hey kidfucker nocturno, post some more animus about kidfucking.

True.

Unfortunately there is still money and power being made on both sides by perpetuating the situation. It's the Achilles heel of social movements in a capitalist society - after a certain level of successful integration of a marginalized social group into the social status quo has been achieved the group becomes a major market demographic, and at that point it behooves all sorts of interests to foster (superficially) that demographic's sense of collective identity that generally arose from the shared experience of (now greatly diminished) oppression to begin with, because by the time a social movement has reached this point it tends to cast its net over a very large, diverse population who probably have more differences than similarities beyond whatever uniting factors have been selected to stand in for their shared history.

Well shit, now I have to pay $10 when I get paid on Wednesday. I can't wait for the election to be over so I don't have to worry about this damn pledge anymore.

If you were a woman, you'd only have to pay $7.50.

this just in: man who identifies as "feminist" declares patriarchy dead in the west.

i agree with your third paragraph, john, but saying the patriarchy is dead because a woman can be president is like claiming there's no more racism because obama had two terms. those customs and expectations, that culture- that *is* the patriarchy.

>>>perpetuating the situation. It's the Achilles heel of social movements in a capitalist society - after a certain level of successful integration of a marginalized social group into the social status quo has been achieved the group becomes a major market demographic, and at that point it behooves all sorts of interests to foster (superficially) that demographic's sense of collective identity that generally arose from the shared experience of (now greatly diminished) oppression to begin with, because by the time a social movement has reached this point it tends to cast its net over a very large, diverse population who probably have more differences than similarities beyond whatever uniting factors have been selected to stand in for their shared history.

I think that it's time to stop defining gender issues writ large in terms of oppression. There are individual cases of oppression all over, in work and relationship, but all women are not oppressed by all men.

Even the most well-meaning of men are not prepared by our greedy, exploitative advertising/video game/porn culture to empathize with or relate to real women. Just NOT GETTING IT isn't oppression, it's DYSFUNCTION . And when women see NOT GETTING IT as oppression, which happens a lot, guess what? They're NOT GETTING IT, either!

Men who are MRAs and women who are FEMINISTS can get a sanctimonious edge from vilifying each other, but it's not going to solve any problems. We were all born into this dying, dysfunctional gender clusterfuck, and many of us, I believe most of us, are making a good faith effort.

Women seem powerful to men because being sexual is supposed to be central to being a man, by definition, and our physical urges reinforce this perception, especially when we're young We're trying to sell women sex and it's a buyer's market. Misogyny is often the fear of that percieved power.

But I've slowly come to the realization that for women, being the object of men's neediness is not remotely perceived as power. It can be a burden. It can be frightening, or even dangerous.

I stopped dating a long time ago. Brad and Angelia lived out their whole relationship in the time since I last had sex. Of course, I miss sex, but I don't miss the neediness. I don't think I know another way to never be that weak person again, and it's worth it to me. I'm hoping that in the future, men won't have to go to such lengths.

i totally see where you're coming from, and i can totally live with us disagreeing on nuanced definitions of terms while being nominally on the same team :)