Folks, the original subreddit that discussed the inner-workings of Reddit's participants
(media.communities.win)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (23)
sorted by:
The entire history of women's rights shows this is false. They just whined until they were given enough power that they are currently able to drag our world to hell on their whims.
Feminism was only allowed to succeed because it benefits those in power. Turning people on each other based off of gender has proven to be a really good method of divide and conquer. If feminism didn't benefit those in power, it would've been shut down quicker than Occupy Wall Street.
And yet women managed to gain considerable power just by begging for it, and plenty of men who weren't at the elite top gave it to them all the same.
The world isn't just "elites and the rest."
You're assuming that women didn't have "power." I would argue that women have always had power, and the problems we're having now is that we've dismantled nearly all checks on female power.
Their power was indirect. They had control over those with power, but attempting to leverage it outright and directly would be stilted heavily. So they needed to work through their husbands, fathers, etc. Their gaining of power was them seizing the ability remove that individual element, and instead leverage society as a whole as their new daddy with little restraint on what whims would move into action.
To deny that change is to deny that being able to open a pickle jar with your barehand instead of a gripper tool isn't an increase of power. Regardless of the result being equal.
I'm not denying that change; it sounds like we're in complete agreement. Women have always had power; it used to be a different type of power that (typically) had to be exercised through someone else (an implicit check on it), and now that check no longer exists.
We are in agreement then. I am simply used to people saying "ackshually it was the super shadow cabal who controls everything making them think they had power!!" so I countered a little wider than needed.
One thing to always keep in mind is how an human behavior is predominately governed by individuals acting in their own interest. Furthermore, a characteristic grouping people together, namely race, sex, or class, does not imply that individuals of a category work towards a common interest or support each other. Another comment correctly notes that women have always had some power, how much depending on circumstance.
The quote applies pretty well with that context, part of the explanation of how many women find themselves miserable situations, either of their own making or decided by previous generations' (both genders) policies and attitudes. "Powerful men" didn't bequeath power onto all women, some powerful men and women outmaneuvered other powerful persons by duping commoners into accepting a phony, dysfunctional equality and using that momentum as ammunition.
Individuals acting in their own interest can make changes on the behalf of the group, so I don't know what that entire paragraph is trying to get to. Feminists, in this case, changed the playing field for all women despite being a minority of them. Also, someone having power already doesn't preclude them from getting more power.
They literally did though. Powerful men in government and elite positions granted them legal power and protections to break them of their social chains (thereby granting them social power too), which they accrued entirely by whining loudly until they were uplifted. Even the parts that didn't require powerful men directly bequeathing it, like slut shaming, was accomplished by crying to men to stop doing it until they did. Just because they couldn't handle that power and it backfired horribly on most doesn't mean they lack it, nor does the fact that many of them choose to not use said weapons make them powerless.
You are speaking in flowerly vague terms to try and hold your point as 100% true in all cases possible, when a concrete example shows that its only usually true. I don't mean this to sound as aggressive as it does, but it was hard to even grasp what you were trying to say.
George Carlin's 'big club, and you ain't in it' only implies that a top 1% individual will risk himself for the class's benefit only if there's a visible outside threat, or if such actions would happen to significantly raise his status. Otherwise, the day-to-day modus operandi is individuals and factions vying for themselves; this has the added effect of ensuring the upper-class doesn't become unsustainbly large. The same principle applies to the peasantry, with how wages increased in the aftermath of Mongol invasions and black death.
And other commoners (losers in the Gervais Pyramid) were duped into thinking into thinking they were getting a great deal with feminism/progressivism/etc, while being distracted away from grand transfers of wealth throughout the 20th century.
As in a king ceremoniously swearing in his loyal retainers. Some were swindled by beggars, but most were coerced by other elites and new bloods.
There's always generalisms and nuance; I'm just stating the overarching cause behind feminism 'succeeding' was social attrition, not top 20% men breaking down at the sound of pleading spouses and daughters.The entirety of the feminist movement, at least as pertains to politics, is my example. What you see as begging was really activists and pawns engaging in a whole bunch of maneuver and doublespeak. 'Oppose the newly passed 19th amendment and lose your business contacts while being placed on the wrong side of history.' I don't feel like conducting extensive archaeology on feminist history to pick out specific examples, since my original point was about not licking the boots of jannies and investor-hamstrung tech companies.
You just repeated the same thing over without any relevance to what I said about how individuals can work for their own interests, and still change the placement of the group. The top 1% person can do something entirely for themselves and it ripple across everything. Karen Horney had a personal hissy fit against Freud and created her entire progressive rot in the Psychology field, and in turn the abuse of said field across all walks of life. King Henry changed the entire course of the English people's history on a desire for a divorce.
Again, irrelevant. They still got great amounts of power. Just because someone else benefited and that power didn't bring them happiness like they believed doesn't change that. Which seems to be your issue in general, focusing on the shadow cabal of elites profitting and then working backwards to where all other things fall into place for your definition.
They didn't plead the elites straight up into getting it. They plead everyman who could be made to listen into fighting their battle for them, just as they've always done and have continued to do since. That attrition is exactly what I meant, you just want to say you are right and reword it to fit your "can never" original point.