Matisyra

Here's my beef with this video. Obesity -- actual obesity, not just merely not looking like a fitness model -- is a real problem in our society that impacts women AND men. There is nothing in this video about men and obesity, other than that they don't like obese women. Never mind that men are obese, men are discriminated against for not fitting into a healthy weight, and men have their own problems and concerns when it comes to weight. Nothing about the stigma for men around trying to lose weight, as dieting or watching what you eat is a 'girl' thing. In fact, the video implies that it is women who need to watch what they eat and what they look like, and men of course never have those issues. Nothing about men's relationships with their own bodies, their own anxieties and emotional lives. There is also nothing about how processed food, commercial agriculture and the glut of chemicals in our food supply is contributing to obesity, in addition to increasingly sedentary lifestyles, or how for men who are working a 50-60 hour week easily, plus have household duties and family duties in many cases, do not have the time to work out, nor are they coming home to meals that aren't either take out or easily cooked processed crap anymore. Men have far, far bigger issues facing them with the obesity problem in the west than just not having enough hot women to look at, and I find the video incredibly insulting to not bring up the real issues actually facing men. He's just re-enforcing the (often found in radical feminism) stereotype that men are just boner factories with no concerns of their own or anxieties other than whether they feel they can screw a particular woman.

That's my take on it too. The Women Against Feminism women are the feminists your mother should have warned you about. I'm sure they all like the rights to vote, to own property of their own, to be able to get work, access to birth control, etc, but they stop liking feminism the minute it implies that they might have to do for themselves. So many of those posts were about needing a man to lift heavy stuff and open jars -- classic male disposability stuff, really. They also don't really have a good critique of the marxist patriarchy theory overtaking feminism, and that's just lazy to me. It's so easy to rip apart.

This was DC in the late 90's, so it was a question of walking through an area with muggings from junkies or an area where drive-boys and gang-related issues came up, or take a very long walk at night, or a long cab wait. Standing around or being out for long didn't sound smart, and so the lesser of two evils was the option I went for. If you live in a city, learn to know the area. Check out the city crime beat. It's not enough to know the bad areas and the good areas - know what kind of bad areas there are. Avoidance for men and women will not be possible every time, so knowing how to de-escalate a situation is helpful. Was not hurt at all, luckily enough. Sadly, especially for the men I knew who got mugged, most people are not so lucky.

It did work for me the one time I had to try it. Granted, this was going through an area where it was well known that most muggings were to score drugs and the attacker did look pretty strung out. Would not be the best response in all situations but in some, it is a way of de-escalating. It's a good trick in areas known for junkies, but not a trick for areas you don't know anything about.I'm all for concealed carry for those who feel like it's a good precaution. For those of us who are nervous around guns, are small and could easily be overpowered by a larger attacker without spending years in martial arts training, situational awareness and avoiding high risk situations may be the better tactic. I'm all for it for those who feel comfortable with a gun though. I'm not going to question anyone who chooses to practice avoidance rather than carry.

I would say the video of things women do to mitigate risks is fairly accurate. When I was living in cities, I would say I did all of these (except the not eating bananas in public thing) and quite a bit more - never have a cell phone out while walking especially at night, take off and hide watches or jewelry before walking at night, always carry some cash so if you are mugged you can throw the cash one way and run the other. (Pro tip: carry the going rate of a hit of the current drug du jour). While some women may feel like victims all the time because of this, I have personally never met one -- anecdata is not data of course, and so I fully understand that there are women out there who will view themselves as victims because they need to show vigilance while living in a city with a higher crime rate. I viewed it as just being smart about my surroundings and my capabilities if I got in a bad spot. Honestly, it wasn't a big deal, nor did it ever feel like an injustice. The men I knew were often not as careful. They also got mugged more frequently, and men are the ones more likely to be mugged. Maybe, instead of women ranting about the safety measures they take, they should be good citizens, pass on their tips to men and encourage them to follow them rather than tease them for it. Cities are less safe for men, and as someone who likes men, I want them to be safe too. So guys, avoid walking alone at night, keep a twenty on you and put the phone away when you are walking. And give your friends text updates if you are on a date with a stranger too. Women can be dangerous too.

Here's the problem as I see it. Unless a woman has exceptionally good parents, she is raised with two utterly irreconcilable messages: She can be and do anything, just like Barbie, and it in a relationship, she should be treated like a special princess. Women are raised with the message that they have more options than being wife and mother, and they do not have to fit merely into traditional feminine roles. They are raised with the understanding that they can earn money, own property and seek public success in the way that men can. Nothing wrong with that, per se. Where it all falls apart is that most aren't raised with the same sense of responsibility that men get raised with. Men are told not to start dating unless they have money to pay for it, and not to have children unless they can afford it. If they cause a pregnancy, than they have to stand up and be responsible. Now, maybe girls are being raised differently, but when I was growing up, I don't know of many girls who had parents who were telling them that if they wanted to start dating, they better have a job to pay for dates, and if they had sex and a pregnancy occurred, they -- and only they, not the father, not the girl's parents -- better be ready to financially support that child. For at least the last twenty years (can't speak for before that), it seems that women have been entering the dating the world with all the benefits that men look for (companionship, sex, etc) with none of the responsibilities (asking someone out, paying for dates, working to get the approval of his family, continuing to put the work into planning future dates, financially supporting any children that may result). Women are told they have a right to having the social benefits a man has, which is fine, but they still expect a man to bear all the burdens that come with those benefits, which is absolutely NOT okay. A woman doesn't want hook-up culture? Then don't participate. Either go your own way or go ask men on dates, pick up the check, and don't get pregnant until it is a mutually agreed on and planned decision and you have both discussed how you will contribute financially and in terms of being there to raise the child. This isn't the age of chivalry and you should not expect men to pay you homage and curry favor. And grow up and be prepared to be told no. Men have been dealing with rejection from women for millennia. Women are not so frail that they can't handle no. Don't go hanging around bars and clubs to meet men. Don't act like a ho if you want to be a housewife. Don't think you can spend your early twenties amassing debt, a dubious reputation and possibly a kid or two and then settle down with a successful, masculine, virtuous man. He'll want nothing to do with you. A man doesn't want hook-up culture? Then don't participate. Don't go picking up girls at bars, college parties or known haunts of women who are only interested in hooking up. Don't go for a woman who talks about how she was daddy's little girl and was treated like a princess. Go your own way rather than put up with women who want treat you as a full human being and not a ATM with a vibrator attached. Don't go acting like a ho when you want to be a husband. Don't think you can spend your early twenties amassing debt, a dubious reputation, and possibly an 18 year plus child support commitment to a woman who is doing a terrible job raising your kids, and then settle down with an attractive, modest, virtuous women. She'll want nothing to do with you.

And of course, because women are such limited, infantile creatures, they can't possibly ever relate to a story that isn't by and about women. Because women are so brainless that they can't possibly get into Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, Joyce, Hardy, Conrad, Achebe, Rumi... they couldn't possibly ever enjoy a film like Glengary Glen Ross because no one had a vagina. Yeesh, and these people are supposed to be feminists? If women are truly equal to men, why can't we be inspired by words by a man, or find great knowledge and an insight in a story about a man? As for the idea that no memorable female character was written by a woman, I would argue that there have been. Jane Austin wrote some very memorable characters and was great at skewering some of the idiotic conventions of "femininity". The Bronte sisters wrote some pretty compelling women as well. However, since feminism, instead of the Brontes, we have "Chick Lit" and 50 Shades of Bland Sex. The publishing industry (NOT a meritocracy but not 'patriarchal' either) realized they could make more money selling books about shopping and pseudo-BDSM to soccer moms than promoting intelligently written books that weren't catering to the general female population. Can't blame them -- publishing is a business. Truly intelligent women writing good books for thinking readers, as opposed to ranting Marxist-bimbo-feminists spewing pandering words to middle-aged slugs upset they didn't get more than fifty percent and a hot pool boy in the divorce, make up such a small percent of the publishing industry that any publisher would starve for generations if they attempted to focus on that market.

Thanks for the welcome everyone! I'm really looking forward to joining in on the discussions and learning from everyone here.

So everyone can see what a feminist definition of rape culture is, here's a link: http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/03/examples-of-rape-culture/ To quote from the article: Even feminists are admitting that we don't commonly engage in sexual violence as a society, nor do we outwardly promote rape. The article goes on to cite a bunch of examples of stories and behaviors that range from the annoyingly impolite to the criminal. There can be shitty things in society happening without there being a "rape culture". If anyone wants, I can knock those down point by point, but I don't want this to be excessively tl;dr. What always pissed me off, even when I was a feminist and especially as a sexual assault survivor, about the whole rape culture thing is that it reduces women to their sexual organs, essentially. The worst possible violence that could happen to a woman, or happen in the world at all, is something involving her vagina. Even the idea that it could happen is supposed to turn me into a fainting consumptive, it seems. Brain injury? Eh. Become paralyzed? Oh well. But something happens to the hooha? Oh my god, that must have just ruined you, you poor broken woman! We ain't in Victorian England, ladies, and this ain't a Thomas Hardy novel. Getting raped was awful, yes, and it was a crime. However, it did not kill me. I'm not, unlike a lot of injured soldiers returning from war, permanently injured, maimed, and/or in debilitating pain. It doesn't make what happened to me not a crime and that isn't say it took a bit of time to get over, but I do not see how I should feel "empowered" by a feminism that tells me that a bunch of criminal reprobates putting their dicks somewhere I don't want ruins my entire life. Here is what feminists could say that I would completely support. "We live in a culture that condones violence. That violence gets expressed toward men and women differently, and since we're women, we're more aware of and able to speak to violence as it impacts women, but our culture of violence affects all of us. In fact, if we look at it, men -- more likely to be the victims of violent crime, more likely to die in war, less likely to receive social protection from violence -- are the ones most hurt by cultural violence. While it is important to consider violence against women, we really need to give a platform to violence against men if we want to stop this, so we'll pass the microphone."

I'm a software architect, and my undergrad degree is in English. If you are in the US, I would caution to finish getting your degree because a lot of your employers will care that you have some degree, just won't care what in. The advantage of having a non CS degree is that you can write actually coherent documentation and often may be a bit more practiced in giving presentations. For me, having the non CS background has actually helped me advance beyond just being a coder, since I would always be the one sent to talk to the business users and owners. Definitely go to a code bootcamp, but also just start building stuff. Get a hosted site somewhere and start doing things. Employers will care more about what you can actually build than they will about your degree. Also, while you are learning the front end stuff, learning the backend stuff of database structures, data analytics and mining can be a very, very, very good idea right now.

Hello everyone, I'm Olivia from Maryland in the USA. I'm a 35 year old software architect and open water swimmer. I come from an actually decent family -- my parents are still married after almost 40 years, were not ones to spank or hit ever, and raised me to value independence, effective work, taking personal responsibility and education. My father was a software designer and architect -- though I had majored in English and had ideas of a more artistic life, it seems it was in my DNA and by my mid-20's, I was happy to admit I had far more fun working on machines than I did doing just about anything else, aside from swimming. My mother was a stay-at-home mom when I was little, and later worked for charities and symphonies as a development director when my sister I were older. While my parents and I had our disagreements when I was a teenager and rebellious, we are still close. I'm also close with my sister. I've never had children of my own since my biological clock never turned on and, for a variety of reasons, probably couldn't have them if I wanted to. I've been very fortunate to find a very smart, wonderful man who is a single dad with two children and is not interested in having more children. Rather than finding just one person to love, when I met him I found three. Came across Stefan's YouTube's videos when, after the Isla Vista shootings and the #yesallwomen stuff came up. I'd always considered myself a feminist. My mom considered herself a feminist because she believed that being a woman, caring for children and having "feminine" traits is not a character flaw. My dad was far more interested in teaching his daughters how to code and change the oil in their cars than calling them princesses and daddy's little girl (even typing it kind of makes me want to wretch). However, reading that stuff, I got kind of annoyed. This wasn't the feminism I was raised with, which said that women grew up to be adults just like men with the same rights and the same responsibilities as a man. I grew up with the idea that women could learn just as well as a man, and as an adult, they could meet the same standard and be held to the same standard. Somehow, it seemed like feminism turned into a bunch of grown women infantilizing themselves and blaming men -- most of whom have less social power than the women do -- for everything. No one was talking about women having the ability to stand up for themselves, take responsibility for mistakes and credit for accomplishments, except for places like FDR and people like Stefan. Always one to care more about the content than the label, I figured if the "misogynists" were treating women like full human adults and the "feminists" were treating women like children, I'd switch camps to the "misogynists". Also have really enjoyed Stefan's views on the state and the whole philosophy UPP. So glad I found this place.