the same REQUIREMENTS for QUALIFICATION for these positions.
These are life-and-death positions; but the "standards" are LOWERED in order to allow women to participate -- because IF they weren't, then far, far fewer women COULD qualify.
Don't get me wrong; I'm all FOR it, think it should be mandatory -- period. You wanna be a soldier, you're gonna go to the front same as the guys.
I believe this garbage on both sides comes and goes in waves, so I do my best to bow out of it, mind my own and stay to the side, except for discussion.
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