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[Nichi]

Indeed. Stiff like that pisses me off; the whole "men can't be raped \ abused \ etc." mentality, which means if you happen to be unfortunate enough to end up in that situation, nobody will take you seriously.

[Chocofreak13]

i share with you examples from both sides of the fence, courtesy of facebook:

Example of Why Sexual Dimorphism is Sort of Crap
Example of Why Gendering the Status of "Victim" is Crap

i dislike what the feminists from the 80's did. they were instrumental in passing a lot of laws we take for granted now, such as spousal rape laws, but their habits of taking it a bit too far may have contributed to our poisoned reality now. maybe it was necessary at the time. but, much like plenty of things we felt "necessary at the time" (*coughcoughatomicbombcough*), the repercussions weren't felt until decades later. :\

[Bella]

Sexual dimorphism is 100% real though — as that post pointed out there are definitive skeletal differences between DFAB and DMAB people and some muscular differences as well. Of course, humans are hugely diverse and there will always be people who fall outside the averages (DFAB people who are taller, stronger and more muscular than the average DMAB person, DMAB people who are smaller, weaker and less muscular than the average women), but that doesn't make it less of a reality.

Of course, size or strength doesn't mean a whole lot if somebody knows how to fight and means absolutely nothing if a person is armed, which is why gendered domestic violence laws are so fucking stupid ...

[Nichi]

Indeed. After all, one of my coworkers is a guy with a small frame, and doesn't have much in the way of muscle...but he knows some martial arts; he can pick up someone bigger than him with ease (To demonstrate this one time, he picked up my bro-in-law; whom is more than twice his size). Size doesn't really matter so long as the person knows what they're doing.

[Chocofreak13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireman's_carry

@bells: when i say dimorphism is crap i mean that using it as justification for things that one gender can do that another cannot is not only wrong, but incorrect based solely on the population's body chemistry and structure. differing amounts of hormones at the onset of puberty may result in a whole range of body types, including men with wide hips and women with narrow ones. my mother's hairdresser had an overabundance of testosterone during her teenage years and as a result her frame is bigger than what you'd expect of a woman. her shoulders are wider than my dad's. and her shoulder punches fucking hurt (even if they ARE friendly).

basically, while dimorphism does exist, i suppose i'd be more comfortable with polymorphism, to reflect that (despite society recognizing only 2 'official' sexes and occasionally 'intersex') there are more body types than one can comfortably catalogue. :0

[Nichi]

@Kari: That wasn't how he did it. He bear-hugged bro-in-law and lifted him off the ground -w-

[NejinOniwa]

>dimorphism
Biologically, it's more like a quadmorphic spectrum
Male High Test ---- Low Test
Male High Est ---- Low Est
Female High Test ---- Low Test
Female High Est ---- Low Est

hormones fuck you up good

You have no idea how pissed off this sort of mentality makes me feel.

It makes me think of this story a friend of mine told after class one day, about how he was stabbed in the arm by his soon-to-be ex-GF when he tried to break up with her over dinner, she was jailed but later stalked him after release, following him even after he moved to a new city. I believe he mentioned that she was eventually re-arrested but he never said what ultimately became of her.

He's a big, funny guy and told the story in his usual irreverent and absurd way, we reacted with humor but then I was like, "What the hell - SHE ASSAULTED AND STALKED YOU, do you realize how much harm she could have done? We wouldn't be laughing if the genders were reversed!" He agreed with me and said something to the effect of, "well yeah, when a girl is hurt it's sad, when a guy is hurt it's funny." He pointed out another of our friends and said something like, "It would be funny if I kicked him in the crotch. But can you imagine if I kicked a girl in the stomach?" (I paraphrase here.)

Sorry for the rambling story, I just ran across those two links this morning and it got me thinking about this issue.

Female privilege is a thing, you know. Has always been in western society. It's just that the reasons for things to be that way don't fucking exist anymore. Chivalry isn't dead - damsels in distress are. They've got a better protector nowadays in the law and its heavily biased enforcers.

[Bella]

You and Kari make a good point about it being less simple than male-female, as you've both noted testosterone and estrogen do come into play. I'm a bit high T myself and I've always wondered if it played a role in my body configuration (I have a somewhat high waist-hip ratio (0.78), small bust and my shoulders are pretty wide proportional to my body) and some of my mental traits (supposedly pre-natal testosterone exposure plays a role in determining sexual orientation and gender identity, and considering that I'm pretty solidly non-heterosexual...). There are certainly other factors at play but it's enough to make me wonder.

I also wonder the effect of high/low estrogen. I know estrogen levels are a major factor in fat deposits (supposedly people with higher estrogen carry fat more in their thighs and buttocks while people with lower estrogen carry fat in their midsections), breast growth and hair growth (supposedly higher estrogen people have less body hair), but I haven't read a whole lot about its effects on the body otherwise.

As for female privilege — while I wouldn't have phrased it that way (I'm not a huge fan of the privilege concept in general but that's a story for another day), it does irritate me to see women held as less accountable for their actions, particularly violent or criminal actions. We're very much a society that wants to promote equal rights for the sexes but many of us seem to not be over the mental hump of viewing women as being as capable of malice as men are.

Though I sometimes also wonder if it's an inability to fully comprehend women as being capable of violence or a tendency to view men as being predatory (i.e. in any violent interaction between a man and woman, the man will be held at fault). That would be a fascinating area of study — looking at sentencing in male-on-male, male-on-female, female-on-male and female-on-female crime. If there was some culturally ingrained lenience toward female criminals I would expect to see lighter sentencing for the latter two, whereas if there was a bias against men I would expect to see stricter sentencing for the former.

[Chocofreak13]

it all falls back to the feminist issue. when women are treated as people instead of women, it'll be easier to see them as capable of violence and physical actions, as well as easier to see men as possible victims. this'll help out issues of largely ignored male-on-male or female-on-male sexual abuse, too. :0

there have been a few video examples of the public at large's lack of response or willful ignorance to the issue.
the experiment's been performed a few times, but, as we all know, America tends to have the attention span of an infant, so after about a month of buzz, we've all moved onto the next big thing. i just hope that the other countries this is spreading to do more in the legislative sense than we have, since maybe we can follow suit. :\

[NejinOniwa]

The problem with feminists are that they don't want female privilege gone. They want female privilege expanded to a great degree, and whatever scraps of male "privilege" remains abolished with great prejudice.
I don't like the privilege rhetoric either, but it's probably the easiest way to sum up the respective sexes' beneficial sex-based perks in society. So yeah.

And America's deficit attention span (especially on this point) has more to do with the fact that the people who control that attention at large - big media - is owned and controlled by the same people who are pushing the current feminism agendas, among other things. What they don't want seen, won't be seen by the large plebeian masses.

Bells, your case does sound like a typical HTF-LEF outcome in many ways. It's probably be easier to look at if you traced it a bit, since hormone balance stuff generally is heavily genetic. My family on my father's side is all very HT, and mom's side is LT-HE. For a comparison (since hair loss depends a great deal on T levels) my grandfather on dad's side lost basically all the hair on his head between him proposing to and marrying grandma; while on mom's side grandpa still has all his hair left at 80-something years - similar results abound with their respective descendants. Based on outcomes I'd say me and my sister are HT-ME or HT-HE, while my brother is HT-LE.

The Female-Male violence thing - or "You can't be sexist towards men" as some phrase it - is a very important cornerstone of the issue at hand. I'd say gender conflicts in general are, despite being to some degree a manufactured crisis, the only conflict that comes close to race conflicts in importance today. "You can't be racist towards whites" has to be one of the most damnably stupid things I've ever heard.

It's pretty damn weird to look at. Right now there's a petition among South African whites to attain a similar Right of Return to Europe as Jews have to Israel. It's on the back of heavy persecution from the black-dominated politicians, as well as over 4000 racial murders, mostly of farmers. And lo and behold, for the first time in this never-ending game of mass immigration from Africa, the left-dominated media starts to use words like "Europe will be overrun". Yes, it'll be "overrun" by the descendants of the same people who left Europe a century or two ago. Nevermind the millions upon millions of people swarming across the mediterranean every day, nevermind the human smugglers, never mind the conflicts of religion and race that abound due to the differences between the immigrants you're already embracing and the populace you already have. But when it's about white people immigrating en masse - legally - there's suddenly a problem?
This has the stink of propaganda and conspiracy all over it, and those two things are what I hate more than anything in life.

[Nichi]

TBH, I'm not sure where my hormone balance is; never had blood work to determine that, although given that my thighs are kinda big, an issue my sister has as well, it's possible I may have low T. IDK; I'd need a doctor to actually check me out in that regard

[Chocofreak13]

mum's father: losing hair but still has an okay amount at 88
dad (his father died in his 30's or 40's): losing hair slowly at age 57


@nej: i'm not disagreeing with you, but help me out to understand some example of female privilege. we talking getting doors held open and shit or we talking preferred custody of kids and more workplace/government help when it comes to raising kids/taking time off? :0

as for the racism/sexism thing you mentioned,
i think Hank Hill said it best.

society has proven that anyone can be anything to anyone. if it's not possible to be racist against whites, why is there a precedent of white-on-white hate in the case of class differences? :0

[NejinOniwa]

The "preferred custody of kids" deal is kind of big. Really, really big, when you see the kind of preference we're talking about. There's a series ongoing right now - here in Sweden, and in a liberal paper to boot, who would've thought - about the kind of damage it does to society when financially unstable and/or insane mothers are favored for custody over their considerably more competent husbands. And yet, this is the standard by far. If the mother demands single custody, 80% of the time she'll have it - regardless of financial differences or the like. And a similar tendency exists in the justice system, where males defendants with female plaintiffs tend to get harder sentences and go free less often; despite the fact that there is a rather disturbing tendency of false accusations in many of these cases (specifically with sexual violence).

All the rest of what you've noted is applicable. One could also argue for the presence of a sexual privilege - as in, competition for mates is considerably harder among males - though this is by and large quite natural and exists in some form for most mammals.

I've a party to go to, so I've gotta cut this short, but the topic of male vs. female "privilege" is something that needs to be discussed and evaluated, and not just taken at face value whenever some propagandist yells at you.

[Chocofreak13]

it's topics like these that i agree with you about, but am in little position to do anything, and the mere thought of being politically active makes me tired. maybe the depression is hitting me again.

i plan on teaching my kids to be as gender-neutral as possible, with regards to fairness, hitting, toys, clothing, whatever i can. my only hope is that enough people thinking like me will teach enough of the next generation this to start evening the playing field. unless there's some big, cataclysmic event or the feminists change their tunes ever so slightly, i can only see change happening gradually, over generations (as it did before, from when dads were usually awarded custody in the 50's). :\

[Goujer (she/her)]

Same sex marriage is legal everywhere now.
I don't swing that way anymore but I still think this is great example of America's ability to bring liberty and freedom to everyone.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?referrer=&_r=0